The other day on CNN’s news ticker, there was a little blurb about how rats made nests in four either Dutch or Danish F-16’s. Supposedly they tore out wires to make a home for themselves.
Little did the rats know, they were on the verge of the ride of their lives. [:)]
Regards, Rick
There was a post some time ago regarding maintenance personnel who “lost” a screwdriver in a Dutch or Danish F-16 (I think) - which was going to require an estimated several hundred hour maintenance cycle for the disassembly of cockpit components, location of said screwdriver, then re-assembly…estimated operational downtime for the F-16 was supposed to be something like 6 months…I remember seeing old RAF footage of a Spit having it’s Oerlikon drums changed out - the erk had his screwdriver on a bit of string.
We’ve come a long way in 60 years…
Anyone remember hearing about the wrench that was found inside an Apollo capsule when they took it appart as part of the Apollo 1 fire investigation?
As it turns out, there was a local news story here in Denver a couple days ago about rabbits eating wires in cars parked at the airport. I heard that one local dealer had about 9 instances in one month. Now they are starting to repair the wires with metal sheeths. To darned rodents really know how to cause a headache.
when I first moved to Germany I found out the hard way about rodents and wires. Something a Polecat… kinda like a large ferret a very aggresive decided to eat my brake line and a few other wires. Went to back out of my drive way and went straight across the road into a hedgeline before the e brake stopped me from plowing into the neighbors house… nasty little buggers
I once had a flashlight fall apart on me in the cockpit of a P-3 Orion.
Wouldn’t you just know that one of the batteries fell beside the yoke
and disappeared under the deck. I walked into maintenance and reported
that sad fact to the chief on duty. He promptly grounded the airplane and then
told me “Well go find it!” 16 hours later, I had found it and put the cockpit back
together.
Ray
Ray, I hear ya!! As a Shooter for my squadrons Hornets, I nearly let one go after replacing a fuel pressure solenoid in one of the main wheel wells. I chased it to the cat to get my wire cutters that I set near the Encoder/decoder!! I got a good reaming for that!! - Calvin
Calvin,
That P-3 was my crew’s bird. No way I’d fly in it or let anyone else fly in it with gear adrift
near the flight controls. I didn’t get chewed out because those gray Navy flashlights tend
to fall apart when you smack them against your hand to get them to go back on and,
I reported it to the maintenance chief.
BTW…How’s Atsugi these days? I was there in the mid 60’s with VQ-1.
Sagami Otska still going strong?
Ray
Lovin’ it, Ray! Just wish I didn’t have to leave at the end of Feb! Not sure what ya mean by Sagami Otska. The train station? Sounds like you’re refering to a baseball team or “redlight” part of town! LOL - Calvin
Without being 100 % sure I think you refer to a thread i started about 4-5 months ago under another user name.
It was a bolt for the rudder pedals we lost not a screwdriver, estimated “downtime” was 1 month ( You can’t really talk about downtime when the aircraft is undergoing major upgrades anyway ) It ended up “only” taking 3 weeks in the end.
In the royal danish airforce we have not had any incidents with rats in the recent past.
Considering that we are performing MLU, Falcon star high and low priority and M3 mods on our entire fleet, one lost bolt is a small price to pay.
We remove the wings, we completely disassemble the cockpit, COMPLETELY, not a bolt not a wire not a bracket is left only the bare structure … and we remove some of that aswell. we disassemble the fuel compartments, We remove all stabilazers, we take the horizontal tail support beam apart, we romove the FS 460 bulkhead, we remove the F1 fueltank cover. We remove all ISA’s, we remove both hydraulic reservoirs and the gun drive and most of the ECS components. Oh and I almost forgot, we also completely disassemble the forward and aft equipment bays. There is a lot of parts to keep track of.
Calvin,
Well, there was a train station there but I was referring to the “Entertainment” district.
One of my great moments in aviation (or Most Humiliating Life Experiences): I held up a flight of four F-4D’s at Carswell AFB. We were already at “last chance” with the pins pulled on the pratice bombs and Vulcan cannon pods, and one of the planes was loaded up with a hot PAVE Spike pod for some laser practice when we got up to the bombing range in Oklahoma. Just as we were about to begin taxi to the takeoff end, I dropped my camera somewhere way down in the guts of the Martin-Baker seat. Of course, every single step of our low-level training mission (I was merely ballast, a media flight) was timed right down to the second, and my dropping the camera blew that all to hell. My pilot could barely restrain himself, as he poliltely asked me between clinched teeth if “we were going to need to abort to the spare?” After a few frantic seconds of looking around on the cockpit floor among all the piping and hidey holes in a Phantom cockpit around the seat, all the while strapped in so tightly I might as well have been duct-taped to that seat, unable to bend over, I finally found the camera about two inches out of my reach. Somehow I made my body extend that far from sheer panicked humiliation, some seven minutes late. And God only knows how much fuel those eight idling J-79’s burned up waiting for this fool to find the dropped Nikon “idiot camera,” as the real photojournalists called them back then (I took it along for some vain self-portraits during the flight, the real photog being in the next plane in our element, so it was unecessary gear and thus doubly grab-asstic on my part). I’m sure after we finally left the base after the mission the pilots had some choice words at the bar for that idiotic civilian they were forced to chauffeur around that afternoon.
TOM
Reminds me of a depot-level maintenance worker who told me about doing a major, but routine, overhaul of a Harrier…removing canopy, seat, wing assembly, engine, etc…going as normal until it came time to remove the fuel cells, there was a roll of duct tape sitting nicely on top of one of the internal tanks!
One of our a/c needed an engine change at Da Nang. They had to fly the engine down from Okinawa, and arrange for a crane from Force Services, or someone. After the change, it was fired up for the test flight and it promptly blew up again. Seems the mechanic rigging the prop left a scribe in the intake. He wasn’t a popular person after that.
And I won’t go into what someone left in the cargo ramp after removing about 50 screws from the access panel.
Ray, Do you have any internal or otherwise pictures of your P-3? I was planning on building a 1/72 P-3C for my dad’s reserve unit mess hall with his old unit’s markings (VP-49).I know those guys could spot an innaccuracy from a mile out and any pics you have would be great. Allen