You can contruct a hand held gun using coke cans/OM15 cans firing a bodge tape ball/frozen orange using MEK as a propellant.

OR

for the really brave an "upgraded" version of the MEK cannon capable of firing a football sized object well clear of the hangar and a long way over the pan(somewhere near VASS alledgedly;)), don't forget the oxygen trolley to purge the system with O2 before lighting for extra oommphh

OR

for the criminally insane an improvised explosive device using dry ice a little water and empty coke bottles, ideally you screw the lid on as you drop it into a full rubbish bin in the crew room at 0300, rapidly retreat and watch the mayhem

OR

used in pairs with the aid of a length of drainpipe to make an effective mortar, ideal when the other squadron have their hangar doors open, can't beat an airburst device with the noise of a thunderflash going off at the top of the open doorway, especially if the hangar doors at the other end are closed!

Or you can explain what -8 volts really are!

When Albert jumps the chocks on "brakes off" on bay 43 and rolls towards the bund road and your pension appears to be rolling away in front of your eyes.

Topping up allison engine oils with a sick bag

Topping up hydraulics with a sick bag

Pumping out overfilled hydraulics with a vacuum pump that looks suspiciously like a sick bag

Getting drenched in Avpin and driving the landie across a flight line by memory to find a tap

Actually having a chief at Scampton with an albacore dinghy called sea stores

As an afterthought, in this day and age of expensive fuel and diesel cars, I wonder what the average fuel consumption of the liney landies work out at?

IIRC our lightweights did <1mpg in winter time! cos they were left running virtually 24hrs to get what little heat there was in the heater. Was funny as you didn't even need a key, a GS would do to start them.

You might be an aircraft engineer if.....
 

.....you've ever looked at a bald tyre and said to the Captain, "well you're not going by road are you?"


Great thread by the way. :D

"Requirement for countersignature waived IAW AP101B-0900-1E"

Why does that stick in my head after 26 years ??

Also the phrase

They've found a Tanker

When awaiting the last landing of night flying.

Eating cold braised steak for breakfast as the hotlocks container wasnt that hot.

Still partially deaf after standing under a Victor B1 during ground runs in the days before H&S, no ear defenders 50 years ago, then trying to ring for a fuel bowser.

You might be an aircraft engineer if.....
 

After standing on a freezing Apron for over an hour on a see off whilst watching the Student Puma Pilot doing his walkround , who is by now crouched down and staring up aimlessly into the port main wheel fairing.

walking up to him and uttering the immortal words

" Excuse me Sir, but are you flying it or buying it?"

As one of my old collegues did........ :}:ok:

and on detachment when
 

You can make a cricket set out of bodge tape and kimwipe.

You can only play your joker once

a Tornado shoulder pylon fuel seal costs 200 B&H from the German storeman in Decci

if you tell the J Eng O how you fixed stuff without approved spares that "if you do not ask me a direct question I will not tell you a direct lie"

you tell the aircrew that you fixed a snag by jacking up the nosewheel and changing the aircraft

...you've ever signed off the entire servicing of a multi-engine a/c, including the refuel, all the sups, numerous amounts of paperwork due to everyone else going sick on detachment, and hoped to god that it doesn't crash on the next flight...

You have made up complete breakfasts from half eaten ones out of the poly bags.
Spent all day working with skydrol without any problems then you get an itch in the corner of your eye just as you get to the washroom
NFF a box and get it back 6 months later to fix another snag, still with your 731 on it
Get the meals list from the cabin crew and asked what you want from remaining only to find you've got the chix curry again
Try to figure out how your initials on the nosewheel were always touching the ground when you stopped and never the crews!

As a non-techie but thoroughly enjoying this thread, can someone enlighten me on a "MASB" and its relationship to a sausage????

Thanks.......

cc:confused:

MASB,Master Armament Safety Brake (Weapon system ground safety device).
Handed to the pilot last thing before he closes his canopy.About the same size as half a compo sausage.Pilots would instinctively stow it before realising what it was!

"MASB,Master Armament Safety Brake" - or even "Master Armamaent Safety Break"

When you read in the F700 'nasty smell in cockpit' and you're tempted to write 'nasty smell removed, nice smell fitted!

