Same Time, Same Place, Same Level - chapter 6

Fun unlimited

Episodes like the one above, when controllers and flight crews must utter their calm in the face of danger need an antidote. And what best in this respect than fun and laughter? It does not matter if there happens to be no extra opening for fun, controllers will see to it that funny situations are created out of even the most lowly things.

Roller Skates Shops

The Case of the Jacket Sleeve was one of these.

Air traffic controllers, being mostly private from the social eye, are not exactly predominant for following an Ibm-like dress code. Blue jeans and T-shirts were coarse in most places, especially before some air traffic control authorities decided to issue their controllers with uniforms. In those good, old days before uniforms, if one or the other of our colleagues turned up in the morning dressed in a dark suit, it was a sure sign of some extra opening for him and sometimes for the rest of us, too, if a birthday or similar festivity prompted him to bring in a piece of extra cake only his wife or girlfriend could conjure up.

When A.B. Came in one morning, dressed like a Big Blue executive on a sales trip, we knew that something big was in the works. Our suspicions were confirmed when he asked the duty supervisor to let him leave one hour early, claiming to have tickets for a play opening that night in the National Theatre. Permission to leave early was granted, and after depositing his dark suit on a hanger in the locker room, A.B. Went to work in his assigned control sector. Unknown to him, a crew of enterprising young controllers, who happened to overhear his plans for the evening, thought about and with the professionalism characteristic of controllers, undid the lining in the sleeves of A.B.'s dress jacket, then turning the material one half turn, re-sew it with equal ardor.

Things became a bit hectic by late afternoon, and when it was time for A.B. To leave, it took him a slight longer than predicted to hand over the control position to the man assigned to relax him. Once free, he rushed to the locker room, donned his suit but while putting on his tie, he realized something was wrong. The buttons on his jacket sleeve kept insisting on facing forward. He pushed them back and they came forward again. Puzzled, he took off his jacket, hanging it up and lo!, the buttons were firmly on the side, with seemingly all things in order. He tried putting on the jacket once more. The buttons, as if having a life of their own, again sprung forward.

He repeated the rehearsal a few more times until gradually realization dawned on him and he checked the lining inside the sleeve. From then on it took a mere hour to undo and redo the seams and ultimately he made it to the theatre - at the end of the first act. We heard later that his wife was very, very upset, not so much for being left standing in front of the theatre and missing the play, but for his going to such extremes with his story to cover up the time she was convinced he spent humping some broad...

The Case of the Welded Shoe exhibited no less ingenuity. F.G. Had all the time been a meticulous man and this was reflected in most of his personal habits also. In the locker room he would invariably sit on the same chair to turn into his working attire, leaving his clothes nicely folded and all the time in the same place. His shoes would be left, strictly parallel and with an impeccable shine, in front of his favorite chair, all the time in the same position, not an inch to the left or to the right.

Now, there are many cables, wires and the like in and nearby any control center, and these are mostly private in ducts running under the floors. To furnish easy access to these ducts, at our single center they were topped by long, vinyl covered metal planks, flush with the floor, but precisely lifted in case of need. The covers also had thin, metal strips on their edges, retention the vinyl in place. These ducts crisscrossed even the floor of the locker room. It was pure coincidence that F.G.'s shoes were all the time left atop one of these ducts, with the metal on the heels exactly lined up with the metal strips.

One day, while F.G. Was busy handling arrivals in the ops room, a maintenance crew came to effect some repairs in the locker room. Off-duty controllers watched with interest as the boys professionally welded back a few fittings here and there, and it did not take long for the big idea to be born. Similarly, it did not take long to persuade one of the maintenance men to use his welding electrode on the heels of F.G.'s shoes. Two small flashes of the galvanic arc made sure that his elegant footwear should come to be solidly fixed to the duct covering. And all this without arresting the shoes even a fraction of an inch. With a proud view at his handiwork, the maintenance chap gathered up his apparatus and hurried after his pals.

When his shift was ultimately over, F.G. Came to the locker room and embarked on his never changing disposition of getting into his road clothes. The very last maneuver consisted of sitting down on "his" chair, pulling on his socks and stepping into his shoes (without arresting them, mind you!). He did just this also now, then stood up and took a step forward... Well, in fact he fell forward, out of his shoes, with an expression of utter bad dream on his face. Eventually, he did manage to take off his shoes, but the small specks of molten metal on the duct face remained for many years, for all to see, especially those who found it difficult to believe this had precisely happened.

