Practical Jokes / Pranks

[Guest HoosierNAV]

Here is great video our crew was able to get while out in the desert this past winter.

Our linguist who was on his first deployment fell hook line and sinker for the old Radar Calibration gag.

We incorporated this into the mission brief and everything.

We gave him the lollypops from the troop doors also know as the Radar Calibration Paddles, and I told him to follow my instructions, I will switch the radar to calibration mode and I will read from the Dash-1 for the procedures. I aked him how tall he is for my calculations, he replied, "oh, about 6ft" I told him that would be perfect...be sure to tell us if you start heating up, he said ok.

Check out the video, I wish it had sound, we could barely hold the camera still we were laughing so hard. He finally realized he swallowed the hook when we asked him to twirl around to test the radar's tornado detection capability.

Cheers

[Flare]

When I was an RSU controller back at SPS, we used to do the same thing with the light gun to students we had making their 1st trip out to the RSU. Red light, left hand...green light, right hand...white light, both hands....then move back further from the RSU to make sure it works at various distances. Good times.........would have been even better with those Radar Calibration Paddles!

[Guest Ghost-Pilot]

That was great....and as a former C-130 avionics troop i almost fell over laughing at the twirl... your crew has made every avionics troop at my old shop proud! hahahahaha good stuff!

Edited March 26, 2008 by Ghost-Pilot

[outbreak]

did you send him out for a spool of flight line, or a box of grid squares? how bout a bucket of prop wash.

[Mambo]

Good stuff!

My favorite was sending a guy into the tool crib for a fallopian tube. We also had the "voice activated Light All" and the "push start -60" among others.

[amcflyboy]

Good stuff!

My favorite was sending a guy into the tool crib for a fallopian tube. We also had the "voice activated Light All" and the "push start -60" among others.

Yeah our maintenance guys have told us about the "fallopian tube." Again, freakin' great!!

[scawtiedog]

Did the same thing last time I was out. Had a brand new MX guy our crew chief wanted to get. In the tanker world you drop down one of the overwing hatches. So we had this MX guy running all over the place in front of our jet with a door. He never figured it out. After a good 10/15 minutes we finally gave up and finished our preflight. Wish I had my camera that night!

[pawnman]

did you send him out for a spool of flight line, or a box of grid squares? how bout a bucket of prop wash.

My buddy spent some time in the Army, his favorite was to send the FNG to ask the MSgt for a "pricky-7" (sound it out).

[Guest regularjoe]

We had a new guy once at a freight carrier I used to work for, guy had all the answers and was personal friends with Howard Hughes and the Wright Brothers etc... you know the type.

Well one night while we were waiting for our loads and flight plans this guy was in the operations area and was regaling us with stories of his newly minted PPL. The guy doing our load plan was getting tired of listening to his bs all night so we devised a plan and put it into action.

We had one of the other pilots come in and give us all the "warning" that the FAA was doing ramp checks. With this "warning" in place we proceeded to tell the guy that the FAA along with the EPA needed a - Exhaust Air Sample - to make sure that our engines were burning clean enough etc...

Well long story short he bought it hook line and sinker and the next DC-8 that rolled onto the ramp we called the crew on the company frequency and let them in on the joke so they left the #1 engine running at ground idle and here was this genius standing 20 or so feet behind a CFM-56 with a 50 gallon clear trash bag collecting an FAA air sample.

Everyone but management was laughing so hard no one could keep it together, well the mob of us that instigated the whole thing got a serious talking too but our Union reps couldn't stop laughing in the meeting so everyone basically agreed that we wouldn't pull anymore jokes that could potentially hurt someone.

[Guest tentoad]

Big time thread revival!

Searched for practical jokes and found this thread.

Fail for passed-out individual, win for roommates.

[HerkFE]

While at OKAS a few years ago we had a crew with a young Co-pilot. The Pilot, Nav, and Co were shacked up in one room. The Pilot and Nav rode the young Co pretty hard (sts) about everything. One of the other Co's found out they were giving him shit about leaving the toilet seat UP!!! Well this crew went out on a mission and this other Co found me and asked if I had a leatherman. I did and asked what for. He explained the situation and said he was going to remove the toilet seat. I said "cool". Then I told him that it is pretty cool to take a Hershey bar and melt it then take a coffee stirrer and fling the melted chocolate all over the porcelain (experienced gained from another practical joke years earlier). The crew actually broke that night and spent a few nights in some hole so they weren't in the best of moods when they got home and found no toilet seat and the appearance that someone had shat all over their throne.

[BQZip01]

Herk advice compiled from another thread:

Step1: Heat up the cargo compartment!

