58th Fighter Squadron F-35A crashes during night landing

[quicksilver]

“In fairness, the Harrier mafia never had to deal with tricycle gear porpoises.”

Ya think so, eh? It actually porpoises quite well, tandem gear, outriggers and all. Also does like a wheel barrow. I’ll find the video...

A nearly ‘all points’ landing is SOP for every landing. If you consider the gear geometry relative to the tail, you’ll notice that you cannot flare the jet lest you skag the tail. Be a little ‘flat’ and you’ll touch the nose gear first go for an e-ticket ride. Late idle? Power bounce; the later the idle the bigger the bounce. Land ‘conventionally‘? Imagine touch down around 160kts in a jet with a wing that wants to fly at airspeeds down to about 30, and has a tandem landing gear set-up where the main mount (the only part with brakes) supports only 50% of the weight of the jet. Don’t be late with power nozzle braking and don’t use to much thrust to do so or you will make like a wheel barrow as you scoot down the runway well above 100kts. While you’re doing that, over-control the NWS and swap ends to go backwards.

MTF...

[Gums]

Salute!

Hey! The dude left his speed control doofer set for getting to the IAF or wherever, then did not turn it off or go to some cosmic mode that a Nintendo kid could fly. Sheesh. BEAM ME UP!

Believe it or not, the Voodoo had a coupled A/P mode for the ILS. It did not control AoA or speed, just tried to keep the jet on the glide path amd centerline. I tried it a few times in CAVU to see how it worked, and I only had to use throttle for speed. The stick would move back and forth. left and right.

Something wrong with an A/P system that does not re-configure once gear is down. My Voodoo system required you to engage after gear/flaps down for the coupled ILS approach.

Gums sends...

[spazsinbad]

I'm glad the MP had put the gear down - imagine the kerfuffle otherwise - & not checking the approach IAS ONCE?!

[quicksilver]

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/pl ... phone&tt=b

4:10 and 5:24

[marauder2048]

My reading is that the AIB was going really out of their way to be kind to the pilot.

Example: The pilot claimed he only noticed on approach that his HMD was misaligned
but there's no actual evidence for it either before the incident or as a result of post-crash analysis.

It's also a bit strange: the pilot and the AFE personnel both agree that he had previously
complained about misalignment and the tester had come back negative but there are no
records. Given his sensitivity to apparent misalignment, quite why he only noticed it on approach
is weird.

[spazsinbad]

Agree that my impression of the accident report the board appear to be 'kind' to the MP. Is he very senior/well regarded?

As for glitches: (not with an HMDS or HUD) things could work OK on the ground or disconnected from the particular A4G aircraft on the ground but in the air the combination of a particular aircraft and the faulty equipment was the problem.

[marauder2048]

Agree that my impression of the accident report the board appear to be 'kind' to the MP. Is he very senior/well regarded?

As for glitches: (not with an HMDS or HUD) things could work OK on the ground or disconnected from the particular A4G aircraft on the ground but in the air the combination of a particular aircraft and the faulty equipment was the problem.

Yes. There's gross alignment and then fine alignment that's aircraft specific; the Gen III helmets (that this aircraft
was going to get in December) permit the pilot to perform fine alignment in the aircraft.

But it's also not clear from the AIB report that the pilot was complaining about fine alignment.

[XanderCrews]

“In fairness, the Harrier mafia never had to deal with tricycle gear porpoises.”

Ya think so, eh? It actually porpoises quite well, tandem gear, outriggers and all. Also does like a wheel barrow. I’ll find the video...

A nearly ‘all points’ landing is SOP for every landing. If you consider the gear geometry relative to the tail, you’ll notice that you cannot flare the jet lest you skag the tail. Be a little ‘flat’ and you’ll touch the nose gear first go for an e-ticket ride. Late idle? Power bounce; the later the idle the bigger the bounce. Land ‘conventionally‘? Imagine touch down around 160kts in a jet with a wing that wants to fly at airspeeds down to about 30, and has a tandem landing gear set-up where the main mount (the only part with brakes) supports only 50% of the weight of the jet. Don’t be late with power nozzle braking and don’t use to much thrust to do so or you will make like a wheel barrow as you scoot down the runway well above 100kts. While you’re doing that, over-control the NWS and swap ends to go backwards.

MTF...

And that's when one has all the undercarriage out in the first place




The all Mattress landing

[outlaw162]

Re: 4:10 and 5:24 and X's post above:

It appears one can avoid the porpoise phase by going right to the crunching impact phase or as an alternative, doing donuts after moving over to the grass.

"Yessiree, we can put this baby down vertically on a dime, but occasionally we have some trouble on 10,000' runways."

(The only time I ever landed on grass was in a C-172.)

edit: BTW I didn't know USMC issued mattresses for Marines to sleep on.

[XanderCrews]

edit: BTW I didn't know USMC issued mattresses for Marines to sleep on.

They don't. We typically use Air Force girls for our mattresses

[sprstdlyscottsmn]

edit: BTW I didn't know USMC issued mattresses for Marines to sleep on.

They don't. We typically use Air Force girls for our mattresses

[mor10]

edit: BTW I didn't know USMC issued mattresses for Marines to sleep on.

They don't. We typically use Air Force girls for our mattresses

That must be the opposing force Air Force girls, as no Air Force personnel would be at the front line.

[quicksilver]

I’ll be at the bar.

[quicksilver]

Re: 4:10 and 5:24 and X's post above:

It appears one can avoid the porpoise phase by going right to the crunching impact phase or as an alternative, doing donuts after moving over to the grass.

"Yessiree, we can put this baby down vertically on a dime, but occasionally we have some trouble on 10,000' runways."

‘Conventional’ (i.e. with the nozzles straight aft) landings are only used as part of an Emergency Procedure. Throttle not much above idle, no speed brake, no big flaps hanging down means you’re in the bad part of the engine response range. If one relies on the brakes alone you will easily use all or most of that 10,000’ and in the process heat the brakes up enough to melt the plugs in the tires (main mount). Land even a little long on your very shallow approach and it will be more than that. Power nozzle braking is used to get the thing slowed down enough to not torch the brakes but if you happen to have a fire light (ref that EP I alluded to) you may be compounding your problem because you’ve activated the reaction control system and are ducting hot 8th stage bleed air around the jet to the RCS valves.

See how much fun this jet can be?

[ricnunes]

edit: BTW I didn't know USMC issued mattresses for Marines to sleep on.

They don't. We typically use Air Force girls for our mattresses