Sounds like the effing GIB panicked and could have killed people on the ground. They dont say if the engine was spooling down, or making power, just that the AB didnt light. Sounds like the guy flying thought they could still get it down when woosh...off he goes.
Guy flying that is a friend of a friend. Said the ejection was more violent than you can comprehend. There are a few things in life I’d like to avoid-riding a Russian ejection seat is definitely on that list.
There's tons of video, and let me preface this by saying I don't know my ass from my elbow on jet engines, but the sound of the engine isn't garbled.. It sounded normal all the way through ejection. Probably banked a little hard for how slow he was going, but expecting the AB's to light. They will definitely be playing those events over and over in their heads. At least the wings were forward, I bet level flight might have been a possibility, but as I said before, what do I know.
When I saw the video I told my wife it looked like an inadvertent ejection. The jet was flying just fine. I wonder if the -23 had an option to separate the ejection sequence? In the F-14D we could have it so that if either pulled, both went, or if RIO pulled, only RIO went. The second choice was what was selected anytime non-aviators were in the back seat to prevent this exact event. It did happen once where a guy pulled the handle and the pilot flew the jet home as a single seat convertible.
Getting parts, especially engine parts - to keep that jet code 1 is probably getting harder to do by the day. I say especially engine parts since Ivan wasn't exactly known for doing full teardown/rebuilds on their engines. Rather, because it was a worker's paradise, they preferred to just swap out the whole thing and put a new one in its place. To their credit, the Russians have had really, really good seats in their aircraft. Probably comes with all that experience with junior enlistees swapping a bottle of водка with the boss down at the maintenance hanger just to leave early on a Friday and chase glorious казачья вагина. But yea, going from that nice semi-comfortable seat with a good view to being smashed in the face at 300 KIAS riding a rocket-powered booster when you didn't ask for it, well ... that's probably worse than impeachment proceedings.
Wayne Newton's compound in Vegas looks similar, but he's only got one plane there- it's a JetStar or something, but they built a hallway right up to it so obviously it doesn't move anymore. It's right underneath the final approach to 26L, if you're on the left side of the plane you can see it quite well.
Watching an interview about Travolta’s home next to a runway, his wife remarked that ‘ … his landings are soooo smooth …. “ and couldn’t help but think that he must really grease those landings. Anyway, here’s a Bear with a missing engine, covered in tyres.
Watched a few videos on this today, including the backseater who was interviewed. Seems the engine wasn't accelerating. They zoom climbed up to 700 feet but speed was down to 190 knots. Tried the throttle 3x and seems like it was not making thrust. Min airspeed for a relight is 240knots+ Minimum window for ejection is 5,000 ft and 90 knots forward airspeed, he says he felt the aircraft buffetting and the nose was up, but they were sinking. In the video, he got out maybe 300' in the air, MAYBE had another 4-5 seconds before the ejection would have not happened in time. Sucks for all involved, glad nobody was hurt on the ground- they got lucky. Maybe he did do something wrong, but if he was early, it was only by 4-5 seconds. No way they were going to get a restart or dead stick it in, so there wasn't too many options IMO. Never flown a jet fighter though, so what do I know.
In the F-16, I think it was - if you were below 3,000 ft at less than 200 KIAS and not near a runway, you were gonna have a bad day. I bet those old rooskie jets required at least a mile of altitude and .8 Mach if you ever hoped to get a restart, and that’s probably only if you practiced. How much practice do you need, you ask? I’m not sure, but the adjutant general of a certain state’s air guard, on his last flight in the viper, experienced an engine failure while doing BFM (basic fighter maneuvers - the sport of gods). He was three or four miles up, but couldn’t figure out the proper restart procedure in time. He tried more than once, but that Pratt & Whitney F-100 just didn’t want to light. Maybe he couldn’t find the right page on his knee board or he perhaps, just forgot his Dash 1 all together, I dunno. No less, he did get out of the airplane in time to watch it crash into a field. When he hit the ground, again, because he didn’t practice or maybe have a check list handy, he was was unable to free himself of his parachute. It’s only one pin on the harness, after all, that you have to pull to get out of it in a hurry. And it was windy, so he was unwillingly dragged over the snow a little ways before he managed to unhook himself. After that, since this was before everyone had a mobile phone, he was walked a few hundred yards, knocked on someone’s door and, used their telephone to let everyone know he was okay. Fifth generation fighters don’t have much of a restart procedure. In fact, you don’t have to do anything other than pay attention since the flight controls will automatically try to restart the engine(s) for you. Kids these days have it really easy.
They did show the relight checklist- it's designed for high altitude, obviously. High Key is 15,000 feet (over the runway for a no-engine approach) and final segment 7,000' with planned touchdown at 210 Knots. I never served in the military, but your story kind of reminds me that it's usually chief pilots that bend airplanes in the civilian world!
Have any of you pilots heard about this? https://pjmedia.com/columns/milthar...-scandal-has-not-yet-been-determined-n1729408
I hadn't heard about this. The last thing I read was about a crummy batch of parts from one of Boeing's suppliers that was used in assembly of the pressure bulkhead of certain 737s. This is a little different, these are parts removed from other engines and determined to be "serviceable" by some kind of inspector- in this case probably an affiliate of the manufacturer. They are then "yellow tagged" and can be sold as airworthy parts to be placed on other engines. The issue is the "yellow tags" were falsified and the parts sold on the open market. Doesn't necessarily mean they were bad, just that they never got inspected by CFM. Variable guide vanes inside the engine are critical parts. They can cause a flameout, compressor stall, or just a failure of the engine to accelerate properly.
A single failed VSV is unlikely to cause a major problem unless it liberates and large chunks go downstream. It's the turbine blades I saw mentioned in one article I would be concerned about...
