The light pole, wings sharpened as knives

The incident takes place during night practices of GCA with the C.8-18 airplane when he flew lower than what he was supposed to during the final part  of the GCA and almost at the head of the runway, he took with him electrical wires including the light pole, near the runway.

Fortunately, nothing happened, except the scare and the light damage caused to the airplane and leaving part of the Base and some houses nearby without electrical power.

The airplane was sent to Maintenance, but no before it was baptized “el Basilio”, because it was the night of San Basilio when it happened.

The airplane spent a long time in the Maintenance barracks, to repair the wing and for cannibalization, and when it was ready to fly, the pilots were surprised to see the repairs to the wing when they were doing the preflight inspection.

The notches that the cables had put on the front of the wing, ha disappeared by sharpening, filing and sliming, reducing the edge until it was converted in a new sharpened edge. This edge was not perfectly aligned with the rest of the wing’s side but it was within the specifications and dimensions as written in the manual.

Even so “El Basilio” continued flying with that sharpened edge that looked like a botch-up piece of work until it was turned over to Greece.