irrational fear of flying

[bigbill]

I asked my son many questions about the T-6, including flight controls. I asked about a loss of hydraulics, and he said there was a knob to pull that requires 80 ft-lbs of force that aligns an accumulator that will extend the landing gear. Once the gear is down, that's it. You can't retract it; it must be reset on the ground. His text today, "Had a great flight today. Did some aerobatics, loops, and precautionary emergency landing for training purposes."

[j44ke]

I'll work on the pictures. We just got home from the ten-hour drive from Roswell, NM, to Hackberry, AZ. This morning, he was driving the truck with the landing lights down to Artesia as the "gear down" observer for touch and go. If they're approaching the runway with gear up, he gets on the radio and says, "Wave off, wave off, wave off," and turns on the red lights. Everyone takes a turn having that job. I remember when I was stationed in Norfolk, we'd go cycling around Pungo, and there were some outlying fields the Navy used for carrier approach touch and goes. A pilot did a gear-up touch and go a Tomcat, somehow got it back in the air, and returned to Oceana for an emergency landing. It's probably a career move.

That might have been the brother of a good friend of mine. Sounds like a similar event at least. There was some kind of malfunction so they went back around, kept it out of all those residential houses they've been building in the flight path at Oceana and landed it on its belly. Plane was repairable. He got a medal as did his co-pilot (wrong term I think - the guy in the other seat) for that - and that plus missions over Iraq got him a teaching position in Top Gun school. Plus he married the boss' (Admiral General somebody) daughter. So yeah, he did okay.

[72gmc]

That might have been the brother of a good friend of mine. Sounds like a similar event at least. There was some kind of malfunction so they went back around, kept it out of all those residential houses they've been building in the flight path at Oceana and landed it on its belly. Plane was repairable. He got a medal as did his co-pilot (wrong term I think - the guy in the other seat) for that - and that plus missions over Iraq got him a teaching position in Top Gun school. Plus he married the boss' (Admiral General somebody) daughter. So yeah, he did okay.

Based on many Top Gun viewings—some of them inverted—I believe the other guy is his RIO (radar intercept officer)

[bigbill]

Based on many Top Gun viewings—some of them inverted—I believe the other guy is his RIO (radar intercept officer)

Yup, Goose was a RIO. The job description changed, but the Tomcats still had a guy in the seat who was a NFO (naval flight officer), not a pilot. Tomcat were designed to carry the Phoenix missiles, which required a RIO, but they've been out of service for decades. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Tomcats were Bomcats, carrying four, two-thousand bombs. On the Mighty TR, we didn't have Superhornets, but the C and D models were also carrying four, two-thousand bombs. The Bomcats would just lumber down the catapult with 8K pounds of bombs, while the Hornets were limited to half flaps because of the bomb load, and required afterburners to get off the deck. TBH, much of impetus for the D model (two seat) Hornet came from the fighter mafia and the senior officers who were NFOs and realized their community was losing out when the Tomcats were retired. The Superhornets E (single seat) and F (two seat) followed the same pattern of trying to preserve the NFO community. Most telling is the G model, the Growler, which replaced the EA-6B Prowler. A single seat Growler can do all the functions of the Prowler, which had a crew of four. The H model is two seat, but again, a single seat version does the same job. The other job for the E and F models is an aerial tanker, which replaced the three crew S-3s.

The Marines are working to reduce the Flight Officer (don't call them Naval Flight Officers) community. There are no two seat F-35s and no plan to build any. As the F-35s replace Hornets and Harriers, everyone is a pilot.

[72gmc]

Gosh darn it, bigbill, I love it when you post stuff like this. The largest model I ever built was a Tomcat. Now I know about Bomcats. I'm excited to bore my wife with this story.

[bigbill]

That might have been the brother of a good friend of mine. Sounds like a similar event at least. There was some kind of malfunction so they went back around, kept it out of all those residential houses they've been building in the flight path at Oceana and landed it on its belly. Plane was repairable. He got a medal as did his co-pilot (wrong term I think - the guy in the other seat) for that - and that plus missions over Iraq got him a teaching position in Top Gun school. Plus he married the boss' (Admiral General somebody) daughter. So yeah, he did okay.

I was officer of the deck on the TR off the coast of Virginia doing night operations for pilot currency (proficiency). A Tomcat came in low, the LSO was shouting to wave off over the radio but the pilot stayed on his low approach. At the last minute, he added power and tried to pull up, striking the ramp (the far aft end of the flight deck) with the back half of his aircraft, tearing off panels, his hook, and wrecking one engine. He continued down the deck and lit the afterburner on his remaining engine to get airborne. He did an emergency landing at Oceana. We had to shut down flight ops for the rest of the night to clean up the flight deck. The flight deck is covered with non-skid paint. If a plane strikes the paint, it can come off in sheets and go everywhere and is hard to clean up. I saw many close calls from the bridge including a few fatal crashes, but this was the only one on the flight deck.

