The change to the Andover as the TOS support aircraft was not universally welcomed among us rag-heads. It seemed to us that operationally it carried little more than a Twin Pin, but made a hugely greater fuss over it.
What really got us was that with the Twin Pins, at Sharjah we could roll up 10 minutes before departure, Landrover to the aircraft door, and climb in carrying whatever we had to take with us. Much the same as at the outstations, in short.
Then, suddenly, RAF Sharjah acquired a Movements Controller, or some such, along with its shiny Andovers, and we were instructed to report to some kind of check-in ONE HOUR before departure. This was not considered funny.
The great Don Tibbee, Paymaster extraordinaire, was especially put out by all this. He had been doing the pay-runs to stations for years, carrying a very large trunk full of Indian coins to pay the soldiers. He would show up at the TP door, with an escort, all armed to the teeth to protect Her Maj's funds, climb in with the trunk and off they would go.
His first trip under the new system did not go well. Arriving 10 minutes before departure as was his right, he was not allowed on to the airfield, but told to go the the Movements Centre (I forget the exact name it had). There he was met by a young and rather pompous Movements person who looked at the loaded handguns with horror, and told him and the escort to hand them over to be stowed safely. After an altercation, he did so with bad grace. Then he was told that the cash trunk had to be checked in, and reclaimed on arrival at the outstation. After another altercation ("I'm not handing that over to a bunch of light-fingered airmen") he gave in, but then told the Movements Officer that the TOS had adopted Royal Army Pay Corps rules, among which was one saying that cash had to be checked on any handover by the receiver. He then upended the trunk over the floor, and suggested that coffee would be in order while the Movements Officer counted the thousands of coins and low value notes, and put them back in the trunk.
I'm sure a complaint winged its way to Murqaab Camp, but Don was totally fireproof and nothing would have been done about it.
At around that time, the conversion of the TOS from what an official report called "an ill-disciplined bunch of misfits" to a rather more spit-and-polish outfit was in full swing, to the resentment of the older hands. The changes at RAF Sharjah were seen as another nail in the coffin of the old-style TOS.