Originally Posted by
VH-MLE
"Anyway, let's do an informal poll:
How many posters reckon the accident aircraft had any ejection seat explosives fitted?"
And the point of that is??
There is some ambiguity in that statement... One of my aircraft had inerted seats (FOL-1's) from 1995 when put on the FAA register. All good, inert, nice canopy jettison non explosive. 20 years later, a mechanic is over the seat removing the inert seat with a couple of other guys, and as it comes up the rail so they can get to the bits they want to do work on, the sound of a charge going off concentrated their minds. There are explosive sears in the seat as well, the "inert" didn't mean removal of all charges apparently.
The S-211 was inert when I looked at them from the guy who brought them into AUS. The canopy jettison would be the point of interest, it's a big canoe like the 326, 339, and the T1/T2s; getting out in an unsteady condition could be interesting. The L39's is better, like the SOG2, (the L39s likes coming off all by itself...) With wing LE damage, the chance that the other aircraft had tail or aileron damage is not zero, and from 2,000' there is not much time to sort out the issues when the aircraft is not responding nicely.
Sharing a cockpit from the outside at low level doesn't matter if it is a Pitts or a S-211, the potential for a bad day is substantial. ALARP applies.