NEWS Big surprise, OBOGS back in the news.

[BACONATOR]

Not surprised, although never experienced this when I instructed at Vance. I'm guessing this is going to get spun up, if for no other reason than it has been national news in many other airframes now. Previous problems were not raised to this level of attention and the "fixes" became rather interesting.

Back when our ejection seats were found to have batches of the 0.5s sequencers that would fail and thus with the redundant sequencers, rendered the front seat about 67% chance of successful ejection, the "solution" was to fly with the ISS set to "solo" and to "brief our student" on a modified ejection. If you were in the front seat, you'd call "Bailout"x3 and the stud would go, then you wait a half second and go. Really scientific. The real fun was if you were sitting in the back, then we had to trust that the student would wait the 0.5 second before pulling and not frying our face with rocket.

This happened mid-tour and they were flying like this when I left.

Really reasonable solution if you ask me...

 

[scoolbubba]

Not surprised, although never experienced this when I instructed at Vance. I'm guessing this is going to get spun up, if for no other reason than it has been national news in many other airframes now. Previous problems were not raised to this level of attention and the "fixes" became rather interesting.

Back when our ejection seats were found to have batches of the 0.5s sequencers that would fail and thus with the redundant sequencers, rendered the front seat about 67% chance of successful ejection, the "solution" was to fly with the ISS set to "solo" and to "brief our student" on a modified ejection. If you were in the front seat, you'd call "Bailout"x3 and the stud would go, then you wait a half second and go. Really scientific. The real fun was if you were sitting in the back, then we had to trust that the student would wait the 0.5 second before pulling and not frying our face with rocket.

This happened mid-tour and they were flying like this when I left.

Really reasonable solution if you ask me...

Never mind that whole NATOPS warning about the ISS shall not be set to solo with a backseat occupant and all that.

 

[Lesh]

Back when our ejection seats were found to have batches of the 0.5s sequencers that would fail and thus with the redundant sequencers, rendered the front seat about 67% chance of successful ejection, the "solution" was to fly with the ISS set to "solo" and to "brief our student" on a modified ejection. If you were in the front seat, you'd call "Bailout"x3 and the stud would go, then you wait a half second and go. Really scientific. The real fun was if you were sitting in the back, then we had to trust that the student would wait the 0.5 second before pulling and not frying our face with rocket.

Still TW-5 SOP. ISS- Solo due to sequencer fail potential, "Eject" x3 -> rear cockpit pulls, 0.5s after front cockpit pulls.

 

[Pags]

Not surprised, although never experienced this when I instructed at Vance. I'm guessing this is going to get spun up, if for no other reason than it has been national news in many other airframes now. Previous problems were not raised to this level of attention and the "fixes" became rather interesting.

Back when our ejection seats were found to have batches of the 0.5s sequencers that would fail and thus with the redundant sequencers, rendered the front seat about 67% chance of successful ejection, the "solution" was to fly with the ISS set to "solo" and to "brief our student" on a modified ejection. If you were in the front seat, you'd call "Bailout"x3 and the stud would go, then you wait a half second and go. Really scientific. The real fun was if you were sitting in the back, then we had to trust that the student would wait the 0.5 second before pulling and not frying our face with rocket.

This happened mid-tour and they were flying like this when I left.

Really reasonable solution if you ask me...

Is it any riskier than the old T-34 "dive for the trailing edge of the wing and hope the tail doesn't catch you?"

 

[Jim123]

Is it any riskier than the old T-34 "dive for the trailing edge of the wing and hope the tail doesn't catch you?"

Well, it was equivalent to the T-37 "you pull first then I pull" non-sequenced seats.

FWIW, Navy squadrons got the hard data on the CAD failures via bubbanet when a few Navy dudes on exchange in AF land forwarded the ppt presentation, about a week after they'd got it through their official channels. Communication is important, 'mkayyy.

 

[Hopeful Hoya]

Yep TW-5 still flies with them in solo. Not sure if anyone in VT-10 can chime in but I heard they just switched back to flying in dual within the past few months.

 

[nittany03]

Is it any riskier than the old T-34 "dive for the trailing edge of the wing and hope the tail doesn't catch you?"

Crew, Canopy, Cords, Harness, Crouch, Dive, Pull . . .

 

[xmid]

Is it any riskier than the old T-34 "dive for the trailing edge of the wing and hope the tail doesn't catch you?"

Yes. Having watched the controlled ejection video in Cruces and having flown with the student and hearing his narrative, it is far riskier.

 

[BACONATOR]

Is it any riskier than the old T-34 "dive for the trailing edge of the wing and hope the tail doesn't catch you?"

I'll refer back to rocket in the face...

 

[Recovering LSO]

T-6 thing getting attention. SECDEF getting briefed very soon.

 

[Pags]

I'll refer back to rocket in the face...

Rocket in the face vs tail in the face vs riding it in. Maybe I'm missing something but even a sub-optimal ejection seat still seems like the least bad of those options.

 

[xmid]

Rocket in the face vs tail in the face vs riding it in. Maybe I'm missing something but even a sub-optimal ejection seat still seems like the least bad of those options.

As someone who jumps out of airplanes for recreation I can tell you the odds of hitting the tail are extremely low, so as to almost be negligible. But if you did, your chute would probably still open from the static line and you'd live. If the rocket to the face knocked you out, you would ride it in and it would be fatal. If the seats collided on the way out, it would probably be fatal. The student in the only T-6B ejection thought he waited forever in the plane after the IP left. He remembers checking his EICAS and fuel state. The video shows that he left the plane milliseconds after the IP. Obviously there was some serious time compression going on. And these guys had an hour to prepare for the ejection.

If you had an incident where the pilot up front is not conscious and the plane is no longer flyable, you have to either leave him to die or try a HAPL/LAPL which is no longer something trained for. Obviously this scenario would be similar in a T-34, but it's not how the new aircraft is designed and trained to be flown. The fact that flying in solo with two pilots went from something you could potentially be FNAEB'ed for to the way of doing business (in order to continue getting the X!) speaks volumes.

Oh, and we flew for 3 days after they had publicly acknowledged the problem, until they came up with a "solution." IP's asked if we could fly in solo during this time and we were told absolutely not. 3 days later it was mandatory to fly in solo. No safety pause. No red stripe.

 

[Duc'-guy25]

As someone who jumps out of airplanes for recreation I can tell you the odds of hitting the tail are extremely low, so as to almost be negligible

At 85 knots straight and level out of a Twin Otter I would agree. A plane that is uncontrollable at potentially higher speeds, I would say the risk of hitting the horizontal stab goes up significantly, and there plenty of Friday Freakouts that have near tail strikes. I know I have seen people get a little more close than comfortable out of the low tail King Airs (albiet usually doing something stupid or off the camera step). I'll take an ejection seat in solo vs old school bailout procedures anyday of the week because getting yourself out of an uncontrollable aircraft is easier said than done.

That being said, the amount of time it is taking (and going to take) to fix the cartriges in the T-6's ejection seat is asanine.

 

[xmid]

I don't care what you'd "take." The point is that is not the way the system was designed and it is inherently much more dangerous. So much so that NATOPS used to say that it could cause serious injury or death. We took that part out when it became convenient. And here we are more than two years later treating it as the norm.

 

[sevenhelmet]

Normalization of deviance...