skyhawknut

My Feedback: (3)

This guy is real lucky - looks like he was about 30 feet and 0.5 secs from death! Glad he ejected!

GOOD STILLS - BAD VIDEO
http://www.ktvb.com/cgi-bin/bi/video...?title=5101701

GOOD VIDEO
http://www.msnbc.com/news/966660.asp?0cv=CB20

Kevin Greene

My Feedback: (85)

I saw the footage on the news today---This guy was a nano second from eatin' the turf and kickin' up daisies!!! (If they would have found any part of him!!!) Talk about livin' on the edge....

Kevin

Terry Holston

My Feedback: (1)

Looks like he needed a better servo on the elevator!!!! Or maybe his linkage geometry was incorrect???

grbaker

My Feedback: (29)

It looked to me like it went into failsafe.

Doug Cronkhite

My Feedback: (34)

I hate to say it.. but to me, it looks like pilot error. More specifically insufficient altitude to recover. I think he started the split S too low and simply ran out of altitude.

The spectators said engine failure, but we all know how reliable 'eye witness' accounts can be.

Regardless.. it's a testament to his training that he examined the situation, made the decision to leave and didn't second guess himself and try to 'save it' and ride it in..

Tom Antlfinger

My Feedback: (24)

Pilot Error: Doubtful.....I have seen about 7-8 T-Bird shows and never saw #6 pull a super-slow reverse cuban 8 out of a high angle climb during initial T/O......at no more than 500 ft altitude!!.......man, that's suicide!

Another possible scenario......event occured just after liftoff with a steep climb angle of 45-60 degrees......other F-16 sites have raised the possiblity of engine failure, possibly a bird strike....the video shows the pilot executing a reverse cuban 8 coming across the top very,very slow....followed by plummeting (possibly in a G-stall) to the ground....looks like a steeper descent angle than the Shuttle....

If you do have a T/O flameout or control malfunction during initial climb at a steep climb angle and low altitude, your choices are few.....one of them would be to do a reverse cuban and try to limp back to the T/O runway, hoping to keep the plane away from the crowd on the pilot's left, or whatever lies straight ahead.....looks like a valiant effort, but about a couple hundred feet too low to pull it off......

More than one Viper Jock has been saved with those zero altitude ejection seats...we had one still on the runway at Truax field squadron over in Madison, WI a couple of years ago....when the pilot bailed with only a few bumps and bruises, after a critcal engine failure.....


Tom

Chris Z

My Feedback: (24)

Even the Thunderbirds make mistakes, this is definitely Pilot Error. Thats alright, I'm sure the Gov will replace that 16.
Chris

Johng

My Feedback: (4)

It's impossible to tell what altitude he rolled the plane over from. Obviously, the camera has a zoom on it. From the video you can see the AB flame on even when he rolls over, however, it looks lilke it could be "flickering". THat could just be video effects though. Being as there was time to point the plane away from the crowd - it didn't impact on the main runway - I doubt it was just a case of too low, too slow.

Tom Antlfinger

My Feedback: (24)

T-Birds were scheduled for a show at Janesville, WI the last weekend of this month...Hope they still show.....Be interesting to see #6's flight profile during initial climbout.....


Tom

P-51B

My Feedback: (5)

Reports out today indicate the pilot claims that when he pulled through the split-s, there was loss of control function. They are looking into mechanical reasons.

First time I saw the video was after hearing that report, the video looks like stall conditions.

realdeal

My Feedback: (45)

What was the temperature at the show. This looks very similar to a density altitude mistake.

Tom Antlfinger

My Feedback: (24)

Lot's of speculation with limited information....."maybe this, maybe that, maybe both, probably neither".....in any case, a great save of a pilot's life with no catastrophic fireball into the 85,000 spectators...

