Just a silly question...Has anyone ever built a functional ejection seat? I was thinking one of those small "AAA" sized model rocket motors (can't remember all those different sizes). But then, you'd have to find a way to keep the motor from catching your plane on fire...but then if its going down anyway...

Just thought it would be neat-o

-jim

This would sure solve that problem with the pesky landings! I suppose you could take a page from the boys doing RC skydiving and have a separate radio controling shute deployment. Of course first you'd have to create a mechanism on the plane to release the canope and then....

What a fun idea! I'm sure springs or rubber bands would do the job without the risk of burning up your plane.

no no no... if you are going to have the pilot eject, you gotta have all the smoke and stuff from the chair! maybe line the cockpit with a thin metel or some other fire-retarded stuff. im not even sure i'd wanna go to the trouble of making the pilot/chair one of those r/c sky diver type things...

of course all this means that the model would have to be a modern military type, as the older wwii planes didnt have ejection seats and, as far as i know, silly-villion planes also, do not include ejection chairs... although, think about a 747 were all the passanger chairs can eject... when that little brat of a kid behind you wont stop bugging ya, just reach over and pull his handle

ok... so the 110 degree heat of az is getting to me.

-jim

Besides the fact that the AMA frowns on pyrotechnics from model airplanes, I have a feeling that once you accomplished this silly feat, you would not like spending the rest of the afternoon looking for your canopy and ejection seat. If you're lucky enough for the chute to open on the seat, then you have to worry about how far the wind is going to carry it. But you're spotter is the one that will be chasing all that stuff, because you'll still be flying the plane...that is, unless you got all caught up in the moment and watched the ejection seat instead of your plane and then you will be looking for it too.

just my .02

yeah, i know its a dumb idea... but hey, its monday and its hot, and im board silly. just having a little fun

My brother's next door neighbor flew F-4 Phantoms with the Texas Air National Guard. One of his flying buddies was flying an F-4 when the guy in the rear (WSO?) punched out. He said the plane was almost unflyable and he considered punching out himself. Of course, I've seen a lot of models lose canopies and continue flying with no apparent adverse effects.

I know all about the heat. My local club had Big Bird Flyin last Saturday and I had problems and ended up working on planes all day and then when I started loading up to go home, I nearly went into heat exhaustion. It took me over an hour to load up when it usually takes about 20 minutes. I fought muscle cramps for over an hour after I got home.
Hope I don't ever do that again!

To avoid burning your plane, use a spring system to get the seat clear of the plane, then ignite the rocket motors. You can attach your radio gear to the seat, and in the event you are going to crash, you can have a chance of rescueing your radio gear. But if you are going use the ejection seat for a crash, why not let the rocket engine ignite your plane and go down in flames?

LOL, nice thought, If it catches on fire then the fuel tank might have time to blow and you have yourself one expensive fire cracker. Or you could just not blow it up and save the money.

Eject the seat with a strong spring, and install a tube filled with flour up the pilot's butt. When he ejects the flour will look like smoke.
Dennis-

Any pyrotechnique used would require a fire retardant housing or cylinder. This would be easily devised. Finding and recovering the canopy would be the most difficult aspect.

"Keep 'Em Flying!"
Flak

Why not build the Dornier DO-335, the first plane an ejection seat was put in to try it out. Getting the seat to work along with trying to keep 2 engines would be really fun.