Situation: you are over the middle of the pond with a planeload of grunts. Everything's quiet (save 4 T56A-16s). The fligt mech (crew chief) hurries up front from his perch on the paratroop door, starts unstrapping the chutes and tossing them up to the cockpit. One of the troops asks if everyting's alright, he says "Oh, yeah, everything's great..."

We had a Herk crew play a funny on a crew member when they were flying w/ no pax... He'd fallen asleep on the paratroop door seat, so they saftey wired his boots to the floor, slowly descended to 10,000 ft., depressurized and everyone put on a parachute. They threw open the other paratroop door and of course he woke up with wind blowing all through the cargo compartment, everyone w/ chutes on, screaming that they were bailing out! When he jumped up to go grab a chute, he fell flat on his face! Good times, had by all!

Another one:

With a plane load of grunts, get the pilot to go into a dive, have engineer runs to the back and grab the manual hydraulic pump handle (with it set so the fluid doesn't do anything) and start pumping furiously while the pilot starts climbing again. When he starts to slow down the pumping, the pilot starts to dive again. In no time you'll have a grunt that asks what the problem is. You tell him, "We need to keep pumping this handle to keep us in the air!!" They'll start rotating through each of them pumping on it for 10-15 minutes desperatly trying to keep the plane in the air!!

Another one:

Once the grunts are loaded, the engineer starts up the GTC (or APU, depending on how new your Herk is) but shuts it off at 20-30%. Do it a couple times, then put a worried look on your face and go back to the cargo compt. and tell them, "Well guys, we need some help. We can't get the GTC started, so we're going to have to get out and push the plane until we can pop the clutch on it." You'd be suprised how fast 40 grunts can get a Herk moving just by pushing on the back end!!

[Royal]

A while back I heard a story of a civilian flight instructor giving an intro lesson to a girl. He told the young miss that she had to blow on the pitot tube to clear it out before the flight...little did she know he turned the pitot heat on. Oops. Apparently he got fired after she had to go to the hospital for the burns.

[BQZip01]

A while back I heard a story of a civilian flight instructor giving an intro lesson to a girl. He told the young miss that she had to blow on the pitot tube to clear it out before the flight...little did she know he turned the pitot heat on. Oops. Apparently he got fired after she had to go to the hospital for the burns.

yeah...200 degrees Celsius will do that...

[Dead Last]

A while back I heard a story of a civilian flight instructor giving an intro lesson to a girl. He told the young miss that she had to blow on the pitot tube to clear it out before the flight...little did she know he turned the pitot heat on. Oops. Apparently he got fired after she had to go to the hospital for the burns.

That worked on the Tweet too! One of the many parts student harassment program...

Cheers

[Jimmy.The.Engineer]

How to guide:

The FE and load are in the back of the plane talking about a problem with something on top of the plane. This is done loudly and with the intention that all of the PAX hear (at least the ones in ear-shot). The load kinda shuffles off to the front, leaving the FE in the back. The FE leans over to one of the lower ranking PAX and tells him/her not to let them take off with him up there, as he is going to check on the prob. He then proceeds out the rear escape hatch and walks to the front escape hatch (careful not to make a lot of noise up there) and takes his seat in the cockpit. The load comes back and seals up the rear hatch. Maybe someone raises the flag - maybe not. Take-off, fly to dest, land and taxi in. The FE then goes out the front hatch and walks to the rear hatch, climbs back in the plane, whereupon, he begins to cuss the load.

[LockheedFix]

On a really long TDY with a brand new copilot, my engineer dumped an entire liter of water into the air conditioning vent (gasper) in front of the CP. After starting #3, the eng upsped it and then cranked the AC on full blast. The CP proceeded to get doused with the entire liter of water. I mutter something about seeing the "CP's water separator" being written up in the forms and try to start the rest of the engines without laughing.

After managing to pull off this trick for about 4 days in a row, with less and less success at hiding our laughter each time, the CP gets in his seat, closes his gasper, and says "Ha, I'm not getting sprayed this time." After starting #3 and #4, keeping them downsped and turning on the AC at the bare minimum, the eng says "Hey co, can you open your gasper and point it toward me, I'm pretty hot back here." To our shock, the CP does as he is asked, at which point the eng upspeeds the engines that are running and places the AC at full blast, once again dousing the CP. I tell the CP he is officially the dumbest guy I have ever seen. The CP pouts the rest of the trip and refuses to hang out with us. Good times!

