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In-Cockpit Video: Bird Strike

Zoomie said:
Astrodog - I have read about the incidents onboard USN carriers - the crew don't get spit out the other side, that is impossible (without being cut into millions of little pieces. 
In most USN jets (A6, F-18, etc) the air intake gradually gets smaller as it approaches the top of the turbine - the deck crew have been lucky to get themselves wedged in this tight space and extricated after an engine shut-down.

Ahhh my mistake... I've seen my fair share of A-6s and EA-6Bs so i found this peculiar as well, it was the info given on one of those 'wildest videos' shows... so i guess consider my sources!
 
Astrodog said:
I've also seen a vid from a carrier where a deck hand gets sucked into an A-6s intake, but miraculously survived and was spit out the other side!

The unfortunate deckhand was not sucked completely through the engine. What you see in that video exiting through the exhaust is his clothes. he was trapped up against the front cone holding the fan blades on. I had though the same when I first saw that video, but I later saw a documentary on carrier life that showed that video and gave the explanation of what happened, including an interview with the crewman. Unfortunatly I do not remember the name of the documentary.
 
does ANYBODY know what the (what sounds like) "T6NL" Bitchin' betty audible warning stands for? This has been driving me crazy, nobody seems to know!
 
Betty must've been taking hormones the day she recorded those warnings, 'cause she sure sounds manly to me! (But that's not what you asked, so...)

The T6NL warning signals an engine overstress; either TGT (turbine gas temperature) overheat as measured by the T6 thermocouples, or low pressure compressor shaft (NL) overspeed. Hence T6NL.
 
Crimmsy said:
Betty must've been taking hormones the day she recorded those warnings, 'cause she sure sounds manly to me!

  Well she IS british on the hawk! Thanks for the inside info Crimmsy
 
Sounds like the pilots got out okay...been on too many where there were fatalities...not fun at all. :cdn:
 
Bitchin' Betty is a North American term - the Brits called him Nattering Nigel...

 
hehe.. that doesn't sound british at all!... Was talking to a hornet driver who was good friends with the IP in the hawk, apparently he busted his leg up pretty bad and was in rough shape, but pretty lucky all things considered... great insight into how well these men handled such circumstances
 
Too bad he busted up his leg, but at least he is alive.  With luck he will get his medical category back and fly again.  I've attended too many funerals where the crew did not make it out.
 
Yep, a 1/4 inch nut would destroy a jet engine, and those blades are nasty when they let loose and come through the casing.
 
The only time I ever heard our pilots sweat about birdstrikes was is in Honduras; the rotary boys did not like the way that packs of birds would climb out of the jungle canopy if they flew too low (over 6 foot wingspans!).
 
FourNinerZero said:
The unfortunate deckhand was not sucked completely through the engine. What you see in that video exiting through the exhaust is his clothes. he was trapped up against the front cone holding the fan blades on. I had though the same when I first saw that video, but I later saw a documentary on carrier life that showed that video and gave the explanation of what happened, including an interview with the crewman. Unfortunatly I do not remember the name of the documentary.

It was a green shirt (catapult crew, hook runers, etc...) working on the launch bar of an A-6 , who made the mistake of walking too closely to the intake while standing upright (vice crouching low) -- he was sucked into the intake, but his vest snagged on the inlet icing probe. While his helmet went through and FOD'd the engine, he was hung up on the probe and slid out of the inlet after the pilots shut down the engine.  Ouch!  I bet his ears were ringing for a while!

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos/sucked in engine.avi

Just a note on the Hawk crash:  that's a pretty good example of good cockpit management and dealing with the situation in a calm and methodical manner.  Good on the guys for making sure the aircraft wasn't right on top of Bushell Park (the Q-patch in the Jaw)...

Cheers,
Duey
 
Could someone in the know tell me whether that pitch up immediately following the bird strike was the pilot flying (if so pretty quick reaction on his part) or an automatic feature of the Hawk to gain altitude on engine failure ? Did they still have some power to maintain airspeed and climb, looks like a 20-25 degree pitch ?

Cool heads on their part  :salute:
 
Nothing automatic. What if you're inverted? You'd become paste before you could do anything about it.

They probably saw the bird and pitched up, you can hear the guy say something like "Aw ...." as the bird got sucked in. The HUD shows them doing 245 knots so there's lots of energy there, first response to an engine failure is to zoom (trading airspeed for altitude) and you can see on the HUD they were around 130 knots in the right hand turn prior to ejecting.
 
Inch said:
Nothing automatic. What if you're inverted? You'd become paste before you could do anything about it.

Excellent point, I never thought of that. I don't have any experience being inverted in the C172's I fly.  ;D

I didn't see the A/S on the HUD when I watched it, thanks I'll have another look.

:cheers:
 
Didn't they asked for a Closed Left and were cleared for that?  Maybe that's why they pitch up.

Max
 
A quick check of your airspeed and the first reaction is zoom for altitude, trading speed off until you begin to approach your best L/D glide speed.  Tutor IA was "zoom, idle, airstart" (to gain alt, idle to reset the IGVs and airstart to try and reignite idle fuel being injected.  Failing that, if you still had time/altitude, you'd go through a full in-flight re-light procedure if you judged the engine would still run (although taking in a bird and flaming it out was pretty unlikely so most would consider a proper set-up for ejection.  I don't know the Hawk's engine fail IA, but I would think it's pretty similar to the Tute.

Cheers,
Duey
 
SupersonicMax said:
Didn't they asked for a Closed Left and were cleared for that?  Maybe that's why they pitch up.

Max

Closed right on 29R.  ;)

And yes, they were probably in the process of pitching up for that, it all happened kind of concurrently.
 
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