Page 69 - Demo

65aircraft that had been hit in a strike at some time in the past. I think the wall around was to disguise the fact that aircraft had been destroyed but as the tails were sitting up over the top of the wall it appeared rather pointless. When we arrived some Egyptian ground crew came aboardand sprayed us all with an insecticide which we were not overly pleased about. At the same time, they pulled petrol hoses over the engines and started refuelling. As the exhaust stubs were pretty much red hot after landing this again was worrying but we could not stop them. Also, the tip tanks were pressurised but for some reason the pressure had not dissipated. We desperately waved to warn them but as we were locked in the could not hear us. They found out when one of them unlocked the filler cap and it shot about 20 ft into the air, luckily not knocking him off the wing. Eventually we were allowed out and Paddy went off to check the air traffic control and the nav went to file our next flight plan. I just stayed with the aircraft which was parked next to a Russian Cargo aircraft. In due course everyone came wandering back and I started doing my external checks of the aircraft. An Egyptian guard had been left with the aircraft and as I walked past him, he pulled out his pistol, it was a big revolver. He broke it open and showed me that it was loaded, closed it up and pointed it at me. I thought the best thing to do was just to get on with my checks, which included a pull up to see into the front of the engine and then carried on around until all was checked. They had told us that we could not start our engines until we had departure clearance,but we pointed out that it took about 30 minutes from starting the engines to being ready to depart and by then the clearance would not be valid. It turned out that they would not be able to hear Cairo if the engines were running and so we agreed to leave a siggy outside the control tower. When we were ready to go, we would get him to get the clearance and then run back to us and get in. To make it all a bit more