Redbull at it again

[Tony P]

The major problem with this forum is that there are no dickheads!

[hrtpaul]

The major problem with this forum is that there are no dickheads!

Up until now I wasn't offended Now I bloody hell am. WTF are you on about Tony? FFS I try so hard to be a dickhead (and alas I'll never be anywhere near as good as Damo )and you say something as demeaning as there are not dickheads here. You insensitive bastard

[tor lives]

The major problem with this forum is that there are no dickheads!

Up until now I wasn't offended Now I bloody hell am. WTF are you on about Tony? FFS I try so hard to be a dickhead (and alas I'll never be anywhere near as good as Damo )and you say something as demeaning as there are not dickheads here. You insensitive bastard

OK......put down the keyboard and move slowly away from the emoticon keys, (you are using em all up ).
TOR

[hrtpaul]

Sorry. I forgot there was an emoticon quota for the site. My humblest apologies LOL

[tor lives]

Sorry. I forgot there was an emoticon quota for the site. My humblest apologies LOL

No quota for you Paul
TOR

[Adam the Akrodude]

The major problem with this forum is that there are no dickheads!

I've been trying my best too!

Hats off to you HRT Paul - most awesome post sir! Tremendous discussion - great and varied opinions on this very interesting topic.

Cheers

Adam

[Nicolas_Fantich]

[tor lives]

OK Nicolas, that's enough mate. The A/CAM membership participating on this thread does not deserve this kind of disrespect, and I will not tolerate it on my site. Everyone is entitled to have their say here without the need for this kind of ridicule or belittling. Not on my site thanks mate.
TOR

[RHB785]

Yes, what is that old saying? Goes something like "Pride goeth before a fall." I almost fell foul of a Decathlon once at Camden doing a zoom climb. A mate had done one the weekend before with me in the back seat of this particular aeroplane and it looked so easy but I made the mistake of overpulling and appraoaching a high speed stall. The stall warning horn was buzzing its head off and I'd just started to feel the wingroot buffet when I decided it was time to do something about it and unload the wing. I just missed the top of that little hill the other end of the main runway from the river end, I think the eastern end. That was enough to scare me into having a good long hard look at my own ego.

Some years earlier I was having lunch with some other pilots in the pilots' crew room at Maitland and had just gone to the Coke machine for a drink when I was hit in the back by the door as it was swung open by a very egoistical young man. He then proceeded to tell everyone very loudly how good he was as he'd just got his restricted licence in the minimum 33 hours. "I'm gonna be the best damned F-111 pilot the Air Force has ever seen." Sitting at the table with us tyros was an older man called Miles Lewis who operated a charter business out of Maitland with 2 DC-3s. After this young bloke had left and I'd returned to my seat he said "That young man is dangerous. The Air force would be remiss to let him anywhere near an F-111 or anything else for that matter. When you've got 33 hours in your logbook you think you know it all. When you've got 333 hours up you're beginning to wonder if you do know it all. When you've got 3,333 hours up you know you don't know it all and when you've 33,333 (and he did have) hours up you know you're never going to know it all. As I said, that young man is dangerous. I give him 12 months at the outside to live before he kills himself." That young fellow killed himself and 3 of his best friends 10 months later out in western NSW barnstorming in a Cessna 172. Old Miles was dead right.

On page 1 of this discussion someone mentioned that RAAF 707 crash in 1991. I'd been out of the RAAF for a couple of years at that stage but I was friends with the FltEng on that flight, WOff John "Taps" Fawcett and his wife. I'd been visiting some friends at Kurrjong about 2 weeks before the crash and had met John and Sandy and their young son in Richmond that Saturday morning. When the crash occurred another student at the college I was studying at in Sydney told me about it and asked me if I knew a FltEng called Forsythe. Immediately Andy Forsythe came to mind and I thought Oh no. I knew Andy but wasn't particulalry close to him but when I found out it was Taps my heart sank. Along the grape vine I heard that the last voice on the cockpit voice recorder was Taps telling the pilot something along the lines of "You effing idiot, you've just killed the lot of us." followed by a metallic sounding crunch. Flying certainly isn't for those who can't control their egos. Eventually that crash will happen and unfortunately sometimes it isn't just the pilot who dies, it may well be some of his friends or worse, a paying customer.

Regards,
RHB.

[Adam the Akrodude]

Hi Ross

Thanks for your comments. Egos versus risk is the point I have been trying to get across - not just the risk associated with flying. Anything worth doing involves risk as we know.

Sorry to hear of your personal connection with the RAAF 707 crash. It was such a bloody awful thing to happen. Such is the human condition.

Cheers

Adam