One of the more critical skills for a sound designer to have is good business/people skills. This is most directly shown when you do what you have to do to gain access to certain locations/vehicles/events in order to record them.
this thread is for those stories.
Please post stories here about what you had to do/pay/say to gain access to something for the purposes of recording it. Even stories of failure to gain access would be fun to see
They don't have to be crazy over the top things (though those would be cool), but even regular run of the mill stories so that the rest of us can see what does and does not work.