Some might say that he was so unlucky that he should have been
grounded... but that would be a matter of opinion. And, if indeed
the loss of an engine caused such a catastrophic loss of control, why
was he allowed to display publicly a high-alpha pass? Who was to say
the the aircraft would not have headed for the crowd? Imagine the
photos then... However, I have spoken to a colleague who does a lot
of display flying, albeit in Spitfires of various vintages (:>)) and
he agrees that it is common practice for manufacturers to get their
pilots to take the aircraft to the limit.
Siddiq, high alpha is high angle of attack (aka AOA). It looks cool
to fly a big fast jet slowly along the crowd line, well to pilots and
potential buyers of the hardware it does. It demonstrates control at
low speed for a fight. Tactically it is unsound to be slow in
air-to-air and the Warsaw Pact air forces would not normally have
used such a manoeuvre in the old days - slash in and out would
normally have been their tactic. But the new low wing-loaders have a
lot of control at low speed, as well as lock-after-launch missiles to
allow shots off the beam. Clearly the aircraft was not well-placed
at low speed if the engine lost power (or surged perhaps), so it was
a self-defeating demo.
I contest the assertion that the Russians make the best ejection
seats. They might make good copies of the Martin Baker Mk10 (with
arm restraints or not) or the ACES II, but they did not come up with
anything that could better them IMO. When I arrived on the Hawk TMk1
(similar to the USN's T45) in 1977, we could eject inverted, level
at 350ft using the MB Mk10 seat. I have seen an ACES II leave an
F16D on the bounce from the runway and give the pilot a safe ride
(the IP student messed up a glide approach, broke the hydraulics,
losing a gear, and the little aircraft gave up flying just before the
IP instructor could land it).
Rant over.
Chris
Gary Edwards wrote:
> See http://www4.ncsu.edu/~caltino/migcrash.htm
Two crashes and two ejections! Some plane, some pilot!
jh
--
___________
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C M I Barker
Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, Great Britain
mailto:imagopus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
mailto:chris_barker@xxxxxxxxx
YaC tel: +44 (0)7092 251126
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