It is said
that the question most often asked of astronauts is: "How
do you go?" This question probably also applies to survey
pilots as related in the following anecdote from Bruce Beale who
optimistically describes himself as an "exceedingly lucky
fellow".
"I doubt that anyone would ever have complained about the
Adastra social life - if they did, it would more likely have been
a complaint of excesses rather than moderation. Most of the social
life revolved around sampling the 'liquid amber' at many a watering
hole Australia wide. The only down-side to this was the early
morning, cold, high altitude, long duration flights - often 5
hours or more. It doesn't take too much imagination to visualise
the effect all this had on the human body - particularly our ageing
crewmen. The one in this story (flying Hudson AGX) shall remain
nameless. Most of us carried some sort of small container with
us - sufficient for our personal needs for the flight. The pilot
in this story, a man of mature years and excellent breeding, used
a container that was more commensurate with his stature and build.
Do you remember those Nescafe' jars - not the regular or large
size, but those huge ones that held about a ½ gal? Well, that
was the one and it resided on the floor of the cockpit and served
the needs of its owner well. It also served as an ashtray, conveniently
dousing the gentleman's cigarette butts of which there were many.
Also, its size meant that he was spared the task of emptying it
regularly, with several weeks often elapsing between such events.
Are you getting the picture? The resulting concoction was decidedly
unpleasant! Imagine my joy, when, after stepping back from my
pre-flight cleaning of the APR Tracking Camera lens (forward end
of the bomb bay), I looked up just in time to see a strangely
coloured deluge, shower down from the cockpit window directly
above. There was no avoiding it. I copped the lot! So why "an
exceedingly lucky fellow"? Well, to my knowledge there is only
one airfield in Australia that has a toilet facility (complete
with fully functioning showers) immediately adjacent to the aircraft
parking area, and we were at it - Tennant Creek! I made the 50m
distance in very commendable time. To our friend's credit he was
unable to look me in the eye for several weeks thereafter.
PS: I later flew for many years in Papua New Guinea doing survey
work in an old PA-23 fitted with a Wild RC8 camera. A camera operator
devised an excellent solution to this problem. It consisted of
a short length of hose poked down through the rubber sealing around
the camera and out into the airflow. The top end was fitted with
a plastic funnel. The resulting suction was surprisingly large
but with care (and not without a few injuries) we found this to
be an excellent solution to the problem. Not so our avionics engineer
who could not understand why the connections on the ADF antenna
kept getting corroded!"
Bruce Beale
9th May 2003
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