Lost & Found
 

Prompted by a comment in Pinksters thread about her new headset I thought I'd ask y'all out there what is the daftest thing you've ever found in an aeroplane when cleaning or maintaining it?

I found a ladies glove under the carpet behind the seats in my old Aerobat along with some cents from the US of A. This in an aircraft that had lived in the UK for a number of years by the time I got around to buying and cleaning it. Were they missed during the Annual Inspections or were they put there for a laugh??? When I removed the inner door panels to replace them with shiny new ones without ashtrays in, a cigarette butt fell onto the floor. Somebody had been luckier than they ever knew I think...

As mentioned in pinkster's thread, I once saw 5 pencils recovered from the rear fuselage of a Tiger Moth.

I think a longer thread would be what other people have found in aircraft I've flown. A couple of people will have found stopwatches I've lost, several will have found pencils, and more than a few will have found clip-on sun-glasses.

As for what I've found... apart from the usual half-drunk bottles of water, half-eaten sun-softened packs of chewing gum and so on, nothing very interesting at all. Except for a pen which had fallen through the floor of a Super Cub and lodged itself quite nicely next to the control column, ready to jam up as soon as the aircraft was put into the correct unusual attitude :eek:

FFF
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A map of Paris, well worn, and a Parisian restaurent csrd.

But no entry in the log corresponding with a trip to Paris.

And it was my aircraft.

A fellow PFAer found an entire family of mummified mice in the rear fuselage of his aicraft when doing his permit renewal last year!:uhoh:

blueskis it could be sinister :suspect: or worse it could be your missus dropping heavy hints :hmm:

A three legged milking stool in the tail cone!!

Stik

Stik

That shut them up!

I have a suspicion that you will be taking the prize in this particular contest.

A set of false teeth...! :} ;)

Not mine :} :} :}

(I only have the one:rolleyes: )

I once found 21 (real, live) flamingos in the back of a PA-28.......Then again, I did put them there!

stik finding part of the structure doesn't count :ooh: still, it's nice to know what the ar*e end of a Pitts is made of :uhoh:

Flap 40 did the flamingos reduce the take off run or were they sitting peacfully? The question I really want to ask is what the Hell did you have 21 real, live flamingos in a PA-28 for :confused: :confused: :ooh:

Evo was that because someone said "I'd give my eye teeth for a go in that (add aircraft of choice here)__________".

Do flamingo chicks count? How much did you get for them?

A nest. complete with live baby birdies
 

Inside the vertical stabiliser of a Heliocourier. The nest was invisible at preflight and the birds were silent until after their flight!
I didn't fly it, but was the only one with hands small enough to extricate the babies from their hiding place. Five were still alive and protesting loudly.

A large Maglite in the aileron of a Boeing 757 - thankfully I didn't find it but one of the Tourists did and had to use the breakout facility on the aileron circuit to regain control !

I once took the fuel cap off C152 to find a short length of pencil floating on top of the fuel. Someone had obviously tried to dip the fuel and dropped the pencil in there

Screwdriver in the elevator control circuit; jamming the stick, after a student had complained about having difficulty trimming the glider in strong thermals.

FD

OK, it wasn't in an aeroplane, but doing the airfield inspection one morning, I found a supermarket trolley on the runway, the biggest bonus being that it still had the £1 coin in the slot......

The 3 legged milking stool was not in the Pitts (they don't have tailcones!).

It was in a Vulcan B2 0ver 20 years ago. It was suggested that the "bucker" had sat on it whilst his oppo drove the rivets probably during a major overhaul.

Stik

A pair of pliers sitting on top of the engine following maintenance.

Mike

Bolt in the static pipe
 

Following a 50 hour at a maintenance facility I don't use any more(!!!), my mate was plagued by low suction (oh well - it happens to us all........!).

For convenience he took the aircraft, a Cherokee, elsewhere to have the fault looked into . The fault was quickly found to be a bolt - presumably used temporarily blank one of the static pipes(not sure of the exact detail) - that had not been subsequently removed.

All the original facility would do was give his letters a stiff ignoring, refuse to return the bolt and spread it around that my mate (a professional honest as the day is long sort of a bloke) had put it in there in an endeavour to avoid paying the bill.

In reality, all he wanted them to do was deduct the bill for the investigation/ remedial work from their 50-hour invoice.

This is the same M3 facility that stiffed me for a new oil cooler - one that miraculously failed catastrophicaly (a 20ft oil slick) during the post 50-hour ground run - and decided to chuck the old one (200 hours from new) away before anybody (the CAA and the manufacturer for example?) could take a look.

Guess what response I have got to my letters?

Yep - a stiff ignoring.

HP

A tennis ball behind the rudder pedals of a 150.

stik just being a tad cheeky old bean ;)

Hairyplane sounds like a case of serious lack of prefessionalism. I hope I never use that crowd inadvertantly .......

cjp that sounds seriously dodgy :suspect:

CJP, Sounds like somebody misunderstood the advice "centre the ball using the pedals" :}