Tom

PJFaller

Sometimes it makes me sick to my stomach to listen to the replys on here about what someone thinks about what might have happened. To say that without any sort of training or experience in situations with operating multi-million dollar high speed jets, that we can conclude from our experience with RC's and maybe some experience with some Full scale jets that this was pilot error is UBSURD!!!!! It might end up being error and I say MIGHT does not give us the right to go and make blanket statements without any knowledge into the crash is amazing. You should go work for the NTSB and make the months of investigation that much easier if you know the answers!!! We should applaud the pilot that in his ejection he got the aircraft in a position by luck or by skill that hundreds of people on the ground where not killed. I have over 10,000 flight hours in High performance full scale jets and I wouldnt even think about making any assumptions to what happened be it pilot error, or the other hundreds of things that could have went wrong with that aircraft. Just my two censt worth take it for what it is, and think before you publicly defame a T-bird pilot in a public forum.

Pete

DCM

My Feedback: (15)

I think it is unlikely that it is pilot error. The maneuvers are so scripted and practiced that a major mistake like that is unlikely.




David Hudson

lov2flyrc

My Feedback: (24)

Pete.....
What the heck are you doing reading these boards, I gave you a long list of things to do on that euro [8D] Get back to work

Todd

JetflyerJ

My Feedback: (67)

I agree with you 100% Pete, thank God nobody got hurt that's what's most important

You tell'm Pete


Gotta Love the rocket scientists



Johnny Hernandez

grbaker

My Feedback: (29)

You hit the nail on the head Pete!!

Has anyone been following the thread on the AMA discussion forum.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_25...tm.htm#1138711

Read post #63. It almost made me sick to my stomach when the daughter of the deceased modeler posted her response. I can't imagine how she must have felt after reading some of the stuff posted about her dad and his deadly accident. We need to think about other people before we post assumptions about what might have happened.

mugenkidd

My Feedback: (94)

All I can say is GREAT SAVE. Does anybody know how long it takes to go from the first thought of ejecting to actually getting shot out of the plane? Since the plane was only in the air a few seconds, just wonder how soon he had to plan the eject.

Thud_Driver

My Feedback: (1)

Been a few years and the seats are a little different now but it goes something like this:

Pull handle/face curtain, canopy fires immediately, .3 sec later, seat rockets fire, seat clears the rails and the seat drogue goes (if it has one), couple tenths of a sec or less later, the man/seat separator fires and the chute is force deployed. Fully deployed chute in ~ +/- 2.5 secs. Somebody up to date can quote the correct times and it's actually significantly more complex than the simple timeline I gave.

In the Thud, with 2 seats, the back seater went out first so when the handle is pulled, the back canopy went, .3 sec later the EWO went, .4 sec later, the front canopy, and .3 sec after that the pilot. About 1.05 sec to leave the plane from the front and roughly 4.5 sec to full chute for the pilot and shorter for the EWO. The seat was nominally a 0/100 seat - 0 altitude @ 100 kts. Modern seats are usually 0/0 but can only tolerate a certain amount of sink near the ground and still make it.

Looked to me like he managed to kill the sink for just the instant he needed to get out, whatever the problem might have been.

Doug Cronkhite

My Feedback: (34)

Actually you're wrong. I have every right to voice my OPINION on the matter. An experienced opinion I might add, as I was an ATC representative to the NTSB when I was a controller at LA Center years ago. I've seen my share of accidents and accident sites. I was at NAS Miramar in 1978 when Lt. Mike Curtin rolled his Blue Angel A-4F into the ground during a practice. I was at MCAS El Toro when the F-86 Saber Dancer crashed following a loop at too low an altitude. I was at MCAS El Toro when an F-18C crashed for much the same reason. It sucks.. but it happens.

If the T-bird, Blues, Red Arrows, Frecce Tri Colore, Patrioulle de France, etc. were incapable of mistakes due to the rigorous practice and training, then they also could never have had the accidents they've had. And yet accidents happen. Pete.. you have 10,000 hours of flight time in jet aircraft.. can you say you've never made a mistake? Even with what I'm sure is extensive training and experience? It happens. It could have happened here.

I'm not saying categorically that it was pilot error, but it certainly APPEARS he started the 5/8th inside loop at a much lower altitude than normal. Video zoom can obviously screw this up.. but let's look at what we CAN see from the video.

