de_icing

[flynverted]

My office at KFWA many moons ago...

[Alisoncc]

Tell you where you can stick your de-icing. Have memories of standing on the wing of a Vulcan at 2 o'clock in the morning in the middle of Winter on a Yorkshire base, wearing a rubber suit and hanging on to a hose spraying a hot glycol mix. Some idiot had called a Mickey Finn and we were out on QRA. There I was hoping to God that the guy hanging on to the rope tied around my waist was awake because it was a long drop if I lost my footing in the ice. And there was ice, by the bucket full. Windy as well, the glycol mix was going everywhere and the rubber suit was useless for keeping me dry and out of it. Wasn't happy at all.

[om15]

Do you remember the old RAF MAD runway deicers, two Derwents fitted to an extension on the front of a Leyland Hippo bowser, the engines were old, unreliable and not safe, the bowser was old, unreliable and not safe, the complete assembly a nightmare.
They were really good fun, the operator of the jets sat in a small homemade wooden shed arrangement between the jets and communicated to the bowser drive through an intercom. By being disobedient the operator could open up the jets and push the bowser backwards, todays H&S would have a fit if they saw one of these.

[OFSO]

Me, a YIT passenger, and a TO, driving, in a GPO quarter-ton Morris Minor van, nervously crossing an ice-encrusted runway at RAF Cottesmore and narrowly being missed by the nosewheel of a Vulcan looming up out of the Rutland/Leicestershire mist... still sticks in my mind....

[Blacksheep]

I was a qualified MAD Operator and I admit it was great fun.

My last working day at Waddington was spent snow-blowing the main runway. Next day I finished 'clearing' and was on the train to Lyneham, flew out that night and two days after blowing snow, I was lugging 66 pounds of approved baggage up the hill behind RAF Changi Arrivals. Phew! Quite a change in the weather!

[Airborne Aircrew]

OM15:

Early in my time in i was holding at RAF Binbrook and they were using one to clean the runway there. Huge slabs of big thick chunks of ice getting thrown in the air like they weighed nothing... Great fun to watch, I bet they were a ball to operate.

Backsheep:

I went from a nice 80+f day in Belize to walking across the pan at Dulles in jeans and a tee shirt with a -8f wind chill... i carried a jacket after that...

[om15]

I was a MAD operator for 3 years at Kinloss, never used it in anger, every Friday in winter we had to fire it all up and trundle about to ensure it all worked, melt a bit of tarmac and wind up the MT driver.