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By: - 4th April 2012 at 23:31 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
At. Readiness every time
By: - 5th April 2012 at 08:09 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
"IN" meaning it may happen and they be sitting around all day with nothing happening.. "AT" meaning theres a high probability of what your expecting to happen will happen with great immediacy.
Air Sea Rescue helicopter crews wait around "in" readiness waiting for the call to standby and be "at" readiness in case a major event that is happening may require them to be there. they may not always scramble but the crew and aircraft would be made ready.
in some events the call obviously leads to a scramble straight away.
By: - 5th April 2012 at 08:09 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
In readiness (for an action) is correct English
At (a state of) readiness would have been the condition of the pilots
in their deckchairs
Long time since I was doing O level English though!
By: - 5th April 2012 at 08:23 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Thanks.
Conclusion: not crazy.
By: - 5th April 2012 at 08:29 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
At readiness for us was, sat in cockpit, trolley acc plugged in, but everything switched off, two groundcrew sheltering under the wing, waiting to unplug the trolley acc and pull out the chocks as soon as we had started up. The scramble telecom cable plugged in to the rear of the aircraft pulled out as we taxied away from the ORP. All waiting to hear the scramble call when we were allowed two minutes to get started, swing onto the runway and get airbourne. Normally took about 90 secs.
Normally we sat like that for about two hours and then would be told to get airbourne to do some sort of exercise, while the next pair of crews got into place on the ORP. (ORP = Operations Readiness Platform, a layby at the end of the runway.)
By: - 5th April 2012 at 09:31 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Umm...airborne, I think!
A.Pedant
By: - 5th April 2012 at 13:47 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Have it your way Pedant, O level English hadn't been invented when I had the 3Rs drummed into me :D:D
Racking what few memory cells left to me I realised that we had two states of readiness. 2 minute Cockpit Readiness as described above, and 4 minute Readiness, which entailed sitting in the hut adjacent the ORP, fully kitted up ready to run out to aircraft, similar to action in the old films.
By: - 5th April 2012 at 19:16 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
At Readiness :)
It can clearly be seen on this RAF 'Tote' board
http://www.globalaviationresource.com/battleofbritain/reports/41sqn/images/25.jpg
By: - 5th April 2012 at 19:59 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Grammatically correct equals: "At readiness" eg. Present.
Grammatically correct equals: "In readiness" eg. Future
John Green
By: - 6th April 2012 at 09:47 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Oh dear!
I can still just visualise Miss Smith attempting to ram "English Language" into us yokels. :o Although it was close to 70 years ago. :(
Posts: 1,318
By: DCK - 4th April 2012 at 22:14
I'm puzzled. Thought it was "at readiness" - Mae-West on, sitting in chairs outside a Nissen hut waiting for that scramble.
Not once did I read "in readiness".
Have I been blind?