http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero...nier_do335.htm


Ty

This is no more difficult to devise a design for than building the plane or jet itself and is well within the technological capabilities of any of the modelers on this site. I'm assuming of course the aircraft involved is large enough to carry a little extra weight, cause it will need to in order to carry the slight extra battery weight to ignite the seat. Basicly the design can be powered by an estes mosquito, ie their smallest size engine. Design the entire seat to clear the cockpit and to be inserted onto a wire upon which it slides up and down. This is the same wire and tube design used in the launching of most model rockets, and one on the back of the chair might do the trick. Some static tests with a dummy seat and model on the ground to see that it doesn't bind and is balanced when the rocket pushes it off the rail would be recommended. The rocket engine could be placed in a few different spots, but most likely, directly under the seat, ie the pilots arse, would be the best thrust/balance point. a small metal blast funnel should be created to channel the rocket flame out of the fuselage, and it can exit the bottom of the fuselage under the seat via a small metal tube which extends the funnel. The engine is simply ignited via your transmitter with a "simple switch" which you can buy and attach to your rx. When hit, this switch channels the power of two series wired 9volt batts to the engine, setting off the eject function. The main problem will be the canopy. I would reccomend a spring loaded canopy that you "fire first' with a servo, then hit your eject function to spit out the pilot. The reason for this is, that the rocket engine will not have built up enough thrust/momentum to push the pilot and chair hard enough to pop off anythiing but the weakest of canopy attachments. Unless your real good at designing something so sensitive that it can stay on in flight, yet be popped of at the slightest touch of the chair and pilot pushing up on it, its not going to work reliably. Therefore, something springloaded and servo driven for the canopy would, in my opinion, be more reliable. Anyway, Whatever you do, I suggest you do a lot of SAFE experiments first in a SAFE location, and to you young-uns lokking to just play with fire, dont try this at home.

ZOOM

They permit fused dethermalizers on free flight airplanes.

Copied off document #105 on the AMA website.

There was one of our aircraft that was designed to have the whole cockpit eject not just the seat. I believe it was designed for punching out well over the speed to sound. If you made that aircraft, then you would have lots of room for all the goodies to make it look cool and it would be one unit to go get. [8D]

I think the F111 had such an ejection system.

Ya, that's it!!! That would be cool to see eject! Lots of room for smoke and fire Now to find someone with the time/money to build it for all of us to see. [8D]

Couple of things to consider. Main thing is if it's a scale plane and you eject the pilot or the seat capsule then I suppose to keep it completely scale the plane must then CRASH.
Too scale like for me.

hay, as long as the seat is goin, have it pull a chute on the way since the pilot is dead, might aswell save the plane!

Since an ejection would naturally cause the plane to crash.... I have a slightly different idea for an ejection.

What if you put all your radio and any expensive components in a special box that could detach in the case of an accident? and have pushrods that can be detached if this box was ejected. So then in case you had a radio failure or you lose a wing or something, you could have a single channel receiver/servo combo that ejects the radio box while the plane is going down. Maybe a button on your TX under a flip cover to operate that other channel to eject your radio!

And I guess you could put the rockets on the bottom to shoot it out, but at the same time have a chute deploy on it so that your radio comes down safely. Then you can let your airplane crash and burn with the fuel tank and no expensive electronics!

Maybe even make the unit reusable, by building planes with special pushrods that have the detachable end on them so in case you have a radio failure, a wing breaks or falls off, you're doing combat and somebody takes out your elevator and rudder, etc

With that in mind, why not have a larger shute deploy and save the entire plane!
As for ejections, Byron Originals used to have a Jap pilot jump out of a stricken Zero every day at their air show just before the plane exploded in mid-air simulating a Corsair shooting down the plane. It was so SWEET. Little did I know I was watching the finest RC war bird show ever to be presented to the public. May Mr. Byron Godberson rest in peace.

Gary9648, that has actually happened to full scale aircraft before. The picture below is from [link=http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/home/Safe_Landing_feature_k_4.html]this website[/link].

P.S. Is there a video of that show? I would like to see it.

I believe the B-1 was also designed that way.


From http://www.aeroengineer.net/history/b1/b1_dev.html

Development of the fourth B-1 commenced on August 15, 1975, with the award of an Air Force contract amendment to Rockwell International. The aircraft will include cost reducing design refinements to the forward fuselage (ejection seats instead of the current crew escape capsule) and engine nacelles, and redesign of the forward fuselage and aft avionics bay to accommodate defensive avionics equipment. It will be used for flight test of the B-l defensive avionics and is currently expected to fly for the first time in early 1979