You know someone once told me that when a pilot gets borne he is issued with 2 buckets. One is full of LUCK and the other is empty but marked "EXPERIENCE". The trick they said was to try and fill up the bucket of EXPERIENCE before the bucket of LUCK ran out.
I got borne in the Army. With a little more than 300 hours in my logbook and the ink still wet, I found myself tasked to fly a General from Soest to Rheindahlen along the affectionately termed "IF Corridor". To achieve this we had a MINITANS Doppler driven NAVAID which liked to **** itself occasionally especially in clouds. (Great). However, being well trained in the basics one had a back-up plan! DR (Dead Reckoning). So when the TANS went AWOL you could probably, fair wind and all that, end up within a howitzers range opf the intended destination. Thank God Laarbruck and Bruggen could "Catch" you at the other end with a nicely timed GCA. However, situated along the corridor, close to it, was Dusseldorf. ZE Germans liked to mess you about. Turn Left, Turn Right, Decend, Climb, etc, all of which we could do cos we was properly trained by the Green Machine! All this in a Whistling Chicken Leg (Gazelle) with no SAS let alone AFCS (which was at the time just a mere twinkling in Aerospatiale's eye).
However, then comes the hideous phrase "Cleared to continue with your own navigation"!. Quick look at Mr TANS and realise he has gone on holiday just when I need him. Holy Moly what do I do next!. Captain Manwaring might not panic but his bucket of Experience had a lot more in it than mine! Suddenly an Angel appears (well a Big hole in the clouds) and I look down and see Rheindahlen. Collective dumped, arse eating the seat cushion, dirty dive through the hole and land.
Siting in the seat gently perspiring I sense a deficit in my LUCK bucket and a small addition to my EXPERIENCE Bucket. This lasts but a few moments until the General (who up to now has been oblivious to the mortal danger) leans forward and says "5 Minutes Late, What's your name Soldier"
I resisted the urge to say "Its printed on my chest you Dork!" as such things usually ends ones career.
Fast forward to 1990. I become a sweaty heaving civilian! Sumburgh, 2 x S61s in the fleet fitted with the dreaded Bog-Roil/Knitting Needle NAVAID (Decca moving map) (Moving haha, hah). Aided and abetted with a Black&White Radar Stormscope thingy smack in the middle of the instrument console.
Sumburgh had no ILS back then and getting home in the fog/low cloud was a simple case of local knowledge matching the shape of the coastline against the RADAR return and slithering along the NDB needle and the Bog Roll wobbling on top of the console hopefully confirming that we were not doing something stupid. (Providing of course it didn't eject the bog roll down the centre aisle of the passenger cabin).
My bucket of experience actually felt like it had something in after that and the bucket of luck was stabilising under the steady guidance of the Sumburgh Old and Bold.
And here we are today. The MINITANS has gone to the great NAVAID repository in the Sky and the Bog Roll....well I hope someone wiped their arse on it before it was finally retired. The knitting needle should really have been used to poke our F***ink eyes out so we were stopped forever from doing dumb things! However this was not to be.
Replacing all those Heath Robinson solutions in favour of Glass Cockpits, Moving Maps (that actually move), FLIRS, Colour RADARS, Terrain Databases and the Great God of the Sky...GPS and in theory our buckets of LUCK should be protected somewhat allowing our buckets of experience to grow steadily until we achieve the status of LEGEND (Like SAS or CRAB) no irony intended and said from the heart boys!.
Of all the challenges we faced in the past, the future does not seemed to have learned very much.
However, I remember back to those days in Sumburgh sat next to a crusty old Captain who had long favoured the Times Crossword over filling in his Logbook, peering over his bifocals at my truly ****e performance and saying...."Keep trying Laddy. One day it will be all right". And the thing is that my bucket of luck was in their care until the day came when I could get it right.
Those old agades:
1.Runway Behind you!
2. Fuel in the Bowser!
3. Death and WRACs! (oops that's not politically correct anymore is it).
For the sake of sanity and in no small measure, to look after our personal buckets of LUCK lets add another one;
4. DONT FLY OVER RED BLOBS (below MSA).
Last edited by DOUBLE BOGEY; 4th May 2017 at 16:56.