Page 86 - Demo

82pilots drew the sonobuoys plot on a piece of paper which we fitted in front of the instrument coaming. As we became more experienced, we realised that sometimes just listening to the operators and looking at our rough sketch we could see before the navs realised, that we were getting behind the submarine. On several occasions when I was captain, I told the navs to jump several miles down the projected submarine track and lay a new barrier. They were always surprised when almost immediately we picked up the submarine again.All crews loved these sorties. At the off task time you would drop predesignated numbered buoy to hand over to the next crew on task. As you climbed away you really hoped for a strong Doppler shift and always wanted to be better than the crew you had taken over from. Of course, the handover was covert and you never saw the other aircraft. These tracking sorties could go on for several days and were very expensive in aircraft hours. When a crew knew it was going on they all begged to be tasked on it. But eventually we would be told that we were going to stop and that your sortie would be the last. If you were last you could of course still monitor the buoys as you climbed out. Suddenly, the operator might cry out %u201cthe tape is now top secret%u201d. There would be a scurry as the AEO covered everything up as the rest of the crew could not see it. What had happened is that we had picked up a RN submarine that had now taken over the tracking. However, much of that was in the future.In August we went to Akrotiri for 3 days. We didn%u2019t appear to have to do much while we were there, but I can remember sitting on the beach with one of my old Cranwell friends and his wife one afternoon. By now Pete Reddy had taken over as first pilot from Mike Black. Domestically I had a slight problem. Gabby had not passed her driving test but was taking it on the day we departed. If she failed, she would have to stay in the mess while I was away as she would not be able to get to