Simviation Forums

Sad News...............F-18 down, Pilot too
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030527.ujett0526/BNStory/National/

how did the pilot die if he was found in his chute 200 metres from the plane???

news on tv said chute wasn't deployed.........investigation just starting.........

200 metres is a very small distance to be from your plane after an ejection. he may have ejected too late, and didn't have enough time to deploy the chute, or maybe something went wrong with the ejection system.

the death of a pilot is always sad, my heart is with his family and friends.

What a tragic loss

definatly a sad occurance,
as for the chute the hornet operates a 0-0 ejection seat on all models i believe, so it shouldnt have mattered how low the plane was.

A 0-0 seat if fine for 0 airspeed and 0 feet of altitude, as long as the A/C is upright, but doesn't taken into account any variation of attitude.......unfortunately, all aircraft are operating in a full spacial environment and 0-0 only specifies two of three important dimensions(airspeed, altitude, and attitude), relative to any A/C. The seat mechanism knows nothing of the attitude of the A/C, relative to the ground ?

..... hornet operates a 0-0 ejection seat on all models i believe, so it shouldnt have mattered how low the plane was.

This is only correct if the A/C is in an upright and adequate attitude.......think about it......if you are inverted and low or in a high bank angle, will you have time for your auto deploy to occur, if you are fired by rocket power, into the ground from 100' AGL ?.....this is an unknown we need to uncover,.? what was the attitude at time of ejection ? just something to be determined by the investgation.......
In any event, a very sad end of a flight

didnt think about that,   good point

I know some of the people involved, even knew the father of one of them.

The Martin-Baker seat has a fairly good range of stabilization and could recover from some off-angle ejections. I'd have to guess from this that the ejection was carried out too late...the seat just didn't get far enough away from the plane to believe otherwise.

Coldest sound you can hear on an air base...the crash alarm wailing.

My thoughts are with the family, freinds and Sqdn mates.

standard comment:
ouch