SSD
Glad you enjoyed the Going Critical C4 programme and thank you for your compliments.
I would suggest that whether such programmes are accurate, balanced, helpful and so on, is more dependent on the Producers than the cast. In my experience there are plenty of people who know about aviation matters but few Producers who are motivated to do an accurate non-sensationalist job – especially about airshow stuff.
When the young lady who produced the programme, Emma Jessop, first contacted me I feared the worst just because of the subject, but after her call she sent me an email listing all sorts of issues and questions that she wanted to understand and deal with and I became convinced of her good intentions and abilities and so was happy to help. I did not see the programme before it was transmitted but on the night I thought she had done a very competent job.
On a point of nitpicking detail, SSD, I hope I was discussing the merits of the MiG in regard to the tailslide and recovery - not the cobra. Both involve passing through 90 deg of alpha but the tailslide recovery involves only about a quarter of the airspeed used in the cobra. The UB version of the MiG-29 (that they let me fly in 1990) had a much smaller all flying tailplane than the later versions of the MiG-29, which they started taking to airshows in the mid 90s. As such I rather doubt it could have generated the necessary pitch rate for a cobra entry. Certainly that manoeuvre was not part of my trip although I did do a couple of tailslides.
You ask whether the K36 series of seats is better than Martin Baker’s best.
At low speed I suspect the two makes are very much on a par but at high speed I think 10 years ago, there would have been no contest. Today it may be different. The Russians even then included very high IAS in their specifications (Foxbat driven) whereas the Brits and the US did not expect the occupants to be injury free at say 500 kts and above. Even a bit slower perhaps.
For high speed in the past the US either jettisoned the cockpit as a pod (some F-111 variants) or had a seat where the pilot was encapsulated following initiation (XB-70). Both approaches had successes and failures when used in anger.
The US Stencil seat (as used in many Harriers) was driven by best low speed performance, which everyone defines as the time between seat initiation and a fully deployed canopy. You need to talk about well under 2 secs for the best in that regard. Naturally, the opening characteristics of the parachute have a big effect on that total time. Indeed the Stencil seat uses an explosive canopy spreader to ensure that the parachute is open as quickly as possible. If you imagine a high sink rate low level erect attitude ejection (engine failure in a high hover for example) then the gun and rocket could in the worst case just put the pilot back in the hover with little or no airspeed to inflate the chute. A spreader is clearly good news then.
But, the catch with providing excellent low speed rapid sequencing is that things must be slowed down at higher speeds (or not used at all as in the case of the Stencil spreader) to avoid lethal stresses on the occupant – as well as on the chute. So seats had to become multi mode and operate very differently at even moderate speeds. A changeover in the Stencil happens at 220kt, which some experts feel is on the high side to hang on to the fastest possible sequence of the low speed mode. Certainly I never intended to use it between say 190 and 220kt – unless there was just no choice. For example, gliding down to a possible force lob attempt, if it appeared not sensible to stay with the aircraft at 1000ft, then one could pull the nose up from the gliding speed (of about 220kt) and get well inside the low speed seat envelope before ejecting.
The big issues with these wide speed range seats are mode failures and weight (the brilliant K36 is considerably heavier than typical Martin Baker variants) Arm and leg restraint mechanisms as well as other features able to prevent injury at 600kts or higher must be very reliable and robust – and that inevitably involves weight.
Re your second question, I don’t believe vertically seeking mechanisms (through steering the rocket or whatever) are yet in service. They were certainly not fitted to Anatoly Kvotchur’s seat at Paris. There was some evidence in his case that the blast from the explosion of the fuel underneath him did accelerate the opening of his chute as well as providing a transient upward force. But then the good guys have to win every now and then eh?
Sadly, as you may have seen elsewhere on PPRuNe, wingman Alexandre (of lighting the fag fame at Fairford) was killed in the crash of a twin turboprop he was testing last month.
Regards