ORIGINAL: skyhawknut
I know this is not really RC but...
We lost one of our Hornets yesterday while practising for an airshow. Errily similar to the Mig 29 crash years ago. Pilot got out OK.......just!
My question is - if you look at the photo's the #2 engine nozzle is closed - would this indicate some kind of shutdown? If the pilot didn't have time to close it and he had a failure or compressor stall - would the nozzle still close?
I suspect engine failure.........thoughts?
Video:
http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/medi...ediaID=3315870
This is not necessarily indicative of an engine shutdown, possible, but more likely his right burner failed to light. The nozzle on most modern fighter jet engines contracts as you get closer to military power (full power without afterburner), in order to regulate exhaust pressure and flow. In this case it looks as if his right nozzle is closed down in the full military position and his left nozzle is open indicating the afterburner is cooking.
Multi-engine center-line thrust jets are surprisingly sensitive to asymmetric thrust conditions. In advanced training we (USAF AT-38's), used to do a high angel of attack (AoA), demo to demonstrate this affect to students. Typically we would slow the jet below 250Knots and slowly raise the nose to achieve a higher than normal AoA. Once the jet was slowed and the nose was up we would ask the students to move the stick from side to side, the jet would barely roll at all. Then we would ask them to stomp on the rudder at which point the jet would roll so fast they would find themselves hanging upside-down in the straps. We would repeat the process and slowly retard an engine, the jet would immediately start to roll off to one side. We did this demo for several reasons, first to demonstrate the slow-speed characteristics with high AoA (a place they would likely be during BFM), and as a reinforcement of the single engine characteristics of the AT-38.
I hate to speculate from 2000 miles away, but it does look like he got a touch slow and attempted to correct with power. Somewhere in that process he tried to power out and it looks like he selected full blower. There are several reasons the right blower might not have lit. He might not have advanced the right throttle all the way (sounds odd, but has happened in multiple crashes), the right engine might have compressor stalled, he might have taken a bird, the engine might have failed, the burner might have simply failed to light. Either way, once he encountered a high asymmetric thrust condition that low to the ground AND that slow, he had little choice but to jettison the jet. Glad he survive and will live to fly again.