Emergency Landing

Indian Ocean, 1974. I was the aircrew man on HMS Lowestoft's Wasp helicopter. The pilot, Lt Kidd and I, were flying on a brilliant day at 400 ft above the sea when suddenly there was a loud bang!
The pilot and I looked at each other wondering what had just happened. The aircraft flew on as normal but I could detect an increase in vibration mainly by looking at the instruments. One of these, a basic temperature gauge was vibrating more than normal and I decided to look through my missile aimer's scope which was like a pair of binoculars. This confirmed that indeed there was extra vibration present. The pilot suggested that it might have been a sonic boom from an aircraft high above us but none were in the vicinity. I suggested the aircraft's gearbox. It was then that he requested an emergency landing on the nearest vessel with a flight deck. RFA Olna was visible and minutes away.

The landing went as normal. An engineer was dispatched and winched down to Olna using Falmouth's Wasp helicopter. He did a few tests and took oil samples but could find nothing so we flew back to Lowestoft where further tests were carried out. Nothing was found but I knew deep down inside that the gearbox was faulty. I tried to tell the flight crew and the pilot but no one would take me seriously. They even sent and engineer up in 451 to check out the scope but he returned saying it was fine. I knew it had changed dramatically. I was given a direct order to fly in 451 so I had no choice. My nerves were frayed.

Flying continued as normal but when we were asked to identify a large Russian warship on the horizon, I was unable to do so since the scope was vibrating too much. It was the Cold War years and I hate to think of how many missiles must have been locked on to us before we got too close.
Years later I found out that this ship was the USSR Leningrad, the flagship of the Soviet Union.

Lt Kidd, the pilot, was fond of doing excessive acrobatic manoeuvres with the helicopter such as stall turns which made me even more nervous. The helicopter just kept on flying as normal but when HMS Falmouth's Wasp ditched into the sea and was a complete wreck, the crew surviving, they requested to borrow ours. It was then that I had many mixed emotions. What if it should crash. I would feel responsible but I was not taken seriously.

For some days I had to live with this possibility until shockingly a message came through that 451 had actually crashed on the flight deck of the Falmouth. Miraculously, the aircraft had sustained no damage and had made a heavy landing on the deck when the gearbox had failed. Yes the gearbox!
Nothing was ever mentioned about this incident in relation to me suspecting that this was the problem but nevertheless, I was completely vindicated.

I would never have made a good aircrew man though and indeed after this incident and others such as metal fatigue that later that led me to be reverted back to Radio Operator.

Long Hard Slog

I've been cleaning windows for 26 years now, which is a long time. I know most of the "In's and outs" of this business now though, I know for sure that some have done better than me. It's okay though, I don't mind. I'm sort of glad they did it but for me, I chose to keep it small and simple.

That's not to say it wasn't a successful venture, this window cleaning. When I first started, I felt like a failure and that people would look down on me. Oh how things have changed! The way the economy is going, I suddenly feel like a King. My wage is nothing to write home about but I can tell you this; it's about double the minimum wage and for a lot less hours. I get home for my dinner virtually every day and my travel costs are negligible when you compare it to the long commute that a lot of people are struggling with it just seems unfair on them.

I like working for myself as well. As some of my readers will know, I have done a hell of a lot of things before I became self employed. I even wrote a book about it and that's why I began this blog site in order to promote it. I was told to promote it. Not my style really but if I don't then no one will know I'm on the planet.

This morning I got up to do my usual shift. More glass to clean and in freezing temperatures. Yesterday the water was freezing on the some of the glass, especially the conservatories since these are generally not heated. I don't use ladders anymore which is a big bonus for me, or anyone for that matter. I spent twenty years climbing ladders before I discovered other ways of doing it. Health and safety now demand that you find alternative methods but in this case I do believe that it is well founded. Only the other day I heard of a man who had been cleaning windows for thirty years and fell off his ladders and died. I never fell off but I had some very close shaves as it were.

