An aviatrix I know just completed a PPC ride on the Shorts 360. In honour of her achievement, here are some jokes about the Shorts. As you can see from the picture linked above, it's a medium-sized, extremely boxlike airplane. It's also fairly slow moving, so other airplanes may need to slow down or circle to avoid overtaking it on approach.
This is a classic, but of course people know it and copy it, so I've heard it on the radio for real:
ATC: "Keep the speed up."
Shorts pilot: "We're pedalling as fast as we can!"
Citation pilot to Shorts pilot: "Nice airplane. I'll bet it goes faster when you take it out of its packing crate."
A C172 reports pulls up to an intersection hold line while a Shorts 360 positions at the threshold.
Cessna pilot: Ready on Charlie
Female ATC: Standby, I've got to get my Shorts off first!
ATC: You're number two, after the Shorts 360
Pilot: Left or right 360?
You can also insert your own Daisy Duke joke, if you like that sort of thing.
And as this is a short (ha ha) blog entry, I'll add the fact that I just found out that on the TV show The West Wing, they film the exterior shots of "Air Force One" using a Virgin Atlantic 747, and they use special effects to transform it into the blue and white livery with the presidential seal.
And what a fine aircraft that is. They use them at London City Airport because they can take off and land in such a short distance.
ReplyDeleteIn the 80s the U.S. Air Forces in Europe operated a small fleet of Shorts as sort of an in-house FedEx type operation.
ReplyDeleteTheir call sign was "Pokey".