Ormeside,
Bit puzzled about your "ARAA" Radar at Topcliffe - only thing I can think of would be an ACR7 (-C or -D), which could do quite a decent PPI (step-down or continuous descent) - but no glide-path. Does that ring a bell ?....D.
harrym,
No sooner have I invented my new acronym then YLSNED comes into play!
Hysteresis ? Never 'eard of it ! Good old Google to the rescue, strikes me that many of the people I've known in the RAF have shown its effects.
Now terror is piled on terror. In the first instance, all gliding is fundamentally unsafe. For:
"What goeth up, must yet Descend/And each Flight cometh to an End". You've little choice as to where, and in what circumstances - gravity will decide that for you. Even getting into the air is not without its hazards. You're dragged up by a tug flown some stranger, on a long piece of string (which may bust) or a winch (ditto), into the Wide Blue Yonder and cast adrift without compunction.
And now you tell me that you're actually
snatched off the ground ! (by a method akin to the system then used on the railways to grab mailbags without stopping). I remember that, in the Good Old Days, that messages from an army in the field were enclosed in a leather pouch and strung on a sort of washing line held stretched ten feet above ground between two poles.
Then a Wapiti (or something of that ilk) would come along with a version of your hook and do the necessary. I believe the reply came back from HQ with a big lead weight in the pouch (so it wouldn't drift far in the wind when chucked over the side of the aircraft). (This must have made the eyes of some poor squaddie water a bit if he chanced to be on the wrong spot).
Each to his own - I'd sooner have an engine !....D.
Flash2001,
Your:
"After the war, of course, he reverted to F/L. He continued to fly and rose again to WingCo but the powers that be wouldn't let him in a jet. He then retired without pension or much else from the RCAF".
This sounds rather hard. Of course, we "hostilities only" people could not expect our wartime service to count for RAF pension purposes (had I returned to, and remained in the Civil Service, it
would have counted for
that pension). But I think that in the your uncle's case, he must have entered the RCAF pre-war on some kind of regular Commission; surely his service would have continued unbroken through the war, and for a long time afterwards.
Because you don't get from Flt.Lt. back to W/Cdr overnight in peacetime service. I'm not sure what the RAF minimum for a pension was then, but think 16 years (if less, but with 10 years in, you'd get a substantial gratuity). If your uncle had made S/Ldr by '39, he must have had considerable pre-war service. All in all, he must have done 20 years or more, and surely would be entitled to a RCAF pension.
The explanation is almost certain to be a break in service after the war - for then the "clock" is reset to zero: you start again on a new "contract", and your eligibility for pension will be based on that....D.
Goodnight, all. Danny.
PS: I'm rather surprised that no one has drawn attention to a small item in Saturday's D.T. Seems that in August 2010, an unfortunate Chris Wilson was flying
something over the Congo with 18 pax - and a
crocodile (don't ask me why). The animal was insufficently secured, broke free and was marching up the aisle.
The Flight Attendant bolted forward to the safety of the Flight Deck, with a stampede of pax behind her.
The trim shift caused the aircraft to enter a dive from which it did not recover. There was only one survivor, who told the story (and possibly the crocodile: there is supposed to be a video of the creature being removed from the wreckage, alive or dead I know not).
Moral, all you transport Captains: do not agree to carry Crocodiles.
(It reminds me of all the horror stories I heard in India of people flying along and finding a snake in the cockpit.... well, what would
you do ?)....D.
Cheers, everybody, Danny.