Superstitious ????

[overpitched]

I was wondering whether anyone is particularly superstitious ??? If anyone has a little ritual or something they do before they fly ??? Apart from checking the fuel levels !!!!

[Thomas coupling]

Try not to fly under ladders on friday ?

[Hidden Agenda]

Unlucky 13?

Never make thirteen landings in one hour. Does that count?

[SHortshaft]

Never land with the helicopter’s skids across a crack (or expansion joint) on a concrete parking apron.

[SASless]

Always cross my toes when flying EC machines.

[Ascend Charlie]

Never land if a black cat is landing on an intersecting runway.

A friend's wife (who is Buddhist) follows him around the aircraft as he does his preflight, and touches each part and says a small prayer for each bit. Works so far, he has returned from every flight.

[flyer43]

If the engineer who performed some major "surgery" on your machine is not willing to go with you on the test flight, it's probably not a good idea to fly it!!

[Farmer 1]

Many years ago, I took the conscious decision not to believe in all this superstion nonsense. On occasion, I went out of my way to walk under a ladder. I walked over the cracks in pavements; if I were throwing away a mirror I would deliberately break it; if no one was looking I would direct a (gentle) kick at a black cat; etc. etc.

And the result of all this? Well, I'm still here. I can honestly say nothing untoward has ever happened to me as a result of all the above. Touch wood.

[Whirlygig]

The nuclear physicist Niels Bohr was asked why he had a horseshoe hanging up in his laboratory when he wasn't a superstitious person. "I've heard that it works even if you don't believe in it!" was the reply!

Cheers

Whirls

[rotorque]

Good one farmer.... you made me giggle.

[C of G]

O.K., I'm not generally superstitious, but it gave me and others some pause the Friday the 13th I hand an engine failure on my 13th leg!!! I'm not making that up.

[VEMD]

Most of my colleagues fly with 121,50 mhz in the standby radio, I never do that...

[Genghis the Engineer]

Under no circumstances will I conduct any kind of test flight if I know that a priest is watching.

Twice I've been managing a flight test, a priest (military padre to be precise) turned up out of curiosity to see what was going on, and within 5 minutes we came within a hairs breadth of losing an aircraft. I mentioned this to a former boss of mine, who said "ah, yes, the padre was watching when I lost a Harrier".

That's good enough for me, won't do it.

G

[torque dirty to me]

I always stroke my birds nose like a horse when doing my walkround...does that make me weird?

[ShyTorque]

Yes, I'm afraid it does.

[Whirlygig]

....especially as horses can't "stroke" as such

Cheers

Whirls

[SASless]

I would think your bird would find another boyfriend if you stroke her nose like she was a horse.

[Simon853]

I always stroke my birds nose like a horse when doing my walkround

'Torque dirty', you have the wrong user name. You should hereafter be known as the "heli whisperer".

Si

[delta3]

A non scientific answer

A non scientific answer from a scientist.

I would not call it superstition but intuition.
Ì tend to believe and follow my intuition.

Remark that even Farmer 1 ended with "touch wood" .....


d3

[John Eacott]

Revisit an old thread: I was reminded of this as I deal with motorcyclists who must put the left glove on first, mount from the left side, etc etc. Otherwise they will self combust/run off at the first corner/get a speeding ticket/fail to find a decent coffee shop.

Throughout RN flying training we (nearly) all had our lucky charms, etc. Mine was a set of Dad's wings carried in the left arm pocket of the romper suit. Anyone else remember habits during training, or even now still carry out a set routine?