Have you ever sent a mayday?
Sod the embarrassment. If you need to call mayday you'll know. I'd called pan many times before but when the hole in my canopy appeared I knew exactly what I was going to say. Sadly our tape didn't run on the day but another Sqn mate in the area did have a good tape. I remember listening to it the next day to see if I sounded as cool as I thought I did. I remember the call to this day.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday VYT83 mayday"
"VYT83 your mayday is acknowledged pass your message" (on guard and ATC were excellent).
"V83 is a Hawk in the Llampeter area, I've had a bird strike with a big hole in the canopy (I was annoyed about using big instead of just saying a hole) request vectors for Cardiff".
What followed was a vector, which was within 5 degrees of where I'd decided upon myself, and then simple instructions and acknowledgement from then on. We set up for a visual straight in on the westerly runway. I also remember having to avoid a large shower for fear of getting wet.
We had the entire conversation on guard (the first time I spoke to Cardiff was on the ground frequency) and it didn't bother me one bit. I even found out afterwards from a friend that he had been flying a Nimrod on exercise over Cardiff and they immediately set up a RESCAP in the event of an ejection when they heard the call.
The only other thing to add was that from the first mayday I prefixed every call with "mayday V83". Not sure if that was correct but it meant, in my mind, that everyone knew why I was disturbing the peace on 243.0.
So there we go. Not the most exciting mayday ever, but when you're in a single engine jet and it's just become a cabriolet and you never know if any shards of Perspex have gone down the intake, why take a chance?!
BV