RAAF CAC Sabre. Finished. Thankyou Brick!

[Piprm]

The Sabre looks the goods - Eric!

Stunning model!

Phil

[Brick]

Egad, a blast from the past!  A posting by TTail (see above).  I must confess that this came as somewhat of a surprise to me because, firstly, I have not seen TTail for 30 years or so and, secondly, I had heretofore been completely unaware that he could actually read and write.

 

For those of you who do not know him, TTail is an A380 captain with Qantas, and very careful not to go over thirty degrees of bank these days for fear of frightening himself.  As he says, he was a junior Mirage pilot in No 3 Squadron in Malaysia when I was CO in 79-81.  Like all the other rather tiresome junior fighter pilots of that era, he was brash, boastful and supremely over-confident - a marked contrast to the shy, self-effacing, painfully modest junior fighter jock I was in the days of ol' A94-967.  He was an officer but he was not, of course, a gentleman, having never flown the Avon Sabre and, as a consequence, never having had the opportunity to acquire the level of sophistication, refinement and urbanity that characterised those of us who flew that legendary aircraft.

 

When you have just ticked over 40 years of age, have spent the last four years on the ground at Staff College and behind a desk at Defence Headquarters, and are posted back to flying as CO of a Mirage Squadron, you know - you just know - that all the young hot rocks in the squadron are going to look upon you as a doddery old geriatric who is well past it and should have been put out to stud years ago.  It was ever so.  And I must confess that it was a bit of a struggle to get up to speed again.  So I was rather pleased that, after a couple of months, I found myself at the top, or near the top, of the weapons ladders, which are about the only objective criteria we had for measuring pilot ability in those days.  This gave me the opportunity to stand in the Officers' Mess bar with my junior pilots, loudly and rather theatrically lamenting the fact that the young fighter jocks under my command, all of them in the prime of their flying lives, couldn't beat an old re-cycled dodderer of my then age.  It's a failing, I know, but I really, really enjoyed doing that.

 

And as for TTail, I'm pretty sure that he never beat me at one single weapons event.  Not ever, which is such a shame really.  As for his challenge to me to describe the parting gift presented to me by the No 3 Squadron troops (a.k.a. ground crew), I have absolutely no hesitation in responding to that rather puerile "dare".   The gift was a model in two parts.  The first part was a full-size model of a hand in a golden glove.  The second part was a half-scale model.

 

As for the F-18 ride TTail took me on at Edinburgh, where I spent two years surrounded by maritime reconnaissance crews and other weird people, well, bear in mind that I had not been in a fighter for about five years prior to that date.  And, as anyone experienced on fighters will know, that meant that my 'G' tolerance was going to be way, way down.  Did TTail act responsibly and professionally and ease off a bit on the high 'G' stuff in recognition of my years on the ground and advanced age?  No he did not!  I swear that we must have spent at least half of that mission up around 8.5 'G', with me in the back struggling to stay "awake".  To this day, I still suspect that TTail had decided on one last effort to finally best me by getting me to "black out" while he stayed awake.  Needless to say, he failed in this endeavour, and had to resort to resurrecting that damned golden hand nonsense, which had me cringing in embarrassment from 1980 until the end of my Service career.  And now he's done it again.  30 years later!  The man has no shame.  I hope he falls off his wallet on payday.

 

At the end of my two-year tour amongst the "fishheads", the Air Force absolutely startled me by assigning me to be CO ARDU (Aircraft Research and Development Unit).  I couldn't believe my luck - back in the cockpit for one last hurrah.  About two months into that tour, the unit was assigned a PC-9 performance validation task, as a consequence of which we were also assigned a PC-9 on a semi-permanent basis.  In a trice, the troops put my name on the side of it, underneath which they put, in gold for Pete's sake, the words "The Golden Hand".  I just shrugged, finally resigned to the fact that this cringe-inducing embarrassment was going to follow me to my grave.  And so it is, courtesy TTail's posting, for which I hope he burns in hell

 

But here's the thing that represents my final ascendancy over TTail.  The PC-9 with my name on it was the seventh off the production line, and thus had the tail number 007.  TTail never, ever - not in his whole life - had a flagship with the tail number 007.  Game, set, and match, methinks.

 

Anyway, back to Eric's superb rendition of ol' 967.  Below is the only other picture I have of her.  If you look closely, you'll see a lovely little schoolteacher by the name of Sally, who wanted a photograph of herself near an Avon Sabre.  (I told you that my first tour at Butterworth represented the best days of my early life )

 

 

The aeroplane, gentlemen!  You're supposed to be looking at the aeroplane!

