Mayday - I'm on Fire
'Mayday, Mayday, Mayday – I’m on fire and abandoning the aircraft!'
Based on the experience of my Lynx helicopter cockpit fire episode, the smell of burning wasn’t too alarming in itself, nor were the black smoke and acrid fumes. But then, all of a sudden, real live flames started appearing from behind the instruments. Now this was a first; I really was on 'proper fire'! And I really needed to get out quickly, and I really needed a brave chap with a fire extinguisher to put out the fire before it caught hold and destroyed this beautiful little aeroplane. Fortuitously, I was right in front of the ageing wartime control tower at Old Sarum when I radioed for help. I was greeted with a reply to my Mayday from the chap in the tower,
'You what?'
'I’m on fire – real flames! I need the fire truck.'
As the words passed my lips I was already wriggling out of my harness and parachute and out of the door that I’d already flung open, to run, like an Olympic sprinter, the 50 metres or so I reckoned I could cover without embarrassment. Which I did, only to turn to see the red fire truck now manned by the bloke from the tower about to squirt fire retardant foam at the rate of a hundred litres a second at my stricken bird. Put mildly, being hit by a torrent of high-pressure foam would have killed this particularly small and delicate aircraft for all time. So now I ran the 50 metres in the other direction, desperately throwing my body between aircraft and fire truck, wildly flapping my arms in the hope of communicating, 'Please don’t destroy this little aircraft with your mighty foam spray nozzle.'
The message got through, but now I was left, singlehandedly, trying to extinguish the flames with my, thankfully, gloved hands (I still have the gloves to prove it) but without success. I shifted tactics and I managed to negotiate the use of a carbon--dioxide extinguisher from the fire truck which I grabbed, pulled the pin, squeezed the trigger and pointed the nozzle at the source of the flames. With a woooooshhh and torrent of misty gas, as quickly as the fire had started it was extinguished and I’d saved the day again.
Based on the experience of my Lynx helicopter cockpit fire episode, the smell of burning wasn’t too alarming in itself, nor were the black smoke and acrid fumes. But then, all of a sudden, real live flames started appearing from behind the instruments. Now this was a first; I really was on 'proper fire'! And I really needed to get out quickly, and I really needed a brave chap with a fire extinguisher to put out the fire before it caught hold and destroyed this beautiful little aeroplane. Fortuitously, I was right in front of the ageing wartime control tower at Old Sarum when I radioed for help. I was greeted with a reply to my Mayday from the chap in the tower,
'You what?'
'I’m on fire – real flames! I need the fire truck.'
As the words passed my lips I was already wriggling out of my harness and parachute and out of the door that I’d already flung open, to run, like an Olympic sprinter, the 50 metres or so I reckoned I could cover without embarrassment. Which I did, only to turn to see the red fire truck now manned by the bloke from the tower about to squirt fire retardant foam at the rate of a hundred litres a second at my stricken bird. Put mildly, being hit by a torrent of high-pressure foam would have killed this particularly small and delicate aircraft for all time. So now I ran the 50 metres in the other direction, desperately throwing my body between aircraft and fire truck, wildly flapping my arms in the hope of communicating, 'Please don’t destroy this little aircraft with your mighty foam spray nozzle.'
The message got through, but now I was left, singlehandedly, trying to extinguish the flames with my, thankfully, gloved hands (I still have the gloves to prove it) but without success. I shifted tactics and I managed to negotiate the use of a carbon--dioxide extinguisher from the fire truck which I grabbed, pulled the pin, squeezed the trigger and pointed the nozzle at the source of the flames. With a woooooshhh and torrent of misty gas, as quickly as the fire had started it was extinguished and I’d saved the day again.
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