The Case of the Disappearing Crap comes from truly antique times, from before the move to the new airport and as rumor had it, at the old airport the oddest things could happen. It all started with the unduly large length between the hangar and the toilet facilities. While most habitancy found this disturbing at the worst, one of the old hangar supers at last came to the end that his over-tasked legs should not be obliged to work even more on catalogue of the daily calls of nature, and he additional concluded that the nearby bushes were all he needed in this respect.

At first his daily, casual walks in the direction of the thick wall of greenery went unnoticed, but one day his purpose was found out by one of the aircraft technicians. This old airport was in fact very small, with an roughly house climate to it and in a short time the news spread far and wide, at last reaching even the control tower. It was typical, though, that while roughly everyone had learnt about the super's clandestine operation in the bush, he himself was never told of the fact that he had been found out.

By meticulous notice the suited binoculars that were standard equipment in the tower, controllers established the pattern the super followed. He appeared a meticulous and methodical man, never using the same place again until the goods of his earlier visit had had a opening to be absorbed into nature. After a time it was easy to guess which single area he would head for on the next occasion.

As was likely to happen, nobody took notice when two off duty controllers, armed with a plank of some length, disappeared among the bushes which had been earmarked by the notice team as the next most likely port of call of the old supervisor. They did not have to wait long before he arrived on schedule. Pushing down his pants, he squatted and groaning loudly, he set about to defecate. He also had an old magazine, which he was busy reading and never noticed when the plank, silently as if arresting on oiled rollers, sneaked in under him.

Having concluded his business, the super stood up. Pulling on his trousers, he was apparently overcome by curiosity and looked down where his most recent mound should have been. But there was nothing. In mounting shock, he looked closer and also slightly left and right, though there was no wind... Now he was truly alarmed. Off came the trousers and turning them upside down, he vigorously shook the garment, hoping to expel whatever that might have fallen into it...

This was too much for the two controllers still hiding in the bush. They burst out laughing as they scrambled from the thorny branches and a few seconds later none of the airport personnel had to be told why the super was chasing two boys across the green airport grass. It would appear that even animals were hard put to flee the normal climate of fun at this back-country airport. The Case of the Silver Duck should furnish ample proof of this, even though in this single mischief controllers had no role to play.

We still had the network of domestic flights operating at that time, these milk runs production use of a few old Dc-3 clones. It was also coarse practice for pilots to be presented with small gifts, courtesy of the airport managers, at their intermediate landing points. Even a live duck could fall into this category, as one of the pilots was to learn one day, just prior to Easter. Though the poor bird endured the trip back to base with surprising grace, the bemused Dc-3 driver decided to leave him on the ground at our airport while he did the afternoon run. For want of a best parking place, he secured the unhappy beast with a piece of string to the tail-wheel of other airplane parked in the hangar. The duck, unsure either her status was that of evening meal material or treasured flying colleague, watched with frightened eyes as her devotee climbed into his engine and took off in a cloud of dust.

Soon afterwards, a painting crew appeared to discontinue the fix job done the former day on the plane in the hangar. At first they did not know what to make of the duck tied to the tail dragger, but being standard workers, in short order they applied a shiny coat of silver paint on the repaired part of the aircraft as well as on the struggling duck. When one of the crew view that this most recent increasing to the fleet had no registration marks on her, some black paint was brought out and they thought about painted "Ha-Hap" on her wings.

On his return later that afternoon, the first impulse of our pilot was to leave the, by now, totally disgraced and humiliated duck where she was, but then his stomach got the best of him. Wrapping the bird in an old newspaper he boarded the airport bus that would take him back to town. They didn't go half a mile before the duck wriggled free and started voicing her thought about the whole procedure. His fellow passengers did not take very amiable to this rebellion and shortly afterwards the driver politely asked them both to leave the bus. It was a long, long walk home and though the duck ended up where she belonged, on the evening meal table, beautifully roasted, the poor pilot had a lot of explaining to do before he could ultimately sit down to enjoy his "gift".

The Case of the Vanishing Lunch comes from more recent memory. Although air traffic control was already using Very High Frequency radio for direct pilot-controller communication, the old short wave sets somehow survived, assembled in a slight corner room, together with their operators, mostly old hands nearing resignation age. everyone was convinced that once they left the battlefield, the radios would go also, together with the marginal service they provided. Thus it was slight wonder the operators were treated more like curios in a shop than real human beings. Religion did not normally enter into the daily workings of air traffic control, but if a chap belonged to a rare, supposedly pretty vicious sect, and he also happened to be an elderly radio operator, this composition was sure to stir controllers into action.

