Engineering excellence

As I dangled from a 3-story high roof top, screaming like a girl, I came to a single – awful conclusion; I’m a rubbish electrician.

It had taken quite a few years to get to this revelation; the Navy had supposedly trained me, some time ago, to quite a high standard in electrical engineering principles. I’d worked on some frighteningly complex weapons systems and tackled some very challenging faults on a surprisingly diverse set of military equipment.

As I held tight onto the safety rail, which was also acting as the ‘ground’ towards which the 220 Volts were using me as a motorway, I began to desperately try and remember if I’d ever actually fixed any of those systems on my own. Had I ever actually resolved any of those faults or understood any of the wiring diagrams I had studied? The answer was to be as shocking as the AC that was currently sparking through my fingers – NO.

On the Ark Royal I’d been thrown out of a small compartment by 5000 Volts, whilst trying to fine tune a decoy system, much to the amusement of the Leading hand who was supposed to be supervising. On another day I managed to whack the big off switch to the Aircraft Carriers main systems computer when the ship lurched over for a take off and I bumped into the control panel. I was on auto in the middle of the night, so I completely failed to notice the room go quiet. I’d just finished signing the log to say everything was OK and was leaving the room when, half the senior engineering team came hurtling along the passageway towards me screaming. I believe the Harrier made a successful take off in the end, even without the ships sensors on line.

As a spark of electricity left a deep red scar on my forehead I remembered how many hours I’d spent in the Ops room of H.M.S. Coventry trying to fix the Captains mini RADAR display. I was cursing and screaming as every jolt of electricity that surrounded the tuning board lifted my hand up so fast I smacked myself in the face. I never did get it aligned. Later I managed to crash this ship’s main control computer. This time it was my own section. This time I should have known better. The Ops room were closed up working quite a high level air attack scenario, the RAF were doing their thing, coming up close on a bombing run. Meanwhile, downstairs in the Computer room I was thoughtfully showing the young WREN on the section how the mains to back up power switchover works. The power dropped, thinking with lightning speed I shouted, “ Leg it!” and as she disappeared down the passageway, I sped into the compartment to begin the reload procedure just as the whole world and it’s brother came running in to see what was happening. I’m somewhat ashamed to say I accepted full credit for being so fast at getting the reload going after this completely inexplicable crash.

Here I was then, about to fall off the roof of our accommodation block in the middle of a hot Neapolitan summer, just because I’d decided to set up some lighting for a party. It should have been straightforward; the flat roof was a perfect venue for a quality Italian hero costumed night, with hot dogs and Peroni. I’d rigged up the lights and had climbed over the safety rail to pass down the extension lead through a window below. I was hanging onto the rail with my right hand to dangle the lead from my left, casually holding the exposed plug metal. I heard a shout from below, “do you want me to plug it in?” My head, with its City & Guilds and many years experience, said “NO!” My mouth, with its many more years experience of foot swallowing, shouted “YES!” The power surged across my body, my left hand clamped tightly around the plug – unable to let go, burning a detailed picture of the two-pin plug into my flesh that would take months to heal. My screams started to draw quite a large crowd of people from a few of the different forces around us on the NATO base I called home. For a brief moment I must have let go of the safety rail, just for long enough to break the circuit and allow my hand to release the plug, it took an Olympic standard dive back over the rail, and I was safe.

The party, happily, was a success and all attending had much amusement at my electrical prowess. My confidence came back and I forgot all about my conclusion. I settled back into my work, which my boss thought a bit of a shame later on as a Sea Dart missile went missing, on an extremely high profile test firing, but that is a very different story.