Most useless 'route steal'...

[BEagle]

OK - every Ascoteer has done it. Wandered into the local BX with only a hangover and wallet full of Aunty Betty's blats for company. But then, something which, at the time, had seemed really, really useful has attracted his/her eye. "Utter route steal - must have one of those", our hero has thought...

So what was the most usless or daftest BX route steal you've ever seen anyone buy?

The electric kitchen thing for the wife which only works on 110v?

The 'very cheap' car tyres which, without e-marks, are illegal in the UK?

The kids' bikes for which no spares are available in the UK?

The handheld spotlight which throws a beam for half a mile? (OK - guilty!)

Or the joke gifts - like the pink plastic Islamic prayer clocks in the shape of a mosque?

Any more??

[TBSG]

BEagle - I note you are posting a lot tonight. Are you on a mission to reply to everything on the forum? Bored and on another long stopover??

Anyway, how about beef jerky - looks great on the shelves, tastes like trench foot once you get home.

[BEagle]

Nope - have been waiting for a phone call...and still b£oody am!

Agree about Beef Jerkoff - but have you ever made the mistake of trying the god-awful 'Wintergreen flavor Lifesavers' (Spam-speak for Polos)....:yuk:

[number-cruncher]

I agree that beagle is posting a lot tonight. But there is one simple answer as to why? He is as sad as they come. Joined the site in may 99, 9403 posts so far, 80 months in total= 117.53 posts per month.
I can only assume you are commissioned, middle-aged or young and really sad, sit in a little one person office with a computer connected to the web, in a corridor with lots of little one person offices and....nobody has a clue as to what you actually do. If you are married, you're wife never has one to one contact unless she checks her e-mail or perhaps the odd text at dinner time or special occasions e.g. computer monthly arrives through the letterbox. Finally, you are biding you're time waiting for the big payday and believe you have earned it and do a damn important job.(at least that's what you tell friends) If you are aircrew, then you are a Sqn Ldr or similar on PA spine earning minimum 55K or greater for nowt.
Back to the thread.
One lad bought a Gerber sharpner for $3 and didn't even have a Gerber knife.
He said it was a bargain and rude not to.:ok:

[BEagle]

Keep eating the porridge.....

[number-cruncher]

9405......

[Episkopiana]

:confused:

Now that sounds just like the MJ I used to know and Love. You were always chickeng my spillin misteaks two.

:p

[Rakshasa]

Grammar nazism. Now there's a topic for lively debate!

Mistakenly bought some (knock-off)T-shirts only for them to fall apart as soon as they were put in the wash. :=

[Roguedent]

I believe BEagle is all the opposite to the ideas you put forward. But alas he is now in pastures retired. Probably counting the amount per post that his pension brings in, cos I bet he earns more than me just sitting at his computer. I Will never forgive him for failing a thrust reverser and making me crash...in the SIM I might add. Back to the thread, I once bought a kebab that looked really cheap at the time, only to find out that it gave me the s##ts in the morning. To make matters worse Cocanelli smells the same even after being in your stomach for 15 hours....:yuk:

[Onan the Clumsy]

crunchie-number I think you're mistaken about codename BEagle. Look carefully at how it is spelled and you will soon begin to realise it isn't just one person, but a crack team of mission ready professionals who are regularly parachuted in to threads where the natives are getting restless.

Membership in this semi secret organisation is a goal of many people, but it's a goal rarely attained.

[BEagle]

You manage to keep Kokinelli in your stomach for 13 hours?

Respect!

(Was the thrust reverse sim event when you didn't check the orange lights, so when you asked for full reverse you got full reverse on no. 1 and full forward on no. 4? Followed by an excursion into the bondhu, whereupon the sim went wibble?

Bet you've always checked the lights ever since though!

I made it crash by using the slew jobber in the back. Effective, wasn't it?! ;) )

[Roguedent]

I bet there is a long and hard selection. Possibly involving eating as many ACC's and LHR's as possible. :yuk: Add to that mind altering ground CATs:{ and the ability to ghost on to States trips,:cool: then, only then may you join. As the BEagle once said...Hmmm learn you must, teach you I will...:ok:


and yes BEagle it was, and yes I never fail to check them now. Glad the Captain, once a NAV, was operating....hehe

[brakedwell]

A Revell kit of the Cutty Sark in the BX at Hickham - I must have been p****d.

[adrian mole]

Ah the penknife - I still remember the Court Martial...

[Anita Bush]

Once managed to convince a kipper mate that the CDs he bought in a BX wouldn't work at home as the electricity supply worked at a different frequency in the US.

[BEagle]

Not a BX, but an RAFG NAAFI shop. Holding officer (ah..bless) dashed in, grabbed a couple of slabs of German-sounding tinnies for which he paid a surprisingly small price, then hopped back into the wheels before clambering into the back of one of HM's Vickers FunBuses on his way home.

