ANONYMOUS techo blunders we've seen

[Radialicious]

How's this for a starter? An LAC colleague of mine working on a post Kahu A-4, stitch-drilling a hole in the fuselage for a skin repair. Something drew his attention but not alarm bells to something not quite right. "Hey you boys look at this! White swarf!!!" Our faces suddenly made his bells clang as he realised that the 'white swarf' was infact the insulation of a wiring loom just under the skin. The Kahu A-4 had looms and black boxes wedged all over the place in an airframe already chocker with bits and pieces. This loom was munted and because of its snug fit, splice repairs to the wires in the area of damage, would make the loom too fat. The greenies had to stagger a whole heap of repairs 'upstream and downstream' of the damage to keep the diameter of the loom manageable. It was a huge job in an area with no access that kept the boys busy for yonks.

[Bruce]

Have to be a bit careful here, but on one of my previous jobs we were rebuilding a modern but very rare light twin that had been involved in a landing accident. The airframe techs needed to replace both the wing leading edges, which were fancy laminated bonded aluminium (probably actually unaffordium - or unobtainium) we duely imported said skins, very expensive and long lead time, and the crew got to work fitting them. As they didnt come predrilled, the needed to be set up and drilled to match the existing structure. One of the techs aligned one skin with the wrong mark, and every hole ended up 1/2" out of line - one very expensive skin suitable only for scrap. That was an honest mistake, albiet very expensive, and I felt sorry for the guy. In theory the liability insurance of the company should have covered that, but in a bit of a dodgy deal the used the original insurance claim on the aircraft. the owner later found out (3 wing Skins on the insurance bill is a bit of a giveaway) and the doo doo hit the rotating thing!. (subsequently a long and bitter legal battle took place).
As I said, not particularly funny, but about the most expensive I've seen.

As a funnier one, a new apprentice was sent by the old hands across the field to the parts supplier to get some "Prop Wash" (the traditional trick to pull on the new boys) the only minor problem being the supplier had just taken delivery of a fancy new fluid for cleaning the insides of Constant speed props - you guessed it - "Prop Wash". At $300.00 a bottle that was the last time that particular exercise was carried out.

[Dave Homewood]

One I didn't personally witness, but boy oh boy the techies on base all heard about. A very nice, unnassuming and quiet yet stangely accident prone chap I knew was working at PTS when he realised the powerpull tractor was low on juice. He took it down to the MT Section to top it up. This was a big grunty tractor with a large engine, by the way, for towing aeroplanes about the place.

Later on it started running rough, real rough. An MT mechanic was called in to take a look. After an inspection he discovered a full tank of diesel, in the petrol tank! This precision instrument that had ran smoothly since the war had been fed the wrong juice, despite the sign clearly written by its cap that it took petrol. Poor old chap assumed as it was grunty and industrial, deisel was its tipple. From memory the lineys were banned from filling their own tanks after that.

Of course elsewhere on the forum Beagle and I discussed the S&S baggie (who went on to become a notable Warrant Officer) that was in a ruch for lunch so deflated a hydrogen balloon, and his ego, with a vacuum cleaner. Explosive results!

One of the stupidest things I did that I recall was a simple act brought on by the stupidity of my mate! I was inside the Technical Squadron hangar at Wigram. This was not long before the Tech Wing fully closed and a lot of our S&S stuff was being moved there from No. 6 Hangar. I had wheeled a trolley of junk in through the hangar door, which was hinged at the ceiling and opened outwards like a garage door kind of, or more like a massive cat door(?).

Anyway, I was closing the door, a process by which I stood near the door and on the wall was a green button for close and a red button for stop (plus another green for open). This was a very heavy steel door, bombproof I guess from pre-WWII. So it required a motor to drive it, slowly opening or closing it. The large door had a small door inset so when it was closed you could go in and out the little door.

Anyway, having checked all was claer, I'm standing there holding the green button. The motors vibrating away and the door's slowly coming down. Suddenly my mate Vaughn - who's further in the hangar - calls "Dave!". The look on his face is somewhat comical, so i don't think anything's amiss. "What?" I ask. "Look" he says, pointing.

"Look at what?" - I can't see anything from my angle, only the door coming down.

"Look!!" he insists, smiling. I summed up the situation. He never once said stop, no panic in his eyes. Can't be anything bad. So I walked away from the panel leaving the door still closing, to work out what the hell he was pointing at. Getting a few metres further into the hangar, I suddenly see it.

