Sods of Jobs

[paddy]

I'm sure we all had them.
Here's two of mine.

Replacing the external Canopy Jettison Cartridges in a Skyhawk

No safety pin (no room to remove), 6 inches of bendy cable on one end with a ball swage at the end just waiting to be snagged. The gas vent in the palm of your hand and up to your elbow in hydraulic lines looking for a one inch hole that you couldn't see and that you had to push said six inches of bendy cable through. Scary.

Strikemaster Canopy Jettison Jacks. First put the detent in, then the spring (Really strong spring) Then the retaining button. Easy so far. The split pin had to be placed THROUGH the retaining button from the cockpit wall side. Bloody BAC

[Dave Homewood]

Trying to fit the MS10 liferaft into a Lindeholme package, they never wanted to fit easily. Especially the Wet Drill ones.

[skyhawkdon]

Here are some of my favourite Skyhawk jobs

- EPR Transducer with the engine in-situ.
- Salt Removal valve (cockpit floor behind LH rudder pedal)
- Longtitudinal Servo with tail still on (need to remove the tailpipe)
- Fuel Quantity Control Unit - cockpit floor by RH rudder pedal (T-bird not so bad as it was in the back seat but single seater was a shit!).
- CFG replacement (but we did them so often we just got used to it!).
- In fact just about every job on the Skyhawk was a sod as most things were crammed in the most inaccessable, hot and dirt places!

[ox]

ADI amp on the Herc - lived on the forward bulkhead behind the instrument panel.

Post mob

Almost everything on a BAe146 - british engineering at it's finest - and loose nuts on everything.

Dash is pretty good - power lever microswitches are a pain - headfirst under the flight deck floor but everything else is good - if you have the right tools.

Best purchases - set of SK universal sockets and SnapOn right angle ratchets which take the apex bits.

New aircraft are a pain too as everything has the required number of bolts as opposed to old ones which sometimes have a few left out of places that aren't really necessary

[baz62]

Here's one from working on the Avenger at the Museum. Trying to reconnect a hydraulic line for the brakes where it passed through the centre section. You could reach inside trough the flap bay with the flap section held down and just reach the pipe union. I sweated and swore trying to get the male end to fit inside the female connection and trying to get a spanner on to do it up.
It finally went back together and we took her outside for an engine run and a taxi. Unfortunately for me the reason it finally went back together was the pipe had cracked through at the 90deg bend. So when Kel Aldridge tested the brakes( before we removed the chocks!!) he found the rudder pedals went all the way down with no resistance. Paul (tbf2504) you'll remember this won't you?

[Bruce]

changing the rudder trim drive chain on an Aero Commander 500 - which involves lying on your back in the extreme tailcone with control cables rubbing on your ears!

Changing rudder cables on a PA18 Super cub was a tough one too - the fairleads in the rear fuselage required removal to pull the cable through, which meant carefully laying a plank inside the fuse (due to the fabric covering there is nowhere you can put weight on), and crawling headfirst down to the tail end - which of course slopes downward. several tools are required, and of course the one you want is invariably in the toolbox once you get inside!
Worst job without a doubt is paint stripping the belly of the average single engined Cessna.....

[skyhawkdon]

Jan 26, 2009 14:53:19 GMT 12 Bruce said:

Worst job without a doubt is paint stripping the belly of the average single engined Cessna.....

Ah I had almost forgotten that one - paint stripping the underside of an Iroquious as a new mechanic at Hobby in 1985!! The PPE gear was very basic and I remember the paintstripper quickly burnt through the rubber gloves. Paint stripper dripping down the back of your neck while trying to brush it on the underside of the Huey was definately character building stuff!!

[shorty]

I'll go with any job forward of the rudder pedals on a Skyhawk, anything to do with the fuel probes at the tip in a C-130 wing

[phil]

Most anything Skyhawk - arming 5002 rocket launchers. The no volts check was complicated and the intervalometers were knackered, you could never be sure which tube you'd selected as there were rarely any 'clicks' to be felt. And no, you couldn't put your head around behind to check visually incase Mr CRV7 went off and took your head with it. Even more of a pain when there were four aircraft sitting burning avtur at the ORP.

Setting up the barrostat and G limit switch on the BTRU on a Martin Baker Mk10 when the air force is too cheep to buy the correct test set!

And my most recent least favourite - inspecting 250 feet of hoist cable, which by the time you've turned it around to see all the way around the circumference really equals 500 feet of cable!

[paddy]

Re Rocket Launchers.
I remember 5am one Sunday morning in 77?. A firepower demo for the Army. A skyhawk full of 2.75" Rockets. Did the no voltage check and plugged them in. Turned the intervalometer one click (From safe to arm) Back in those days you were allowed to put your face to the rear of the launchers but there was no way I was going to. So I didn't visually check the switch position. Problem was that someone in the Bomb Dump had left the intervalometer on tube 18 on more than 1/2 of the launchers. My turning the switch 1 click merely turned the launchers from Tube 18 to safe. Result, Jim Jennings bought back most of his rockets. I can remember him being most unimpressed.

[kiwikid]

So, what's going on here then? Can anyone tell me what that hole half way up the outside of the intake is for?

