All I can say is, what I said in the title. Man, he was close! Hope he's all right.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...terjet-crashes

I saw something like this once upon a time in Del Rio, Texas, when a Thunderbird pilot pulled the wings off his F-100 Super Saber. He was going up at the time though.

- Jack

 

Roger that, Jack.

Canuckistanians, eh? What can I say?

There goes our Airforce budget for the year.

What's the deductible on one of those things, anyway?

That's a reliable plane - wonder what went wrong?

We also be tough boogers - so I think he'll be alright - surely do hope so.

MGD

 

That's close..........

 

Holy Crap!

 

lucky mother

 

that 2nd pic is eerie.

 

Look at how bowed the pilots head is as the ejectors fire (first picture). A lot of Gs there, probably enough to kill him right there.

 

He might need to change his underware.

 

That reminds me of the old adage, " He who hesitates is lost!"

Speaking of eerie, we have Red Flag going here, and watching the Migs doing touch and go's at our airport is strange.

 

Interesting you saw that. I pointed it out to Janet when I found these pictures, and was telling her you have to sit erect, head back against the headrest and chin tucked in before ejecting. He had to have a hell of a whiplash injury.

I can't recall, but does the FA-18 use a D-handle between your legs or the "armrest" style ejection handle? I never liked the D-handle, because it seemed to me you'd naturally bend over to grab it, then maybe not get back into position in time.

- Jack

 

Here's a link to a video of the crash. He was operating at very low airspeed (high angle of attack) and it looks to me like he "got behind the power curve". You don't see this often, but if you fly a plane slow enough, the drag due to lift increases to the point that it drops into a region in the flight envelope where the power available is less than the power required to maintain flight. The only thing that's going to save you at this point is an increase in speed, which you can only get by diving (since there's not enough power left to do it). He had no room for a dive, of course.

If you watch the video, the plane starts skidding sideways (no control authority). At this point, the pilot must have realized he'd lost it and made the decision to eject.

I have to say it looks very much like pilot error to me. This is a common maneuver in airshows, but it's up to the pilot to keep his airspeed high enough that he doesn't get into the "behind the power curve" region.

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2...ash.globalnews

- Jack

 

Crazy. I am working at Peterson AFB this week. We had some guys surveying on a roof, they heard a couple of sirens, and saw several fire trucks headed for the flight line. Turns out a lawndart (F-16) had an issue and had to ditch his external fuel tank over farmland and make an emergency landing. He landed safely... never heard what the problem was...

 

Agreed- pilot error, but the skidding sideways was the right wing losing lift, a simple stall it seems. Overcorrecting to the left, the right ailervator drops, acting as quite a big speed brake. Outboard of the wing stalls first as always, and drops.

 

Never flown a jet, but I have 600 hours in a Decathlon, and this looks like a case of misjudged (density) altitude. He didn't have enough speed to stop the descent and couldn't let it get any lower at the current rate of descent, had no choice but to keep pulling back, stalled, right wing dropped and bailed. I have noticed that with the very high heat and humidity lately, that my plane is taking more runway to land and more speed to complete maneuvers, perhaps that's what tripped up this unlucky fellow. Canadians are probably used to colder, more dense air.

This actually confuses a lot of pilots when landing at high altitude airports or in very hot and humid conditions. Your gauges, the aispeed indicator, read the same but your ground speed is much faster relative to a low density altitude landing or maneuver. If you're using your eyeballs to judge a landing approach at high density altitude when you are used to sea level, you will come in too slow and make a hard landing. If this fellow was using ground reference to judge his speed and not his airspeed indicator, then that would explain his predicament. Would've worked perfectly if it was 30 degrees colder.

PS: Maybe one of the mods can figure out why my post counter is stuck on 79? Thanks.

 

Yes and no. I agree, the aircraft ultimately gets into a stall, but I feel the likely cause is insufficient power for the induced drag. If the power had been available, he'd have just goosed it, reducing the lift required and induced drag and never entered the stall region.

Next, the wing tip doesn't stall first. Aircraft are not designed that way. The wing can be "twisted" either actually or aerodynamically to cause the wing root to stall first, so that you DO maintain control authority when approaching a full stall. There are other ways to insure the root area stalls first too, such as inboard spoilers and stall strakes. The last thing you want is control loss or control reversal at high angle of attack (which would be caused by tip stall). You also have a rudder that doesn't lose effectiveness in this region.

But, if he's gotten so slow that there's not enough power to speed up again, he just starts going slower. At this point, the aircraft has all the flying characteristics of a brick, and, there is ultimately a full stall. But, the plane was doomed before the stall occurred. It happened as soon as the thrust required exceeded the thrust available. A general aviation aircraft can't really enter this region, it stalls first. I know it sounds like I'm splitting hairs here, but I'm not. You maintain full control authority as you fall behind the power curve, so there's no "stall warning", just a sudden loss of airspeed that you cannot correct with power.

There's an old film clip that was required viewing for all new Air Force pilots (and may still be). It's called the "Sabre Dance". I'm including a link to the last few seconds of it below, and there are other, similar films. An F-100 Super Sabre was trying to go-around from an aborted landing and got into this same condition. His nose gets higher and higher and at some point, the pilot lights the burner. The plane was really under control through all this, but continues to slow down. Ultimately, it DOES experience a full stall and turns sideways, almost exactly like this one. The end result was the same, with one big difference: The Hun driver did not punch out.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga...3-11_F_100.WMV

- Jack