Ah - morse on the Aldis Lamp!
When young APO Teeters was starting flying training post AOTS (a briefly lifed son of ITS), the Powers That Be were tinkering with flying syllabi.
One plan - to save cash of course - was to do more Chipmunk flying followed by less JP flying. The chosen model for the trial extra Chippy flying was the RN/FAA pre-helicopter course (60 or 75 hours instead of the 30 the RAF got). So 10 of us were dispatched to Linton (then mostly RN) to fly. (Although I was the only one to finish up rotary).
"But," said our wise masters, "the RN do lots of morse, so you must keep up."
"Instead of your post graduating leave, you can all go to Topcliffe (Siggy School) to do 2 weeks intensive morse. You will need 12s (words per minute) on the key and 6s on the Lamp (
)".
Which we more or less achieved, and proudly declared our ability on arrival at Linton.
"Oh morse?" said the staff "How quaint - the FAA gave all that up a couple of years ago!"