Don't get me wrong though, window cleaning is not an easy business to be in. I have never had any trouble with competition but it is genuinely hard physical work, ladders or not. There is more to it than meets the eye as you will find with most things in life. There really is an art to it, if done correctly, not that even I can attain to perfection. My age is something that is beginning to get in the way now. At fifty-nine, it is beginning to get a bit like hard work, which it always was but I expect you know what I mean. It doesn't get any easier to quote my Dad.

I made the most of it though, regular and consistent employment for all that time tends to pay off after a while. I was able to buy a house, a semi in a nice area and believe it or not a retirement flat in Malta. I used the equity in my house to do this but don't imagine for one moment it was easy and indeed I'm still struggling to pay it all off.

At first I was not so enthusiastic about window cleaning but after a while I began to take more interest in it such as equipment and efficiency. This all paid off too since the speed I can properly clean a window makes it all look easy. I also started a YouTube site for others that are interested in starting their own businesses. Here's the link Window Cleaning Tips and Idea's take a look just for a laugh if you must!

Most Comical Moment - Top Autobiographies

Locked in a cabin

On my second merchant ship, the Orita in 1970 I was just a young deck boy. The First Officer was obviously gay and was forever trying to get me into his cabin. I had avoided this for months but the rest of the crew intent on a good laugh, had other idea's.

One day they grabbed hold of me and bungled me into the First Officers cabin. I knew I was in trouble and was terrified. My mind was racing as I frantically tried to figure a way out of the tight spot I was in.

In the meantime, I sat on his bunk as he asked me if I would like a drink. It was then that a cunning plan flashed into my mind and as he was distracted pouring the drink, I leaped up and in a flash I was out through the open port hole and out onto the passageway that ran alongside. I can still hear him swearing.

Of course I was young and slim and I had previously practiced this acrobatic trick before and this is how I lived to tell the story!

Metal Fatigue - Top Autobiographies

Metal Fatigue!

When HMS Lowestoft had berthed in Rosyth Dockyard in 1975 the morale of the ship's company was low. We'd just finished a tour of several countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Brazil. All this seemed a distant memory in the dismal weather of the British Isles.

This is a similar Wasp

 

On families day several weeks before, the ships helicopter, of which I was the aircrew man, had dropped a live depth charge into the sea to impress the hoards of onlookers as the ship sailed slowly through the sea just off the South Coast and Portsmouth. The pilot had miscalculated the distance between the depth charge entering the sea and the actual ship. The resulting explosion was impressive but was to have some interesting consequences. Most of the admiring families were soaked by the massive fountain of water that engulfed the ship including my future wife.

Damage had undoubtedly been done to the ship but this was erroneously attributed to sabotage. It was decided by the authorities, to fly in three detectives to the ship whilst in Rosyth Dockyard using the ships helicopter call-sign 451. On return, the helicopter was folded up and slid into the hangar, the detectives scurrying below.

It was my job as aircrew man to inspect the tail rotor after each flight. I had been careless in this regard in the past but since three detectives were on board it was just the impetus I needed to carry out the task. I can still remember clearly the dim lights in the now deserted hangar, the smell of fuel and the residual heat still coming off the engine as I made my inspection. All seemed in order as it always was and I was about to turn away when I noticed something. It was like a thin watermark that ran most of the way round the tail cone. At first I could not believe what I was seeing but there was no doubt that it was a classic case of metal fatigue.

Raising the alarm it was not long before most of the flight crew were in the hangar and I was given more commendation than I'd ever had before in my career. It was a strange feeling though since I knew that potentially, I had not only saved my own life but that of the pilot and the three detectives on the very next flight.

Become an Author - Top Autobiographies

Why not become an Author?

Ever thought of becoming an author? I never thought that I could do it myself. I've even surprised myself by writing my autobiography.

I began writing in a depressed state but soon after that I found that actually getting it all down on paper (computer), I found that I began to find it therapeutic. This was an unexpected bonus and was to change my life.

