The Late Met Man

[langleybaston]

The Fear of Flying thread is humbling. Hats off to the contributors.
The Met Man's fear was not being wrong, but late. Late for mass briefing, for handover, or in house crew brief.
I am 20 years retired and the nightmare is at least weekly.
Was I Ever Late? Never for mass brief, never with docs, a few times for handover. I am far from the only retiree affected.
There must have been a pervasive ethos ...... Very few colleagues had otherwise.
The cynic might have preferred an accurate forecast slightly late of course.

Re flying and heights, as for flying SLF it is claustrophobia, with heights, I am fine with masts, ladders etc, but not nature.

[Pontius Navigator]

Presumably why the 8 o'clock weather was at 10 to.

[Pontius Navigator]

How about right and wrong?

Forecasting black flag conditions and experiencing cavok all day? Or vica versa?

[[email protected]]

One morning at Middle Wallop in the 90s on a beautiful Spring day, the met man put up the cross section slide with fog until at least 10Z.

We had all walked to the briefing room 5 minutes before and commented on what a splendid day seemed to be in prospect with clear skies and light winds.

After poo-pooing the met man's forecast, we walked out 5 mins later to see the fog rolling across the airfield where it stayed until just after 10Z!

Met man 1 - aircrew 0.

[pulse1]

Worst journey I ever had from the South coast up to Old Sarum, to hopefully spend a day instructing at 622 Gliding School, was in very thick fog. As the first instructor to arrive I sat in the office, totally unable to see the airfield only a few yards away, and called the RAF Met office at Upavon for the official gliding forecast. This meant that the Met man just read out the data on his form and I copied it onto mine. It was a wonderful forecast so I suggested to the met man that the fog would clear pretty quickly. He seemed totally surprised that we had any fog and that it wasn't particularly local.

To be fair, the fog cleared quite quickly and we enjoyed an excellent day gliding.

[cargosales]

Being late for Met Brief .. Not a good idea for either side.

IIRC, a thread on here yonks ago mentioned an exchange between a UK Fighter Controller and a flight of America's finest .. which went something along the lines of

"FC123, this is Assh0le flight checking in"

FC "Err, say reason for choice of callsign"

"Late for Met brief"


No idea if it's actually true but wouldn't you love it to be!

[langleybaston]

"Late" was a movable feast of course, depending on how punctual the Staish was. As Met. was traditionally first on, there was no wiggle room either.

[50+Ray]

Best Met Brief I remember was for night flying at Oakington in early spring 1973. We Studes had spent a relaxed day punting/ogling the Cambridge talent, then from a beautiful day we were stunned by a forecast of Thunder/sleet/heavy rain/strong gusts. Looking out the window as the sun sank in a cloudless sky we all thought Bert the Met had gone crackers. An hour and a half later it all arrived in spades. We rang Met office to congratulate/ask wtf and Bert said he got the actual from his mate at Cottesmore just in time to brief the conditions 'just up the road'.

[Onceapilot]

Nellis, Red Flag, 1986. Morning briefing. Beautiful clear blue Nevada desert morning, unlimited vis. Disbelieving Brits hear Met man "Scrub due 10am duststorm". Back outside...blue, calm.
10.00am brown cloud approaching from the west, 10.05 tumbleweed and sandstorm engulf Nellis and Tonka's/groundcrew (mostly with canopies open!).
Lasts till 2pm. Met man 1, Brits 0. :ouch:

OAP

[Pontius Navigator]

We seem to remember memorable good forecasts; is that because they were rare? Do we forget bad forecasts?

I can remember two memorably accurate ones from 1963 and 1969.

I can remember one bad weather instance but although the weather was diabolical the problem may have been optimism hoping the forecaster was wrong.

[langleybaston]

Never mind the quality, feel the width!
Seriously, were briefings and forecasts delivered on time?
I had one colleague who insisted that a written one-off forecast had to give 2 hours notice. Technically correct but dreadful for a service industry. We despised this attitude.

[[email protected]]

An engineer's 'Twenty minutes' turning into 3 hours????

[FantomZorbin]

Wyton morning briefing many decades ago:
Met Man strides to the podium ...
"Good morning Sir, gentlemen. I see 51 Sqn are here so the weather must be good, good morning"
With that he strode out to loud cheering from the assembled company including Sir!

[Onceapilot]

I have a theory that the RAFG Met men used to quote the forecast LL vis in Germany in Feet, rather than Metres. This might have been a hang-over from the War? If so, their 5.5K (feet) was always spot-on! ;)

OAP

[rogerg]

Many years ago at Syerston the met man got it wrong and the night navex students, in JPs, ended up "uncertain of their position", lost, flew the flight plan and ended up in the London TMA instead of turning at Cambridge. Some had to land away due low fuel. We did not have many nav aids then!!

[cargosales]

Really, there is a thread about the met man turning up late? Whatever next:


Boswer driver slightly delayed
Catering truck will be a little late with the in flight butties
Honey wagon has lost its way
Crew chief can't find his headset

:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

BGG

Err, it's called recognising the input from all those without whom we'd never leave the ground.

Which bit of that is difficult to understand?

Annoyed

CS


P.S.
As this is a military aviation forum,

It's a bowser, not a boswer :rolleyes:,
The military tend not to have too many catering trucks delivering butties (ha ha, if only!) :rolleyes:
And honey wagons aren't generally required for most military aircraft (hint - count the number of seats and 'in-flight facilities'!) .. :rolleyes:

[Onceapilot]

Annoyed

CS


P.S.
As this is a military aviation forum,

It's a bowser, not a boswer :rolleyes:,
The military tend not to have too many catering trucks delivering butties (ha ha, if only!) :rolleyes:
And honey wagons aren't generally required for most military aircraft (hint - count the number of seats and 'in-flight facilities'!) .. :rolleyes:


Don't discount bowsers, catering trucks and honey wagons in Mil Ops CS. ;)
Prize to person identifying the seriously important non-food role of catering trucks in supporting Ops?
BTW, Crew Chief headset fail/loss is not an emergency! :)

OAP

[langleybaston]

Cargosales, many thanks for your rebuke of the 17 year old Gilbert.

Fortunately the recruiting of MetPersons always begins with skin measurement ....... has to be thick enough to deflect verbal barbs.
Only the "five yard run-up, wearing boots kick up the a*rse" begins to register.

[glad rag]

An engineer's 'Twenty minutes' turning into 3 hours????

heiyM61dfio