Edited May 10, 2016 by Brick

[ericg]

Thanks again Brick, and also TTail for taking the time to contribute. I am sure the followers of this thread are absolutely loving it!

 

I fear that once this build is finished there will be no more stories, unless of course I can find another ex-fighter pilot who feels up to the challenge of contributing to another build like this.

 

Eric.

[Hubert Boillot]

A half-scale model of a hand in the grip of a full-scale hand   ? Did I get this right   ?

 

Hubert

[TTail]

What A ripper response Brick I fell of my Chair laughing classic old Brick Some points of contention though.

 

1. You refer to a Full scale model of the glove but alas the other bit was a half scale model ..... of what ? .... the dare is still alive

2.As to no longer  going over 30 degrees of Bank see below ....

3. PC9 .... must be some reference to your "Queer F I"  background

 

The joys of Radials and ex knucks behaving badly at age 60

 

BTW for LSP The Trumpeter 1/32scale Nanchang tail is porked and needs a lot of work ... the 1/48th Trumpeter Nanchang tail is ok

Edited May 10, 2016 by TTail

[Nillus]

I think I get it..."half-scale".

It's all in hand.

 

Very good.

[DonH]

In the context of the aviation theme, I guess the golden hand was gripping a golden joystick.

[Guest Peterpools]

Eric

Absolutely loving the tread! Simply what the hobby is all about:

Friends and memories.

Kerp 'em coming

[Victor K2]

It's great that this story of "man and beast" (Brick and his aircraft not the "Golden hand and other") is laid out before us. The model is stunning and the "Pull up a sand bag" tales that go with it go "hand in glove".  

When this model is finished I hope that some publisher will get in touch with you and make these stories into a best seller that these tales deserve, including the build sequences of  the Sabre.

 

Bob

[Chek]

A great thread, a good read, and a damn good model to top it all.

[Whitey]

Great model mate and Sean and Brick have raised the bar for thread content.

[ericg]

Egad, a blast from the past!  A posting by TTail (see above).  I must confess that this came as somewhat of a surprise to me because, firstly, I have not seen TTail for 30 years or so and, secondly, I had heretofore been completely unaware that he could actually read and write.

 

For those of you who do not know him, TTail is an A380 captain with Qantas, and very careful not to go over thirty degrees of bank these days for fear of frightening himself.  As he says, he was a junior Mirage pilot in No 3 Squadron in Malaysia when I was CO in 79-81.  Like all the other rather tiresome junior fighter pilots of that era, he was brash, boastful and supremely over-confident - a marked contrast to the shy, self-effacing, painfully modest junior fighter jock I was in the days of ol' A94-967.  He was an officer but he was not, of course, a gentleman, having never flown the Avon Sabre and, as a consequence, never having had the opportunity to acquire the level of sophistication, refinement and urbanity that characterised those of us who flew that legendary aircraft.

 

When you have just ticked over 40 years of age, have spent the last four years on the ground at Staff College and behind a desk at Defence Headquarters, and are posted back to flying as CO of a Mirage Squadron, you know - you just know - that all the young hot rocks in the squadron are going to look upon you as a doddery old geriatric who is well past it and should have been put out to stud years ago.  It was ever so.  And I must confess that it was a bit of a struggle to get up to speed again.  So I was rather pleased that, after a couple of months, I found myself at the top, or near the top, of the weapons ladders, which are about the only objective criteria we had for measuring pilot ability in those days.  This gave me the opportunity to stand in the Officers' Mess bar with my junior pilots, loudly and rather theatrically lamenting the fact that the young fighter jocks under my command, all of them in the prime of their flying lives, couldn't beat an old re-cycled dodderer of my then age.  It's a failing, I know, but I really, really enjoyed doing that.

 

And as for TTail, I'm pretty sure that he never beat me at one single weapons event.  Not ever, which is such a shame really.  As for his challenge to me to describe the parting gift presented to me by the No 3 Squadron troops (a.k.a. ground crew), I have absolutely no hesitation in responding to that rather puerile "dare".   The gift was a model in two parts.  The first part was a full-size model of a hand in a golden glove.  The second part was a half-scale model.

 

As for the F-18 ride TTail took me on at Edinburgh, where I spent two years surrounded by maritime reconnaissance crews and other weird people, well, bear in mind that I had not been in a fighter for about five years prior to that date.  And, as anyone experienced on fighters will know, that meant that my 'G' tolerance was going to be way, way down.  Did TTail act responsibly and professionally and ease off a bit on the high 'G' stuff in recognition of my years on the ground and advanced age?  No he did not!  I swear that we must have spent at least half of that mission up around 8.5 'G', with me in the back struggling to stay "awake".  To this day, I still suspect that TTail had decided on one last effort to finally best me by getting me to "black out" while he stayed awake.  Needless to say, he failed in this endeavour, and had to resort to resurrecting that damned golden hand nonsense, which had me cringing in embarrassment from 1980 until the end of my Service career.  And now he's done it again.  30 years later!  The man has no shame.  I hope he falls off his wallet on payday.

