JASDF F-35A crashed

[spazsinbad]

Another context for SD Spatial Disorientation in a T-6 Texan crash with experienced pilots onboard surviving/ejecting OK:

https://www.airforcemag.com/investigati ... t-6-crash/

PDF of report: https://www.airforcemag.com/app/uploads ... REPORT.pdf (1.5Mb)

"...e. Spatial Disorientation (PC508) [page 23-24]
Spatial disorientation occurs when an individual fails to accurately sense a position, motion, or attitude of the aircraft / vehicle / vessel or of oneself. Spatial Disorientation may be unrecognized and / or result in partial or total incapacitation.

During maneuver setup, the MIP [Mishap Instructor Pilot] focused on the weather and did not crosscheck attitude with the MA’s [Mishap Aircraft] flight instruments. Upon entering the spin, the MC [Mishap Crew] could not recognize turn-direction and roll rate. As documented in flight tests, power-on, inverted spins to the right are disorienting due to rapid roll and pitch oscillations. Despite efforts, the MIP was unable to regain control of the MA [Mishap Aircraft]. The MIP recognized the complete loss of orientation and transferred flight controls to the MP. After the MA completed two additional 360°rotations, the MIP, still disoriented, commanded and initiated ejection. The MIP likened the experience to “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride”....

...3. SUBSTANTIALLY CONTRIBUTING FACTORS [page 28]
I find, by a preponderance of the evidence that the following two factors substantially contributed to the mishap: environmental conditions affecting vision and spatial disorientation.

a. Environmental Conditions Affecting Vision
While commonly practiced during continuation training and in the Euro-NATO Joint Jet PIT syllabus, out-of-control flight is only performed in airspace clear of clouds. Once in the clouds, the MC lost the ability to recognize altitude, turn direction, and rate of turn by using the horizon as a visual cue. This coupled with inverted flight contributed to the MC’s failure to remedy the out-of-control flight condition.

b. Spatial Disorientation
The MIP lost situational awareness of the MA’s flying condition while fixated on setting up the unusual attitude recovery. The cumulous clouds in the MOA [Military Operating Area] created a sloping cloud deck, which induced a visual illusion of a horizon well above the actual, level horizon. The MIP perceived that the MA was traveling at 15°to 20°nose-high, when, in-fact, it was 65°nose-high. The MIP attempted to correct for the decreasing airspeed and inevitable stall, but the flight control inputs resulted in a power-on, inverted spin into the clouds. The disorienting nature of the rapid spin onset, followed by the MA’s oscillation and negative Gs exacerbated the MIP’s spatial disorientation. This spatial disorientation incapacitated the MIP and prevented the MIP from safely piloting the MA...."

[outlaw162]

Inverted spins are considerably disorienting (and uncomfortable) even in perfect weather conditions. One is always disoriented when one is thusly disoriented.

A poor man's indication of an inverted spin and spin-direction in the T-37 (also very oscillatory depending on entry type) was all the dust and debris floating to one side of the canopy. T-6 is probably too new to have accumulated enough such 'FOD'. And actually a few puffy clouds out on the horizon could help visually in determining spin direction, especially when it was hazy or vague. Poor guys.

To be more accurate, this situation appears to have resulted more from initial judgement disorientation rather than SD however....but the turn needle never lies.

"Ground (moving) right, ball right, (turn) needle left....spinning left", we would have the student say before settling on which rudder direction was required. If inverted, determined by hanging in the straps with dust in your eyes, the first move was to transition to an upright spin by pulling full back on the pole...also disorienting. Of course you have to know you're in a spin to begin with. Poor guys.

Does the T-6 have a turn needle and ball in the head down displays or are those 'OK Boomer' things?

[spazsinbad]

PDF T-6B TEXAN Flight Manual USN/USAF dated 01 Dec 2012 available: [graphic soonish]
http://www.grayskies.info/DOWNLOADS/NAV ... _w_IC6.pdf (26Mb)

[outlaw162]

Yes, I noticed that before you posted the verbiage. That's the typical electronically generated sideslip indicator also utilized on the fancy airline PFDs. If they have a true turn needle, I don't see it yet.

The ironic thing here is the sort of unusual attitude/upset training being done VMC before this LOC is directed precisely at being prepared for IMC recoveries also.

Those less prominent standby attitude references are generally under trained and under utilized in aircraft with the more modern displays, possibly applicable to the F-35 accident also.