A bike that had been leant against the wall just outside where the motor and panel were for the door had slipped down and sideways, and into the path of the now very much approaching big door! Worse still, in that instant of realisation was the recognition that it was our S&S bike, and that earlier, I had put it there!! There was now no time to get back and hit stop, the bike was about to be munched. I rushed forward and kicked the tire. Nothing - the pedal must have been caught. I kicked again and again. Too late, it was now buckling. So i rushed back to the panel and hit stop. All the time Vaughn was just stood there laughing at me.

I most certainly did not see the joke. I was going to be charged for this.

Hitting stop and reversing the door, I extracted the bike. The front wheel, brand bloody spanking new and only fitted that week to replace one that had been on the shopbike since probably manufacture during, if not before the war, was bent at about a 20 degree angle. Talk about pucker.

Then, as the adrenalin subsided the pain set in. I realised in leaning on the door to gain purchase to kick the bike, I had leant on the small door which opened, and when i pulled my hand away, gravity of course slammed it and the tip of my ring finger of my right hand had, momentarily, been caught in the crush of the door. At the time, concentrating on the bike, it seemed like nothing, just a touch. Now it was throbbing and excrutiatingly painful. It could have been worse as the steel door could easily have sliced the top off my finger, but luckily failed to do so.

Vaughn was doubled with laughter. He and I got on very well and I usually laughed along with him. On this occasion, I most certainly wasn't. I was not amused. Simply because he had not said "stop", and had not properly alerted me to a hazard, and then allowed me to walk away from the control to see what he was on about, I had crushed the bike and very nearly lost the tip of my finger.

I'm not usually violent when things go wrong, but I was so angry I went outside, kicked the bike a few times and then as it lay on its side with the tyre bending up at me, I jumped on the wheel. By some absolute miracle, or perhaps because the wheel was Chinese made and not British like the rest of the bike, that bloody wheel, every spoke, bent back into shape!!!

Suddenly the wheel turned again, it looked almost new again. It wasn't perfect but it was no longer 'charge' material. It was enough to ensure the bike would keep going till the tech side of the base closed (a few months later).

I still can't fathom that. It was incredible how standing on the unbent rim and stomping on the bent bit, I must have applied the exact right pressures to repair it. The tyre tube hadn't even burst!

It was like someone up there dropped a huge turd from above and then thought "oh, hang on, wrong chap", and scooped it back up... My finger should have been crushed. In fact it was slightly and I still have a ripple in the nail to this day that outsted the bruising and pain and still grows that way. But I often think about how lucky I was not to get it caught between the big door and hangar wall, or to have had my foot caught and crushed while kicking the bike. I acted totally irrationally, and was told so afterwards, quite rightly, by my Cpl, for putting myself at risk to save the flippin bike. But the Cpl agreed that Vaughn was the main fault.

I lived and learned, and must say I trated that hangar door with muchos care after that, plus I always stopped and watched if someone else was opening or cllosing it as a second pair of eyes was something needed due to that blindspot I'd discovered.

Speaking of hangar doors, does anyone recall the story that at PTS Wigram once a techie was playing silly buggers with a powerpull, and hit a hangar door on the inside. It was apparently knocked off its runners, fell inwards towards a flock of scurrying baggies, and crashed to the floor within inches of several aircraft. This legend also said one of the baggies was a man I later knew as a Sgt, and the door had caught the back of his jumper and torn it as he ran to get out of its way. Does this ring any bells? Is it true or an RNZAF Myth?

[phil]

A certain armourer, now in the RAAF, was given the job of taking an Aero 20 rack off a skyhawk. These racks are held on by 2 rather large bolts, which are torqued to 300 foot pounds. Now this job needed a very long torque wrench to do, and although you are not meant to undo things with torque wrenches, the only tool large enough to undo the bolts was the same one used to torque them back up.

Now I was crouching under the rack holding the adapter onto the bolt, while the other armourer swung for all he was worth trying to undo the bolts. This is usually a pretty hard job, so I wasn't paying much attention to his huffing and puffing, and I was chatting away to a couple of other guys.

After a few minutes it occured to me that this guy was struggling somewhat more than is usual, and I turned to have a closer look at what he was doing, mentally performing a little 'righty tighty, lefty loosy' check, I realised that the clown had infact been tightening the bolt for the last few minutes, which explaned the fact the aircraft was doing it's best to turn on the spot.

It took over 900 foot pounds to loosen that off in the end, and it broke the torque wrench (two days before heading to aussie for a month on exercise) and the rosan fitting in the wing needed replacing.

His excuse? 'The AC told me to do it that way'

Was that right, CPL?

