Worst week of your life?

[reggiep]

Ok so you think you are having a hard time at the moment, let me take you back to the worst week of my life...

 

Sometime about 12 year ago

 

I was working in RAF and while I was at work my wife got a phone call.

Caller - "Hello is your husband there"

Wife - "No he's at work, who is this"

Caller - "This is the CSA, can you get your husband to call us on this number when he gets home"

 

So I arrive back home at the end of the day with my wife giving me a funny look, she explains who it was and I duly ring them up.

It turns out that an ex girlfriend from 10 year previously has told the CSA that I am the dad of her kid and I am going to have to give her all my cash. I told them that I couldn't be me but they were adamant. I managed to persuade them to go down the DNA route but even then they wanted me to pay for the test at £450 for the pleasure.

 

The next day I go into work early as our squadron are doing the weather checks in the area so our weather check aircraft has to take off first and find somewhere decent to fly for the day.

I did the morning servicing of the hawk aircraft and signed up the documentation. I then went out to the aircraft and along with another person we strapped the pilot in and saw him off to the run way.

I stood and watched as he took off from the runway about 400 metres from me. He got asbout 150 feet in the air before the aircraft flipped over and the pilot ejected into the ground killing him instantly and then the aircraft turned into a ball of flame as it crashed back down into the runway. I felt the heat from the fireball and then fell over with shock.

 

Later that day the RAF police interviewd me and wanted to know why I had fallen over and was it because I felt guilty about something!

 

About 4 days later we found out that a flying control had been disconnected and not reconnected after the work had been completed. So the fleet were aloud to fly again. I went to see an aircaft off again from the ground and found that the same rod was disconnected on this aircraft. I quickly told my boss and he reconnected it but I was never to tell anyon about it.

 

That was the worst week of my life.

 

I got the CSA results back about 4 months later giving me the all clear without an apology.

 

It took 2 years for the RAF police to finally stop arresting me every few months to question me even though Somebody admitted to disconnecting the aircraft controls rods, as a favour to an overweight technician who couldn't access an area he needed to inspect, but he didn't tell anyone about disconnecting them and then went off shift.

 

All the hassle made me give up on my RAF career and investigate the world of I.T.

 

So in the end something good came of it.

 

Now when I get a teacher moaning about their computer running slowly I am not that concerned about the work pressure and in another life I had a really stressful job!

[Ryan]

Blimey

[Dos_Box]

Mine?

 

Bosnia '97 on my way back to Split from BFI 1 at Lipa and was caught in a Balkan monsoon. I had a tacho fitted to my Foden MWD tanker (as per cover-your-arse SOP's at the time) and lost it on a bend doing less than 25 kmh. I got it to stop but was blocking the entire road with the cab in the on-coming lane. Out of the rain coming in the other direction came a merc doing mach 10 and hit the corner of the tractor unit on my side. The merc was packed with a family of 6 Bosnians in a car they had stolen in Austria to get them home (alot of that went on) when the fighting had stopped. They were all unconcious and in a bad way when we dragged them out. They had hit with such force that the merc battery had been thrown 50 feet clear of the car and was lying in a ditch (a Bosnian gawper ran off with it whilst we were recovering the MWD).

 

I was admonished on all charges, but only after the master driver mis-read the tacho. Twice (prick). And I was put in front of the CO to be warned off for court marshall as someone thought it would be a good idea to court marshall all RTA's in theater in an effort to cut down on accidents. The MWD was written off with a twisted chassis and the cab was pushed back 3 inches due to the impact. All in all about £250,000 worth of truck thrown away.

It took the best part of a year for the charges to be dropped.

[altecsole]

Mmm. I was an Airframe Technician in the RAF for 12 years and this sounds very unlikely to me. Part of the pre-flights checks is a test of all flight controls for correct operation and full range of movement. If the control was left disconnected how did this work?

[KarlGoddard]

I had to use Vista once, on a laptop.

 

I'm now in therapy.

[mrtechsystems]

Bloody hell feel for you m8

[reggiep]

Mmm. I was an Airframe Technician in the RAF for 12 years and this sounds very unlikely to me. Part of the pre-flights checks is a test of all flight controls for correct operation and full range of movement. If the control was left disconnected how did this work?

 

13 Years the same job.

It went to a coroners court that I had to attend. The barrister of the guy who owned up to disconnecting the flying control rod asked Our Commanding Officer if pilots had to check flying control surfaces before flights (he even had the aircrew pre flight manual in his hands with that page selected in his hands.

The CO lied through his teeth saying they did not. And the barrister? He came out with the immortal line "No more questions, you honour"

 

When flying resumed the whole procedure changed to include a confirmation that flying controls had been checked.

 

If the control was left disconnected how did this work?

It didn't. Hence the crash!

[PEO]

Brother murderd then been told I had not been acepted for modern aprentiship at an Aerospace company

[reggiep]

Brother murderd then been told I had not been acepted for modern aprentiship at an Aerospace company

 

I'm sorry for you there PEO.

 

A bit of an Aircraft/military feel to this thread now.