Gets back to Brize, wonders why the groundcrew are pi$$ing themselves with laughter.

"Which knob bought the 2 cases of Clausthaler?"





(For those who don't know, it's 0.0% alcohol by volume!)

[Solid Rust Twotter]

Beef jerky?

Well, if you will buy that useless septic pretend biltong....... *sniff*:rolleyes:

[dallas]

The prize must go to the Herc crew who went for the ultimate route 'steal' - literally stealing a base pedal-buggy type thing from Dover and putting it on the back of the plane.

The USAF were not at all pleased and a week or so later another C130 'conveniently' needed a flag stop DOV to return stolen goods.

[bluetail]

Best one I saw, and it was a Kipper Mate Nav....

Weekend up to Kef from ISK in a Mk2, prior to departure Tac Nav approached me, the Chiefy,

Chief I,m buying this all singing dancing Hi Fi kit from the BX in Kef we need some storage space on the jet OK (meaning don,t let the lads take up the back end with beer)

Sure enough, great weekend had by all (is it the Volcano Club at Kef memory dulls over time) and come Monday morning said Nav pitches up with 10 large crates, biggest of which was about the size of the Nimrod bog.

Loaded the toy....Its truly amazing what you can fit in a Bog, down the isles, front door and galley.

We get back to ISK, duty Customs Man meets us (days before the RAFP) clears the groundies toute sweet as ever.

It took the Nav an hour and about £300 in duty to get his toy off, moral of the tail, talk to the customs chappy BEFORE you leave home base to see if you can do a deal.

Officers (and it was bloke too) DOH

[Daf Hucker]

A real route steal was accomplished by a P3 crew on leaving ISK in late 70's/early 80's - they took all 3 Sqn Standards back to Kef with them! Mind you the crew didn't stay in Kef long, they were met by the Base Commander and invited to return them immediately. :)

[Pontius Navigator]

No beer but a quick grab and run on a Clutch base - two cases of diabetica wine! Still tasted better than zero alc beer!

The other thing about bargain buys in the BX, you could not 'consume' them cause you could not replace them if they broke or wore out. I still have two survival hammocks, fit in a pocket, $6 apiece. Never spent more than 5 minutes in them.

[brakedwell]

A case from the grass is greener side from the 1980's. The Chief Pilot of Air Europe bought a bargain garden tractor at the Sears January sale in Bangor, Maine. In order to make it look used he drove it around the snowbound car park for an hour, collecting as much muck on the vehicle as he could so it could be declared as used. Sears shipped the tractor to the airport where it was to be loaded into the belly hold of a company 757 that evening. Unfortunately, the resident AE engineer, thinking of brownie points, washed and dried the aformentioned machine before it was loaded. On arrival at Gatwick HM Customs charged the maximum duty on the pristine garden tractor.

[Blodwyn Pig]

we had to send a working party out to edwards air force base to to a bit modification work on an aircraft already modified by us, chaps found some in car CD/radios for a very favourable price compared to the UK , and proceeded to buy a few of them, for themselves, and with a view to passing a few on to get some money back.
was only when they were hawking them round the crewroom that some bright spark noticed that american radios are on a different range of frequencies to uk ones!

[Pass-A-Frozo]

Whilst on a trip through SE Asia, we noticed that an embassy staff member had these awesome bug zappers. It's a tennis racquet strung with bug zapper wire. You push the button, swing and hit the bug and it gets the "ZZZZZZZ" zap! Very cool. Entire crew purchases them, and spends the rest of the week zapping each other with them.

Proudly present them to customs showing what we purchased overseas, only to have them seized under legislation that bans the import of

"A handheld device designed to issue an electric shock on contact"!

Next 12 months - everytime I went through customs I had my bag searched and was asked to confirm that I didn't have any "little electric devices I wished to declare". The computer makes it look like we all tried to import Tazar's :(

[Lon More]

"A handheld device designed to issue an electric shock on contact"!
I had similar problems with an car anti-theft device I bought in the States.
Basically it's just like a Crook-lock on the steering wheel, but there are copper strips running the entire length of it, connected to a couple of batteries inside it that are wired like a taser to deliver a high voltage shock when it's grasped.
Customs weren't going to let it in for the above reason until I challenged one to hold it and then hit me with it. For about 10 seconds I really hoped he was going to try ....:\
Still got it.

[RubiC Cube]

A real route steal was accomplished by a P3 crew on leaving ISK in late 70's/early 80's - they took all 3 Sqn Standards back to Kef with them! Mind you the crew didn't stay in Kef long, they were met by the Base Commander and invited to return them immediately. :)

As one of the Sqn Standard Bearers, we had to make a trip to Kef pdq. The OO who let the Kef crew have his keys to have a look at the satndards was in pretty deep sh1te as I recall.

