Superstitious ????
 

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 !!!!

Try not to fly under ladders on friday ?

Unlucky 13?
 

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

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

Always cross my toes when flying EC machines.

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.:ok:

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!!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Yes, I'm afraid it does.

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

Cheers

Whirls

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

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

Si

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

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?