Skill! - OT

Success is over-rated - Steven Piles* book "The Book Of Heroic Failures" is the bible to those of us, mostly British, who strive to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

My hero is the canal engineer (English) working in Ireland to build a canal between two lakes. On the great day they cut the tape and.... ........ promptly emptied one into the other. Excellent.

2nd is probably the aptly named PMT (Potteries Motor Transport) who told drivers not to stop for passengers as "it messes up the time-table". Fantastic stuff.

Richard

*He was founder member of "The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain", but he got chucked out as his book was a best seller.

I remember loving that book, but haven't seen my copy for years and years.

Must take a trip up into the loft to see if I can unearth it.

Thanks for the reminder.

David

On or around 1 Mar 2006 04:13:18 -0800, "Dave R" enlightened us thusly:

Oh, I dunno, I reckon the bloke in that last one had a very high level of skill - it's still flying... Mind, WTF was he doing trying to land it there in those conditions I dunno - I'd have thought there were roolz about that sort of thing.

Isn't it amazing what passenger willpower and prayer can do?

Bet there was a nasty smell in the passenger compartment of the plane in the second vid!

90ninety uttered summat worrerz funny about:

It's just reminded me why I love my Caravan so much. I have a vision of the AA trying to change a fan belt at 30,000 ft. Mind the RAC recent adds seem to have developed rocket boots so maybe with time I'll come around to the idea.

Lee

This happened to us when we went to Fuerteventura back in 2002- what a scary flight. You could've heard a pin drop when we 'bounced' back up into the air.....in stark contrast to the huge cheer that went up once we were safely down on the 2nd attempt! Apparently the cross winds are renowned there and landings like that are quite common. Needless to say no-one told us about this beforehand....and we've not got up the bottle to return yet!

Icky.

On 1 Mar 2006 04:13:18 -0800, "Dave R" scribbled the following nonsense:

Had a landing like the second one at Heraklion in October when we went to crete, with a woman captain. First time SWMBO had flown, and she didn't realise what a bad landing was. Quite a few of us commented on the landing, to which the cabin crew explained they had got used to her landings.....

Aaahh, Heraklion, known also to many as Souda Bay. What an airport that was, last time I was there. We landed in a Nimrod (funny looking thing, loosely based around the old Comet 4) with a similar arrival style. Pilot claimed in the bar later that the runway surface resembled a ploughed field, we told him to bugger off, it was just his crap flying! We were parked opposite side to the main terminal, beside the Crete air force, what an engineering disaster area that was!!! Never saw a single plane (OLD ex-american Chance-Vought Corsairs) take off in 10 days we were there. They had manuals in english and couldn't speak a word hardly, they were repairing aircraft by pictures alone!! Frightening!!! Stayed in a hotel in Xania (pronounced kanya?) that stank of diesel fumes, the Kydon hotel if memory serves me right. The harbour area was nice though, lots of nice little restaurants and very friendly locals too.

Even saw a few nice old series II landys out there. Badger.

...and Lee_D spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

You and me both, Lee.

I *know* I can walk. I *know* I can swim. I know I *can't* fly.

Erm........... New undies please, wouldn't have liked to have been on that one, those wingtips came too damn close to the floor for my liking!