Pattern Buffoonery!

[Rocker]

Huh...neat. It'd be amusing if they took a flight of those guys over to Nellis or Edwards.

[Guest Walter_Sobchak]

Overheard in the RSU from a T-38 at the perch:

SP: Kent XX, gear down, full stop, good pressures, flaps full, confirm?

[long pause from the controller]

RSU: Uh,..... confirm!

And from a classmate trying to simultaneously track center runway traffic and a civil departure from Sheppard's "civilian" runway (17/35) on one of his first solos:

"[Callsign] tally-ho, request closed.... fu@k me!"

[ClearedHot]

Viewed from directly overhead and heard on RSU Freq at Laughlin just before my best friend took the barrier at 150kts in a T-38 with an engine stuck at MIL and his thumb holding down the mic button.

"S @ # T !!!!!!!!, a few seconds of loud noise...man that sucked, click."

[TacAirCoug]

Once the guys in the RSU realized he was OK, they probably laughed as hard as I just did.

[Guest AirGuardian]

Sitting RSU years ago,

I just happened to mention to the IP in charge that Sire 21's lights weren't on during approach, hence...

The very astute IP: "Sire 21, flip your lights on - and why don't you turn on your pitot heat while you're at it..."

Sire 21 - "Lights on....uhhhhh, yeah pitot heat on now...hmmm."

IP one, solo student zero. IP's always know the flow and what you miss...

New Jet, new day...

We had one in our class always busting rides and screwing up EPQs or something. Good bud, but the stars were always not aligned for him...

Anyway, he walks in right before standup with "most" of his other classmates(early show) and as he walks backwards into the flight room for all to hear he proclaims: "I tell you one thing, I'm not gonna Fu@k up TODAY!!!"

IP standsup at the head scheduling desk - "God dammit Ruby, you just broke crew rest..."

He was obviously doing something that night before vs the others he was with...

AOR Pattern work:

US - "Reach XX request overhead!"

Arabic control - "oberheed, uhhh Okkkay, Reach XX cleared to land"

As we head towards mid-field we here him screaming: "Reach XX, Reach XX go around, go around, too high, too high..."

US - "Reach XX in the break"

15 seconds later - Arabic control - "aaaaah Reach XX, do whateebbaa you waaant..." click...

[Saluki]

Great stories guys, but this one may take the cake. So there I was a young stud at Sheppard in Feb of 03. Class 0403 just hitting the flightline. Everyone knows about the international thing there and this afternoon a Dutch IP and a Belgium student are taking to the skies over north Texas. Being about the 3 or 4 ride for the Stud, the IP is ever so slightly begginning to think his "kids" are at least getting the basic premise of ground ops. So here we are using the north facing runway and the Belgium taxi's out to the runway no problem. That's when it all went wrong. In case you are wondering, yes, this student got cleared for takeoff, final was clear, he was on top of everything.....except which way the runway in use faced!!! IP sensing this and in the true spirit of training young pilots, laughs his ass off quietly inside while this student turns directly onto the runway....facing the overrun of the opposite runway! Talk about freaking hilarius to see a little Tweet taxi out onto the runway and turn and face the overrun of the opposite runway in use!! ENJJPT IP, you should remember this guy. He was the first Belgium ever to not make it through the program. The Hawg's kicking ass and taking names and I'm loving it bro! You coming to the airshow? Let me know. I still cannot stop laughing picturing that damn Tweet facing the overrun!!

[ClearedHot]

Another Friday afternoon at Laughlin back in 1991. I taxi out to the hammerhead and finish up my before tafeoff checklist. As I pull up to the hold short line, I look to the north and see a T-38 very low on the horizon. I watch him for a few moments and he seems to be sinking even lower. About the time I am thinking he is not going to make the runway, I hear the radio click in, "Overrun 13 center go around". No response and the T-38 continues to drive in scraping across the tumbleweed. Again the radio comes to life, "OVERRUN 13 CENTER GO AROUND, USE BURNERS, LARIAT ON GUARD". I am now mesmerized as I watch the T-38 touchdown about 500 feet short of the runway with the burners cooking and rocks flying everywhere. He stumbles back into the air and pulls closed to a full stop on the outside. I take the runway and fly my sortie uneventfully.

