Forum: General F-35 Forum

By the way... since you mention the chase airplane, those are ours!

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sulfer732 wrote:

I have seen a fuel leak in flight. No need to be condescending, Fella! Our jets leak all the time! Sometimes you guys here are my comedy!

And vice versa when you make a statement that it couldn't have been a small leak if it was detected in flight.

Last edited by SpudmanWP on Mar 10, 2012 - 10:52 PM; edited 1 time in total

Just ask a SR-71 pilot what a REAL fuel leak is like Smile

Couple of examples of fuel leaks I've had, to throw some more fuel on the fire, so to speak...

During T-33 walk-around, to assure the tips were fueled, one opened the tip fuel caps which were attached with internal braided wire cable to the tip tank structure. (The T-33 had no direct reading fuel indicators, other than the small engine feed tank, only a pilot set counter for the rest.)

Evidently I closed the cap with a portion of frayed wire caught in the seal. Resulting airborne fuel leak visually looked like a geyser. Shocked

Turns out it was nothing, a couple hundred misty pounds lost before the 'heavy' landing.

Conversely...

Had an inflight structural crack in the wingbox of an F-4. Wingman noticed a very slight glisten and beading on the underside of the aircraft during recovery with minimal misting and spray.

Turns out it 'looked' like nothing, but was a disaster waiting to happen. Had the wingman move well away when I lowered the gear (aux air doors open) and told him he could have my stereo.

IFE that was declared by the 35 driver was certainly appropriate. This is also certainly not the issue...

So ... was it a leak or a seep? Wash rack? 3 Fasteners? Story doesn’t make sense. Don’t wash it or Gas it, National Security is depending on it! Embarassed

3 days since it was determined to be 3 loose fasteners.

Do they tighten one per day?

Union contract Mx? Very Happy

Loose fasteners might be rivets, could call for drilling out and resetting with blind rivets. And, more importantly, why were they loose? Integral fuel tanks, meaning no bladder, frequently use rivets on some seams. All of that takes more time than tightening three loose screws. Then there's all that invisible paint to work through. Confused

Quote:

However, the maintainers have tightened them on the base’s eight other F-35s, said Chrissy Cuttita with Eglin’s public affairs office.

You're a loyal company man JW. Very Happy

(I'm just an old guy wishing I could fly one of them there jets. Cheers

)

How do you know it's not already fixed? It's not like the news is going to report every piece of non-negative news about the F-35, especially after they trumped up a non-issue.

"In other news, the F-35 fuel leak was really nothing at all. They were able to diagnos the problem and fix it in about 3 hours. In time for flights to resume the next day. I guess we made more of a big deal out of it than it actually was. Sorry Lockheed Martin, we appologize for trumping that up. Back to you Steve . . . "

Yeah, I don't see that happening. Who do you think these people are, real journalist?

Sufa Viper

Gents,
I think the big thing to remember here, from a pilot and MX perspective, is that this particular jet had not flown in almost 6 months. I've obviously never flown an F-35, but I was an FCF pilot for a long time on other jets, and I would have been sucking seat cushion from minute 1 on an FCF on a "hangar queen". I'd bet most FCF guys on here, myself included, were spring loaded for the "big problem" (or problems) that was inevitably going to arise on a hangar queen FCF. Any amount of fuel visible to a chase ship is IFE worthy, in my opinion, but for the first un-monitored F-35 flight, in a new MAJCOM for the jet, at a new base and new wing for the jet, in a jet that hadn't flown in 6-months....I'd be inclined to be VERY conservative on the IFE decision (i.e. hand out IFE's like candy) and leave the second-guessing for the debrief. IMHO.

outlaw162 wrote:

Quote:

However, the maintainers have tightened them on the base’s eight other F-35s, said Chrissy Cuttita with Eglin’s public affairs office.

You're a loyal company man JW. Very Happy

(I'm just an old guy wishing I could fly one of them there jets. Cheers

)

I wish you could fly them too. And I wish I could be in the flight test data station again, monitoring everything you did and every structural load on the airplane. Cheers

Salute!

What John-boy said.

From the credibility aspect background, I was the systems engineer that wrote the software spec and requirements of the data reduction facility for the ATARS test program here at Eglin in the mid-90's. I then got to supervise the implementation of said system and then do some of the actual data reduction once the test flights were underway. The hardware folks we had in our small company figured out what we needed to capture all the relevant data, then we produced the complete spec for the system.

The embedded process here at Eglin was not capable of providing a "quick look" capability, so we informed USAF and our prime contractor that we could do it and do it for a lot less $$ than the Eglin folks. The Eglin folks could use the raw data and take however long they needed for "final report" stuff, but we needed quick feedback to the folks building the system due to our flight schedule.

We didn't have a real-time data stream via data link, but we could produce critical data traces within two hours of the jet landing. A day later we could produce hundreds of charts and graphs and such for management and other engineers. USAF folks didn't trust us, so they sent a "SWAT team" from Wright-Patt and installed their own sensors and such to verify our results. After a few flights they admitted that our data was as good or better than theirs. Hmmmmmm.

I gotta tellya, that as a pilot I wished to have flown the jets. But developing a good system requires many disciplines and good execution. I was very happy to have helped and learned a lot.

+++++++++++++++

I was also an FCF pilot in two airplanes before the Viper and agree that flying a hangar queen is most exciting. Of course, engine replacement was the most interesting, and most of my time was in a single-engine jet, heh heh. Then recall that my LEF failure was first flight after work was done on the LEF system and they didn't complete the hook up from drive motor to drive tube fo the right LEF.

When talking with the wrenchbenders at Eglin last month I was informed that they ran up the motors and actually taxiied. So these were not pure "hangar queens".

Gums sends...

Gums wrote:

+++++++++++++++

I was also an FCF pilot in two airplanes before the Viper and agree that flying a hangar queen is most exciting. Of course, engine replacement was the most interesting, and most of my time was in a single-engine jet, heh heh. Then recall that my LEF failure was first flight after work was done on the LEF system and they didn't complete the hook up from drive motor to drive tube fo the right LEF.

When talking with the wrenchbenders at Eglin last month I was informed that they ran up the motors and actually taxiied. So these were not pure "hangar queens".

Gums sends...

LEF failure.. ick. Glad you survived that - a couple of Hornets have been lost to that.

So would you say that the leaking needed some flight loads to reveal, and not just the pressurization of the fuel system?

Salute!

@ all, only half my time was single engine. 1/3 was in A-37 and 1/5 in Voodoo. So I correct the record.

@ maus, go read my interview on this site and look at the picture and such. Sheesh.

++++++++++++++

I think flight loads may have helped to find the leak or a maintenance/design problem. Don't know what the jet did after gear up, so I reserve further theories.

On our A-7 and Viper groundings, we ran up and roared down the runway at full power, then aborted. In Viper that meant going thru all stages of the burner.

In both jets we had no problems resuming flight and did not require an FCF for every jet, but they made the "experienced" folks fly first flights.

In the Viper, wasn't much to check due to the FLCS mod. The sucker's new power supply design/mod worked or it didn't.

In the SLUF, it was a combination of the oil system and the "spacer" on the turbine/compressor shaft ( ask TEG about the TF-41/Spey motor) . But like the Viper, the fix was gonna work or not work and not much an FCF pilot could do about it. Later had more problems with the oil system and lost one or two when the bearings froze up. Benign failures and plenty of time to get out.

Gums sends...

The old post is here: http://f-16.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2 ... p;start=15

The LEF looks a bit displaced.

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Loose fasteners blamed for F-35 fuel leak (1st Training Flt)