PS it was the mid 70s

[BANANASBANANAS]

A Nav I knew on the VC10 (shiny) fleet was a keen gardener and had a very large garden to attend to. On a layover in IAD he bought a very expensive rotavator at a very good price. Approaching TOD for Brize the customs form comes forward for signature and suddenly this rotavator has become an "orthopaedic spade."

He got away with it too.

[engineer(retard)]

"Still tasted better than zero alc beer!"

PN


Sounds like a Decci det with 17 then, a good thank you for the groundcrews hard work :\

regards

retard

[Pontius Navigator]

Blodwyn reminds me of the '60s best buy at Offutt. Just across the main road from the base was a car scrap yard. The buzz was a trip to the scrap yard would yield a practically free state of the art, push button car radio. I think then the freqs were OK except the radio was MW only.

[mrjos10]

...I recall an Elephant being flown off the O-Boat...

[Confucius]

I found some Canadian Tire [sic] vouchers in a rental car, which I usede to buy some sandpaper - just one sheet mind.

[Zoom]

Cochinelli (sp) itself - tastes great in the sun (and so cheap!), is revolting back home (what a waste of money!).

[Safety_Helmut]

Zoom, you're obviously a heathen, Kokkinelli tastes good whatever the location, it's just a shame it costs so much in the UK.

Safety_Helmut

[Ray Dahvectac]

Volcano Club was ASI Bluetail. I remember getting snowed in inside the bar at Kef, but strangely cannot remember the name of the place (it wasn't the place with the very non-PC name either)

Anyway - Kokkinelli. Reminds me of the crew party shortly after return from Akrotiri when the co-pilots wife was quite enjoying the stuff.

"You feeling OK *****?", she was asked at one point.

"Oh I think I am a little drunk", she replied "I think it is this Kikkinelli - it has a cock like a horse".

[Roland Pulfrew]

Slightly off topic, but IIRC the main bars at Kef were the Chiefs Bar, which was funnily enough the Chiefs Bar, The Brass Nut which belonged to the VP sqn and The Knights Bar (I think) which belonged to the F15 Sqn. I remember walking into the Nut one night to find the bar completely turfed and a P3 crew, frustrated by several inches of snow, playing golf! That was a night to remember, if only I could!!:\

[FrogPrince]

An ex MAMS mate (known to us as Mr Benn because of his child-like delight in dressing up in foreign uniforms etc !) told me that after a trip across the Pond, a jolly RAF wheeze was to put down in NI first in order to get the customs papers signed off. The locals were not much bothered about rotavators, spare tyres, car radios, barbeques etc, having bigger potatos to fry.

Is this a wah ?

[LXXIV]

An ex MAMS mate (known to us as Mr Benn because of his child-like delight in dressing up in foreign uniforms etc !) told me that after a trip across the Pond, a jolly RAF wheeze was to put down in NI first in order to get the customs papers signed off. The locals were not much bothered about rotavators, spare tyres, car radios, barbeques etc, having bigger potatos to fry.
Is this a wah ?[/QUOTE]

I'm afraid so; in 19 years on Lyneham Hercs, Wing, Squadron and OCU, never heard of it. The only guy I know who tried anything like that diverted to Macrihanish on his way back from Norway to pick up some fish. Believe he lost his captaincy. Was your MAMS mate C*****? If it's the same guy, when he was MAMSing at Aldergrove, it seems he was never in the same uniform two days running, dressed up in Combats, going on patrol down the Falls Road, etc. Greeted one morning by his Flight Sergeant "And what are we today, Sir ?"
LXXIV

[FrogPrince]

Dave N*******, actually.

He writes weighty tomes of futurology for the MoD nowadays (at great cost to the taxpayer....)

[allan907]

As last man away from a Maple Flag det to Cold Lake I surveyed the now empty line accommodation for 208 and realised that a whole mountain of black duct tape had been abandoned. A quick dash down to the BX, purchased new suitcase and brought back shed loads of very rare duct tape. (Still got some 20 odd years later!)

[Zoom]

Safety Helmut
You're probably right, mainly because I've puked it up more times than I've kept it down! :yuk: :yuk: :) :yuk: :yuk: :) etc.

[Truck2005]

As an ex, lowly paid GE, I cannot compete against lawn mowers etc. (I could only afford a tube of pringles, they were dirt cheap in Bowling AFB). But in the long gone days of the DCI run we used to park alongside a car scrap heap compound. A BengO had the need for some Fiat spares and had arranged a lift back with a broken car. We spent the next 2 hours back to WID putting our hands through the body work. The wing fell off, (the car), on landing followed by numerous bits when it got off-loaded. After collecting our Becks we left him sweeping up the remains!

