"All together now..."

The RAF (like most large organisations - and particularly the military) love acronyms.  Abbreviations.  TLA's (That's "Three Letter Abbreviations" - Ohhhh the irony).

And one of the worst areas I have come across is the Fast Jet world, particularly the Tornado fleet. Hundreds of TLA' - and many with more than three letters.

My favourite was the DINCDU. Or "Dinky-do" as we pronounced it.  This stood for the Dual Inertial Naviagation Control and Display Unit. It controlled the navigation system of the aircraft, and was a fairly reliable bit of kit, but was good for a wind up.

Here's one for you to try out,

Walk into Rect's Control and see that there's a snag on one of the jets that has something - anything - to do with the Nav system.  Stand and wait for the aircrew to come in so you can do the de-breif of the snag and ask him loads of questions to try to and get an idea of the fault - just like a garage mechanic would do if you took your car in for a "knocking noise".

The Navigator will come in and tell you what's wrong.  You'd ask serious questions - "Did you recycle the system?" "Did you get any fault lights on the warning system?" "Did the Dinky-do show any fault codes?"

You'd get serious and workman like answers.

And then the Navigator would ask - "What do you think is wrong?"

You'd ponder for a second or two..."Hmmmmmmm". Check the fault codes in your Gen Book, and then reply...

"It's probably the Duck-Do."

"Duck-Do? What does that do?

All together now... "QUACK QUACK!"

(Sorry...)