Flew with a tough looking Vietnamese born student at Essendon many years ago. He is a 767 F/O now with a Pacific airline. Jovial bloke with very good English and good sense of humour. Became a CFI at a Fiji flying school. He also was a black belt karate expert. He told me about flying with an instructor from Melbourne Institute of Aviation, or MIA based at Essendon. Said instructor was a grade 2 with a foul mouth and was a screamer. During a X/country in a C172 the instructor was shouting non-stop. The student related to me that this grade 2 got right up his nose so much that: Quote: " I nearly considered putting him to sleep" . And with that he made an evil grin at me while making a karate chopping motion with his throttle hand.
A dirty trick story follows.
In another era Centaurus was a Lincoln instructor.
Wot's a bloody Lincoln you might say. Well its a bigger version of the wartime Lancaster four engine bomber. Designed as a single pilot type another crew member could act as copilot by sitting on a tiny fold-down stool attached to the fuselage wall. The seat was below the level of the captain's seat. That's where the instructor sat if there was one. A short instructor could barely see over the instrument panel. Needless to say I was a short QFI. Checklists weren't heard of in those days. It was all in the head and scans were usually left to right apart from the before take off checks which were standard RAAF Hatches, Harness, Hydraulics, trim etc. Mustn't forget the bomb doors lever either. .
One of the more important switches was the High/Low engine supercharger switch which had to be Low for take off otherwise you could bugger the engine on take off. From experience I knew pilots would occasionally miss this switch during their scans and with no checklist to pick it up it was potentially quite dangerous if in the wrong position (High Supercharger)
So for night flying especially (dark cockpit in those days) I would deliberately get into the cockpit before the "student" and flick the switch to "High" supercharger position in the hope the pilot would pick it up during the pre-flight scan. Dirty trick maybe but it could save lives. Word soon got around among the squadron pilots but I was not aware of that.
Was doing a night check on a former war time RAF Halifax bomber pilot called K.K. Wilson who had risked his life many times by dropping secret service agents at night by parachute into Occupied Europe. Very dangerous flying especially if the German night fighters got you on radar. KK knew about my trick and got into the aircraft before me. The bugger then taped several drawing pins pointy side out on the supercharger changeover switch and withdrew to the back of the aircraft to await my own furtive arrival. It was black as spades when I got to the cockpit and I didn't need a torch to locate the supercharger switch because I knew exactly where it was located in the middle of the instrument panel.
I found the bloody switch by feel and stuck my fingers right on to the drawing pins which drew blood and caused a great oath. From the back of the Lincoln appeared KK with a big grin and he said "that'll teach you to f**ck around, young Centaurus." Point taken in more ways than one...
Last edited by Centaurus; 26th Dec 2012 at 12:48.