Edited October 26, 2010 by LockheedFix

[Learjetter]

Am supervising three young awaiting-pilot-training LTs a few years ago. Orderly room emails me the RIP, in MS WORD format, that sends one to UPT. We edit the doc changing the guys assignment from UPT to ABM tng, prebrief his spouse, and leave it in his v-file. Tough to keep a straight face when he comes to me a few days later...but we manage to simulate a call to AFPC to get him assigned to UPT... Kid may still think I'm a god for that one...vastly improved the other two's motivation to exceed expectations--nothing better than a fired up LT to get some queep done just prior to a UCI...

[nsplayr]

Am supervising three young awaiting-pilot-training LTs a few years ago. Orderly room emails me the RIP, in MS WORD format, that sends one to UPT. We edit the doc changing the guys assignment from UPT to ABM tng, prebrief his spouse, and leave it in his v-file. Tough to keep a straight face when he comes to me a few days later...but we manage to simulate a call to AFPC to get him assigned to UPT... Kid may still think I'm a god for that one...vastly improved the other two's motivation to exceed expectations--nothing better than a fired up LT to get some queep done just prior to a UCI...

Well played.

[BQZip01]

Am supervising three young awaiting-pilot-training LTs a few years ago. Orderly room emails me the RIP, in MS WORD format, that sends one to UPT. We edit the doc changing the guys assignment from UPT to ABM tng, prebrief his spouse, and leave it in his v-file. Tough to keep a straight face when he comes to me a few days later...but we manage to simulate a call to AFPC to get him assigned to UPT... Kid may still think I'm a god for that one...vastly improved the other two's motivation to exceed expectations--nothing better than a fired up LT to get some queep done just prior to a UCI...

Wow, lucky you didn't get strung up for that one...but well-played anyway...

[brabus]

Am supervising three young awaiting-pilot-training LTs a few years ago. Orderly room emails me the RIP, in MS WORD format, that sends one to UPT. We edit the doc changing the guys assignment from UPT to ABM tng, prebrief his spouse, and leave it in his v-file. Tough to keep a straight face when he comes to me a few days later...but we manage to simulate a call to AFPC to get him assigned to UPT... Kid may still think I'm a god for that one...vastly improved the other two's motivation to exceed expectations--nothing better than a fired up LT to get some queep done just prior to a UCI...

Did something similar to our flt/cc in UPT. We made up a fake RIP for UAVs (he was an Eagle dude) and got the sq/cc in on it. He was on the phone with his functional at AFPC when I walked into his office obviously trying to hold back laughter. I think he said "never mind" to his functional, hung up the phone and said, "fuck you guys!!!!!" He then turned it on another Eagle guy in the squadron who also completely bought it. It definitely made for a hilarious afternoon.

[Stitch]

." You'd be suprised how fast 40 grunts can get a Herk moving just by pushing on the back end!!

This may be a better fit for the sky cop thread but a thousand years ago a buddy of my was TDY at Nellis for Red Flag and was towing an F-4 from the trim pad back to the RF ramp. Last job of the day before going downtown to see the sights so they're doing a mach 2 tow job when the cop pulls them over for speeding on the flightline. Thinking quick our hero riding brakes in the Rino's front set jumps out of the jet[thinking he's screwed anyway so nothing to lose], slams the tow checklist on the ground screaming "WTF are you guys doing? I was just about to pop the clutch and you f*cked it all up!" Cops say that MOC didn't let them know, apoligize, get back in the copmobile and drive away no questions asked. He said the hardest thing to do was play along after the cops bought off on a total line of baloney the figured they'd see right though.

[HerkFE]

Almost forgot this one as told to me by some F-16 engine guys. They would get their new guys to perform the "echo check" on the engine. They would have to yell down the intake while simultaneously hacking their stop watch then run around to the exhaust and wait for the echo to come out to time it. Needless to say they were always too slow and had to perform the check many times but had to hustle a little more each time to be able to catch the echo before it escaped.

[OBOBs_11]

Thread revival...

So I'm a soon to be commissioning/graduating cadet from ROTC (in May), and its time for my class to do a prank on the rest of the corps. Unfortunately the rest of my class really isn't too creative, and my ideas really aren't the best either, so I was wondering if anyone out there had any good pranks that they did back in the day that could be done at a detachment with limited cost. I'll take pictures and/or video to show the results.

Any ideas will be appreciated! Thanks!

[Lawman]

Common game for my 53 buddies to play on guys is push starting the APU. Great laugh to be had watching a platoon all giving a 70K lbs helicopter a push and then after a bit of coaxing by the crew chief they arent going fast enough the pilot steps on the brakes and hits the APU starter.

Also got to watch a young PFC yelling with all his might into a urinal relief funnel to test the "sound powered ICS."