I remember the flight dispatcher days well in the 70’s – in and out of the a*se end of Hapag-Lloyd B727’s, Sterling Caravelles and BCAL 1-11’s…

When I worked for Shell Aircraft Services in the 80’s, we also used to enter and exit the BA BV234LR (Chinook) helicopters “a derriere” too…..

When I was a flight dispatcher at Tees-side in 1977, we used to handle the LOT Polish Il-18’s who were taking out British workers to Warsaw, apparently building power stations.

One winters night, amongst the snow and slush, I was detailed to do the loadsheet and trimsheet for Il-18 SP-LSH. I remember the Kommissar onboard – he was in charge of the aircraft – not the captain, and he had a very large lump under his left shoulder…..

About half way through the refuel, as I was trying desperately to restart the Servisair tractor, one of the hostesses ran down the steps and rather inelegantly through the snow and ice, tried to make for the customs hall at the side of the ramp. The Kommissar ran off after her, and took her back onboard. Doors shut, engines started (no passengers), and off they went back to Warsaw, empty. Another Il-18 came in a few hours later and took the Wimpey construction workers away.

I’ve often thought about that poor woman and her unsuccessful asylum effort….

Anyway, I remember the Il-18 was a solid beast, quite utilitarian inside the cabin and cockpit – and only Servisair staff were allowed near it!

6

I’m Narked!

Do you know, this really annoys me!

This radiation lark is truly blown out of all proportion. If you wanted to be affected by the radiation in any of these instruments, you would have to break the glass (releasing the alpha particles, which are WELL past their “sell by dates” and now completely ineffectual), lick the paint on the dials for a couple of weeks, sit back and hope that you had done enough to poison yourself. It’s all nuts. I have an extremely effective Geiger counter, bought at reasonable expense to survey the vast amount of instrumentation that I hold, and can assure anyone that it is infinitely more harmful to live in Aberdeenshire or Cornwall with the background radiation from the granite, than it is to sit in front of the depleted instruments in wartime/50’s cockpits.

Furthermore, I’m one of the few peeps that have a complete boxed set of comparative instrument dials, released in the late 50’s, to compare the glow from proper instruments against these benchmark ones, to select the instruments for repainting. Guess what – the Geiger counter doesn’t even register up against them!! It’s time to get real, chaps and let past hero’s visit their old mounts. H & S problems around this are very definitely “can’t be bothered attitudes” or the old Esther Ranzen “Jobsworths”. It’s time for museums to get off their proverbials and help, rather than sit in offices and let the minions view what they deign to let them.

For goodness sake, let’s get real!! :D:D:D

Early gunsight from an RAF fighter, with different German a/c named on the reflector dial….me109, me110, FW190 amongst others. Put it into East Fortune museum when I was a lad (it was given to me as a present) to find out more about it, and never got it back. It was apparently fitted to the Spitfire which is still on display….:mad: