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That will leave a scratch.
Canadian flyboy Captain Brian Bews had a narrow escape last Friday when his CF-18 Hornet decided to give up the ghost during a practice run at an airshow at Lethbridge airport in Alberta. Bews' injuries following his low-level ejection were described as "non-life threatening", although he's probably lost his no-claims …
Normally I get a bit bored with those people who say things like "you're way behind, this was news last week". However, I think this is getting beyond a joke. All the news sites had this on saturday. Even the blogs that exist on linking to other sites had it on sunday. Maybe sometimes rather than recycling old news it's best just to admit that you missed the boat and let it go.
Or maybe not.
It looks like a classic spin entry to me, just not nearly high enough.
He was mushing on the edge of a stall (look at all that up elevator) and applied aileron to stop the wing drop. As the nose comes past head-on you can see that the outer aileron is up!
It looks like he flew a classic spin entry to me, just not nearly high enough.
He was a lucky boy, though - another second and he'd have ejected downward. As it was he barely had enough height for the chute to open.
Oh wait, it already has...
Seriously though, ordinarily these McDD jets are, arguably, the most capable combat jet type currently in service -- reliable as hell, too -- and certainly aren't known for lawn-darting.
There was no obvious sign that anything had gone awry (aside from the subsequent massive fireball...) and it's a twin-engine type so... ? Strange.
There's also the spectre of the desk job in there encouraging any pilot who likes flying to keep the bloody thing in the air until it becomes blatantly obvious that it ain't staying there.
I once knew an RAF Squadron Leader who ended up flying a desk. Dunno about the Canucks, but he told me that the RAF operate (or certainly did back then) a strict "three strikes" policy on bangouts. The reason is that the pyro pack that accelerates the ejection seat intially also imparts a fair degree of spinal compression in doing so. The thinking is/was that a pilot can only withstand three of these before his lumbar vertebrae give up the ghost.
"This video is blocked from your area (USA) by CNN Europe on copyright grounds."
Fine - we'll just visit you with a few dozen of these things in proper working order, and we'll see if you can block that.
F'n regional news indeed. I thought only Uncle Sam managed the news . . .
For anyone interested in this genre I'd like to recommend the MiG 29 crash at Le Bourget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL1FblthxQ0
When the engines fail right after take off, he turns and flies straight towards the ground before ejecting, in order to avoid hitting the crowd. Remember hearing that he stood up afterwards without any major injuries, and that he offered to fly the next day.
And, all our-equipment-is-better-than-yours-flames aside, you have to admit that the MiG 29 is aestheticly more pleasing than the F-16.
When I worked at Intel they would have air shows over the parking lot.
A brave pilot stood his jet on its tail over head there as well, successfully.
A number of people (myself included) were directly below it about 20 feet off to one side of its vertical, very loud, and very impressive. not so safe, but what the heck... it was great..
My actual comment though was that being in the US I noticed that CNN said that the video was blocked in the US due to Copyright issues. I had to laugh... at the irony and so I left El-reg for a minute to watch it on You tube from about a dozen sources and angles... CNN can go pound sand, "what a bunch of Maroons" (Bugs Bunny) anyway good that the pilot was safe and that there weren't a bunch of yahoos like myself standing underneath it just for the thrill.
:)
There are some good still photos of the crash. He was performing a high angle of attack pass, which is a standard airshow demo. Spectators reported that this port engine appeared to be "glowing red hot" but the starboard wasn't. Photos show that the exhaust nozzles were in dramatically different positions as the aircraft stalled and crashed. Perhaps a bird strike? Mechanical failure? The accident report will no doubt unravel the mystery of this flight's last seconds.
As others have already pointed out, such things need time and altitude to recover from, which he didn't have. But if the root cause was an engine failure of some kind, the "wrong thing" that set up this crash was the planned display routine, and Air Forces are known for older, more senior, pilots checking and approving those plans.
Yeah, it's frustrating to not be able to watch something because you're in the wrong region. It happens to those of us outside the US all the time. I've stopped reading certain sites because they were always linking to hulu or something, and it was just an exercise in frustration. An outdated business model that doesn't transfer all that well to the internet. Google should take a stand and not allow the option on YouTube. I'm Canadian, so getting the message was pretty funny.
