Silly injuries
 

Hi all,

While checking the plane today before heading out, I was looking at the linkages in the ailerons. Unfortunately, I kinda forgot it was a particularly windy day, and didn't hold the aileron up, and it slammed down on my fingers, causing a bit of a cut.

So, my question, what daft/minor injuries have you had in an unconventional way to do with aircraft?

Neil

I stand up under the prop regularly, one day I may remember it's there!

Stepped off a wet piper wing onto the step. Foot slipped back and got a deep gash in my heel from the flap trailing edge- they are sharp!

Loads of pairs of glasses ruined in chest pockets leaning into cockpits to adjust rudder pedals.

Not holding the canopy on windy days, they slam hard on your head.

All aeroplanes bite fools ( even before the engine start)

Reaching over my head and backwards two weeks ago in an attempt to fish for the shoulder seatbelts vanished through the small hole in the recaro-style seats in an A211 Aquila (somewhat stoopid design IMHO, don't quite see the need for headrests in GA airplanes, let alone shoulder belts you have to ask nicely not to slip behind the seat) gave my shoulder a little ouch I still feel slightly today.

And of course a few times the match forehead (luckily covered by cap) vs. high wing.

May nothing worse happen :)

Silly injuries
 

Stupidest I ever did was not follow the checklist properly. In a pa-28, didn't lower flaps fully and despite the bright orange warning painted there, stepped on the flap and fell onto the stirrup/step below. Ankle is still not the same, four years later. (Simple slotted flap on that type drops freely with a little downward load. It's held up by airflow, or on the ground by a spring)

I read the checklists now.

My son, aged 4, had a broken metatarsal as a result of his foot being run over by a C152... Interesting conversation with the emergency department... He dined out on it for years.

I now wear running gloves for the a check having arrived for a few check rides having removed parts of hands on airframe.

And 1 day prior to a ski holiday I stepped confidently off the wing of an arrow at Bembridge and jammed my leg between wing and the step having missed the step entirely.

I have not forgotten the pain of that moment 6 years later and now wear appropriate shoes on all wings. The experience is not one to be repeated.

Exactly the one you did.

And I even posted about it somewhere to warn other people not to be so daft ...

One pretty scary one involved the VOR antenna on top of the tail of a Cessna 140. It was the V shaped wire type that stick out from the top of the tail pointed out and forward. I was doing the walk around and was distracted by someone asking me a question.

The result was when I turned my head back and leaned in the end of the wire poked my face about 1/2 inch below my eye. :eek:

The other one involved my transition from a type one float plane pilot

"Those float plane pilots that have yet to fall into the water"

To a type 2 float plane pilot

"Those float plane pilots who have already fallen into the water"

The result was that most of the skin was removed from my left ankle by the chine of the float as my foot went by, rapidly followed by the rest of my body. My excuse is I was distracted by the girl in the skimpy bikini :O

Islander trailing edges I have seen some crackers.

If you haven't seen them they are thin skin which ends in corrugated end to the skin without any rounding out or anything, leaving it with all intents and purposes as a crinkle cut potato cutter.

Thankfully I never did it but boy they can draw some blood!

My own was on the works machine and while standing up after checking the nose gear to makes sure the gear pin was out I brushed the pitot tube while standing up with my shoulder. Didn't think anything about.

Next approach I felt something pulling at my back and pulled my shirt. Their was a ripping feeling and then loads of fluid dribbling down my back. The Pitot was on when I had brushed it and had melted the cheap uniform shirt we had been issued with. The ripping had been the blister which was attached to the shirt coming away. Took about three months for it to heal properly.

Several cuts and bruises from Cessna flaps but my worst silly injury was to my pride. In the good old days when Compton Abbas used to stay open on Summer evenings, I landed there in a 172 with some friends for some famous cake and coffee. Being evening they let me park right next to the patio which was well populated with people enjoying the evening sunshine.

I don't know what really happened but, when I tried to get out, my upper body did all the right things but, for some reason, my feet decided to stay on board. The result was that I fell head first onto the ground. Fortunately the ground was soft and I seem to have an in built instinct to fall well and I was completely unhurt. I covered my embarrassment with lots of laughter but I wonder how many spectators went away convinced that some pilots are quite happy to fly while drunk.

