OOPS!

"""GEEEEZ"" I NEVER SAW THIS THINGEE BEFORE,,,i WONDER WHAT IT DOES??????????

In this case.. it saved his life.

to eject cd push....not pull button?

Outstanding picture! I had not seen the event from this angle I think it must have been taken from the control tower at Mountain Home AFB. I'm really glad he made it out. While the cause has been determined as a Pilot error he really had his act together to recgonize his error and save his live. I believe that it was determined he could not have pulled out prior to ground impact. from what i saw from the side shot of this event it would have been mighty close one way or the other.
Ejecting from an airplne is like attempting sucide to keep from dieing.
Sparky

Wow.. what a shot,
Personallly not right where I would want to be(looking right at the nose of an unmanned F16)
Very cool!

I read the Airforce accident reoprt findings and they determined it to be pilot error. It occured soon after take off. Pilot was to take off, pull vertical, climb to "XXXX" altitude and perform a split S, bringing him back down to the runway in opposit direction for fly by. BUT pilot did not compute the altitude needed for recovery off of Field elevation (AGL) Rather, he calculated off of Sea level (MSL). That left him 200+ feet short on the pull out.

They went on to say that the pilot saw what was happening, applied max back pressure, could not recover and made the "E" decision at 146' before impact (Thats 4 ths of a second)

Don't know if you'll be seeing him in the T birds team soon???

Here's an interesting link...

http://www.f-16.net/f-16_news_article968.html

At the bottom is a link to their message board. Has some interesting discussion along with the photographer talking about his vantage point.

Michael