>ordinarily these McDD jets are, arguably, the most capable combat jet type currently in service
That's the canuck's problem - they have just agreed to buy a gazillion $ worth of the latest US F35.
Which since their only conceivable enemies are a bunch of guys on donkeys and a large country to the south that makes the F35 it's looking a bit difficult to justify - especially when the CF18 is so good.
Looks like they came up with a way to claim on the insurance.
Hands up who hasn't accidentally dropped an old laptop to get a new one.
>What is it exactly that makes CNN block a video in some countries, but not others?
I used to work at a newspaper.
The AP feed would frequently come in with comments like "No Ecuador" or "No Florida" -- in those cases a paper in Ecuador (or Florida) was keeping the photo exclusive in their home market so local competitors wouldn't run it, but outside their market area it was open for anyone to run. Geographic restrictions were most common, but you'd see other ones from time to time.
Very sophisticated technology was involved...they'd just put the restrictions at the end of the cutline, in all caps if memory serves me right. Used to be fun at lunch to just peruse the photo feed.
I agree it looks like the starboard engine failed during a high alpha manoeuvre, but strangely there is no obvious control surface movement. The fly-by-wire systems should have automatically intervened to counter the yaw from the asymmetric thrust, and reduce the attitude to prevent stalling as the airspeed decreased, even if ultimately there was no longer enough thrust to save the aircraft at that height.
Well, even Billy Bishop was known to bend the odd aircraft, so this Cannuck (Captain Brian Bews if the other Web reports are correct) could be the next Commonwealth ace. Very impressed with the performance of the ejector seat, it exits the cockpit horizontally but very quickly rotates through 90 degreees to fire the 'chute vertically. At least Sir James Martin would be smiling. But then the counter on the Martin-Baker site lists 18 other pilots that have ejected on M-B seats so far in 2010, so it's just this Canuck's poor luck to have his mistake caught on camera. I say send Brian his Caterpillar Club membership and get him back in a new Hornet, pronto.
Video is blocked here.... but that's cause my workplace doesn't allow videos through our firewall, otherwise the call centre staff would spend their time watching Fifty Pence on YouTube.
Anyway, I think I saw this same video on the weekend... is it the one where the tannoys are blasting out "Staying Alive" by the Bee-Gees? If so, I thought that was incredibly apt :o)
ps - I chose the pissed off icon cause it resembles the plane, not cause I'm pissed off.
It is a strange coincidence that I have been up at my local airfield (Lasham) training to recognise and recover from stalls/spins all weekend, only to come in to work on monday morning and see this. Definitely looks like a mushing stall, followed by a wing drop and the beginnings of a spin entry. If there was more distance to the ground, then a proper spin would probably have followed.
For anyone blaming an engine failure, I would just like to point out that I have never found such things (engines) necessary in the first place, having had several 1hr+ flights this weekend without one. My suspicion is that the engine just runs a big fan to keep the pilot cool - you can tell this because when the fan stops, the pilot starts sweating...
OK, I'll get my coat then. It's the one with the copy of 'A glider pilot bold' by Wally Kahn...
".....For anyone blaming an engine failure, I would just like to point out that I have never found such things (engines) necessary in the first place...." Well, unless you're using a cat launch at your glider field (unlikely, if I remember Lasham correctly), you'll find an engine and spinning fan on the front of whichever towplane dragged you up to a height where your glider could actually do some flying, and that was usually a lot higher than the height Capt Bews had his brown pants moment.
The frilly bit at the back was wide open on one engine, good I'm told, and tucked in close on the other indicating, I'm told, that it wasn't working well.
There is also an interesting picture of the half-crashed aircraft with a vast plume of fire coming out of one engine nozzle, and not out of the other, again suggesting that only one of the engines was still spinning, as both of them had their fronts in a big fire.
Stills may be better than movies, people.
This video is unable to be viewed in your region.
WTF?
This nasty little NAZI craze of blocking things is starting to creep into more and more and more vids etc.
Even seeing vids of Aussie bands on Youtube, being blocked for viewing in Australia...
Ohhhh here they are playing at my uncles 21st - some 30 years ago.....
Nope - video not available due to copyright restrictions...
Fuck this copyright bullshit.