 

At the end of my two-year tour amongst the "fishheads", the Air Force absolutely startled me by assigning me to be CO ARDU (Aircraft Research and Development Unit).  I couldn't believe my luck - back in the cockpit for one last hurrah.  About two months into that tour, the unit was assigned a PC-9 performance validation task, as a consequence of which we were also assigned a PC-9 on a semi-permanent basis.  In a trice, the troops put my name on the side of it, underneath which they put, in gold for Pete's sake, the words "The Golden Hand".  I just shrugged, finally resigned to the fact that this cringe-inducing embarrassment was going to follow me to my grave.  And so it is, courtesy TTail's posting, for which I hope he burns in hell

 

But here's the thing that represents my final ascendancy over TTail.  The PC-9 with my name on it was the seventh off the production line, and thus had the tail number 007.  TTail never, ever - not in his whole life - had a flagship with the tail number 007.  Game, set, and match, methinks.

 

Anyway, back to Eric's superb rendition of ol' 967.  Below is the only other picture I have of her.  If you look closely, you'll see a lovely little schoolteacher by the name of Sally, who wanted a photograph of herself near an Avon Sabre.  (I told you that my first tour at Butterworth represented the best days of my early life )

 

 

The aeroplane, gentlemen!  You're supposed to be looking at the aeroplane!

 

And Brick, I have a bone to pick with you.... instead of taking pics of the local `scenery', you should have been more thoughtful and done some decent walk around photos of the jet whilst you were at it, for a modeler who could have used them 50 years into the future!

 

Eric. 

[Brick]

Eric, I hope you don't mind me hogging your build log again to respond to TTail's latest tiresome post.  (And, incidentally, I just restored the photos that used to accompany my posts, and which disappeared from the server I use for some reason.)

 

First of all, TTail, may I say that I am absolutely delighted to see that, after all these years, you have finally learned how to do a loop.  I am simply overjoyed.  Tickled pink, in point of actual fact.  No, really, I am.  Then again, there's not much to it is there?  Just pull the stick back a bit and avoid hitting the ground.  I mean, I could teach a pet chihuahua to do that.  When you can do five continuous slow rolls at 500 feet in a Mirage, accelerating from 350 to about 540 knots with the altimeter needle not moving a millimetre all the way through, come and talk to me.  And don't try to tell me you've never seen me do that, incidentally.  16 June 1981.

 

With regard to point 1, I will settle this matter for you once and for all right now.  The full-scale part of it was the glove.  On that much we agree.  The half-scale part of it - or what I cheerfully allege was half-scale - was, as you well know, a representation of a Mirage stick grip, and certainly sculpted and painted to look exactly like one, though in a rather "arty" and abstract sort of way.  (The troops, as you know, could be stupefyingly unsubtle when they set their mind to it.)

 

With regard to point 3, I should point out to followers of this thread that this point is a reference to the fact that I was a qualified flying instructor (QFI) in my day.  TTail's deliberate and predictably childish corruption of that acronym arises from a war that raged in the fighter world for decades, a war that never resolved the issue as to whether the best people to instruct on fighter conversion courses were QFIs or FCIs (Fighter Combat Instructors).  QFIs who were not also FCIs tended to look down their noses at FCIs, and FCIs who were not also QFIs returned the compliment.  TTail's Iittle barb seems to arise from the fact that he has completely forgotten that I was one of those rare beasts who was qualified as both a QFI and an FCI, and had instructed in both capacities.  So the QFI/FCI argument was quite irrelevant to me.  TTail, as you will have guessed by now, was an FCI but not a QFI, and is thus much to be pitied - a semi-qualified wanna-be hovering around the periphery of true professionalism.  You heard it here first.

[Brick]

And Brick, I have a bone to pick with you.... instead of taking pics of the local `scenery', you should have been more thoughtful and done some decent walk around photos of the jet whilst you were at it, for a modeler who could have used them 50 years into the future!

 

Eric. 

 

 

Eric, there's just no pleasing some people ;-)

Edited May 11, 2016 by Brick

[Whitey]

I wonder which one of you two knucks had a stud book entry while a pre-knuck at 2 FTS that read:  "This student has the ability to look at the instruments and see absolutely nothing."?