I want to say something here about lunch.  I like to eat and we had two mines that put on an exceptional feed at lunch time.  The only problem was, getting the guys in the chopper to acknowledge that it was lunch time.  If it was up to them they would probably fly right through lunch and just make it up with a big steak later that night at the Holiday Inn where they stayed for their three days.  I didn't have that waiting for me so I wanted lunch.
    If the guys were not deeply involved in conversation I could usually mention to them that it was lunch time and they would take the hint and land.  If they were in a heated debate about something and it was obvious that we were going to miss lunch because of it, I just could not  butt into their conversation but something had to be done.  That something was the circuit breaker for the "master caution" system.  That one circuit breaker controlled the electricity to all the emergency malfunction warning horns on the ship.  I would simple wait until the ship's clock hit 12:00 noon then I would reach up and pull that circuit breaker and push it back in.  That momentary loss of electricity would then be sensed by the "master caution" system as an "engine out" and every warning horn in the ship would go off for an instant then reset.  It always got their immediate attention and silence would follow.  When asked what had just happened I would simply say, "lunch alert" and point at the ship's clock.  It never failed to remind them that it was lunch time.
     After we had landed for lunch though there was another problem and that was that I was always the last to eat.  The ship required a 2 minute engine cool down period so when I got in sometimes there was little left to choose from.  Most of the time the guys were good about that but there were times when they overfilled their plates and left me with very little.  I would usually give them "the look" and resolve myself to the fact that at least I had something.
     There was one other thing that I did on occasion to shame them a little so that they would think about it next time.  While they were still in the office I would mossy out to the ship and shorten every one of their seat belts by about an inch.  I would then mossy back in and wait for them as usual.  It was sometimes hard to keep a straight face when they got back in to leave and found that they had evidently eaten so much that their seat belts were now just a tad tight.  When the first one said something about it that was my cue to get a zinger in.  I would then tell them I didn't have that problem because there was not much left by the time I got in.  They got the message.

The End