"Make you cockerel crow" and other obsolete aviations terms

RussR

RussR

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I'm reading a book about the early use of radar in WW2, and came across this fun gem:

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"Make your cockerel crow" pretty clearly became "squawk your parrot" and then "squawk". Fun.

Any other obsolete terms, specifically ones that sound ridiculously quaint to us now?

(Oh, and I do find that second paragraph pretty fascinating too. Can you imagine signing up for the military, only to be told your job is going to be riding a stationary bike to turn a radar?)
 
Well, “over the fence” has been occasionally defined in interesting ways.

“Back in my day,” we used the “inner knob” and “outer knob” on radios.
 
Balls To The Wall is a Naval term, not aviation. Referred to the round weights of the steam flow of
centrifugal governor. All the way full flow of steam, the balls were all the way out, next to the boiler room wall.
 
Blind Robins. Early aviators who got caught on top of a thick layer, and descended through to
VFR conditions below. This was before gyro instruments. You had to live to tell the tale to join the exclusive group.

I met a group of about a dozen, having a very private party, all were many decades older than I. I am now 90, so they are all gone now.
 
Bought the farm. Crashed fatally,

Augured In, spun to the ground, fatally.
 
Some of these aren't obsolete, sadly...
 
The example of balls to the wall, aviation, is not convincing. The Boeing example has spool shaped spacers, to fit fingers.

The GA version is familiar to me, from Cessna's Pipers, and Beechcraft, but those are about one quarter as thick as they are wide, so no balls there.

Definitely never heard a pilot refer to the panel as the wall.

Except maybe Snoopy. :)
 
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If I use any of these at work, I will be called to HR...
 
VOR, ILS, NDB, ADF, TACAN, DME, PAR, ASR… dang, I feel old.

The Break! ARGGGGG

Tools

Who has actually used IFF equipment in a jet.
 
"Cool your jets."

I haven't heard "Wilco" for a while.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Whiskey compass
 
Tally Ho when you spotted the reported traffic from ATC radar.

No Joy, if you did not find the other aircraft, often resulting in a new direction and distance.


Talley Ho was adopted from the Fighter squadrons, first pilot who saw enemy aircraft or ground targets announced direction, and when wingmen verified, Talley Ho was the Go signal.
 
The Whole Nine Yards comes from the ammo bays in WW 2 fighters, which held 9 yards of ammo. A returning pilot would report to the armorer that he had used the Whole NIne Yards, if the ammo had been used up.

Edited to add:

The importance of this information was that if some ammo remained, additional could be linked to the remaining belt.

If none remained, a more difficult process to open the feed of the gun itself, and rethread the new belt, sometimes requiring a second person to achieve quickly.

The ammo room had pre assembled, exact "9 yard" strings, length of which varied according to the specific aircraft. The armorer loaded his cart with the proper number of strings, and completed his service in one trip.
 
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geezer said:
The example of balls to the wall, aviation, is not convincing. The Boeing example has spool shaped spacers, to fit fingers.

The GA version is familiar to me, from Cessna's Pipers, and Beechcraft, but those are about one quarter as thick as they are wide, so no balls there.
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The previous stuff I've seen on the etymology of "balls to the wall" said it came from birds like the DC-3, where there were balls on top of the levers. Seems much more plausible in that context than the pictures given on wiktionary.
geezer said:
Definitely never heard a pilot refer to the panel as the wall.
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"Bob firewalled the throttles..." Firewall. Wall.
wanttaja said:
I haven't heard "Wilco" for a while.
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Really? I use that one all the time.
 
geezer said:
The Whole Nine Yards comes from the ammo bays in WW 2 fighters, which held 9 yards of ammo. A returning pilot would report to the armorer that he had used the Whole NIne Yards, if the ammo had been used up.
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Check the Wikipedia entry. It traces the saying to 1855.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Pugs said:
Sweet parrot, sweet India switch strike :)
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“Cease Buzzer.” Actually just bought that book recently. Not sure if you worked with the author.
 
geezer said:
The Whole Nine Yards comes from the ammo bays in WW 2 fighters, which held 9 yards of ammo. A returning pilot would report to the armorer that he had used the Whole NIne Yards, if the ammo had been used up.
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That phrase was first used in the mid 19th century, and continued in use before the world wars.
 
geezer said:
Balls To The Wall is a Naval term, not aviation. Referred to the round weights of the steam flow of
centrifugal governor. All the way full flow of steam, the balls were all the way out, next to the boiler room wall.
Click to expand...
I believe you're conflating the term "Balls Out" with "Balls to the Wall" even though they mean the same thing. Running "Balls Out" was for steam engines in general, and specifically referenced the "fly ball" engine governor. Gardner fly-ball governors where fairly popular (Gardner company is known today as Gardner Denver and is very prevalent in industrial and energy manufacturing). When the balls were flared out to the maximum, you were running "balls out".

Balls to the wall is likely attributed to aviation or naval use when the throttle balls were pushed fully forward to the instrument panel or throttle quadrant wall.

1725979614986.png
 
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There are many whole nine yards connections, but the aviation one is pretty clear.

What does the whole 9 yards mean urban dictionary?

Urban Dictionary: Whole nine yards. Phrase equivalent to "Everything that is available." Has nothing to do with football. In fact, the phrase comes from the fact that fighter planes are equipped with belt-fed machine guns. When the belts are laid out before loading, they measure nine yards in length.Jun 28, 2021



The Whole Nine Yards | Meaning & Origin - QuillBot

Where does the expression ''the whole nine yards'' come from? The bullets for the machine guns used in American combat planes of WW2 and since were in chains twenty-seven feet in length. Thus if a pilot was able to fire all his bullets off at one target he was said to have given his adversary 'the full nine yards'.
 
geezer said:
There are many whole nine yards connections, but the aviation one is pretty clear.
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Except as several of us have pointed out, the saying dates from well before the invention of aircraft, much less WWII. To quote Wikipedia, "Its first usage was the punch line of an 1855 Indiana comedic short story titled "The Judge's Big Shirt"."

But the lengths are actually pretty close. Note the link of .50 caliber brass. The rounds are about an inch apart. A P-51 carried about 300 rounds per gun, so a full belt would have been 300 inches, or about 8.3 yards.
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Of course, most British fighters carried .30 caliber guns. Even then, though, they only carried 300 or 350 rounds per gun. The 350-round belts would have been a bit over seven yards in length.
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Of course, all this is depending on the kind of linking system.

The other potential sources of the phrase involve the amount of cloth needed to make a suit for a funeral, or the physical yard on the mast of a full-rigged ship. Wikipedia goes through these and other potential sources.

Ron Wanttaja
 
luvflyin said:
What is Sweet Parrot? What do you do? Strangle your Parrot used to be a thing.
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The whole sentence means two different transponder/IFF modes are working and he's changing comm frequencies.

Nauga,
squawking and talking
 
Velocity173 said:
“Cease Buzzer.” Actually just bought that book recently. Not sure if you worked with the author.
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Yep. Knew him. He was my buddies pilot in VAQ-137 on his 2nd cruise. Back in the day everyone pretty much knew everyone in the Prowler community at Whidbey Island. It was a small community.
 
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