[Radialicious]

I saw a CET ACFTTECH once trying to torque up a bolt that I knew was way beyond the capability of the little inch-pound torquewrench in has hand. I mentioned this to him only to hear that he knew it was small but he had "set the torquewrench and was going to do it up 12 times to make it into footpounds"......

A mate of mine was asked to push the E(mergency) handles back in on a P-3 as we prepped the aircraft for DLM. He struggled to push the handle back in and suspected that the red button in the cavity where the handle was normally stowed, was the handle release. It wasn't. It was the fire extinguisher button. What a mess..............

[paddy]

1/ about 1975 Loading a MER load of 500lb Mk 82's with the SATS Loader. The loaders wheels rolled into a gutter and smashed the nose fuse off a 500 pounder on the nose wheel leg. Procedure then changed to installing fuses after the bombs had been loaded onto the station.

2/ Also about 1975: Nitrogen bottles were being delivered with paint chipped off in transit. OXYGEN bottle accidentally loaded onto AC Nitrogen Trolley. Gun bottles then charged with Oxygen. As the guns were covered in grease and generated lots of flame when fired this caused a fire in the Starboard Forward Hell Hole. The gun receiver was cut in 2, the breech block left the gun and lodged in the wing root and a 1" wiring loom was cut in 1/2. The Knuck thought he had only had a gun stoppage. Probably the closest we ever came to losing an aircraft without actually doing so.

[Dave Homewood]

Wow Paddy. Close call there. I assume it was an A-4K?

I recall a certain S&S Corporal making the mistake of when removing an MS26 Liferaft (ie 26 seater, massive) from the ceiling of an Orion, (or was it a Boeing? I forget) he accidentally triggered it and it began to inflate. He had to quickly find something sharp and puncture it, otherwise it would have ruptured the aircraft's skin with the pressure. I worked in the Liferaft Bay at the time and recall the punctured raft.

[Dave Homewood]

I just rememebred a classic. A chap I joined up with was, let's face it, a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I'm not sure how he passed the aptitude tests, and I know he only got through recruit course because the GSI Cpls told us later they couldn't be bothered doing the paperwork to throw him out.

Anyway he was an Aircraft Mechanic, and as a U/T was put into the bead blasting bay at Whenuapai. Another of my mates was also working there and he told me on this particular day the Sgt was away. So Mr Thicky decides to tidy the place up. This is a big empty room with the blasting machine, used for stripping parts etc. At one end of the room was a pile of beads on the floor. At the other end of the room, about 20 feet away, another pile of beads. Bright idea, sweep up and put them into one pile.

When the Sgt returned I went berserk, as one pile was a totally different size and grade from the other. He apparently made him sit down and hand pick out all the smaller ones from the larger ones!

I often wonder what happened to him. That's not the only stupid story he generated.

[beagle]

admin said:

Wow Paddy. Close call there. I assume it was an A-4K?

I recall a certain S&S Corporal making the mistake of when removing an MS26 Liferaft (ie 26 seater, massive) from the ceiling of an Orion, (or was it a Boeing? I forget) he accidentally triggered it and it began to inflate. He had to quickly find something sharp and puncture it, otherwise it would have ruptured the aircraft's skin with the pressure. I worked in the Liferaft Bay at the time and recall the punctured raft.

Yes it was a MS26, but not on a Boeing 727. The boeing had 3 42 seater rafts in the ceiling, later going to 46 seater. The incident you are talking about happened in an Andover.

[Dave Homewood]

Ah yes, that's right. I knew it was a 26 seater but couldn't recall which plane. I forgot we had Andovers then. Cheers Beags.

I should add this happened not through stupidity, but a shere accident. The person involved made the right move to puncture the raft - good, quick thinking.

[Bruce]

The liferaft story is similar to one I heard 2nd hand from one of the guys at Auckland who hires out safety equipment, does customs clearances etc for light aircraft heading offshore. Aparently a small group of Aero Club people had decided to take a Piper Seneca (6 seat light twin) to Norfolk Island for a bit of an outing. They had arranged to hire an appropriate liferaft from the guy at Auckland, but when they came to pick it up, the 6 seater hadnt been returned by the previous user(who was delayed somewhere). Never mind, they all decided, we'll take the 12 person job, it still fits weight and balance etc. Anyway, they stow the canister and head north to Kerikeri to top up tanks and clear customs. At Kerikeri they do all the pre departure stuff, and they decide to check everything is loaded and the raft is easily accessable on the top. Whilst leaning in through the very small baggage door aft of the cabin, the pilot is overcome by curiousity as to how a raft is stowed in its canister - forgetting the instructions never to open it until needed. Sure enough he cracks open the canister and the raft starts to inflate. With limited room inside the cabin, our pilot is soon pinned against the ceiling / sidewall half in, half out of the baggage door, with air space rapidly diminishing. The other members of the party waiting outside suddenly see the cabin windows filling up with a solid Yellow wall and hear the desparate cries of the chap in the back!. Fotunately in pre 9/11 days someone actually had a knife with them to stab the raft and release the trapped pilot. Unfortunately, without a raft, the Norfolk trip had to be postponed and they were faced with flying back to Auckland to explain the deployment and damage to the raft.

