Have you ever sent a mayday?
The first time I called mayday it was on May 1st, which in the UK is often referred to as May Day. I was the instructor in the back of a Hawk TMk1 and a bird (a red kite so they told me afterwards) put a large hole in the canopy when I was at 250' and 420 knots. It got very loud and quite cold but once we slowed down it wasn't so bad. The mayday came out once I'd already got myself heading towards my nearest diversion airfield. Quite uneventful from then on. The weird thing is I was almost glad it had happened. I always wanted to know how I'd handle the situation. Thankfully quite well. I remembered to take a deep breath so I sounded cool when I made the call on guard.
The second mayday was on behalf of a wingman who lost more of his canopy than I did in a very similar situation. He couldn't hear the radio so I did the talking for him.
That's it so far and now I've done it I'm in no rush to do it again!
BV