This strip is based on my career flying offshore. I got checked out on this Eurocopter AS355F1 Twin-Star which had one button on the dashboard labeled in french of which nobody knew what it did. When I asked my chief pilot during training “What does this button do?” he responded “I don’t know. Don’t touch it!”
…and I never did. Being many miles offshore is never a good environment to try new buttons.
I also wanted to remind everybody to come hang out at the Chino Airshow! I will be there on Sunday all day! FB where you guys are at and I will try to tweet my location.
Chances are I’ll be hanging around the F4U Corsairs when I’m not cruising with the Tumbling Bear who’s flying at the show.
I used to fiddle around with vintage Citroen cars and their sometimes indimidating hydropneumatic suspension / brake assist / steering assist system.
We had a golden rule about those parts which bears some similarities to the above described: “Don´t touch it until it´s broke!”
In the French/German Transall, there are a lot of writings which are either in French or in German on the panels… Must be confusing sometimes ! I guess this is why there are checklists for everything and that they have to be learned by rote…
tell pax it is the “eject” button and they will not go anywhere near it. Not sure if that would work in a helicopter though…..
did anyone copy out the word on the button and google it?
HA HA!
If I told you there was no google back then I’d be really dating myself, huh?!…..
Then you would have used Alta-Vista or Hotbot.
Do you remember the word ?
no, I sure don’t.
this was a while ago and there have been many different models, checklists, and buttons to learn since…..
This is being picky, but gauge is spelled wrong
Mike and I have been arguing about this, Erika, but apparently you can also spell it “gage”. (Is this in the US? When I looked it up in the dictionary it said “rarely” not “AE” besides it).
Nobu is a Japanese chicken! The chickens in Japan may also spell it differently….
In American aviation manuals, it is spelled gage. Drove me nuts for awhile, but I got used to it. Of course, I might be thinking in terms of wire thickness rather than an instrument. Regardless, I’ve seen it enough to accept it as a proper word.