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**Thebull140** · 15-03-2005, 22:36

Having witnessed recently the amount of stupid threads appearing on these pages over the last few days i decided to start my own. In an attempt to keep it valid i thought i would attempt to catalogue alll the stupid things that royal signals personell have done over the years. The aim of this being that we can then gather all these idiots in one place and have them shot therefore freeing up this page for normal conversation. Just a couple of rules really, Trade is not an issue here, operators have done just as many stupid things as techs and No names. Hopefully if these rules are stuck to then this should go well.

As i am sure somebody will take offence and dig the dirt up on me i'm going to start this with somebody not that far away.

On Op telic a certain technician was working on a power fault on a SAS/MC, after asking the crew if anything important was going on he was given the all clear to work. Quickly the tech pulled out his trusty leatherman and was away, quickly he was inside the battery isolation switch with his fluke checking voltages and working out where the problem was. He noticed a washer had fallen down into the unit in question. Without a thought he grabbed his leather man and went to extract the said washer. BANG, one big blue spark later and the tech was seen flying off the side of the wagon. The tech awoketo find the Sqn yeoman looking very disgruntled as not only had he knocked out ptarmigan to the entire HQ he had done it during the middle of the GOC's conference call. Just to make things better as the SAS was connected to the same generator as the rest of the HQ, the entire staff were now sat in the dark with no conference call and blank computer screens. Needless to say the tech in question was not flavour of the month and earnt himself the nickname "Sparky the wonder tech"

And now to even things up.

A mate of mine was called to a fault on a radio det, the operator just couldnt get comms in. She had checked everything in question all her cabling and everything was working. As the tech stood there looking up the mast thinking, "it could be the pineapple, i'd like to get my fluke out and have a look at that". He asked the operator if he could drop the mast and she said "sure, the link aint in anyway". On bringing the mast down the tech noticed to his amazement that the operator in question had connected the co-axe to the dust cap holder instead of the input.

Oh and if anyone mentions something that feels familiar to events that have happened to yourself. Please have the dignaty to put your hand up.

**jimmys_best_mate** · 15-03-2005, 23:04

On one of the Tessex's at Warminster, that nights duty tech was woken at four in the morning to have a look at a fault on the RMP's radio det parked behind the main Headquarters/Monitoring building on West Down.

The fault is that all the power keeps blowing, Tech checks everything and decides there's something wrong with the earthing. He tells the monkey to make sure everything is earthed properly and that will sort the fault. About half an hour later he's woken again for the same det. This time nothing will switch on, he checks the batteries (all ok), he checks the PDB (all ok), checks the fuses on everything (all ok), finally he notices a small wire coming out of the battery box

The monkey had earthed his batteries.

**forniup** · 15-03-2005, 23:58

On Op Telic the pyro and prrs for the patrols were on ly issued before going out. On one particularly late patrol Lt????? Couldn't be bothered to get everyone to sign for it individually so signed for it all himself. After the patrol came back in at about 3am Lt????? collected all the equiptment and left is nice and safe in an empty water box in Tp office. Then cos its late and he is pissed off tells one of the shift Lcpl's that the place is a mess and to take all the crap out. Said crap is stored in..........yep you guessed it water boxes so at abot 4am the camp get a lovely firework show and Lt gets charged £600 for lost PRR's and pyro. Oh how we laughed!

**Thebull140** · 16-03-2005, 00:10

I've just remembered another one,

On Op telic before it all kicked off we were still in kuwait. A RADIO tech from my workshop was deployed with an ED to go check out a fault on a det about 10 miles away. After about 2/3 hours we hadn't heard anything from them. We got in touch with the det and they said they had never showed up, starting to worry we got on the net and tried to get in touch with them. Still nothing. We kept trying and got comms in eventually to find out they had got lost and were on their way to the det in question. After about 8 hours we decided to deploy the other FRT to the location as comms with the other FRT had been lost totally. The Sqn foreman decided to go with this det with the hope that the other other one was there and he could have a little chat in their ear. Still nothing. 17 hours later the FRT in question tipped up. Straight away the FofS had the tech and the ED in his intray "where were you why couldnt we contact you why didnt you go to the det with the fault" The techs response.

