AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 141 of 332 vegetation coupled with monkey menace inside the hanger adding to the tarmac activities. It was even more fun to see little monkeys swinging on the pitot tube of the aircraft and to chase them away needed more intelligent skills as mother monkey would attack us. I remember the MAS key (Armament safety key) as per SOP is normally hung in the canopy of the aircraft parked in the hangar. Once a monkey took it away and we struggled a lot to recover the same. Thanks to my then Commanding Officer Wg Cdr Rajeev Hora who understood my plight, came to my rescue by arranging a Jugaad Zon Gun indigenously which is a gun mounted on a gas cylinder (from SFSIO section & PSI) which was periodically fired to scare away the monkeys. It was indeed an innovative first of its kind to keep away from those monkeys. During daily flying comprising day and night sorties, the task of Senior Technical Officer was even more challenging who needed to show additional skills in maintenance of high serviceability of aircraft, leave management of air warriors, managing ATF refueller from MT section , liquid oxygen, ground Equipment GPU, towing bar, tarmac space, accommodation and messing for airman etc. Sometimes bird hits resulted in additional checks on the turbine blades and the baroscopic checks contributed to additional delays. The location and layout of STO room was such that every pilot going for flying was to pass through the corridor of STO room after wearing the G suit. This arrangement served as an excellent debrief session after the sortie to understand the snag. In those days we were operating the initial Darin 1 Aircraft as far as the “TGT shoot up” Turbine Gas Temperature (TGT) AMP for 804 engines and 811 engines the peculiarities were phenomenal resulting in frequent ground runs to ensure timely detection of rise in TGT, engine running throttle setting in the max dry and max AB regime and the difficulties with short supply of test set A (test Equipment for Engine). It was a sigh of relief for the technicians, EOs and me to receive a ‘SAT’ in the Form700 from every pilot after the sortie as it is a testimony and indication that the aircraft was in satisfactory working condition in air, and we as engineers / technicians did our bit to scratch our brain to understand and rectify the snag to keep the aircraft air worthy. It was during this the gunnery and armament mission sorties the role responsibilities change and to adapt and adjust to the mission requires lot of emotional Intelligence, specific mostly due to the available assigned time of the firing range and sometimes due to the adverse weather conditions, which frequently force the operational commitments to change from 3kgs to 25 pound, Aden gun filling cartridges to fitting Briefing of Air Warriors at Detachment Location