[spazsinbad]

One has to bear with me as I have no knowledge of all this new fangled stuff whilst having to speed read this crap about what I know not then make graphics (sometimes agonisingly because the way the PDF has been made) then extract pages.

I'M A SPUN OUT TEXAN pages of ATE attached.... Sickness inducing NEEDLE mentioned in these pages below - somewhere.

BACKUP FLIGHT INSTRUMENT (4.) in the cockpit front panel graphic above may have this elusive NEEDLE in PROVERBIAL?

2 page PDF 'bout this BACKUP FLIGHT INSTRUMENT now attached also.

"...The slip/skid indicator is similar in appearance to the minor graduations of the pitch ladder (both appear as white lines parallel to the horizon). The following characteristics will distinguish the slip/skid indicator from the pitch ladder:

● The pitch ladder display is inhibited in the region where the slip/skid indication is displayed; there is no possibility of the pitch ladder obscuring or even touching the slip/skid indication.

● The slip/skid indicator width is equal to the width of the roll pointer. This width is less than one-half the width of the pitch ladder minor graduations, and less than one-quarter the width of the major graduations."

[outlaw162]

Not there on the standby. More EFIS stuff. Oh well. That's probably why they initially neutralize the controls and inverted spins are prohibited....until you end up in one.

Needle, speedle, ball (the only way to fly ):

[spazsinbad]

I've mentioned before that probably a lot of aircraft are prohibited from inverted spinning PRACTICE with lots of verbiage otherwise in the flight manuals/NATOPS for how to recover from same. The RAN FAA lost a MACCHI MB326H from a practice inverted spin / instructor with student ejected safely. Little did they know the RAAF meanwhile had prohibited such things because.... you make a guess. Meanwhile the PDF PFD Pages ATE are attached below....

[spazsinbad]

TEXAN HUD simulating HORNET in DIAL version of T-6B (NOT THE TAPEworm version) wot are different, same as PFD diff.

[outlaw162]

Good stuff, thanks.

We did inverted spins in the T-37 occasionally, usually due to the student holding the stick forward too long in an upright recovery, but also for instructor currency from both upright and inverted stalls. I believe the USN T-2s did spin training also.

Airborne loss of control training programs are primarily a function of whether the actual aircraft is predictably recoverable in the first place or whether your simulation is as good as the F-35 to do it safely even if the recovery is bollixed up. Unusual attitude training, of necessity, would be planned to stop short of LOC....one would hope.

Statements in the AFM like, "after one turn, recovery is highly unlikely" (in both the F-100 & F-105 AFMs) tended to make one fly more carefully and with less abandon in certain regimes.

Can an F-35 even actually be spun under normal circumstances in the operational world with a functional FLCS? I still am of the opinion that this JASDF guy could have benefitted from a little more standby instrument practice during initial checkout.

[spazsinbad]

Inverted spins in spin recoverable aircraft were always initially very disorientating for this little black duck. IIRC we could do both spins in a WINJEEL Radial Prop Trainer BUT NOT NEVER EVER NO WAY ANY SPINNING ALLOWABLE in a VAMPIRE.

I was converted to the MACCHI MB326H by a RAAF Instructor at EAST SALE so I could be the first staff pilot to fly VC-724. We spun upside/downside every which way but loose and thankfully recovered every time then later this unrecoverable problem was discovered BUT NOT communicated to the RAN FAA. QUEL DOMMAGEE. Of course sometimes recoverable.

LOTS of spin info in the A4G Skyhawk NATOPS however spins were not allowed - which was fine by me.

IIRC correctly the F-35 will recover AUTOMATICALLY from a spin if the controls 'let go'. FCS senses the problem to recover.

From about 1 min 25 seconds in this video we hear the explanation of how the F-35 recovers from a spin automatically.

F-35C High Angle of Attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6XofdlfJ0k


_____________________________

F-35A Spin Recovery Chute Test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBxaDkXHzKY

[outlaw162]

In the past, spin training during primary flight training was done to provide exposure to LOC and certain procedural and motor skills that would, to some extent, carry over to those aircraft that would likely be flown operationally in the future, having their own specific procedural nuances.

If you've got an aircraft that recovers itself, that pretty much reduces the required primary training to....

...."Don't touch anything"

Smart airplanes, dumb pilots......we'll see.