Poor Willy had for a long time suffered the unkind remarks, the jokes and the daily mild harassment with a resignation characteristic of his sect. The only concession he allowed himself was having his lunch-break one hour later than the rest of the staff. This arrangement had two advantages. Firstly, Willy was ready as a constant relief during the first hour the canteen was open, an prominent notice for those eating there, as the selection of food (and the climatic characteristic of whatever was left) seemed to show an inverse connection with the time elapsed since opening. Secondly, Willy could eat his home-made lunch in the quiet of the empty locker-room, which he appeared to prefer to the canteen.

On most days, he would take off his slight pot from the fridge before relieving the others for the lunch break, leaving the pot on the desk in the locker room to thaw. On this single opening he had a layer of rice, topped by two slices of meet and some frosty gravy in the pot. Willy precisely loved the steak and the extra gravy his wife could put in order so expertly. A controller, passing through the locker room and hoping to gain a slight more understanding into Willy's soul took the cover off the pot, peering into it with a arresting eye. It took him only a second to lift the top layer of rice, together with the steak and the still solid gravy, depositing it on a plate, ultimately to hide it in the fridge, thought about face it with aluminum foil.

When the time came for Willy to eat, he could hardly believe his eyes. His wife had forgotten to consist of his favorite steak..., did the silly woman think he would eat rice, plain, like a Chinese? With mounting anger he put the cover back on the pot, shoving the lot into the fridge. She can be so thoughtless at times, he fumed, but this time I will have a few things to say to her... So, Willy returned to his radio hungry and miserable.

The rest we know from his own recounting, told "confidentially" to a friend. Going home that night, Willy stormed into their apartment, tossing the pot, its cover still on, in front of his wife, describing in detail what he thought about wives forcing their husbands, engaged in prominent firm having a direct bearing on the protection of international civil aviation, to eat plain rice. The poor woman, not understanding a word of what he was saying, lifted the cover from the offending pot, looked into it, then started on a long explanation how such idiots, like Willy, should not be allowed near whatever flying, putting in danger the unsuspecting public. In the pot, the steak and gravy was in place, exactly as our controller had substituted it earlier that afternoon...Finally, the Case of the Rolling Chair demonstrates that even Union protection inspectors were not immune to the infectious controller spirit.

The move to the new airport brought many changes in the life of air traffic control, but in importance nothing could surpass the facility of the new terminal control radar. This was a truly modern piece of equipment by the standards of the early 60's and the modernization exertion spread even to the level of the chairs controllers were sitting on. Beforehand, these were normal office chairs and on median lasted two months apiece. The dry, warm climate of the operations room combined with users constantly squirming, pushing and pulling soon assured the dubious title of Largest Chair User to the Civil Aviation Authority.

In an exertion to cut costs as well as to satisfy the controllers' union, who had been demanding chairs with rollers for some time, procurement went hunting for rolling chairs befitting radar controllers. Importing such luxuries could not be thought about even then, so a local cooperative was asked if they could produce the chairs, following specs in case,granted by controllers who have seen them at more well-to-do centers. Unfortunately, they had said yes.

What were at last delivered to the control center resembled overturned potato-crates on legs much more than chairs. Furthermore, instead of five horizontal supports with rollers, they had only four. If you can recall some of your geometry, you will perceive that a body supported at three or five points is inherently stable, while with four maintain points, it can be precisely overturned in any one of four directions. So much for the stability of our new chairs. As to comfort, it was akin to that of an galvanic chair, except that one is not normally predicted to sit in an galvanic chair for two hour rotations and is precisely not predicted to live through it...

That was it, then. The old chairs were returned to be used in front of the radar consoles, while the new beauties were relegated to stand in a row along the walls. This changed dramatically, however, when the more rehearsal loving controllers decided that they were excellent instruments for roller skating - in a sitting position. Sit in the chair, push, and there you went, fast as a rocket, down the long corridor to crash into one of the padded doors at the end. The warning, instantly issued by guys who kept their knowledge of physics up-to-date, that the chairs could precisely overturn while running at high speed, went mostly unheeded... This daredevil attitude prevailed even when one of the deputy supervisors, who doubled as the union's unit protection inspector, joined in with his own warning, flatly stating that an urgency suffered while in a speeding chair would not receive the same notice as an urgency on the job. He could only frown helplessly on the chairs and its occupants, occasionally flashing by. Then the rollers started to fail. Chairs removed from "service" for this intuit and thrown into a corner were fondly referred to as having suffered a heavy landing...

It seemed that there would be no end to this fun, until one morning this union protection inspector turned up with a cast on his left leg. What happened to you? - We enquired politely, fearing the worst. Reluctantly he told his gaping audience that ultimately he, too, succumbed to the urge to take a ride in one of the new chairs, it ground-looped and he broke his leg in the fall. This did in fact end the fun, as all the new chairs were taken away in a matter of days...

Same Time, Same Place, Same Level - chapter 6