Peter, You’re in good company, mine was missed as well 🙁

My Wife managed a double whammy, not only did she buy me a driving day, sampling Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus, etc, she chose Bruntingthorpe as the location! 😀
I will need to organise the day so that I can take a peek at the QRA hangar and the other delights residing there….

Day in the life of a loadie at Shawbury in the late ’80s….
07:55 Test of station crash alarm wakes you up, rollout of bed into boots and gro-bag placed next to bed, sprint to Sqn Crew Room.

08:00 Morning Prayers, (ops & Met brief)
08:30 check roster and speak to first hop’s Captain about flight.
08:45 Briefing with Instructor on flight profile
09:00 over to Station Ops to make map, check Notams, plot route and obtain detailed Met (Captain returns to Mess for light Breakfast)
10:00 Check which aircraft you will be using and go through Form 700 for Green, Amber and Red lines (defects)
11:00 Pre-flight Briefing, I outline route, Initial Points (IPs) and confined areas brief. I also outline aircraft defects
11:30 I go out to the aircraft to start External pre-flight (Captain has coffee and Gauloise)
12:00 Internal Pre-flight and Cabin Prep
12:15 Captain comes out to the aircraft, kicks the tyres and straps in.
12:30 20 mins of pre-start checks, I check that Captain carries out checks correctly, then we light the fires.

13:00 lift off! off we go for a jolly good wheeze around Shropshire, picking up Concrete blocks from one woodland clearing and dropping them in others, I have to talk the captain in and out of the confined areas whilst managing the load

14:00 Land, I stand out the front, whilst the Captain slows the Rotor head, watching that the stops go in.
14:10 Captain returns to the Crewroom for a Coffee and Gauloise, I put the covers on and tidy up the aircraft
14:30 return to Ops to discuss the defects with Ground crew
14:45 Return to Crew room for large Coffee and sandwich…

That about sums it up!

There are a couple of other ex-or current Loadies on forum as well.
Basically there were 3 main roles for the Air Loadmaster, Fixed wing Passenger (Chief Steward on VC10s), Fixed Wing Cargo (Hercs, Strategic-long distance, Tactical -low level hurling stuff out the back) and Rotary Wing.

All NCO Aircrew go through the same basic training and then get streamed into trades, so as a direct entrant you would do the same basic training as techies, blanket stackers and rock-apes, then you go to Airman Aircrew Initial Training (Essentially the Cranwell Officer course condensed into 7 weeks), and then onto trade Groundschool (Air Engineers, Air Electronics Operators and ALMs).

In my day it was 12 weeks Loadie Groundschool finishing with 14 exams, which covered weight & balance, PoF, in flight Catering and a practical exam, loading and tieing down cargo into the Herc Mock up (all in balance of course!)

After that we were streamed onto Fixed & Rotary, I was chosen for Rotary, and there followed another 8 weeks of Groundschool to learn Rotary PoF, Operations and the base elements of Nav and technical, as the Rotary ALM also does the Air Engineer’s role and Navigation.

You Finally get posted to 2FTS at Shawbury, and we had, wait for it, another session of Ground school to learn the Wessex systems, before finally we actually get to clambour into an aircraft!

The loadie is principally responsible for all cargo/passengers and the operation of the cabin. he is also responsible for mmanaging the secondary actions of all emergencies and ensuring that the Captain maneuvures the aircraft within clearances. He also acts as eyes and ears of the Captain and will ‘fly’ the aircraft on voice command into confined areas, picking up loads, etc.

It was an interesting and challenging job, I didn’t quite qualify, as my penchant for being a wayward 20 year old clouded my reasonable technical ability….

Welcome to the Forum F100-F!

Ahh yes the Moller Sky Car, I have spent many a boring meeting trying to work out how to create a Radio Control one of these using a combination of Mechanical links and the computer mixing on my Tranny…. 😉

I have been resisting up to now….
But Infer a penny, Infer a pound!

Ahem! sorry…..I’m leaving the building

Worse thing they can do is use the litter box when you have visiters and what they leave can only be removed with the use of an NBC suit or sold off as a new terror weapon!

Or worse, sit in the litter box and go over the side……

Too right.

Harvey and Mr Warwick came from Wood Green Animal shelter, just to the West of Duxford. When I first saw him Harvey was on the roof of the pen watching the Classic Wings Tiger Moths. 🙂

Moggy

Ahhh, the Wood-Green specials! I had a 12 year old tabby with no teeth from Heydon, as well as a pair of feral kittens that had had no human contact until they were 7 weeks old.
Over the past 14 years we also had rescued 2 kittens from the RSPCA in Huntingdon and 2 kittens from a mad Russian woman in Saffron Walden, keeping them in awful conditions.

Alas the 2 feral and the 2 RSPCA kittens got run over, we had to give the old girl back to Heydon when she took exception to our first baby (she was immediately re-homed), and we are left with one 13 year old from the mad russian.
My wife wants a Rag Doll and an Abyssinian later this year…I will have to start thinking of suitable names…..

It is (gulp!) 19 years since I had my last one at Biggin Hill, I had 3, all the same, at 16 for ATC Flying Scholarship, 17 for Pilot and 18 for NCO Aircrew. I was successful on the first and last attempts!

It is very thorough, obviously, the eye test is in 2 parts, vision capability and the actual health of your eyes, there is also a difficult hearing check (what?) and an ECG. It takes about 8 hours to get through it, but most of that is either waiting or moving between the test areas, and yes you do get a (cough!) hernia check.

A couple of things: be careful of the length of your lib from bum to knee in sitting position, I had to encourage the nurse to make sure I was sat correctly as I was on (over) the limit for the bang seat.
Another thing to watch for is admitting to Hay Fever, if you get it, then it may impair your flying (Ears full), and it is a chargeable offence to self-medicate…..

If you want to get some practice, then go for a Regular Commissions Board with the army first, it is much, much harder and the RAF entry seems much easier afterwards 😎

If the selection process is the same as in my day, the aptitude tests are mind-blowing, eg you do one test to remember sequences of up to 14 numbers, then you do another test to keep a spot in some cross-hairs, then next you do the first test with your left hand, whilst doing the other test with your right hand…… 😮

Finally the Interview, whatevre your views you want to fly fast jet, they recruit for that and stream downwards, I made the mistake of admitting to want to fly Hercs (doing a real job, humanitarian effort in Ethiopa at the time, etc).

Saying all that it has probably changed a lot since I did it, and it is really easy…… 😀