[The Real Slim Shady]

Our AEO decided a good deal was to be had on radial arm saws from Macy's in Sacramento. We could barely get in the borrowed pick up and it took all 7 of us to hoist it into the V Bomber bomb bay using a mini bomb hoist!! Lord knows what it weighed!!

Bought some uniform shirts in the JET shop in Limassol: damn fine deal except that when I took them out the packet they would only button up as far as the middle of my chest!! Apparently designed for Cyp look like a Bee Gee wannabees ( well it was the late 70s).

Also bought a box of courgettes from the fruit shop at the corner of the plantation at Akronelli: seemed like a good idea at the time. The missus had said that she liked courgettes - but a 30 lb box???

[Truck2005]

On a trip to Butterworth, the crew, (47 I think), bartered for and got a rickshaw off a street trader! Not only did they pay for it up front, (dodgy), but convinced the poor guy to bring it out to the airfield on our departure day:ok:

The poor guy cycled all the way from Georgetown to the airfield, (an hour or so), and was waiting for us when we arrived at the gate. He then walked back to town well chuffed with himself for his days work. Can't remember how much they paid but he could have built a few more with the money. (They are quite a feat of imaginative engineering when you look closely at them).

[Pontius Navigator]

201 - Keflavik -

Oh, can we just swing by the hobbies center?

Oh, can you give me a hand?

Then followed a succession of crew lugging sandbag weight boxes of Slyp for the Kinloss ceramics club. Must have been a ton of the stuff.

At the subsequent board of inquiry the BOI members noted that all the crew members were plastered. :} Sorry couldn't rsist that one.

I still have a ceramics Nimrod and a ceramics Langcote House Fete egg cup. Joy.

[RubiC Cube]

201 - Keflavik -

I still have a ceramics Nimrod and a ceramics Langcote House Fete egg cup. Joy.

So have I, although the wing with the oversized searchlight is cracked!

[diginagain]

18 dwarf leylandii, from around the car-park at some barracks near Thetford.

[Pontius Navigator]

diginagain, well if we are going for something liberated, how about a ROCK from Iceland.

This ROCK was the pride and joy of the USMC Det and it was properly painted with its name and everything. They got mighty miffed when we flew it to ISK in the Mighty machine.

Or the 1 Group Crest - 3 feet x 3 feet - in carnations lifted after the 1 Gp Dinner.

Not guilty m'lud, it was in my seat on the bus.

[diginagain]

Mmm, on reflection, the leylandii may not have been such a good steal. I was living in a flat at the time.

But, hey, they were sort of lonely, and the back of the Lynx looked really tactical on the way home.

[Dunhovrin]

Took a Shacklebomber to McCord (and that's a long story in itself). Thought we'd celebrate with 20 "World Tour" t-shirts. First 'gig' on the back was July 4th at Keflajik. I had to produce my draft to convince the crew it wasn't my spellinge.

Civvie Strasse one: Crew out wine tasting in Napa. Captain, bit of a wine snob, buys 1/2 doz bottles of some vineyard's finest red at great expense. Agrees to bring one to the room party that night only to find same wine had been bought by the crew at Cala Foods for 1/2 the price.

[cornishpixie]

In Dakar (not sure of the spelling:\ ) bought an African wooden tat thing Wife likes it but I'm still not sure what it is:} Answers on a postit note on the fridge please

spelling mistakes due to poor typing skills caused by an abundance of thumbs

[bad livin']

Beags, were you aware that if you crunch lifesavers up in your mouth, they emit green sparks? True story! I witnessed this while at uni in the US.

Rgds
BL

[EESDL]

Most useless route steal?
The Clap!

[Onan the Clumsy]

were you aware that if you crunch lifesavers up in your mouth, they emit green sparks
That's only the Wintergreen flavour, but seeing as Wintergreen tastes like Germoline (am I dating myself there?) eating one to test the theory seems a high price to pay in the name of science.

How on earth did they ever manage to sell Wintergreen flavoured candy????




Germoline = ointment for you young 'uns

[Lon More]

Wintergreen tastes like Germoline Yup, and Germolene tastes like Anusol

And in the light of subsequent comments maybe I should have said that it tastes like what I imagine Anusol would taste like

[Cambridge Crash]

I went a little wild on 110v appliances when serving overseas - microwave, kitchenaid blenders, food processors, grillers etc etc (supping on the products of a corrupt capitalist system). On return to Blighty to our own house, I installed a 110v ring in the kitchen with a F&CK-OFF big transformer in the adjacent garage. Problem is with the frequency - I don't bother to set the timer on the microwave!

Oh, the Gerber sharpener is an excellent piece of kit!

CC

[Python21]

Yup, and Germolene tastes like Anusol
and what were you doing to taste Anusol?

[Just This Once...]

and what were you doing to taste Anusol?

Going last.

[sangiovese.]

Going last.

Funniest thing I've read for ages

:)