"we got lost fos, never found the det, we found another det and they had a fault so we fixed that then got our heads down." The det the had made it to was no more than 200m away from the det they were meant to get to they were sleeping when the fos turned up there!!!!

And the reason for lack of comms. "oh i switched the radio off i think it's broken it kept making funny noises" can anyone guess the radio they were using, yep you got it..............a 320.

**Shakespeare** · 16-03-2005, 00:26

IRAQ OP TELIC 1 BUT IT DIND'T HAVE A NUMBER THEN IT WAS EXCERCISE LUCKY WARRIOR,

CAMP MATILDA JUST AFTER BORDER WITH IRAQ/KUWAIT. TANK came up to the camp while certain operator was on stag apparently not following convoy drills operator opened fire with gpmg blocked after 2 rounds (lucky) tank was found to be schimitar, shit avoided hilarious episode where someone could have got killed but didnt

**Shakespeare** · 16-03-2005, 00:29

another incident during op telic 1 just before going over the border nbc alarm went off at about 2am everyone asleep. everyone got gas masks on apart from one operator who lost a lense, and first tried to stick a sleeping bag in there then found a sock. hence the name SOCK EYE

**Thebull140** · 16-03-2005, 00:33

Another telic 1 one. On recieving our first genuine alarm the day of "the big push" the usual drill, mask up, get in the shelter, not quite knowing what to expect we all got into full IPE (something had impacted not far away). There we were sat there in full 3 romeo when i lookeddown and saw the lass sat next to me in full 3 romeo matched with rather fetching pink flip flops.

**Shakespeare** · 16-03-2005, 09:45

everyone got gas masks on apart from one operator who lost a lense, and first tried to stick a sleeping bag in there then found a sock. hence the name SOCK EYE

fyi this guy is currently serving in 216, be afraid.

**fozzy** · 16-03-2005, 09:54

Originally Posted by forniup

On Op Telic the pyro and prrs for the patrols were on ly issued before going out. On one particularly late patrol Lt????? Couldn't be bothered to get everyone to sign for it individually so signed for it all himself. After the patrol came back in at about 3am Lt????? collected all the equiptment and left is nice and safe in an empty water box in Tp office. Then cos its late and he is pissed off tells one of the shift Lcpl's that the place is a mess and to take all the crap out. Said crap is stored in..........yep you guessed it water boxes so at abot 4am the camp get a lovely firework show and Lt gets charged £600 for lost PRR's and pyro. Oh how we laughed!

I was there - and yes we did piss ourselves! Even made the first issue of a certain comic strip.......

**fozzy** · 16-03-2005, 10:18

Top thread this.

On Ex ARRCADE FALCON xx, I was in the OSC in our particular puddle - the CO rocks up. Commanders Conference call time and the CO was on the subset connected to SCRAT about 30 metres away. Suddenly his subset dies on him and he drops off the call. CO starts to throw track. "Don't worry Sir -I'll see what's wrong" says the young Fozzy (I think I still had hair then).

I exit the OSC leaving YofS, Tfc and the TOT to placate the now fuming Charlie Oscar. Follow the cable (in the dark) across the field to where I remember the SCRAT det is. Get to end of cable to find it disconnected and no det!

As my eyes adapt to the dark - I see SCRAT down by the Portaloo about 50 metres away. "WTF?" says I. Run over to the det and start to have a "full and frank exchange of views" with the operator.

It transpired that she was busting for a sh*te and didn't want to leave the crypto, so she unplugged the subset connection and drove the det down to the bog! Right in the middle of the Cmdrs conf call too

The pan bash rota just wrote itself after that.