The aircraft following the roll to inverted pitches sharply down starting the looping recovery, but then disappears from the camera view. When it comes back into view, the aircraft still has a substantial pitch rate going on in the pilot's attempt to recover. Now.. when the pilot ejects, that pitch rate stops suddenly, roughly at the same time as when the pilot removed his hand from the stick to pull the loud lever. CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) has bitten many an F-16 pilot. This is what it looks like to me on 1st observation. As I stated before, it is a testament to his training that he acted without hesitation to leave the aircraft the moment he decided he was in an unrecoverable situation, regardless of the cause. I have known too many people who've been killed because they tried to save it instead of getting the hell out of dodge.

RampRat

Looks stalled to me... ...and a stalled wing and CFIT doesn't add up.. You can't have them both...

PJFaller

Im not saying at all that this could not have been Pilot error, BUT how quickly do we judge. Doug you are right you have every right to voice your opinion, but again an uneducated one when it comes to flying high performance jets. you can investigate any accidents all you wish, but not having strapped your ass in the seat once, and to make blanket statements to which the pilot is at fault is ridiculous. Do you know how many computers are attached to every one of those flight controls? Did the engine quit at the top of the climb? did he have a Catastrophic failure? In my humble experienced opinion in which my ass has been in the seat, something went wrong with the aircraft. Pilot induced failure or not, those guys are very good at what they do. Yes there has been mistakes made in the past and this might very well have been one, but to make a statement that unequivocally it was pilot error which some have without knowing the facts is just wrong. give the guy some credit, he is a thunderbird, which arent always the best stick on the block but I can make an assumption that he was no slouch in the cockpit.

Pete

Blueskies21

My Feedback: (34)

I never heard anything about this incident.When did this happen?


Steve

Tom Antlfinger

My Feedback: (24)

I am still hoping to see the T-Birds the last weekend in September here in Wisconsin.....I still have a couple of questions that might be answered if they don't change their routine....kind of doubt it....but still hoping....

What altitude was #6 supposed to be at when he initiated the Reverse-Cuban(1/2 roll/5/8 loop on a [45 deg upline in IAC, and often more like 60 deg with the T-Birds])? Did he brain fart and start the roll 1000 feet too low? That's what got the Frecce TriColore solo killed in his SF-260 during the 1983 EAA show I witnessed...started his Triple Avalanche(loop with a +snap on the the upline, across the top, and on the downline before pullout) 500 ft. too low......

Everthing seemed O.K. until we lose the plane just as he is starting to pull from vertical back to horizontal. What happened? Did he realize he was too low and pull harder into a G-stall, or was there some kind of a fly-by-wire failure just at that moment, as he was increasing the G's for the pullout....when the jet re-appears about 6 seconds later, it is coming down at a very high Shuttle-Like) angle of attack...almost looks like he got dropped from a crane....he is either G-stalled until just before impact, or at least, way behind the power curve....

Final report will be interesting....seems like unless there is a FD Recorder box on the bird, and they were able to recover it, it will be hard to dispute the pilot's claim that there was a control failure, leading to an excessive increase in +G.....rather than a Pilot-Induced Mush....did he load on the +G's or did the Fly-by-wire puke?.....Actually he might have THOUGHT there was a control failure when it actually was a G-stall due to being a bit slow over the top with an agressive pull on recovery.....it is interesting how it appears that about the time he would be reaching for the eject handle, and letting go of the stick, the plane appears to suddenly shallow the high angle of attack just before impact.....

I regret this thread has been taken as T-Bird defamation or support...rather we should look for some insight into why, not infrequently, we jetsters slam our birds into the ground on the back side of split-S, Reverse Cuban, or Loop....it's way to easy just to blame a servo, without considering all the forces, especially Pilot-Induced, acting on the bird just before impact!


Tom

PJFaller

well said Tom!!!!

I was told that the accident happened on take-off, but Im really not sure never heard anything except for the short footage on the news, they never said what phase of the flight he was in. does anyone know?

Pete