new member PHANTOM MAN

Greetings engineers, one and all. My name is Richard Elvin and this is my very first post on any type of forum. Please bear with me as I thought it would be appropriate to let fellow members have an idea of were I've been, were I am now, and were I hope? I shall be going in the near future,hopefully ? with the help of this forum, some help, advise, opinions, successes, disasters, laughs, jokes and more laughs !

Let me just give you a quick explanation of this thread name PHANTOM MAN, as some of you my have already guessed, I am ex Royal Air Force, 26 years man and boy so to speak, and a further 6 years working for them in a civilian capacity. For 22 of those glorious years I worked on the McDonnell Douglas FGR 2 Phantom aircraft. Over those 22 years I had a phenomenal love / hate relationship with this ,in my opinion, great airplane, and I was very sorry to have to do my last 4 years service on the Tornado F3 fleet. So that explains the thread name, and no doubt I will return to this period of my career as my story continues.

My main passion in life so far is engineering, specifically, " BRITISH " engineering in all its former and some times modern glory, and yes, I know I worked on an American aircraft for 22 years,but that's where " Her Majesty " sent me !!, I had very little choice in the matter !!

My second passion is course fishing, I find it a great way to have a reality check and get my head sorted out to face the rigors of life. Unfortunately, 2 years ago I managed ( all on my own I might add! ) to contract Viral Encephalitis, a really clever little bug that in the space of being sat at the the table with my wife ( bless her !! ) having a cup of coffee, to 20 mins later being air lifted in a coma, in an air ambulance ( thank god for them ) on to a life support machine for a few days whilst the great doctors tried to figure out what had happened to me.

Fortunately they did figure out what the problem was, but when they bought me out of the coma I was paralysed from the neck down, and when asked cognitive questions I thought Charles1 was on the throne, and that I had been born some time in the 1920's ! Now I consider myself to be old,but not that old !!.To cut a very long story short , over a period of 2 weeks I regained most of my mobility, but found that the virus had done its secondary job and that is to destroy / degrade my short term memory capability, which I now find a real pain in the xxx

Having been through that, I now have a total new perspective on life, I was very lucky, due totally to my wife's quick thinking, the response of first responders, ambulance crews, the air ambulance guys, all the doctors involved and most important of all, my family and friends for all the support and kindness during a really " crap " two weeks of my life. And, I don't remember a thing about it !

This is now my creed: If I haven't learnt any thing new today, I have wasted a day !

Any way gentlemen, that's the sob story over ( cries of relief in the background from people reading this dirge !! ) its now time to retire for the night. If any body is reading this splurge, thank you for doing so, I'm now going to hit the create thread button, and I've absolutely no idea if its going to work, I will carry on the ( hopefully ) this thread tomorrow, talk to you then.Richard.

Welcome Richard, as a recent new member myself. You will find this forum fun and very helpful, whatever the query someone will have an answer.

Welcome Richard,

The centreline Recce Pack for the Phantom was one of mine! Hope it did not cause your problems! As with all Forums there will be times when you would rather not read something, but in general most here are reasonably sane and occasionaly obsessive.

KWIL, are you responsible for anything else? I'm thinking of the battery location as something to moan about.

Martin

Purely within the Recce Pack, data recording, IR and some camera work.

Welcome Richard,

I remember when a Phantom went full reheat directly overhead once. I was standing on a bog in the Dyfi estuary, so I am not exaggerating when I say the world shook!

Neil

I was in Germany and we were on exercise and alongside a runway with all our trucks spread about and I was walking towards one truck and looked up and could see a Phantom turning towards the runway and I knew he was going to do a low level flyby, I also knew that we had aerials strung about for our radio sets and if he came low he would hit them.

What to do? so I ran out on the tarmac and started waving my arms to wave him off, luckily he saw me and pulled out and turned away.but still went past down the other side of the runway at full blatt, quite noisy!

Howdy, Mates. I spent 12 years in Phantom (American!) front seats and there was no better aircraft at high speed and low altitude, steady as a rock. Thanks to all for stirring the memories.

Richard, I think you'v hit a spot here. Just in case, there is a quite active aviation thread on here, there are quite a number of aviation nuts on the forum.

Ian S C

Welcome Richard; nice to read about your background. As said there are many members on here who are most willing to help, myself included so never be afraid to ask, or offer advice.

George.

Welcome Richard from another ex Phantom Phixer; only seven and a half years in my case, in the flatlands of Lincolnshire until '82. You don't say anything about swarf making.

Alan

Gentlemen, in reply to all who read my first ever post, sincerely , I thank you all for your very kind comments. I will carry on and try to bring you guys up to date as to were I am now and I promise to try and keep it as short as possible so that we can get to the real reason why I joined this web site. After leaving the RAF in 1995 as a Chief Technician in the trade of Flight Systems, but also cross trained in Radar and Air Comms and then working at RAF Cranwell for six years in a civilian capacity, by 2001 I had had enough of electronics and I managed to get a job as an engineering inspector at a small company specializing in GRP bespoke panels for the railway sector. I year later, I received a very mysterious phone call from a guy who had seen my CV and asked if I would be interested in forming a company specializing in the design and production of remotely controlled anti personnel mine clearing machines.

This guy who was also ex RAF, wondered why in the 21st century, people were still on their hands and knees poking sticks in the ground trying to find and dispose of land mines, and once again to cut a very long story short, I joined him in this venture and spent the next five amazing years designing and developing the two prototype machines and then producing two pre production machines and then taking them out to Bosnia to validate all our ideas and technique. At this point I can honestly say that I have the worlds finest hang over cure, just spend 5 minutes in a mine field !!!. It will concentrate your mind in a nano second. I will also state, that after a nuke, an anti personnel land mine is the most devastating weapon in the world. And that guys,brings me round full circle to were I am now,apart from the restoration, over a twenty five year period, of over 150 British cars ( mostly MG's I am an MG MAN !!) and becoming at the age of 17 along with my identical twin brother Ray Elvin, the youngest ever members of the British SMAE FAI 2,5cc Team Race team to participate in the world championships, so I've been quite? busy over the years!

And now guys, the fun??? starts, because tomorrow I am driving from Lincolnshire down to Bristol to pick up my first MYFORD ML7, for restoration, is any body out there going to tell me to walk back into a mine field for a reality check? I hope to chronicle ( if I can figure out how to post pictures ) my progress on the restoration of this object of my present desires ( will the affair last I ask myself, time will tell ! )

Talk to you all soon, Richard.

Richard, you have a PM.

HELLO from another ex Phantom phixer!

Also a new model engineer! Just getting my workshop up and running, getting lots of advice from Dad, who spend 46 years as a machine shop foreman, unfortnately he is not in such a good physical condition these days, so advice is as far as his help can go.

My Phantom experience was only 4 years, on FG1's on 43 Squadron at Leuchars.

Joined the RAF in 1974 as an apprentice at Halton, (124th entry), which makes me one of Trenchard's 'brats'.

Left in 1985, now working in the nuclear industry, but not in engineering.

Welcome Keith!

So you bought a Myford eh? Thats a right flippin' minefield...

Great to see you here, this forum is full of like minded types.

From an ex Bucc / Kipper Fleet (Nimrod) man...

Hi all,

reading this makes me think of what a boring life I've had.......as for the memory loss Richard it come's to us all but mostly it just creeps up on you.....

I'm sorry for the way it happened to you but at least your here to tell the tale....

Best of luck for the future and welcome to the forum....

clogs

I doubt very much whether your life has been boring. I've been all over the world and am yet to meet anyone, male or female, that I'd consider boring. We all have our story.