Battery problems

Here we have another comic that came out of my bin of “not invented” stories. Two fire seasons ago, we needed the brain box for our Cruise Guide Indicator system since ours was broken. It just so happened that one of our sister machines was parked at the same airport. So that night, my crew went out and took the black box out of the other machine. And in true pirate fashion (my machine is the one with the pirate theme, named “Anne Bonny”), they left a note that said “IOU” with a skull drawn on it for the other crew.
That would have been quite a surprise for the incoming crew on their next preflight.

Ok, so we didn’t quite steal it in the middle of the night without anyone knowing. The other helicopter was not on contract at the time and just pre positioned there. The incoming crew knew about it before they we scheduled to go back out and brought another black box with them. But I felt the “IOU” note was still a nice touch and totally something that Chuck would do. So, we converted the story into a Roost Air adventure.

Have you guys ever found a big piece missing during preflight?

Mike

Tagged with: , , ,
2 comments on “Battery problems
  1. Yeah, I was pre-flighting a balloon when I realised that the burner poles (that hold the burner frame up above the basket) were the wrong size. Seems the originals had been broken during a night glow the night before and the guys had thrown in spare poles but they were from a different manufacturer (they’re all the same, right … wrong). These ones were a few mm too thick to fit in the sockets on the burner frame. Ooops.

    Time to fly like the good ol’ days before burner poles were a thing. A bit of fun on initial inflation and landing but once the balloon was inflated, the heat in the envelope kept everything where it should be… mostly 🙂

  2. Jon Steensen says:

    Yes the fun part with flying without the burner poles begins when the ballon is deflating and the warm burner falls down in the basket. It’s a good thing that the introduced the burner poles to keep the burner away from the pilot/passengers all the time -though it takes away the good stories too, as is often the case when things becomes safer.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*