Me: I need some more grease pencils

Supply PO: But Sir, we gave you TWO last month !

In fairness to NASA, pencils were considered, but a broken piece of graphite pencil lead, floating in zero gravity, could have caused a short and was considered a risk to electronic circuits...they went ahead with the pen.

This might be of interest:

Space flown collectible artifacts - Writing Instruments

On a fuel stop during a transit through Europe on the way to an AMF(L) Exercise one of the more senior Puma Crewmen was struggling to put the UTM grid for the next waypoint into the TANS. Eventually he worked out that the numbers on his kneepad were in fact the phone number of a ‘friend’ he’d made the previous evening. Happy days.

PTO. (On both sides)

Slightly off thread but in a similar vein.
Chap on the UAS was on solo X country and decided to do some aeros on route.
Subsequently his map floated to the roof and then fell behind him out of reach.
IIRC he then tried further sequences until it came back in his lap.

On Tucano students knee pads, when visiting Valley in the 90s:-

“RIP OFF POCKET FROM HERE!”

The legend was to aid the steely eyed jet jocks in the bar on Fridays…

allegedly. 😎

If it's that important, write it on the canopy with your chinagraph; at least you'll keep some semblance of heads out.

The swedish airforce have used this NASA Space pen during all my days at SWAF.

Its hard to find a worse pen, it doesnt write good even as new. It might work better in space maybe 😅

Completely blank, so you can write ”Where am I?” With big capital letters and show the local farmer. Comes in handy when you cant solve it even after reading the village name on the road sign.

Try "is the war over yet?" in Fenland. Some might not know the answer.

If you need to ask, I suggest the phone number of the nearest flight school.

Nothing. Take them off and pretend you are a fast jet jock.

Your mother's phone number.....:E​​​​​​​

This is a build on to the ”Dunno where I am” question?

—> Narrowing the navigation issue down, by knowing that I am in a country that there is (or isnt) a war :-)
Back of the knee pad might have ”Do You have a King, Queen or a President?”.

Starting to feel mirrored in now. :)

A Goolie chit might provide some sense of security.

In my JP days I recall having a local map with a compass rose stuck on it tell help work out where I was when I called ATC for a 'True Bearing'! Apart from the callsign other info was useful Happy Hour memory jogging stuff such as '6 pints, 2 x G&T, 8 packets of crisps'

I assume the Happy Hour order was just for you?

Reminds me of Friday 1630 at JHQ ............... sometimes the cavalry charge on bikes down the hill to the Mess was less inviting that the Cloggy Bar or the Belgy Bar. On such Fridays I and my two immediate colleagues went to one or the other and ordered 9 beers and a tray. The barman looked in vain for the other six Brits. The beers were tiny little 0.2 L. Our drill was subsequently to collect them in threes, to keep 9 on the tray, until we were spending as much time in the bogs as in the bar. Then it was finish the 0.6L each and try to get back on the bikes.

There was an incident at Valley when a Gnat sortie on a late winter afternoon culminated in a double ejection over the sea. The QFI lost his dinghy pack in the ejection and was aware that the Whirlwind did not have a night winching capability. As dusk fell he prepared himself for a night he was unlikely to survive. He used his kneepad to write a farewell message to his wife. Happily the Chopper driver was made of sterner stuff, decided it was still Civil Twilight, and an eagle-eyed winchman spotted McMurdo lights and picked up both QFI and student. Cue fast rubbing out of kneepad.