The fatalities were T-45 trainers doing carrier qualifications. The Navy and Marines no longer do that. To qualify on carriers, you fly the airframe you're qualified for, and there's no instructor. It's much easier to power your way out of trouble with a Hornet, E-2, or F-35, than the small T-45.

[rwsaunders]

Aisle seat in the 34,000' flying cattle car to Chicago and then magically, the cabin door closed and no aisle mates. So, as any inquisitive 60+ year old child would do, I slid on over to the window.

[ides1056]

Gosh darn it, bigbill, I love it when you post stuff like this. The largest model I ever built was a Tomcat. Now I know about Bomcats. I'm excited to bore my wife with this story.

you should visit him and hear the good stuff

he and his wife are supremely hospitable

[bcm119]

This is likely a maintenance issue, but I'm sure we'll hear a lot of jokes about the wheels falling off at Boeing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco...ight-35-osaka/

[gregl]

This is likely a maintenance issue, but I'm sure we'll hear a lot of jokes about the wheels falling off at Boeing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco...ight-35-osaka/

Yup, aircraft have been occasionally losing parts since Kitty Hawk in 1903. Now with every phone owner a news camera operator, we regularly get sensational headlines. Thank goodness there weren’t phone cameras back in my commuter airline days when a crew I know rained luggage down on the Grand Central Parkway departing from LGA…

Greg

[bigbill]

Yup, aircraft have been occasionally losing parts since Kitty Hawk in 1903. Now with every phone owner a news camera operator, we regularly get sensational headlines. Thank goodness there weren’t phone cameras back in my commuter airline days when a crew I know rained luggage down on the Grand Central Parkway departing from LGA…

Greg

During OIF, I could watch the CNN feed from the carrier's bridge. I could see our Tomcats dropping bombs, and you could always tell which plane it was by the missing panels. I don't know if any of our Tomcats had all their maintenance panels. They weren't interchangeable.

[Scott G.]

Yup, aircraft have been occasionally losing parts since Kitty Hawk in 1903.Greg

Cessna P210s increase their useful load during takeoff, as various bits fall off.
What the Navy calls FOD, I call spare parts.

Ancient Aviation jokes.

[j44ke]

We are getting 25-50mph winds today. I just watched a handful of pine limbs go up out of a tree top and get tossed 30' away. Levitating winds. The wind appears to be most from northerly directions but there is a lot of variation. The trees are doing an amazing job keeping upright. Fingers crossed until midnight tonight.

Must be rough flying over Hudson Valley today. Ice cold wind, bright warm sun, and warming earth.

[bigbill]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703

More issues for Boeing.

Edit, I don't want to gloss over a person taking their life, the tragedy for the family has to be unbearable considering all that has gone on over the past seven years.

[BBB]

Not good. I wonder what would cause the instruments to go blank?

https://www.theguardian.com/business...ey-to-auckland

[j44ke]

Not good. I wonder what would cause the instruments to go blank?

https://www.theguardian.com/business...ey-to-auckland

Possum.

[thollandpe]

Please put your tray tables and seat backs in the upright position, and fasten the chin straps on your tinfoil hats…

April 2019: Claims of Shoddy Production Draw Scrutiny to a Second Boeing Jet | NYT (gift article)

Last Week: John Oliver calls for new leadership of Boeing: ‘Fix the culture that you have destroyed’ | The Guardian

Yesterday: Whistlebower John Barnett testifies in a deposition about the string of problems he identified at Boeing's plant

Today: Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who raised alarm over plane quality, is found dead | NPR

[j44ke]

Feels like a movie.

[j44ke]

A day before the door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, engineers and technicians for the airline were so concerned about the mounting evidence of a problem that they wanted the plane to come out of service the next evening and undergo maintenance, interviews and documents show.

But the airline chose to keep the plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9, in service on Jan. 5 with some restrictions, carrying passengers until it completed three flights that were scheduled to end that night in Portland, Ore., the site of one of the airline’s maintenance facilities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/u...ight-door.html

Why do I feel like my original suspicion that the seats next to the door were empty for a reason is going to prove well-founded? Is it just because I am a naturally suspicious person?

[Scott G.]

Feels like a movie.

Aviation whistleblower, Nevile Shute's book, as movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway_in_the_Sky