A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#21 Post by Pontius Navigator » Mon Jan 28, 2019 3:39 pm

On the Vulcan we used to fly with 100% oxygen selected and a low continuous flow of O2. For very sensible reasons smoking was forbidden on Bomber Command aircraft.

My crews never smoked. On one occasion I guested with a smoking crew. The AEO, one Paddy Roach (dec) used to smoke what we thought was chopped up durex. Anyway, in this flight, he lit up with his mask dangling. It was a race between the incandescent fag burning out and him getting a drag.

There were also the Hastings T5 flown by ex-truckies who had been allowed to smoke in Transport Command. They resented the no smoking rule and would light up as normal even though we were flying around 20k. On recovery all the fag ends were gathered in a paper cup which was then offered up to the sextant mount - flup and there it was, gone.

Well gone from the cabin but long Brown's streaks along the white fuselage top and the tail.

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#22 Post by Ex-Ascot » Mon Jan 28, 2019 3:57 pm

Sisemen wrote:
Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:45 pm
When I was at Brize I once had a look-round a VC10 that was in Base Hangar undergoing deep servicing. All the interior had been removed and the internal skin of the aircraft was a streaky brown getting darker towards the top. It was explain that that was nicotine staining which had to be cleaned off.

On another occasion I was flying supernumerary Brize-Kai Tak and prior to the Akrotiri-Gan leg and doing the walk round with the flight engineer. The pax consisted of 137 Chinese merchant seamen off the Fleet Auxiliaries. A 10 foot brown streak down the fuselage was pointed out to me and I was asked to guess what it was. Turned out it was the outlet for the cabin pressurisation/conditioning and the streak was nicotine from the Brize-Air leg !
Absolutely correct Sisemen. The air-conditioning was absolutely blocked up with tar from smoking.
'Yes, Madam, I am drunk, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.' Sir Winston Churchill.

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#23 Post by Boac » Mon Jan 28, 2019 3:58 pm

PN - you are assuming they were sitting down in the first place?

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#24 Post by llondel » Mon Jan 28, 2019 4:22 pm

On pressurised aircraft it made finding small leaks easier because the nicotine would condense around the exit hole and make them really obvious once the trim had all been stripped out. That's a comment I had from someone who did major services on commercial airliners both before and after smoking bans were implemented.

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#25 Post by Pontius Navigator » Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:39 pm

Ex-Ascot the UK 3D never permitted smoking and infrequently changed the aircon filters, in contrast the NATO E3 had to change filters every 3 months until they banned smoking.

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#26 Post by ExSp33db1rd » Tue Jan 29, 2019 1:02 am

Used to fly with a Capt who smoked a pipe
Yes, I met the pipe smokers, and the cigar smokers, too.

One advantage of being the Nav. was that one could pull up the curtain that shielded the Nav. desk from the rest of the flight deck light, and don the oxygen mask. ( On the Stratocruiser it was a whole seperate cubicle down a couple of steps at the back of the flight deck. )

One Capt. went out to the toilet, and put his cup down on the Nav's chart as he passed. Sometime later he questioned a couple of abnormally large course alterations. "We're steering around the teastain ring on my chart" the Nav. replied. (That'll learn him ! )

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Re: A bit late on the round-out, Hoskinski!

#27 Post by Krystal n Chips » Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:38 am

llondel wrote:
Mon Jan 28, 2019 4:22 pm
On pressurised aircraft it made finding small leaks easier because the nicotine would condense around the exit hole and make them really obvious once the trim had all been stripped out. That's a comment I had from someone who did major services on commercial airliners both before and after smoking bans were implemented.
That's very true.

Not exclusive to nicotine stains however. oil leaks are equally useful to show a failed rivet / fastener on inspections.

The exit hole is usually referred to as the outflow valve and on the 737-200's were a regular source of inconvenient problems when, in essence, they just jammed solid due to nicotine and you could literally scrape the muck off once the valve was removed. Thankfully, removal was straightforward, but better still, ceased to become frequent, in fact the defects ceased immediately, once smoking was banned on board.

O2 masks and smoking ?.....never the twain shall meet as we know....as a Herc Nav demonstrated one day some may recall. Made an interesting "flight safety " film as well, as it was shown to engineers in support of others showing the dangers of O2, gaseous and liquid.

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