Cremeegge
I was the stooge who worked outside with our traveling engineer while your dad drunk coffee in the warm!
It was around zero and slush everywhere.
The procedure was to start engine 2, remove the starter motor, fit a blanking plate which was carried in the engineers kit and then mount the starter on engine three.
After we started two we refitted the starter to engine three but it wouldn't start - I thought we had got the starters mixed up and we swopped them around - no joy.
We had already re-fueled after the first starter had broken - it took nearly an hour to carry out the procedure in the dark but with another good hour and a third re fueling in Moscow your dad decided we would run out of hours and we night-stopped. Fantastic decision!!!!!
The starter motors were flown in the next day on the subsequent service and we flew back with a couple of pax only.
I always suspected that the starter motor had gone bang ex LHR after some engineering bodge - it was the only time I ever had a starter motor failure in my career- let alone two!
In those days we often had a lot of carry forward defects as well as prodigious tech log entries "ground tested and found satisfactory".
The night stop was a hoot - although we didn't have a room party as Male and females were on separate floors with a granny sitting at the end of the corridor.
Station gave us a briefing about the KGB and BOAC who had unscrewed a chandelier floor mounting plate believing it was a secret microphone causing the chandelier to crash to the floor below.
The hotel room was similar to a french one - cold with a trickle of brown water running out of the tap - brushed our teeth with champagne.
The next day we paraded around Red Square in our uniforms jumping all of the queues into the churches. We got as far as jumping a 1/2 kilometer queue into Lenin's tomb but couldn't be a*****d just to see the coffin.
Moving Map
Played a prank once with a new skipper who decided to have a kip on a night med flight - probably Malta.
When he went to sleep I unplugged his head set jack plug.
We got descent with London ATC and took out all of the manometric locks, slightly throttled back and started the descent on pitch wheel.
It meant that the autopilot annunciator panel was blank - We always included it in our scan to understand what the autopilot was trying to do.
This was followed by winding the doppler map to it's very end - think it had the sector details on it.
All of our radio aids were detuned and P1s jack plug was replaced.
Waking up he would have immediately assumed that we had overflown Heathrow and that the aircraft was descending out of control.
As he stirred we assumed sleeping positions but out of the corner of our eyes we watched the panic dawn over his less than angelic face.
Dare not write the expletives down.
Bet he didn't let his FOs do all of the work on a night flight again!