The last time I flew from SAN to BALT I brought my Pro-107 iScan that doesn't even look like a scanner
with it's short antenna and lack of a traditional keypad with me in my carry-on. I had earbuds and since
I had a window seat and family next to me I decided to do a little signal stalker while waiting for our push call,
The flight attendants made a least 89 trips up and down the aisles and did not spot my iScan
hidding under my leg on the seat cushon feeding to my earbud wire under my shirt to my hidden ear.
So I'm glad that I was monitoring because the next thing I know the ground crew was frantic when they called out
that our plane could NOT take off because of major leak of hydraulic fluid gushing out of the
left landing gear comparment. So our push back call was canceled and next thing I know the pilot was on his
cell phone making several trips from the cockpit to the outside of the front door of the 737-300 SWA jet.
By then I slipped one of the earbuds to my brother in law so he could hear all the drama unfold about how bad our leak was.
We both got a kick out of the crew coming on the intercom with the official annoucement "Ladies and Gentleman we are expiriencing
a "MINOR" technical problem at this time and we ask for your patience and we hope to get under way soon." So much for our 6am
take off time. I had picked up the Southwest Maint ground crew saying that there was no o-ring in stock here in SAT
and that they would have to fly in some mechanics with a 60 cent o-ring on the next flight in from their Dallas LUV field.
An hour later the restless natives were deplaned. We watch from the terminal gate windows as the mechanics replaced
the hydraulic o-ring seal and pressure checked the system OK. A cool 4 hours later at 10am minus alot of passengers
that were rerouted on other flights we were then airborne without further interuptions. I am VERY thankfull that I was in the know
as they say and that the ground crew spotted that problem in the pitch darkness outside or else we might have take off
with this masive leak and perhaps then had a crippled jet with either no ability to control flaps and rudder
or put down the landing gear once we got to our destination. I had visions in those old WWII movies
of the crew having to hand crank down to lock our landing gear in place or worse a "no flap landing"
What did this rule breaker learn that day. Hmm, I found the Southwest-Maint freq 460.6625 w/371 DCS
and got to hear our pilot talk with ARTCC-HoustonZHU on 126.4250 and later various other A/D freqs.
One thing I thought was ingenius on my part while in flight about 8 miles up was I used the NOAA-WX
service to nicely identify our basic location. As the WX channel would say the names of the various cities
in their waether forecasts I could easily track our flight progress just for kicks.
I'd take my Pro-107 iScan that lQQks like some kind of funky MP3 player to travel with me again ... anytime
)