[baz62]

Another Museum one. We had got a few 1820 Wright Cyclones from Hudsons and the plan was to strip them down and use the best parts to make two engines for the Hudson. Now I had no experience with aircraft engines at the time let alone a radial. And no manual either. So we removed the cylinders (some were full of water!) and started removing the rear cover(where things like Mags, hydraulic pumps, fuel pumps, generators, etc are fitted).
Ok all the nuts were off lets prise this cover off. It took a while tapping and prising but she came up a few mm then stopped. It felt a little like something was holding it back but shining of torches and much discussion showed nothing. So several wedges and a few hard taps and with a crack she came free.
It was a milestone moment. I was feeling pretty good about it all. Then I was working on splitting the next bit of the case, the induction housing (where the induction pipes carry the fuel air mixture to each cylinder). Hmmmm whats this a small cover held on by 4 lockwired bolts. Whats this its got some words cast onto it.
They read: " BEFORE REMOVING REAR COVER REMOVE THIS COVER"
There were 2 or 3 of these and they held an alloy shaft which entered the engine. Or rather they used to. They were now snapped in half. Amazing how you can go from 5ft 10 to 6inches tall in 10 seconds!
Lesson learned: If you haven't taken something apart before get a manual or ask someone!!

[the_flying_surfer]

SATS with NZWB southbound and northbound, oh and maybe a lob into NZDN for fun. Makes for a very long day, although rewarding when coming into NZWP at 1800 to see cars stationary on the motorway, suckers!

Another corker, fighting fires at Kaipara with a bit of wet hessian and a shovel after the knucks decide to pop off flares following their gunnery runs. I think we were out there for about 6 hours damping down hotspots.

[skyhawkdon]

Jan 27, 2009 7:59:35 GMT 12 kiwikid said:

So, what's going on here then? Can anyone tell me what that hole half way up the outside of the intake is for?

Inspecting the CSD fluid level or engine compressor blades as part of a pre-flight most likely. The "hole" is the red lens for the proble light (illuminates the refuelling probe/basket when night air-to-air refuelling.

[30sqnatc]

Stepping out of the door of an Andover when the landing gear is retracted, engines running and the ground some distance away while wearing helmet, two parachutes and a pack, webbing and rifle.

Then you take away the ground, add a lifejacket and the sea. If I wanted to get wet I would have joined the Navy

Then you revert to scenario 1 and turn all the lights and sun off. It just ain't natural

And even worse some do it for fun. It just ain't natural

Oh yeah, you do all this tied to the fuselage by something that is designed to break. Did I mention it just ain't natural

[Dave Homewood]

One task I recall that was often assigned to the new guys on squadron that they didn't like when they realised what it was all about, and one I never fell for I might add, was being sent to Stores to order a bottle of propwash.

[Dave Homewood]

I recall a job I got as a U/T at Whenuapai which I found both amusing but also difficult work was I was given some massive boxes full of Orion crew Antarctic immursion suits, like very, very thick diving suits that they wear or have handy when over Antarctic waters in case they crash. These things were about 10mm thick, had a small zip and the bottoms of the feet were flat solid boards. They probably still use them, not sure. Anyway the concern of this task was they were suspected of developing leaks and I had to (for some reason, oh yes the reason was 'because the Warrant Officer said so') turn them inside out so they could be filled with water and brought up to pressure to test for faults. Getting those flipping board feet through the neck was a real mission. I think there must have been about sixty of them, I had them all over the MT hangar floor! After they were tested, guess who had to turn them back the right way...

[shorty]

Inspecting the turbine blades of a Dart while still installed in a HS 748.
Grasp your torch in your hand, put both arms above your head, and then get shoved up the tailpipe. In about two minutes the sweat is pouring off you, glasses are steaming up, and you can hardly move. yell out when you finish and hands grab your ankles and pull you out backwards. Not fun!!

[Craig Sargent]

I see all your A-4s and raise you one Strikemaster...

Bent bass ackwards over a running Viper engine in the arse end of a Blunty, after squeezing your head with ear muffs and shoulders through an opening your head shouldn't fit through, adjusting the voltage regs positioned just in front of your nose, at a position you can barey focus on, and trying to get some sense out of what the guy in the cockpit was trying to relay, on a summers day at Ohakea, without burning yourself on the jet pipe...

[Radialicious]

Talon, that is gold! A clearer picture of misery, I could not paint...

Turbine and jetpipe inspections on the A-4 were fairly standard and straightforward. HOWEVER, when the poor bugger had crawled headfirst into the pipe, which was over 12 feet long, and was doing his thing, there was sometimes a nasty bugger who would reach into the cockpit and push the thrust lever against the ignitor switch.... This would as legend has it, cause the inpector to do a U-turn in the exhaust and exit the pipe also head first.

Flow testing A-4 fuel nozzles was a prick of a job. Each J52 had 9 combustion cans. Each can had four nozzles and each nozzle was made from 15 individual pieces. Each nozzle was as big as a grape and had pimary and secondary jets, filter screens, circlips and was sent to us in the fuel test bay as an assembly. It had to be tested so that the primary and secondary flows were correct versus applied inlet pressure and that the spray cones were within limits. Backlighting projected the shape of the cone onto an opaque screen and an outline of where it should be. If the flows were wrong, we'd disassemble the nozzle and lap the seal faces. If the flow cone was the wrong shape, we could stone the jets. However because the whole bloody thing was so small, the job couldn't be done wearing gloves and the jet fuel used to attack your skin. Towards the end of the A-4's career, we modified the J52 from a J52-P-8B to a -P-8C which had one nozzle per can. It was a fierce new gas dumper that was way simpler that the 4 nozzle circus that we used to swim in.

For some reason, I don't really miss those kind of jobs