2 weekends ago now (gee time flies) we pulled the R4D out of the hangar at the end of winter maintenance (and boy do those cowl flaps that Marty Case redid the bushings on look nice!
) to do the leak checks and engine runs to "clean out" the engines after sitting idle for 4 months. Other than getting not one, but two oil smoke baths as the fire watch, we also had several gentlemen who flew in from Denton watching the whole thing. One of them asked me why our crew chief (Robert) tied down the tail of the aircraft even though the plane was chocked and the crew had the brakes applied. I was surprised they even noticed, but then again, they're pilots, so I guess I shouldn'e be surprised.
It was nice to see that they appreciated that we were taking those precautions though. Too many people just figure chocks and holding the brakes are enough and as we've seen from previous posts, it's not.