A couple hours later I pull into the parking lot of the dorms. I lived on the second floor and as I walk up the building I see my buddy who is a few classes behind me and lives in the room next door. He is leaning on the rail with a big frown on his face. I walked up, opened my door, grabbed a few beers, and tried to cheer him up. I told him it could be worse, “you should have seen the poor guy I saw today, he planted one in the overrun and it was funny as hell”. He looked at me and his face turned red. I didn’t know if he was going to laugh or attack me. We had a good chuckle and I took him to the club where we drank beer until the little oriental woman behind told us to get the F^%k out and go get some sleep.

[ 01. February 2005, 13:11: Message edited by: Clearedhot ]

[Ram]

Back when I was in '38s (not too long ago), we had a guy in the flight who was so big he had a hard time fitting in the front 'pit of the '38. If you're familiar with the place, you realize that tall guys are always keying the mike on accident with their knee. This makes for some hilarity when they're executing a full-up AGSM or turning around to check 6 in an FM set.

Well, we were all pre-solo (baby class, in fact), and we were terrorizing the pattern on a hot Friday afternoon at Sheppard. If you're familiar with the field, you know that the south-facing big runway (15R) has an early exit at taxiway Golf about 6000' down, and studs start landing well enough to exit there around the time they solo.

Another factor is the fact that we were heavily inducted into the "so to speak" way of thinking early on in Phase III...so we'd use it just about anytime we could.

So here we have 3 factors: Tall dude, proud that he can exit the runway at Golf on his full stop, and he's overconditioned to use STS whenever possible...

I was in the pattern that day (on initial or something), and I hear this:

"Sir, I'm going to get off here....*breathing*...LITERALLY."

Made for an excellent story that night at the bar.

[Guest HueyPilot]

Perhaps my favorite pattern story involves a UPT classmate of mine...

There were several of us flying solo in Laughlin's pattern, using the callsign of Speedo. I was flying the outside pattern when I heard my classmate come up on the RSU freq sounding pretty frantic:

UPT stud: "Speedo XX, I think I should declare an emergency..."

XL RSU: "What's the nature of your emergency?"

UPT stud: "I've got full power and can barely maintain 200 knots."

XL RSU: "Roger...confirm your configuration?"

UPT stud: "Speedo XX is gear down, flaps 100...oh sh*t!"

XL RSU: "Speedo XX, go ahead and clean up and return for a full stop"

So she came back, and full stopped...and received her well-earned unsat for the day's flying. Everyone's got a story of almost (or actually) overspeeding the gear, flaps, landing lights or whatever...but she's the only one I knew that oversped everything on the Tweet in one fell swoop...and cursed over the radio to boot.

In another outstanding display of SA, we were holding short of the Tweet runway in our T-1, monitoring the RSU for crossing clearance, along with a T-38 that had the OG/CC in it. A Tweet with two IPs in it doing some kind of CT flying had a stuck mic, and on final, as both us and the -38 waited, the IPs discussed how they oversped the gear and said "I won't tell if you won't". DOH!

[Guest HueyPilot]

And I can't forget our good friends the Japanese...

We had a couple Japanese students in our class...good guys, but had a hard time with the English language. Anyways, a couple gems from them:

I long forgot what my flight CC was talking about regarding the "event" that supposedly happened in historical context that day, but I remember what my Japanese classmate said in response:

Tweet Flight CC: "Mizuno, can you tell us what famous event happened today?"

Mizuno: "uhhhh, today many year ago, Japan have big ass kick"

Despite this being the "formal" brief, we all broke out in muted laughter...and poor Mizuno meant "earthquake"...somehow it didn't come out that way.

Not to mention the response some of my T-38 brethern mentioned during a stand-up regarding a low-level EP...while attempting to state the procedure to "initiate a climb to MSA", he instead said "initiate a crime to MSA".