I walked into the trailing edge of horizontal stabiliser of the SK76 helicopter I was about to use for a Class A night casevac. The dispersal was unlit and I just didn't realise I was so close to it. The sharp edge caught me right on the side of my eye socket and was excruciatingly painful but did no permanent damage.

But the most painful thing was pulling a heavy GPU over my own toe. It had metal wheels and weighed about 500 pounds. My toe was crushed and the pressure that developed inside it pushed off the toenail after a few days. :}

Tim
 

I have often been tempted to use a child as a wheel chock but resisted the temptation .............. At last I meet someone who as actually done so !

Wasn't me but I watched a PO once on Ark Royal. Rule one, "Thou shalt not run on the flight deck at night"!! The Sea Vixen trailing edge is bang on the nose, he was out of action for a week.

Opened the cowl on a Pitts to check the engine which hinges upwards and was happily doing so when the wind dropped and so did the cowl, with the sharp edge coming down right on my head.

I've also walked into Cessna flaps too many times (never learn) and banged my head on almost every part of a Super Cub (which on the ground I consider a death trap).

Not an injury, but who hasn't had an inadvertent shower when pre-flighting a Cessna after rain? Those corrugated ailerons hold quite a lot of water as you discover as you stand under it and pull it down during the 'free movement' check.

I have recently had an encounter with the opened baggage compartment door of a PA28 whilst stepping down from the wing. I was wearing an open anorak, which was blown behind the baggage door by a gust of wind right as I shifted my weight to put my left foot on the step below. The result being the lower right side of my nose hitting the upper edge of the (then) bloody baggage door with quite some force.

Always tell everybody to wait opening that baggage door until everyone has come out of the airplane...

Oh yes, you'd have thought I'd have learned by now, especially after draining the fuel!

being the clumsiest person in the world I have managed the following in or around a 172

1) walked into the flaps

2) the pinched fingers in the aileron thing

3) fallen off the step when checking the fuel tanks, every which way you can think of. Failed to get on the step getting up, overbalanced once up there, gone to reach for the ground with my other foot and somehow missed.

4) whilst still trying to figure out the order you do the seatbelt/seat adjust/ shut the door in, found myself hanging by my seatbelt out the door trying to reach it in order to shut it. if that clip hadn't held I would have been face first onto the concrete
5) pinched finger in the baggage door release (don't ask how!)

flying is dangerous !

Silly injuries
 

A mate of mine (a complete baldy nut hence the lack of collision warning system) once cut his head open on one of the guidance fins on a Paveway 3 during his pre flight walk round. You don't let something like that stop you though. Watching a big bomb that you've just dropped go bang is one of life's little pleasures! I should point out that this was on a training exercise in Oman before you think I'm some nutter who revels in death and destruction.
BV

The pitot head is right at eye level when it's on jacks, too. The back end of Cessna 310 tip tanks are worse.
There's always something out to get you around aeroplanes...:ouch:

What do folk recon on those bump cap baseball hat type things?

Ah yes, soon after I got my Terrier I found out why the grease nipples on the bottom of the flap brackets are known as scull scrapers :ouch:

Regular bruises on the shins from cessna landing gear struts when getting in and out of the plane, or just leaning into the cockpit... :ouch:

Its not like I can't see them either...

Good to read that I'm not alone in the "aviation induced injury club".
Oh well no pain no gain I suppose.

Happy Landings....

My one and only attempt to help preflight a Rotax-engined a/c ended somewhat abruptly, when, with the cowlings off and going for 'burble', I pulled the prop into the top of my nose, missing my eye by very little.

I was found bleeding, dizzy and thinking I was more comfortable horizontal than vertical. We flew home, where I was patched up by the small injuries unit.

:ugh:

That about describes it.

Very early in my engineering life I was checking a HS125 pitot head after a flight, unfortunately it had been left switched on. The burn was there for some time, but I never ever repeated that mistake!