I can't say that my book is anything special in a technical sense but it's more about the experiences that I had and wanted to share. Indeed, some people appreciate this.

If you feel that you have experiences that others would like to read about, then have a go at it yourself. You might be surprised at how well you take to it. I never thought that I had the ability to write a book, not that it's a masterpiece of course but that's not the point.

At the very least, you will leave a lasting legacy for friends and family and have a lot of fun on the way.

Scariest moment of my life - Helicopter crash landing

What's the scariest moment of your life? What's mine - well let's think. To be honest I have a few but here's one. I was in a helicopter as aircrew in the Royal Navy and doing some exercises called auto rotation. This is where you practice engine failure.

We'd done a few of these descents but on the last one the engine failed for real. The ground rushed up to meet us and boy was I scared. With no more height left to recover we just fell toward the ground but just as I thought we were going to die, the stupid engine decides that it was also scared and it kicks back in just in time to scrub off some of the speed we were heading for the ground. Bang we hit the ground, the suspension bottoms out, the engine and rotors scream, the cows in the field produce more than the usual cow pats and we bounce back into the air and just manage to stay airborne.

I think that was my luckiest escape but I have a few more. If you are interested, watch this space. For an immediate fix just have a look at my book. It's all in there, all the sordid details of my farcical and sometimes dangerous life Running For Home a top autobiography, have a free review of the first few chapters you will be surprised at how much of this book you can actually read for free.

Fifty Shades of Grey - Is it really what you want? Top Autobiographies

Fifty Shades of Grey - Is it really what you want?

If you have read the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, did you really enjoy it. Was it what you expected and how did it make you feel? I admit that I have not read any of these books so I can't comment on their content, the way they were written or how well they were written.

What makes a successful book? Is it attractive because its main theme is all about sex? Is this what it's all about, is this what makes it so attractive? Could it be that you wish that your life could be more like the characters within these sort of books and that you can live in a fantasy world and this will compensate for some sort of lack in your own?

Life rarely measures up to expectations and this is a fact. Is it possible for these sorts of books to enhance your life or have you realized
that reading this sort of book only makes things worse and leaves you with a feeling of emptiness? There are so many questions to answer that it might seem bewildering to you.

When I began to write my book I did so out of a sense of bitterness,  a longing to tell someone about my life and the way it went; about all the perceived failure that I had endured. I wanted to get it all off my chest as it were. As I progressed through the book though, I began to realize that I had something to share with others and that I could find a form of therapy in writing down all the things that I had done in my life. This I thought is genuine stuff, from the heart, something that people will want to read because it's real; something that actually happened and not some sort of fantasy. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Personally, I find it hard to get involved in fantasy. Maybe it's just me but I just can't. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a cartoon as much as anybody else but it's just when fantasy is concocted up as something that purports to be real, then I just can't get into it. Much of the time a film or a book becomes impossible for me to take seriously since much of the time it's just not plausible. Alright it might be entertaining but it is rarely satisfying. It might be fun but never ever confuse fun with happiness; never. It's actually not the same thing at all. Fun, you will find is superficial, happiness is a much deeper and more fundamental emotion which you may have already discovered, is elusive.

I realised very early on in my life that for most people if not all, we are in pursuit of happiness. We try to make ourselves happy in a myriad of ways and indeed there are so many things to get involved in that you just don't know where to start. We all tend to do it, money, alcohol, sex, ambition the list is endless but all in the pursuit of happiness.

Am I happy? I guess not but through all the things I did and went through, I made a few discoveries along the way that gave me a few clues. It might not be what you want to hear, but for what it's worth I now know why we as a society are not happy. Not that I have the answer of course, no, it's going to be a lot more complicated than that. There are no quick fixes here.

Like you I will have good days and bad days. Sometimes I feel on top of the world but the next day.......maybe not. You just have to make the most of what you got and try not to take life too seriously. Easier said than done. Hope you enjoyed my rant but I feel a bit better for it now even though it might come across as a bit controversial.