Never handed a MASB to a driver before he closed the lid , usually shown to him from outside at the end of the runway or on a "last chance" dispersal.

As a liney , the last thing I would want is a MASByless aircraft taxiing around, just want it pointing up the take off runway !!!!

Or you may be an engineer when the driver lands and self diagnoses the snag as " Cold air unit seized", and you dutifully prove that the CAU is spinning freely NFF !!

Then ask the driver if he wants to take the jet up again , and do his job , whilst you get on with yours !!

PS FL , it was the cabin temp actuator .

On the subject of fuel economy, on a Northern outpost many years ago we discovered that the Sherpa in second gear would rive at a respectable walking speed with your feet off the pedals, and the speed could be controlled by using the manual choke. This worked well on guard shifts until the MTO phoned the guard chief to ask why this particular Sherpa needed filled twice a night?

As for non-faults, I remember a trip to Gibralter when we ferried a spare ECM pod on another wing station. On landing there was almost fisticuffs when the Nav insisted he snag it because he "could not get that second ECM pod to time out" but would not accept that it wasn't even connected!

P.S. the sunspot activity charts in the back of the on-route supplement could be used to convince Navs that the poor HF performance was due to cosmic radiation, not the fact that the radios were out of the ark!

You've watched the sooties convince a new navigator that jet engines have pistons, just like his car.

When hearing the words "Emergancy State TWO" over the tannoy means drop what your doing, pile into all the wagons and get to the runway to see what happens!!

You've made score cards to rate the pilots landings.

..when, on detachment, your shift of villains rather kindly takes the somewhat naiive JEngess out 'for a quiet meal and a couple of drinks with the lads'...:ok:

How did you know that we had an early take-off the next day? And hence that Bob-the-JEngess would have to go to the Gp Capt's morning brief, as the DetCo would be grinning to himself somewhere between Turkey and Iraq at the time.

(Although the Gp Capt later told me that she did look rather green, poor girl...:\)

You might be an aircraft engineer if.....
 

Sitting in the crew room at Brize on exercise..

A di staff throws a thunderflash outside the window, walks in mid programme and announces to the world an inject, you, you and you are dead, you, you and you are injured and you to one who should remain nameless are OK, right deal with it..........

Cool as a cucumber in the middle of his favourite show he walks over to where his musket is propped against the wall, cocks it, points it at where his wounded mates lie and goes Bang... Bang.... Bang.
The promptly sits down and carries on watching his favourite show even though by now everone bar the red faced di staff are curled up in hysterics..........

His answer to the irate Distaff was that they would only be a drain on resources and tie up valuable manpower and assessing the injuries on the inject he decided the easiest way was to remove the burden from the system and if it was ok, could he please get back to his TV programme......

Over taking the SATCO on the taxiway in the landy at twice the speed limit whilst getting to the end of the runway to put the pins in the returning Q kite, then getting back and getting a bo**ocking from the jengo

Applicable to civvy street only.......
You get paid more than the line pilots :ok:

You are an engineer if.....
You leatherman and mini-mag light collection come from generous aircrew who left them in the aircraft for you to find.

You are an engineer if.....
 

You ride your motorbike around the front of the hangers at Leeming on the apron and incur the wrath of a Winco Eng whilst pointing out you are looking for the Line Office....... Post Bollocking for not only that, but walking across "HIS" grass eventually find the Line Office..

Regail the tale to them as I am there to meet one of our Chinooks that is calling in for fuel and to pick me up, Quick chat to SATCO on phone and permission given to ride out to the said Chinook when it arrives.

Just about to head across the Apron when Staff Car with some BrownJob with pennants flying drives past to some visiting Aircraft, followed by Staishes Car then a RAF Mini with said Winco in it, so join on end of procession, :} follow them out across the Apron...... pulled over again for another rant for same thing in front of visitor at which point I say BUT I have permission.... :p


Pulled up by SWO at Gutersloh for wearing Combat Jacket and given the Station Standing Orders blurb, only to be worn on Detachments or exercise etc speech......
you point out you are on Detachment, :ok: so then falls back on the Haircut and in my office at 3.00 PM, look at watch.... Hmmm 9.30 AM, should be in the bar back in UK by 3 PM........ wonder if he is still waiting for me :p

You are an engineer if.....
 

