Neptunus Lex

A Vermont firm aims to reduce certain kinds of flight mishaps to a trickle:

(A) Vermont company has come up with a 21st-century solution that replaces unwieldy “piddle packs” and painful waits with a system that pilots can use without unstrapping themselves from their seats.

“Pilots have many responsibilities during a mission, maintaining their sights, monitoring fuel, navigating the aircraft and monitoring their weapons systems — and they gotta go so bad they can hardly think,” said Mark Harvie, president of Omni Medical Inc. “This takes care of that problem for them,” he said.

The system, called the Advanced Mission Extender Device, uses special underwear equipped with a hose linked to a pump the size of a paperback book that drains urine into a collection bag.

The men’s model uses a pouch; the women’s has something that resembles a sanitary napkin.

Would have certainly helped me out, a few years back.

Which reminds me of the story about escorting the female Prowler pilot and her crew up into Iraq’s southern no-fly zone, having to use not one but two (both!) piddle packs on the flight, balancing the “load” from one to the other as herself stepped up in starboard parade to see what the h3ll I was doing in the cockpit there, being cleared for an early recovery to the ship and barely having time to square everything away, only to realize after my overhead break, approach, landing (OK-3 wire, natch), taxi, shut down and climb down from the jet that I hadn’t quite stowed everything for sea.

Franks and beans!