Today I cut my head open on a Lear 35.  It was pretty cool, I was bleeding down the side of my head and I looked pretty tough, untill my supervisor yelled this at me "Damnit!  Don't bleed on the plane!"

Anyone else have some "battle wounds" from aviation?

Got myself real good on the trailing edge of a Cessna flap once. Left that unique imprint and everything. I didn't look tough- I just looked like a dolt.
Now I do my entire preflight hunched over like Quasimodo, just in case.
but just last weekend, somewhere between preflight and refueling the plane, I managed to scrape my finger pretty well. Probably did it "dipping" the tank with my finger (with a Cessna, if you don't touch fuel, assume there is none, even if you can see it...).

I jumped out of a 172 once and that hurt my head pretty badly...

Quote:


...at 10.000 feet AGL...?

LOL...!

Paul... 8)...!

Quote:


Interesting...I bet it burned pretty bad too!

Bruised the back of my hand once when turning over a prop. Turned out the mag earth lead was broken. Good job it was a wooden prop & the fuel was switched off or I might have lost the hand. I also picked up a Tiger by the tail once. This was a common method of moving Tiger Moths which I did every day. On this occasion a split pin was sticking out of the strut attachment & went straight through the palm of my hand. Get out of that one.
This painful experience gave me my lifelong obsession with tucking the tail ends of split pins (& locking wire) in safely. I hope this saved others suffering a similar if not worse fate.

Well I have been bruised and banged around a lot in the old Canso's (Catalina's or PBY's for our American friends and just another bloody American aeroplane for our British friends LOL)

During the summer months we flew the pig boat "Canso" into the fiords on Hudson Bay to deliver fuel/stove oil and dry goods as the barge might only get part way down prior to freeze up.  You kept the engines running and  the aeroplane into the wind while your crew, usually a loadmaster and co-pilot wobble pumped the fuel/stove oil over the side into a flat bottom boat from one 45 gallon drum into another in the boat.  I often traded places with my number one as it was hard on the legs because you were on the rudders with hands on the throttles all the time.  The throttles, pitch, mixture were in the cockpit ceiling between both pilots on the pig boat "Canso".  You could be on the water for hours in rough water.  We had tried other methods such as rolling the drums into the water in a net and hauling it to shore.  The drums always seemed to get contaminated or damaged.
You could get tossed around depending on the sea state but that was the only way to get fuel and dry goods there.  There were no roads or rail roads into the area at that time.  There was a winter road  during the winter months that was just as dangerous.

During the winter months we used the Douglas DC3s  
(Dak, C47) another useless aircraft for the job.  Everything had to be hand bombed on and hand bombed off.  Remember it was all up hill on the Dak when loading.  Sorry no pallets.
We would land on Hudson Bay with wheel/skis between the lights of snowmobiles usually around 2am.
Unload the aircraft, taxi to a fuel storage dump and wobble pump fuel on, do an oil dilution and put on oily engine covers as well as wing covers.
Unloading 45 gallon drums was always fun, more than once a crewman got pinned against the rear bulk head if the drum got away from him.
There were several aircraft avialable at the time like the Caribou but due to outdated Canadian Air Regulations these aircraft could not be sold to Commercial Operators for some time to come.  "Only in Canada you say...PITY" LMAO

Well that is how I got banged, scratched and bruised.

I can remeber getting paid  a whole lot to, $660.00 a month plus 11 cents an airmile.  That was just about what I got when I left the Royal Canadian Air Force to get rich flying commercial LMAO

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug
P.S. Don't think I would have traded those years for anything else in the world.

Quote:



Cringe!!! Hell yes, you were lucky there, Doug.  And a sympathetic "ouch!" about your wire story... in my current line of work, I often manage to get a strand of stiff audio cable up under my fingernail, deeply... that'll throb all day.
Now, back ewhen I was a full-time carpenter... LOL. Let's just say it's astounding that I still have 10 fingers...