Not the term FOD amusing so much as the way it’s bandied around, every time you venture anywhere near an airfield, like people are going to run around chucking things around. Also the way people in the ATC refer to all rubbish as FOD, ie I know people who refer to litter picking as a FOD plod, probably as they get excited by the military connotation. I use the phrase picking up rubbish, as that’s what they are doing, but leaving it won’t amount to Foreign Object Damage.
I’ve never been to AEF, VGS (remember them), station on a visit air side and known myself or any other staff saying I’ve lost a badge, creating mass panic and I’ve been doing this a long time. There’s more panic if someone can’t find their phone.
The word migrate is an interesting one as for the .0001% of a year spent by ATC personnel on an RAF station with aircraft, I doubt that one has “migrated” into an aircraft more than any of the other debris on and around a station and bits and bobs that get detached from kit / lost by real personnel using the aircraft.
I cannot see how our little badges are this massive risk that people have seen fit to suggest to be lethal, as if they were we’d have been asked for years to take rank slides off and empty our pockets every time we set foot inside a hangar or airfield.
I think mostly the people who don’t like the pins are ATC bods who don’t want the hassle of them and love blandness.
How many VRT or ATC gilt pins have been found in a place they might be direct FOD problem over the years? By this I mean in a hangar, airfield or in an aircraft where it might be interfering with controls etc. I bet if there had been one single instance knowing HQAC’s love of jerking knees, there would have been several tomes of policy issued and a complete ban on flying, while they have months or years of investigations.
I wonder how all the thousands of aircraft taking off from airfields of all types, all over the world all over the world manage to fly and not crash out of the sky, given the paraphernalia passengers wear that can become more easily dislodged than an ATC or VRT badge. The FOD thing seems to be a disproportionate military thing to keep reprographic depts. going making posters.
There are lots of examples where small items have jammed aircraft controls or damaged aircraft engines etc. VRT/ATC pins may appear to be benign, but the fact remains they can fall off. If they can, they will!
Air Cadet staff are at AEFs and VGS daily, so there is a risk every time that escorting staff member walks out onto an aircraft apron.
Granted there are many other FOD risks but the only sensible precaution is to ask staff to remove them whilst airside?
But the way our little pins are made out to be the spawn of all satan’s creations wrt foreign objects is massively disproportionate, especially when something as ubiquitous as a stone chip (size would be interesting) can be seen as a danger.
It is a bigger issue with potential control restrictions from losing them in cockpits as opposed to engine ingestion. Even if it extremely unlikely that a lost pin can cause a problem. you cannot take the chance and you need to account for a lost pin.
Flight safety is important and if we can do more to remove a potential cost in time and airframes then lets do it as the opportunity arises.
How many cockpits would you have been in where there aren’t loads of other things carried by the people there every single day.
One can only assume that incubus has errant pins on his uniform that keep falling off. I’ve never had to reattach a pin since becoming a Flt Lt all those years ago. Maybe I’m unusual among staff.
If you want to look for a problem, you will find one and then convince yourself that it is greater than it is and blow it out of all proportion. This is what has created the industry around H&S.
When I go Flying there’s nothing loose in my cockpit!
Where the pins are is one of the issues. On the shoulder which is where parachute/harness straps are fitted. Fitting straps could easily dislodge them?
If one fell out onto the apron, somebody could stand on it and inadvertently transfer it into an aircraft?
Nobody’s creating the issue. The issue exists…!
Maybe speak to the squippers, or to current military pilots, and get an understanding how how they deal with potential loose articles in a small cockpit and what happens if they think something has gone amiss.
The reality is that any inverted flight can result in a canopy full of gravel and pens but that is no reason to be blasé about the potential risk and to take this opportunity to remove something that has, for whatever reason, been highlighted as a potential problem. Also, I’m 50% certain that many of the concerns are fed by walts who want to ponce about in gro-bags masquerading as regular pilots and if we can remove that opportunity to then I’m all for it.
The insignia is, for whatever underlying reason, changing. This is an opportunity to get rid of the pins (which have always been stupid, breakable tat) and move to a better system.
I’m in the “sew it on with nylon thread” camp now, by the way. I was on the “superglue it” camp but that wasn’t stable enough and I dropped a few (due to seatbelts mostly) so I upgraded, Most of the real issues I’ve heard of were from officers struggling with cheap VRT pins which either break too readily or, if they don’t break, they swivel.
@Teflon For someone who castigates HQAC for spending huge amounts of their finite time and effort on absolute irrelevancies that have no more impact on anyone than a snowflake at the South Pole, you, err… don’t half go on about absolute irrelevancies…
Instead of your interminable whining about stuff that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, why don’t you plan an exercise or an AT day for your cadets, or given your endless appeals for HQAC staff to actually do what they are paid for, why don’t you do some work instead of spending hours wittering about gilt pins!
