Bloody Legs!

[jonesfam]

So, over the years I have broken 4 legs. Since most people only have 2 I think that is a high number.
Anyway, this morning I was taking rubbish to the bin & stood in a hole under the grass. Almighty Crack sound, extreme pain & I collapse in a screaming heap. After one of the boys helped me up I discover I can't put any weight on that foot & my ankle is swelling Bill Gates bank account.
SWMBO drives me to hospital X-ray, probing, proding & some really nice drugs later it seems I have hairline fracture & a whole lot of buggered tendons etc.
Moon Boot & a week of doing nothing.
What fun!
Jonesfam

[travelrover]

So, over the years I have broken 4 legs. Since most people only have 2 I think that is a high number.
Anyway, this morning I was taking rubbish to the bin & stood in a hole under the grass. Almighty Crack sound, extreme pain & I collapse in a screaming heap. After one of the boys helped me up I discover I can't put any weight on that foot & my ankle is swelling Bill Gates bank account.
SWMBO drives me to hospital X-ray, probing, proding & some really nice drugs later it seems I have hairline fracture & a whole lot of buggered tendons etc.
Moon Boot & a week of doing nothing.
What fun!
Jonesfam

Oooow that’s tough luck! You must have brittle bones or just very bad luck?

[jonesfam]

Today I got a charter back to Doomadgee from Cloncurry.
Some how when I was only supposed to bring my Foster Daughter back I ended up with another girl on the plane, all good, happy to get her home.
The charter was a twin engine Chieftain, I'm not a pilot & don't know much about planes but do they usually cough, splutter & run rough when you start them up? Also with 3 people & 500kg of freight would it be normal to take 99.9% of the runway to get off the ground?
Ho! I also had to kind of crawl onto the plane being in a Moon Boot.
Anyway, we got home in one piece & it wasn't even the most adventurous flight I've had over the years up this way & despite the fact I will miss SWMBO it is nice to be home.. even if somehow I have ended up with a random extra kid staying with me.
Seems once you are a Foster parent kids just decided you will do for now.
Jonesfam
BTW Getting off the plane in a Moon Boot was no fun either &, my boys did well loading all the freight in Cloncurry.
We won't mention driving in a Moon Boot!!

[V8Ian]

It always concerned me a tad, when the pilot got a few hundred metres off the ground and decided that would be a good time to tune the engine, then started fiddling with the mixture. [bigrolf]

[1950landy]

When my daughter had her first teaching posting in Charleville on one of her flights home for holidays the Dash8 had a fuel leak & they had to land at every airport between Charleville & Brisbane to take on fuel.

[BradC]

It always concerned me a tad, when the pilot got a few hundred metres off the ground and decided that would be a good time to tune the engine, then started fiddling with the mixture. [bigrolf]

Rich for initial power to get off the deck then start to lean out. In the little birds it's all still done manually. I reckon a good light aircraft jockey has about 6 arms.

[3toes]

On a flight in western Queensland in the years before GPS I noticed that the pilot was following the roads. Was confirmed when did a right run at a junction. Makes sense as the road is probably one of the best features to know where you are and not that many of them out there

[BradC]

On a flight in western Queensland in the years before GPS I noticed that the pilot was following the roads. Was confirmed when did a right run at a junction. Makes sense as the road is probably one of the best features to know where you are and not that many of them out there

When Dad was flying around WA he was often seen with a Shell road map.

[JDNSW]

Today I got a charter back to Doomadgee from Cloncurry.
.........
The charter was a twin engine Chieftain, I'm not a pilot & don't know much about planes but do they usually cough, splutter & run rough when you start them up?

Not uncommon - most light aircraft engines provide rich mixture for starting by flooding the intake manifold with fuel, which will be very unlikely to result in smooth running for the first minute or so until the excess fuel is burnt and the engine warmed up enough to run smoothly without an extra rich mixture.


Also with 3 people & 500kg of freight would it be normal to take 99.9% of the runway to get off the ground?

Required takeoff distance depends on the aircraft type, the load, and the temperature, altitude and wind direction. As long as this requirement is less than the available runway, all good. It is quite possible that the pilot held it on the ground for a little longer than necessary, perhaps because of an expectation that the wind was different a few hundred feet up, to have some spare airspeed - or just possibly, the pilot miscalculated the required distance, and you really did "just make it" - or it was deliberate to stir up the passengers!

Ho! I also had to kind of crawl onto the plane being in a Moon Boot.
Anyway, we got home in one piece & it wasn't even the most adventurous flight I've had over the years up this way & despite the fact I will miss SWMBO it is nice to be home.. even if somehow I have ended up with a random extra kid staying with me.
Seems once you are a Foster parent kids just decided you will do for now.
Jonesfam
BTW Getting off the plane in a Moon Boot was no fun either &, my boys did well loading all the freight in Cloncurry.
We won't mention driving in a Moon Boot!!

At least you are home. And an extra kid or two - no problem. Not foster, but we often seemed to have an extra when my boys were teenagers, mostly a relative, but not always.

[Arapiles]

About 25 years ago (how did that happen?) I was flying into a mine site in the Western province of PNG. We'd normally be on Air Niugini but this time it was a bush plot - probably Mission Aviation Fellowship. As we took off I wondered why the pilot had the left and right controls set up differently. Then I noticed that the seals were missing on the door next to me - good air conditioning, and I had a view as well. When we landed - plane again trimmed up to the left - I noticed that the left tyre was flat .... I did wonder why he didn't fix the flat before we took off.

In the 6 months around my visits to the mine site they lost three aircraft getting in or leaving, with about 37 fatalities ... on one trip we were delayed and then stuck in Mt Hagen due to weather and failing light. The next morning the ABC ran a story about a plane crash at our mine site (it was actually a reference to one of the earller ones) - my fiancee heard it, rang a friend who worked with me, he rang my manager and they tried to contact me at the mine site residence but I wasn't there - and then they and the mining company switched into a full disaster management plan. Took them a couple of hours to sort things out. The stupid thing is that I'd actually spoken to a colleague in Melbourne the previous day explaining what had happened and where we were - I'd had to crawl into the locked Mt Hagen terminal through the luggage chute to find a payphone, but the ****wit had never passed it on to anyone.

[trout1105]

I have had 3 broken collar bones and one dislocated one over the years, We must just be lucky bastards ay[bigwhistle]

[jonesfam]

I have had 3 broken collar bones and one dislocated one over the years, We must just be lucky bastards ay[bigwhistle]

Broken a couple of them over the years as well.
It was funny when I first got to Curry Hospital the nurse asked if I had broken any bones before?
So I spent 5 minutes listing them all, they add up after car accidents, motor bike accidents, football & baseball.
When the doctor came in the nurse just said "He has suffered multiple major past trauma".
I thought she could have at least memorized some of them!
Jonesfam

[Markf]

....I'm not a pilot & don't know much about planes but do they usually cough, splutter & run rough when you start them up? ....

Yep. They do that to vibrate and rattle all the loose bits off....[bigsmile1]