Turbine Auto Restart Fire
 

Jet was low when he had a flame-out. Made a successful emergency landing but did not shut the turbine off by lowering the trim, so turbine was in restart mode and tried to restart on the ground resulting in a fire that could not be extinguished.

Makes me wonder about this feature. One thing for sure, if the turbine quits on it's own and you want it to stay off, remember to lower the trim and make sure it stays off.

Sorry to hear about that. But in hind-sight... you are right. If the engine shuts down for an issue... an unsupervised re-start may not be a good thing. I only have one engine with that feature... I think I will make sure it's turned off.

This scenario brought up many discussions when we saw that feature for the first time on the foamy jets at a jet rally a year or two ago. I believe Gaspar was asked if he was going to incorporate this feature into his ECU/turbines and his reply was "no" for safety reasons. The reality is that it could save your plane or cause more devastation on the ground as a deadstick crash may not even have a fire whereas a restart a few hundred feet up can cause a totally uncontrollable fireball that's falling out of the sky.

You can turn the feature on or off on the new KingTech turbines and I believe that is what was in the F-35 prototype shown in the video.

Please, please, please for this type of fire, water is best. CO2 is only for the turbine and not for airframe. So please when you go fly take at least 5 liter of water.

Water and kerosine fire dont mix...

Hi Ceeray
In a room you have some chance with CO2, but in open place no way, CO2 is useless (you can see on the video what happens with the CO2). Water cool down the airframe (composite fuse, when hot, generate very inflamable vapor) and help exting the fire. Please note the flame are not from the liquid kerosine, they are from the kerosine vapor. The problem is the vapor and the solution is to stop the vapor production. Take out the heat. No vapor no fire. Pressurized water have to go on the base of the flame and not on the flame. I use garden pressure sprayer. I have make some tranning on big fire. Please belive me, the best, the most efficient is water at modeling level. It is easy to take a sprayer in the car.

Being a retired Professional Firefighter, I can assure you that as Ceeray mentioned; Water and a kerosene fire do not mix.

The kero will mostly likely be absorbed into the airframe and the surrounding terrain. The C02 bottle is useless so water is the next best option and works quite well on this type of fire. The best way when the crash is in a dirt area is to have a shovel. Throwing loose dirt on the fire smothers it immediately and is the best of all options.

duplicate

I thought this would be more about the auto restart, but it is an interesting conversation about what to use on a fire.

I would like to do some testing myself, it would seem the surface that the fire is on would have some impact on how it burns, how it spreads and thus how it could be extinguished. I would think that a surface that retains liquid would have the effect of spreading the fire if water is used, but maybe not so in the case of dirt? Just thinking out loud. As we are all supposed to do, I carry a pressurized canister of water, but I thought we were doing this to put out a grass fire. Anyway, I think running a small test would help me make up my mind.

For the majority of off field crashes/ fires, shovel and and a 5 gallon water extinguisher is probably the best thing you can reaonably expect to have on hand.. a little wetting agent -even some dish soap- added to the water will increase its effectiveness. i always figure that the plane would be a 100% a write off and you want the water to put out the grass. in this case in the video a shovel would have been the best thing..

ABC, ABC, ABC!! You will send your turbine back anyways!! ABC's are great all around extinguishers.

Even if you don't have a CO2, if you have a fire, use an ABC! You will save your jet for the price of a turbine cleaning.

And regarding auto restart, Gasper clearly writes about the potential dangers of an auto restart! And if you know you are going down, procedure number 1 is shut down the engine. Sorry about the loss of the jet.

I use these for my jets. They are a firefighting foam and have a distance to them and cover a decent size area. Plus being water based and basically soap and water it doesn't destroy your turbine. Foam is the best thing to use on a fuel fire.

Fire Gone Aerosol Fire Extinguisher - 16 oz

I think in this case, a fire blanket would help
to put out the fire.

I started off flying helicopters, then got into airplanes, and for the last year or so I have been flying jets. In helicopters we add throttle cut on one of the toggle switches. I incorporate that on airplanes and on all of my jets. I set the throttle cut so that as soon as I flip the switch it goes to low throttle and low trim no matter where the throttle stick is currently at. I had a flameout last year and my F16 went down. I knew I was going to hit the ground so I flipped the switch before it hit the ground. Not that I had auto-restart on that engine, but just a habit of flipping the switch anytime something goes wrong. When I shut down all my turbines I always flip the throttle cut switch, then after it is cools down I flip the switch back again and I go back and put the trim to the lowest setting. Good muscle memory with throttle cut can prevent similar fires as the one on the video. I believe Jetcat engines also have such a feture for throttle cut.

+1

Tried finding out more info on that airframe. Was told by the guy who filmed it that it is a Skymaster, but Anton denies it ;)

So ti must be a DerJets prototype, since it is 140 size. Looks good regardless.

Too bad...never liked the auto restart concept and turned both of mine off or rather confirmed that they were already off. The 'fried' parts shown at the end of the video are definitely from a Der Jet F-35A, unfortunately.
Len

Use AFFF
 

Not straight water - this is possibly a liquid fire.

The correct extinguisher is AFFF (Aqueous Film Forming Foam). Best of both worlds!

Our club always has a large AFFF extinguisher ready for these events.

This is the type you want:

https://www.firesafetystore.co.uk/fi...FYIW0wodr_sJSg

Please don't use dry powder extinguishers. When carted around in a car (like we do) it is almost inevitable that a grain of powder gets lodged in the nozzle and releases the pressure. Then when you need the extinguisher it is useless.
I saw this happen at the UK nats a few years ago. The model was a write off.

The best combination of extinguishers is:

Miniature CO2 (bicycle tyre inflator) for start up - backed up with large CO2.

AFFF (Foam) extinguisher for a crash.