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posts about #su24 more → Combat Pilots Ejecting After Aircraft Crash
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Combat Pilots Ejecting After Aircraft Crash |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
03/22/09
03/20/09
A big issue with ejecting is getting the parachute open with plenty of time before landing on the ground. In the past, sufficient altitude gave the parachute time enough to open enough for a safe landing. Airspeed obviously provided an assist in the form of wind to help open the 'chute.
However, many ejections are at fairly low altitudes (especially in the Navy, as a result of carrier operations), so a means to help ensure safe escape at lower altitude and lower speeds was needed.
In the Navy (maybe the Air Force too), an ejection seat parachute has 28 riser cords. These are all bundled together where they attach to the canopy itself, and 14 small explosive charges are incorporated into the bundle. When the seat is fired, the automatic timing sequence handles a bunch of chores in quick succession. One of the last timed events is the firing of the 14 charges, which forcibly opens the canopy, helping it to fill with air much more quickly.
As a result, it's fairly safe to eject in a parked airplane (unless it's parked in a hangar, and that's happened, much to the chagrin of the crew that had to clean the hangar ceiling).
The Russian seats (the Zvezda K-36, I guess?) ALSO will compensate for far off-axis ejections, and can actually right the seat from a really bad shot, possibly close to inverted.
03/20/09
One thing I forgot to mention is that the ejection in the video could have been accidental. Fire may have set off the rockets, or possibly a piece of wreckage could have activated one seat. Typically in multi-crew aircraft, command activation (one pull of the handle shoots everyone) and self activation (each man for himself) are options, so if the pilot's seat went off, the other might follow automatically.
03/20/09
I'm dense today. An addition to my addition. Some seats are designed to fire a few few underwater, and in some cases this has actually happened, saving the crew. The seat goes right through the canopy. In fact, some aircraft are designed for ejections through the canopy.
In the recently retired S-3 Vikings, for instance (my aircraft), the four-person crew would eject through the canopy. The seats were equiped with "breaker bars" that stuck up about 10 inches above the rest of the seat in order to break the canopy before anyone's head did. The canopies also had explosive detonation cords for quick removal, but that was a manual process and not really intended for ejections.
More trivia. Seat cushions on ejection seats are very thin, maybe a half inch or so. The reason for this is that the acceleration is so great that if they gave you much more padding, the seat would have reached too high a speed before fully compressing the foam, and the occupant would be at risk of a broken pelvis, etc. from the impact. So by using a thin cushion, the butt accelerate with the seat, preventing the seat from accelerating into the butt.
03/20/09
03/21/09
03/20/09
Sorry they crashed, but I'm sure glad they're okay.
03/20/09
03/20/09
funny, I picture you ejection from the dinner table in the middle of a sentence about book keeping rules for corporations
03/21/09
Oh yeah, they like it then. ;)
03/20/09
03/20/09
He kindly stopped for me;
Because I was but a second late,
in my eject button pushing spree.
The airplane held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My parachute and flight stick too,
For his civility.
03/20/09
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03/20/09
Most ejection seats are designed for zero/zero (zero altitude, zero speed) conditions. I mean... if you're strapped in and need to get out of a burning airplane, there really isn't time to do anything BUT eject.
03/20/09
03/20/09
There is one I couldn't find of a jet hitting the ground almost vertical and the pilot ejecting safely, even as the plane goes nose first into the dirt. If anyone can find that one....
03/20/09
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03/20/09
That part of the movie was suggested by the Navy after the filmmakers said they wanted Goose to die in an air-to-air collision. The Navy said NO WAY are you gonna show our guys involved in an air-to-air. They were asked to come up with a scenario in which Goose could get killed. Based upon an actual training accident in the early days of the Tomcat, they came up with this scenario.
03/20/09