You accidently drop the flight line office door stop (3-4kgs) into the boggies helmet bag, and then direct him to his jet at the far end of the line.

you realise how quickly time flies when you're up the front end trying to fix a Nimrod autopilot snag while the back fills up with smoke from the pitzas you found in the galley, put in the oven and then forgot about.

You might be an Engineer if.....
 

You've beaten the padlock on the front of the aircrew rations locker, by simply turning the locker round, de-riveting the back, half emptying the goodies, securing the back with Harry Black and putting locker back in original place.
Unfortunatly, you might also be an Engineer if you've tried to eat 15 of the aircrew's Mars bars, from the locker, on a night shift. :yuk:

Detachments...
 

...you're on Det in Australia (Darwin) for Ex Pitch Black. Your C stores, LRU's and everything else needed to service eight tornados are on a boat somewhere between "Singapore and Sydney". The first wave has just returned and you've got SMS snags. At that point your ex-bay lecky JNCO traces the problem to a circuit board in the Pylon Decoder Unit. As the spares are still afloat somewhere, he calmly unscrews the PDU, fabricates a board puller from a wire coathangar (and the ubiquitous Leatherman), nips out to Radio Shack buys a soldering iron and some solder, resolders the errant diode, resistor or whatever it was, reassembles the PDU, puts it back in the pylon, carries out a WPU BITE and signs the aircraft up in time for the night wave! You just can't teach that kind of ingenuity.

You're on Red Flag at the end of the runway and the same JNCO decides to use a chock to fix an SMS snag! Takes the chock and smartly raps the pylon quite hard to reseat the board in the PDU. WPU BITE carried out fault clears and jet launches. Fellow end of runway crews from the USN and USAF looking-on amazed finally come over to ask if he really just hit the aircraft with a chock. Calm reply is paraphrased from another great engineer tale - I charge a hundred bucks for that fix, one dollar for hitting the pylon, ninety-nine dollars for knowing where to hit it!:D

You might be an aircraft engineer if...
 

...you completed a 3 year apprenticeship resulting in an ONC in Aeronautical Engineering.

Otherwise you'd only be a Technician, Fitter or Mechanic

:}

Standing by...

(awful lot of Dog F**kers contributing to this thread)

Only 3 years and not 4 ! must be one of those modern things :ok:

Hear , Hear , and after 4 years you were still 'under training' for some time !!

SPLH

Would that not be Engineer then, rather than engineer?

After all the DF Cpl did engineer/wangle/contrive a solution.:}


We know we are only Technicians, (for the most part) it's the Aircrew who insist upon calling us engs, gingerbeers, engineers etc.......:)

ps you know when.................. you can set an adjustable in the dark by the size of indent on your hand.

3 years to get an ONC must have failed a few units many times :cool:

Engineer...
 

Capital E. Said JNCO already had his HNC, went on to complete his degree and now has the right to put IEng after his name. In fact if it wasn't for the fact that he's still serving (teaching at Cosford) he'd be able to put CEng after his name.

Flightester ex DF

Maybe DF's are just smarter than your average engineer? Ducks down below the wall

If you sit here shaking your head thinking that Engo's are ruining the best thread on PPRuNe for some time!

You might be an aircraft engineer if.....
 

Seeing off a VC10 full of passengers the Pilot informs you the final engine, No 1 engine will not start, you pull a safety raiser over under the Engine, jack it up and drop the door, using the same jacking handle you lay into the air start valve with relish and are comforted to hear it move over and the engine wind up, closing the cowl and crouching down you glimpse up to see an aircraft full of worried passengers faces glued to the window watching you beat the crap out of their Engine........ :ok:


Seeing off a VC10 full of passengers you find the towbar pin is stuck in the leg, so taking the tugs towbar pin you proceed to beat it out of the hole, on the intercom you hear the pilot explaining to the passengers of a slight technical hitch that the engineers are presently rectifying over the noise of our efforts echoing down the cabin like lucifer banging on the gates of Hell..

...if the reluctant Canberra brake spider has three legs, but you only have two hands.

So you use your head.

You've lost a torch in a Bucc's Bomb Bay and decide to tie the lowest resistance mechanic to the door and then roll it closed to see if he can find it!