Standing up under the TFE731 engines on a BAe125 and denting the top of my head on the witness drains was a regular occurrence, but again over time I learnt.

On the flying side, just like another poster, I'd opened the cowling on a PA28 when the wind blew it shut on my fingers - "ouch" was not what I said. Dumb.

M.E.

None myself so far! But I once witnessed a young girl on a trial flight get her large fingernail caught while closing the oil dipstick door on a pa28, she was devastated when it broke off! I've never laughed so much

The door or the nail?

Last winter I had a hard fall on ground when pulling the 172 out the hangar onto a tarmac full of snow. At work I once got hit on the head by a Fokker 50 prop that started windmilling. Even at a low rotating speed that did hurt...

Broken nail

Constantly banging my head on the flaps of the 152....
Tripping over the wheel and falling backwards on to my ar*e, then standing up quickly to save face in front of the chuckling people who happened to witness it and then banging my head again on the flaps.
Walked into the stationary propeller cutting my leg
Slipping off the wing strut whilst checking the fuel level.... and to be fair the list goes on....

Sometimes wonder if I am safe to fly being so clumsy....

The skydrol tank on the Vulcan was being topped up by my apprentice and I happened to look up at him to ask him a question which caused him to miss the neck of the receptacle giving me my first, and last ever, skydrol cocktail.

Moral of the story, don't look upwards when someone is filling up something, especially with your mouth open.

B52.

A friend was a crew chief in the early sixties, and he was quite used to jumping off the wing tip
when fully fuelled, assuming that wing LG was on the ground.
About a 6 to 8 foot drop.

Not so when he stepped off the opposite wing when the AC was light.
It's a big drop then!. Broken bones.



(sorry I don't know how to make images smaller).

Russell

I dislocated my thumb whilst strapping on a Pitts - trying to get the straps nice and tight, tugged hard on a strap and my thumb got caught underneath. Still flew with a mate, drove myself to a&e later that evening and got it strapped up.
I'm quite good at driving one-handed it would seem.

I too walked into the flaps of a Cessna 152 at the start of my GFT.

result 3 stitches and a delay to my GFT :ouch:

Removed finger nail.
 

I was once towing a C152 into a hangar on a golf buggy, local rules meant you had to detach from Buggy at hangar entrance as only hand towing permitted inside. As I lifted the towing arm eye off the towbar, the little old 152 rolled forward slightly and my finger was trapped in between the towbar and the back of the buggy...instantly popped my nail straight off. A mistake I have never repeated:ugh:
Moli

Never try to clean debris out of a used petrol tank using an electric vacuum cleaner...Derrr! :eek:

Never use a match for light when looking how much fuel is left in the fuel tank!

My uncle lost his eyebrows when doing that on his moped in the old days ;)

Not me, this time:

With the Sea Harrier, when landing away from somewhere that had steps, it was quite normal to climb out of the cockpit, gingerly make your way a few paces towards the rear of the aircraft and then sit on the wing and slide down to the wingtip. Unfortunately, nobody had explained to one of the new guys that we slide down the middle of the wing and not the forward part. By the time he realised what was going to happen he'd built up a fair speed and was unable to stop his arse being assaulted by the vortex generators that he managed to slide over. The wing fence put paid to his sliding but, in doing so, added ankle lacerations to his bum injury list :{

Don't put your hand on the canopy rail when closing the gull-wing door of a TB10 with your other hand.....it hurts.

Don't look around the windscreen when landing a Luton Minor in a field recently occupied by cattle. This exposes your face to the stuff being flicked off the tyres. It is smelly and very difficult to wipe off. Definitely wear goggles if you do intend to do this as it is smelly, difficult to wipe off and stings your eyes like mad.

1) Bashing my head on the high Cessna wings. A lot. And I still do it.

2) Missed the foot hold on the spar of a 172 when checking fuel. My foot slid along the spar, I fell off and smacked into the tarmac. That one hurt!

3) Pulling the aircraft with a towbar that wasn't properly anchored. It flew off and I fell backwards and thudded into the taxiway.

And why do all these things happen when there are lots of people watching? :sad: