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Request for FJ wheels up pics

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Request for FJ wheels up pics

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Old 7th Oct 2010, 20:16
  #41 (permalink)  
 
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It wasn't caravans alone that offered advice on landings etc. I know of lots of incidents where warnings from all sorts of people who worked on airfields were transmitted to the tower; things such as an aircraft lining up with a rudder lock still in place, and various bits falling off during take-offs.
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Old 7th Oct 2010, 20:50
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Since this thread has now drifted, I have a question.

If a jet is KNOWN to be coming in for a wheels up landing like in the F-111 Video,
why is foam or water not sprayed onto the runway beforehand to
decrease the amount of sparks / potential for fire ?

Thank you.
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Old 7th Oct 2010, 21:07
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runway caravan

Hi,
I don`t have any pics but I rember back in 1965, as runway controller at Manchester, I looked out at the A== Tu=== Bristol Freighter at the holding point. It had pretty ribbons hanging from the outer wings, rudder and elevators.

The tower said AT... cleared line up and take off !!!

I said AT... check for full and free movement.

5 seconds later the rear door opened, out jumped a man and removed the control locks, waving them at me as he got back in his aeroplane.

Three days later, same AT Freighter came in again and I was presented with bottles of Scotch!!!!

Ah....the good old days.

Dave
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Old 7th Oct 2010, 22:18
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Trim Stab,

Have you heard of the concept of "distractions" or perchance the "Swiss cheese model"?

No-one in the RAF, or any of the Services, or indeed in civil aviation, has ever intended to land wheels-up - sometimes unfortunately it just happens. Generally, this isn't due to a one-off oversight, cavalier attitude or gashness, but a combination of events or misleading information (see Typhoon in China Lake).

If you really think that you are "a cut above", just remember that any idiot can buy an ATPL - you have to earn military wings.

For you:

Genuine Current RAF Military Cloth Badge Pilots Wings on eBay (end time 10-Oct-10 22:09:38 BST)

£10.49 currently. To be honest, for someone who displays an unnatural interest in flying for the Services, you might do well do pin your ears back and listen, rather than spouting on about how great and professional you are.

Understand, never-was?
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Old 7th Oct 2010, 23:05
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Originally Posted by Trim Stab
Why not just use the control tower?
I'm not sure what your experience has been of being an Aerodrome Controller but at Manch in '72, I found it easier and quicker to get the caravan man to step out with his binos by a nice safe runway than than to sod about moving Control Mobile (God I hated that Morris Minor) out to a suitable safe position to eyeball a DH125 with 2 geeens and a red. OK, I admit it; I should have asked him to fly by the Tower; the spotters would have been thrilled.
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 00:39
  #46 (permalink)  
 
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500N, I think for a couple of reasons. One, by the time the firies have finished laying enough of a foam blanket (and it has to be a big area to cover the potential landing area), they don't have much left for fighting any fire that may occur (water and foam are finite resources in a fire tanker, they are exhausted pretty quickly) and two, without the higher friction of a dry runway the aircraft will slide further and will suffer potential controllability issues, i.e. more likely to depart the runway.
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 01:15
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Traffic_Is_Er_Was

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

I understand where you are coming from. I picked the F-111 as they had 3 hours to prepare and of course the cable as well to stop the aircraft.
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 07:23
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I once watched an accidental wheels up landing take place. [small piston civvie] As we strolled over to it, my v experienced companion said ' well, two types of pilots. Those who have already done it, and those who haven't yet!!' Incidentally, does no-one in the tower EVER look at aircraft on finals to see if everything is as it should be?
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 07:38
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AreaRadar - good spot, well paid. that crew knows the price of keeping egg off face (at best) or Jet out of primary school.

TS - some of your points come across well but in this thread you, sir, are looking like a gibbon of the highest order....

So you've never made a mistake. Go You.

When you do, expect a huge crowd of ppruners to come over and go HA HA.

NOBODY is infalliable, only God is perfect and if I could count my **** ups on one hand I'd be happy.

Runway caravan = extra pair of eyes and another link in the flight safety chain, slightly off topic i caught some channel five show last night about deep sea diving - the old tender (divers bitch) said that if he got distracted or stopped during his see off checks (or equivalent of) he went back to the beginning and started again so he knew he hadn't missed anything. Lesson learnt from someone dying or similar.

try carrying that type of attitude around rather than I taught birds how to fly and I am awesome - we'd all sleep a bit safer that way
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 08:35
  #50 (permalink)  
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Thank you

Thank you for your pics and videos guys.

Some interesting and some revealing comments above. I tell my students, co-pilots and Cadets that Airmanship is all about the total understanding of what is happening in your bubble, which with experience should be several miles wide. Thank you to those posters above who have this awareness and also to those who think they have it.

Is the definition of 'the right type of flying' mentioned above where you have to climb into the aircraft through the roof?

As a flight safety officer, QFi, CRMI, FI and FE those doubters can rest assured I have told the Cadets about the whole value of the runway controller and others, including making sure they are looked after at Sqn parties along with crew chief etc. It is just that to keep the attention of a class of teenage boys learning about airfields and who are only doing it because they can not do the dirty fun things until they have passed the exam, a few dramatic pics helps to keep their interest.

