Ralph Eaton
 

I was saddened to learn from the CAA RSA magazine 'Contrail' obituaries that Ralph died last May. I'm sure many of you will recall him as your Navigation course instructor at Hurn in the early 70's. I've always remembered him as "Gizmo", because that's what he always called the little circle in the centre of the Dalton E6B nav computer :-)
RIP sir!

Sad to hear that - he was an instructor on my course but not navigation, we had Tony Culley.

In one of my books there is a photo' of the crews of 73 Sqn ( Canberras) in Cyprus c1958 and it has 3 navs who I subsequently met as ATCOs - Ralph plus Roy Sharman and Tony Maskrey at LATCC.

Was he at Larkhill for a while or was that a different 'Eaton'?

Sorry to hear about Ralph. I will always remember his Brummie accent & his blazer. Another one of ATC's characters gone. RIP.

I was saddened to hear of Ralph's passing too. I worked with him for several years at Brum before he retired.

I remember he used to have a habit of standing, jingling the change in his pocket while working in the tower.

Happy days. 20 years since I left there now.

Ralph Eaton
 

Sad news indeed.

I remember Ralph from my APP course. It was the last day of work before Christmas and we were towards the end of the course in the emergencies phase. I forget the exact details other than I was carrying out the coordinator/switchboard role when the call came through about an acft with an emergency. These were the days of Int'l Rescue on TV and so, with my best Int'l Rescue Jeff Tracy accent I took the details and uttered the words "5,4,3,2,1, Thunderbirds are go!"

The rest is a bit of a blur. I recall being lifted vertically out of my chair by an extraordinarily irate Ralph and being told I was off the course. Hero to zero in the briefest time possible. Luckily for me, the always wonderful Tony Culley smoothed things over and we broke for Christmas.

To his credit, Ralph forgave and forgot my extremely immature behaviour pretty much immediately! But 42.5 years later I still remember that day!