Smoking, etc. in cockpit

There were people that chewed tobacco in cockpit. A friend with a Libelle
had no can for spit. Those Texans were tough hombres.
GA

Guess that's better than smoking weed to "get high and stay high"...

-John

On Aug 14, 9:15 am, Robert Gaines
wrote:
There were people that chewed tobacco in cockpit. A friend with a Libelle
had no can for spit. Those Texans were tough hombres.
GA

On Aug 14, 8:15*am, Robert Gaines
wrote:
*There were people that chewed tobacco in cockpit. A friend with a Libelle
had no can for spit. Those Texans were tough hombres.
GA

Hmmmm I hope he doesn't use his pee tube to empty his spitoon :-)

On Aug 14, 10:03*am, vontresc wrote:
On Aug 14, 8:15*am, Robert Gaines
wrote:

*There were people that chewed tobacco in cockpit. A friend with a Libelle
had no can for spit. Those Texans were tough hombres.
GA

One of our local legends, Bob Fitch, used to smoke cigarettes (forget
the brand, maybe Belairs?) in his glider. I was flying behind him on
final glide into Elmira one day when the glider started some really
crazy pitch and roll departures from level. Turned out he dropped a
lit one down around where his pee tube should be if you get my
drift...

P3

Many years ago, there was a 2-22 in Northern Mississippi. It was nothing
but frame. No skin. Seems a cigarette was dropped and it caught fire in
flight.
GA




One of our local legends, Bob Fitch, used to smoke cigarettes (forget
the brand, maybe Belairs?) in his glider. I was flying behind him on
final glide into Elmira one day when the glider started some really
crazy pitch and roll departures from level. Turned out he dropped a
lit one down around where his pee tube should be if you get my
drift...

P3

Worth repeating. Many years ago in the UK, a Std Cirrus pilot
apparently dropped his lighter into the front of the cockpit, undid
his straps to recover it, and PIO'd himself out through the canopy.
Parachute worked though.

Frank Whiteley

After all these tales of disastrous happenings to cockpit smokers, how about
a funny one:

Many many years ago I had a syndicate Olympia. One of the members was an
inveterate smoker who persisted in smoking while flying. We tried to
dissuade him, what with all that wood and dope around, but he carried on
doing it. He had the last laugh though. One day he set off on a Silver
distance attempt from our airfield near Stoke on Trent, heading east in a
blustery westerly blowing about 30kts. He was seen to climb to about 3000ft
and disappeared over the horizon while doing it. Nothing was heard for quite
some time, till we got a phone call (no mobiles or radio in those days)
saying he had landed out near Nottingham, not Leicester East which he had
declared. When we got to him it turned out that, due to his speed over the
ground, at no time during the flight had he any idea how far he had gone or
indeed where he was, because in the confines of the somewhat cramped Oly
cockpit he wasn't able to open his map properly and had torn it trying.
Eventually he had looked down and there below him he saw a building which
seemed very familiar. He circled round it and when the penny dropped, he
remembered where he had seen this building before. At that time (the 1960s)
the firm that made his ciggys (the W H & D O Wills outfit which included
the famous Philip as a member) printed a picture of Nottingham Castle on the
back of their cigarette packets ('cos that was where they were made). He
fished out his fag packet, and sure enough he now knew exactly where he was
and it was far enough for Silver. It was impossible to stop him taking his
fags with him thereafter.

Alistair Wright
Melrose

There's that scene in The Sunship Game where Gleb opens the sliding
window in the canopy of his Cirrus and flicks out a cigarette butt...

On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:52:58 -0700, Frank Whiteley wrote:

Worth repeating. Many years ago in the UK, a Std Cirrus pilot
apparently dropped his lighter into the front of the cockpit, undid his
straps to recover it, and PIO'd himself out through the canopy.
Parachute worked though.

Did this happen more than once or is it apocryphal?

I ask this because Martin Simons describes an almost identical event at
Waikerie around 1971. See "Sailplanes 1965-2000" page 147.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Aug 14, 8:01*pm, Martin Gregorie
wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:52:58 -0700, Frank Whiteley wrote:
Worth repeating. *Many years ago in the UK, a Std Cirrus pilot
apparently dropped his lighter into the front of the cockpit, undid his
straps to recover it, and PIO'd himself out through the canopy.
Parachute worked though.

Did this happen more than once or is it apocryphal?

I ask this because Martin Simons describes an almost identical event at
Waikerie around 1971. See "Sailplanes 1965-2000" page 147.

--
martin@ * | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org * * * |

Can't say. Related to me in the late 1970's as a UK incident, but
maybe the provincials still consider OZ part of the empire;^)

Frank