[beagle]

This guy must have been pretty slow in trying to vacate the situation, as being in charge of a Liferaft servicing section, and watching liferafts of various sizes inflate, off the top of my head I recall it took about 1 1/2 minutes for one of our rafts to go from tightly rolled to fully inflated and blow off valves blowing.
One thing I have seen is the small co2 bottles used in passenger life jackets.
We went from re chargables to disposable items over a certain time frame and I can recall a device consisting of a tube with one end plugged and fitted with a suitably placed sharp point.
Those bottles went like missiles.

[Dave Homewood]

We (three of us at Wigram) made a mortar out of a vacuum cleaner pipe with a nail and cork at the bottom. dropping the CO2 cylindars from the Wet Drill jackets they fired rather far across the airfield grass by No. 7 Hangar. Great fun.

We wanted to go bigger to a liferaft cylindar but the Sgt over-ruled us. :-)

I agree about the speed of inflation Beagle, I can't see how he'd get trapped unless he was in the aircraft and the raft blocked his exit.

[beagle]

were you looking at using single seat bottles (SSMK15/16)
yes they would go a fair way. Someone at Ohakea did something and they had one go shooting across the room and through a wall.

I could add the story regards the P3 spinner incident but ............
I'll send you a private message

[Dave Homewood]

Yes, we were eyeing up the single seat bottles. :-)

[Bruce]

The liferaft story came to me second hand, so chances are it has been embellished, however a Seneca baggage bay is quite small, and with baggage in there as well, it may be possible...
You guys know more about rafts than I do, so you're probably right.

[Radialicious]

There was the Andover years and years ago that was lowered off jacks with the wingtip trestles still in place.

[Dave Homewood]

I recall a SATS Andover was marshalled at Wigram straight into a 2TTS Devon sitting on the tarmac, damaging the wings on both. In fact I think that one was written up in INSIGHT magazine (the RNZAF's Safety Magazine) later.

[beagle]

ok
where do we start....
a C130 was jacked up in the hangar for some reason, must have been for something to do with under carriage or similar, but somebody did not check the fuel gauges first, oops
Pretty sure from memory the normal ramp fuel was 26k but this wa sjacked at something like 40.

An andover at woodbourne had a certain lever, was for something hydraulic, and it was not quite pushed into the right detent and after they had come back from lunch there she was resting on the props. So that makes me think nose landing gear...

Then there was the occassion on a certain Sqn that operates maratime patrol aircraft. A couple of non specific trade members were helping reinstall a spinner.
Later that a/c went for high power runs and when it was doing the last one, the sinner fell from it's normal place and sucked into the props and smashed into a zillion pieces, which embedded themselves into quite a few nasty areas of the a/c .
From memory it wa sin the hangar for about 3 months getting fixed.

Saw a certain S&S baggie disobey his sgts instruction to stay where he wa sin the cherry picker while he answered the phone, but the baggie thought he was pretty clever and brought the basket with him in it back to the ground. Well without supervision, he did not see how close he was getting to the fuselage and if you look on the side of NZ4205 l/h side near the galley window there is a nice patch.

[Radialicious]

Beags, that Andover that suffered the NLG collapse was occupied at the time by a couple of junior personnel who were undergoing flight training on the type........... The MLG didn't retract because it had to go back over-centre before it would collapse. There was a court of inquiry and a number of us baggies were detailed to guard the aeroplane overnight. I can't remember if she still had her props embedded in the tarmac at that time. I suspect not, as it is a long period for the aircraft to be under such stress. The prop tips sunk a good 10cm into the tarmac. The marks are still there if you know where to look. However us young lads had lots of fun that night seeing who could go fastest on an office chair on the tarmac. If Johnny Knoxville was there, he would have recruited us on the spot.

In my time there was a number of 42 SQN LAC's returning for their tech's course. They were of course familiar with the RR Dart, also fitted at the time to SAFE Air's Argosy freighters. One night, they decided to show how clever they were by deciding to start one up after a night on the jars. I seem to remember they got away with it even though the Dart isn't exactly the worlds most stealthy engine............. ;D