Use of the brake chute
Although winds at Stanley were frequently of 'stonking' magnitude, I don't recall ever risking a hookless landing - one had to consider the possibility of a brake chute failure and that metal runway could be really slippery. As I recall, we always had 5 cables rigged, 2 approach, one mid and 2 overrun such was the concern over stopping but the airborne streaming of the chute was very much frowned upon as it was both unnecessary and risky - time it wrong and you could have a very heavy landing indeed, even for an F4.
Standard functional test of a production USAF F-4 upon landing at McAir, St. Louis: touchdown, pop the drag chute, full brakes to check anti-skid function. Occasionally a pilot would forget that he was flying a U.S. Navy F-4, which did not have anti-skid. Result: blocking one of the runways at Lambert - St. Louis International Airport until the Phantom was jacked up and what was left of the main landing gear hubs placed on dollies so it could be dragged back to the hangar...
Join Date: Oct 2001
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nipva: correct, until the infamous 'demonstration arrested landing' for John Nott (?) conducted in RED wx conditions (I ask you!) when the BAK-13 cable snapped (due to co-incident chute deployment) and re-organised the rear-end of the subject F4. After which the BAK-13s were 'withdrawn' and we had to use the 2 x RHAGs only, with the concomitant massive increase in re-wind/reset times and reduced rate of recovery.
The shot above has aroused my curiosity. Why the 'chute? I did not think that 'chutes were ever used for deck landings because of the need to be able to bolt so when would a deck landing ever be accompanied by the use of a 'chute?
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nipva, the image of the F-4 with the chute deployed during the bolter, posted by Spaz, is a VMFA-323 F-4N (BuNo 152318), the deployed chute was the result of chute door latch failure during the bolter, it was aboard the USS Kitty Hawk during CarQuals, Feb 79, the F-4 did a circuit and landed without further incident. (info via P.Greengrass)
-RP
-RP
Last edited by Rhino power; 2nd Aug 2016 at 10:02.
