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Aeronautical Insanity Crosspost


LostCosmonaut

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According to my book (amazon link), Kingfish would have had about the same top speed as the A-12, Mach 3.2 (pg. 181), while having about 700 miles less range, and slightly higher cost (also, the government was more confident in Lockheed's ability to deliver the aircraft on time and work in a highly secretive environment). The Mach 4 figure appears to be for an earlier variant of FISH (First Invisible Super Hustler) that would have been air launched from a modified B-58.

I think we were looking at the same #s.

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Chuck Yeager was very good at talking about doing things that would mean Chuck Yeager is a good pilot, no matter what the facts are.

 

Here's a big old source dump post on the subject of B-36 intercepts: http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9510&p=179123. The quote from Magnesium Overcast is there in the book, so I'm confident in the Big Stick quotes being in that one.

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Chuck Yeager was very good at talking about doing things that would mean Chuck Yeager is a good pilot, no matter what the facts are.

 

Here's a big old source dump post on the subject of B-36 intercepts: http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9510&p=179123. The quote from Magnesium Overcast is there in the book, so I'm confident in the Big Stick quotes being in that one.

Thanks for that read xthetenth.  That was interesting. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow... Just read this.  A mach 3+ disintegration and dude survived!  Geeze. Totally unsurprised that the other guy broke his neck almost instantaneously.

 

http://theaviationist.com/2015/03/17/sr-71-mid-air-disintegration/

 

There was also an Eagle that went out of control and the crew ejected supersonic, apparently it was a very unpleasant experience and only one survived, and he needed a bunch of therapy to get back into shape, but he made it back to flying.

 

http://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm

 

Apparently the first guy to survive it was in an F-100A, and he was a total mess when he got down too.

 

http://www.whiteeagleaerospace.com/supersonic-nightmare/

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I forgot to post this yesterday but August 7 was the 60th anniversary of Tex Johnson performing barrel rolls in a prototype 707 - the Dash-80 -over Lake Washington during SeaFair. The publicity stunt was one of many factors according to legend that helped Boeing achieve dominance in the commercial airline industry.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?displaypage=output.cfm&file_id=390

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-famous-boeing-707-barrel-roll-over-lake-washington/

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So, remember that flight that crashed in Indonesia a while back; https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/circuit-board-solder-crack-cited-in-indonesia-airasi-419593/The accident report got released, and goon Alereon helpfully provided a summary.

 


The overall process of the accident seemed to be:

1. There's a computer that keeps pilots from turning the rudder so hard or rapidly that it snaps the tail off the aircraft. This computer had a broken internal wire connection so every 3 minutes it would shut down, trigger a bunch of errors on the displays, and need to be rebooted.

2. After the 4th rudder computer crash/reboot, the co-pilot decided to try rebooting both Flight Augmentation Computers (providing autopilot, protections, Airbus magic) as well. This is a redundant system, so you should be able to shut down computer 1, turn it back on, then do the same for computer 2 without an interruption. The pilot failed to correctly restart the first computer, so when he turned off computer 2 they lost both computers. Note that to restart computer 2 the co-pilot had turn his seat around (thanks Linedance!), the breakers are behind him.

3. With the loss of both FACs, a whole bunch of error alarms and warnings appeared, the autopilot disengaged, they lost all protections and Airbus magic, and a pilot was required to take manual control of the aircraft. Because of what the FACs were doing when turned off, the rudder settled to 2 degrees left, and the aircraft began a left roll at 6 degrees per second, which is relatively fast and can be felt in your inner ear.

4. Surprised by the unexpected loss of both FACs, neither pilot recognized that they had to fly the airplane. 9 seconds later, the co-pilot who had been troubleshooting realized that he could feel the aircraft rolling, noticed their attitude. and freaked out. He screamed "Oh God!" and pulled the stick back and to the right, pitching the aircraft up and rolling right to level within two seconds, which is super violent. He over-corrected trying to stop the roll, and rolled back to the original 54 degrees left, then corrected more gradually right back to wings level, but still pitched up.

5. During the roll corrections, stall warnings began to sound because the aircraft was pitched up and losing speed. The pilot noticed this and began to push the stick forward, however the co-pilot was still pulling back. The warning that tells pilots they are fighting each-other did not sound because the stall warning was playing instead. The average of their control inputs was a continued pitch up (because the co-pilot was pulling harder than the pilot was pushing), so the aircraft continued climbing until it stalled. The pilot was recorded telling the co-pilot to "Pull down", he meant to say "push down", but every time he said this the co-pilot pulled up harder instead, the opposite from the correct response.

6. Neither pilot had had stall* or upset recovery training because those conditions were believed to be impossible due to the protections provided by the FAC, so the pilots did not recover appropriately. The aircraft fell for about a minute and then broke up at around 12,000 feet.

*They had had "approach to stall" recovery training, how to return to normal flight after the computer has prevented you from stalling the aircraft, but not training about how to save your aircraft when you have already stalled it.


 

 

Emphasis added on point 6, because holy fuck.

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Somewhat related: CVR database

 

The CVR/story behind Fedex 705 is especially insane (even considering everyone lived)

 


 

AC: Sit down, sit down, get back in your seat, this is a real gun, I'll kill ya.
JT: Get him, get him, get him, get him, get him, get him!
AW: bank angle, bank angle...
JT: Get him, get him, get him!
AC: I'm gonna kill you!
AC: Hey, hey! I'll kill ya!
AW: bank angle, bank angle
DS: Get him, get him, get him!
AW: bank angle, bank angle
DS: Yeah, get him!
AW: bank angle, bank angle
JT: Get him, get him, get him, Andy, I got the airplane!
AW: bank angle, bank angle
JT: Get him, Andy, get him!
AW: bank angle, bank angle
(struggling in background)
(overseed warning -- series of clicks in background)
JT to Center: Center, Center, emergency! Center, emergency!
AW: bank angle, bank angle

 

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