[altecsole]

13 Years the same job.

It went to a coroners court that I had to attend. The barrister of the guy who owned up to disconnecting the flying control rod asked Our Commanding Officer if pilots had to check flying control surfaces before flights (he even had the aircrew pre flight manual in his hands with that page selected in his hands.

The CO lied through his teeth saying they did not. And the barrister? He came out with the immortal line "No more questions, you honour"

 

When flying resumed the whole procedure changed to include a confirmation that flying controls had been checked.

 

Fair enough. Sounds a complete nightmare to me. I'm just glad I never served on a Squadron that lost anyone during the time I was there. That's the time when everyone starts to cover their own arse!

 

Anglesey by any chance?

[reggiep]

Anglesey by any chance?

 

Yup, Valley.

[StewartKnight]

Wife had a stroke and was in hospital for some time

 

our young kids couldn't understand, they thought she'd died

[zag]

Wow some real stories here!

 

My worst one was probably coming into work over the holidays to fix a broken server and coming out at the end of that week with no server, no data, and over written backups! Managed to restore 95% of it in the end but there was one point where I had lost just about every bit of school data from the last 10 years! Not a nice feeling but it pales in comparison to some of the stories mentioned earlier.

 

Just goes to show, you need to put things in life into perspective.

[chrbb]

19 year old son open heart surgery to replace pulmonary valve in 2004.

 

4 hour walk round leicester during operation to pass time clutching mobile phone praying it wasn't going to ring before at least 3 hours had gone by.

[m1ddy]

Out with my dad when he was arrested because they thought he was the Yorkshire Ripper.

 

:eek:

 

Some really awful things some of you guys have been through. Puts the problems I have had to deal with recently in to perspective. thank you

[contink]

I don't have anything for myself to touch this but my fiancee certainly does.

 

 

Dad dies of cancer after a protracted fight... He was blad on top but the melanoma developed where he had hair and it wasn't spotted until it had spread something vicious.

 

Not long after her one true friend and quite possibly the guy who would have been marrying her in another life, was out with a group of mates.. There were five of them and the cab could only take four so, he said he'd walk as he wasn't far... he wasn't drunk or stupid... Walked along the road and a van driver not only ran him over but left him there to die. The excuse in court was that he'd thought it was a ghost so ignored it... For some bizarre reason the court believed it was valid given his cultural beliefs so he got off scott free...

 

Then to top it all off she keeps it together long enough to find out that her mother who had breast cancer, a mastectomy and beaten it, had found a new lump... That's when she broke a few years back.

 

 

Since then life has looked up and she still amazes me, even now.

 

Me? I managed to jump out of a burning building Xmas Eve in Montreal and lived to tell the tale... Like that was even close a bad day... Life is just so much sweeter as a result.

[elsiegee40]

Dad had brain haemmorhage and collapsed in Edinburgh, on first day of our holiday in South of France. I flew there... but hubby had 4 days driving with 2 young children

Dad died 2 weeks later.

 

Shortly afterwards husband was made redundant and my school (not the one I'm at now) went into Special Measures... a summer I'd like to forget

[GrumbleDook]

There are times that I have thought I have had a bad week ... but I just think back to my Dad telling me of when he was based in Singapore and he used to come across people whose family had died, lost limbs as they tried to make ends meet, overcome struggles ... and still got on with life and building fresh each time.

 

In the words of Bill Bailey, "Some people ask me if I am an optimist ... I say 'I hope so!'"

[Joedetic]

It really does put it into perspective that at my age (20 in July 08) you don't have a "worst week."

 

Yes, like a lot of people, I've had some experiences that have really impacted on my life and that I'd like to never have to repeat again...but as far as I can tell...it only gets worse from here Or is that too morbid depressing eh?? lol

[chrbb]

@joedetic I bet if we had a best ever week thread we would all have fantastic things to recall:)

There are some truly awful 'worst weeks' on this thread and if like me you don't even have think which was your worse week you know it was a bad one, but I will be joining the same son tonight in the pub with my husband and other son to celebrate him getting his first teaching job ()so I'll put my loose change in the heartlink box on the bar and give him a big hug.

[Edu-IT]

Bloody hell feel for you m8

Vista isn't that bad surely?

 

(Sorry!)

 

Fortunately I've not yet had a 'worst week' and I hope that I never have to go through what some of the people in this thread have.

Edited May 23, 2008 by Edu-IT

[SeanVin]

Mmm. I was an Airframe Technician in the RAF for 12 years and this sounds very unlikely to me. Part of the pre-flights checks is a test of all flight controls for correct operation and full range of movement. If the control was left disconnected how did this work?

 

I can verify that the accident did happen and that it was caused by a disconnected control rod. I was in the RAF at the time (I did 24 years as an engine/airframe technician) and I remember it very well. It was the first fatal accident caused by a maintenance error for a long time and every engineer sat up and took notice.

 

I really feel for everybody involved. Luckily I was never caught up in a board of inquiry, everyone I know who has, have said it is a very unpleasant experience. They have all said that by the time the board had finished with them, they believed it could have been their fault, even if they had nothing to do with servicing the actual aircraft involved. As reggiep was one of the last people to work on the aircraft he will have had a particularly hard time.