Thanks again guys
MM
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 08:44
  #51 (permalink)  
 
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Foaming of runways

"Since this thread has now drifted, I have a question.If a jet is KNOWN to be coming in for a wheels up landing like in the F-111 Video,
why is foam or water not sprayed onto the runway beforehand to
decrease the amount of sparks / potential for fire "?

Thank you.

The answer to that is that it has never been proven that foaming of a runway prior to a wheels-up has had any benefit. It is also problematical that major fire-fighting vehicles can produce a lot of foam in a short space of time, but they can't do that for the time necessary to complete a long foam path unless towed down a runway. They also have to be replenished with foam/water, and by the time they started and finished a foamed path, the entry point would have disappeared, and the aircraft possibly run out of fuel!

Some airfields classed as major diversion,once had specialised trailers of foam/water available, but they proved eventually to be totally impracticable and were disposed of. Your standard crash/fire vehicle cannot produce a foam pathgiven the time consrtaints of an imminent landing, so forget it and land anyway!
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 09:04
  #52 (permalink)  

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but they proved eventually to be totally impracticable
Possibly allied to the fact that the bean counters didn't like major assets "doing nothing most of the time".
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 09:23
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I remember two instances at Manston where we laid foam. I believe Leeming was the only other airfield that had the capability and they always punted the stricken aircraft to Manston as they were operational. It took a long time to wash away the foam mess afterwards.

The first was a Canberra which blew its canopy off before landing as you could never predict which side the aircraft would settle its wings down on. Left wing down would possibly obstruct the door and the crew might have to clamber out through the top. It landed safely but one of the crew badly twisted an ankle when he slipped on the foam that spattered over the aircraft.

The most eventful one was a Dan Air Comet, full of charter tourists, with its nosewheel refusing to lower. We laid a centreline strip of foam starting midway down the runway, and the crew were briefed to lower the nose and start braking before running into the foam. For some reason they decided not to do this and held the nose up as long as they could. By the time they had lowered the nose they were well down the foam carpet and the mainwheel brakes were saturated in the slimy foam, reducing their effectiveness. It went off the far end by a few hundred yards demolishing the approach lights. Nobody was hurt but the first fireman who arrived at the bottom of the slide was surprised to be handed a bucket of false teeth by the first CC down.
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 09:38
  #54 (permalink)  
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Foam

I recall from my flight safety course a long time ago that they advised the foam had no real affect as mentioned above.

I once came home with a fuel leak and as the main runway had just been napalmed by a Jag mate jettisoning all his stores on take off before jettisoning the airframe shortly afterwards, I had to land on the cross runway. With no diversions available the assembled station execs decided to use the fire trucks to foam the runway so my fuel would float on it and therefore not damage and black the cross runway. Short of fuel I then asked ATC what their crash cat was? A long silence ensued before an answer of zero was given. I landed anyway on a contaminated and flooded runway and we all lived to go to the bar as discuss the wisdom of the Stn Exec's decision!

MM
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 11:24
  #55 (permalink)  
 
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MM

'.... and also to those who think they have it.'

An interesting human factors concept is 'metacognition'. It has a number of definitions, but in aviation this is a persons knowledge of how good their situational awareness is. It's more dangerous having someone who thinks they're situationally aware but actually isn't, than someone who isn't situationally aware, but knows it. i.e. you know what you don't know, and act accordingly.

In a study of single and twin seat FJs crew in a simulated strike mission, all crew reported similar levels of SA, however, the single seat guys were shot down more times in the course of the mission. That is, they thought they were aware of everything they needed to be, but actually weren't. The twin seat crews, with a second pair of eyes, had a much more accurate estimation of the situation, in the high workload scenarios involved in low level work.

Cheers,

P
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 13:18
  #56 (permalink)  
 
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As I said, there was never an incident where it was proved that a foam path was beneficial, and the US Navy spent a lot of money proving the theory!

There were far too many risks associated with it, like getting the width of the foam path just right, how long, how wide, how long can the aircraft stay aloft, could the crash vehicles be replenished in time, the list was a long one! It would be a brave man who committed his crash line to making foam on a runway! Crash vehicles today can produce foam while moving, but that wasn't always the case in the RAF, maybe still is, so the vehicle would have to be towed, and each vehicle can make foam for a relatively short period. The final nail in the concept was the change to to the type of foam compound carried on vehicles, from the old protein-base to the the film-forming- type developed as a result of the disastrous fires aboard US Navy carriers off Vietnam. The resulting foam was much, much more effective, but thinner. You wouldn't gain any benefit landing on it for sure!

The old protein-based foam compound was a brilliant fertiliser by the way, and if vehicles werefoam- tested around a source of heat, say landing approach lights, you could guarantee an almost endless supply of beautiful mushrooms! It was brilliant diluted and sprayed around roses!
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Old 8th Oct 2010, 17:48
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Interesting to note along the lines of those that have and those that will.... the young Blue Angels Lt. doing the impressive finale to his display ended up as an admiral by way of Vietnam, commanding Top Gun and a carrier in the first Gulf War.
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