[spazsinbad]

I think your last sentence describes current non-mil trained airline pilots (most of them) very well. I do recall a South Korean airline crew unable to land their aircraft in SoCal manually. They did not have a clue apparently, so into underrun.

Such a sophisticated aircraft as the F-35 not taking advantage of advances in flight control laws would be silly indeed. Paves the way for robotic aircraft going into battle to return safely. Always a good thing for a carrier robot for example.

[spazsinbad]

F-35 System Development and Demonstration Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Air Station Patuxent River
Dr. Mary L. Hudson, Michael L. Glass, and Lt Col Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton - Edwards Air Force Base, CA, 93524, USA and C. Eric Somers, and Robert C. Caldwell - Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD, 20670, USA

...G. Test Pilots’ Perspective...
...The first F-35 pilot to reach 1000 flight hours was David “Doc” Nelson at EDW on 6 January 2017 in AF-3. The following are some of his comments on F-35 flight testing at EDW....

...2) Intentionally putting the aircraft out of control in different ways more than 150 times to confirm its ability to recover to controlled flight..."

Source: download/file.php?id=27746

LOOKING for the CANIN article about CLAW came across this long article with some interestin' bits to quote:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=54424&p=401317&hilit=Canin#p401317

How F-35 Experience Could Reduce Hurdles To Developing Fighters
07 Sep 2018 Graham Warwick

"...All three variants had issues with abrupt wing stall and roll-off in transonic maneuvers—a problem that affects other fighter designs. The rapidly changing aerodynamics as shocks migrate across the aircraft are difficult to model, so the control laws were augmented outside the basic NDI to achieve adequate handling qualities. The same technique was used at high AOA.

Requirements call for maneuverability “on par with any fourth-generation fighter,” says Canin, “which is an achievement for an aircraft with an outer mold line driven by other requirements.” The F-35 has to be able to use all the maneuverability it has. The program office called for air-to-air tracking up to stall AOA, or alpha, followed by predictable and controllable post-stall handling. “The aircraft has to be departure-resistant in any normal tactical maneuver and recover with minimal pilot input,” he says.

“At high AOA, the [aerodynamic] model is very challenging to build, so there is some augmentation outside the model to correct for errors,” says Canin, adding: “High-alpha control is all about allocation of horizontal tail power for yaw and pitch.”

Tests involved about 100 flights per variant, attacking the 50-deg. AOA limiter to force departure and demonstrate recovery. “It always did,” he says. “The aircraft is extremely departure resistant.”

The F-35 can enter deep stall, but recovery is automatic and not initiated manually as in the F-16, the control system sensing and pitch-rocking the aircraft out of the stall. “Unlike the F-16, the F-35 does not have an inverted deep stall,” says Canin…."

Source: http://now.eloqua.com/es.asp?s=96691307 ... Id=13994#1 [no longer available of course] [AvWeak Original: http://aviationweek.com/combat-aircraft ... g-fighters

[Corsair1963]

JASDF F-35's and USAF F-16's taking off from Misawa Air Base Jan 16th.....



https://youtu.be/Pcg8E-5COZ0

[Gums]

Salute!

Remember about early days of the Viper - they did not figure out "a way to get into a deep stall" for years. The flight control laws cut out manual rudder above 30 deg AoA or so and provided anti-spin rudder. The guys that explored the envelope back in the 70's are old now, but it would be great to talk with them.

The Code One I link I post here has an interesting war story about first deep stall.

http://www.codeonemagazine.com/images/C ... 8_2157.pdf

My old roomie flew at Edwards for years and said the Sluf had classic spin characteristics and recovery technique. Step on the ball after relaxing back stick. I never departed that thing, but several other FCF pilots did it intentionally. Most unintentional departures resulted in a nose slice, roll/tumble and unless you held stoopid control positions it recovered by itself without entering a spin. One guy in our squad actually departed and the aggressor trailing him was fascinated by the display and flew out ahead of him. Squirrel recovered then got a tone on his AIM-9E and called the kill shot!
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Looks to me that only the HUD on the T-6 has the "turn and slip" presentation, and it is electronic!! Gasp. Those gyros are cheap and small and reliable.

Our Air Defense Command checkout in the T-33 required us to do an approach using needle, ball and airspeed. If the IP was really nasty, he would also cover the RMI and we would couple the primitive instruments with a "gyro out" procedure.

+++++++++++++++++++
Biggest thing about losing orientation is that it can happen very quickly. And I am not all that sure about how to show that to a newbie.

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