By: Sonderman - 19th April 2006 at 20:59
Best regards,
Mathieu
By: Groundcrew - 16th April 2006 at 20:45
JP T4 Ejector seats
You mean like these two Paul?
By: turretboy - 14th April 2006 at 20:33
These are the ejection seats in our collection:
Two CF-100 Martin Baker seats, one Lockeed F104 C2 seat and a Lockheed T-33 seat.
By: Rocketeer - 14th April 2006 at 12:05
A 3G (which is a Swift seat) or do you mean a 3H?
Yeah yeah!!! Thanx MarkG you are correct!! Put it down to having to remember part numbers for too many aircraft, not relying on books and being too lazy to look and of course time marching on!!! 😀
By: MarkG - 14th April 2006 at 10:41
I have a 3G in WN890 (this seat is a rareity as it actually saved a life of a Hunter pilot over Wales), 2H in WT648, 3G in XG290. XF113 has a Javelin (Mk3 IIRC) waiting in the wings. I also have a Folland Gnat seat, which will probably move on as I do not have a use for it (i.e. no Gnat cockpit anymore).
A 3G (which is a Swift seat) or do you mean a 3H?
By: Rocketeer - 14th April 2006 at 02:00
I have a 3G in WN890 (this seat is a rareity as it actually saved a life of a Hunter pilot over Wales), 2H in WT648, 3G in XG290. XF113 has a Javelin (Mk3 IIRC) waiting in the wings. I also have a Folland Gnat seat, which will probably move on as I do not have a use for it (i.e. no Gnat cockpit anymore).
By: MarkG - 13th April 2006 at 23:07
Thanks for all the replies. Does anybody own any?
I’ve got 4, but 3 of them are exactly the same type so I don’t suppose they count! 🙂
The Mk.2H which may go into my Hunter cockpit is here if you’re interested.
By: Steve T - 13th April 2006 at 20:43
7A2–
I’ve got the first officer’s seat from a Victor K2 in my loft among the memorabilia; the Victor in question was the one that crashlanded on arrival for the 1986 Hamilton airshow, XL191 of 55 Sqn. Exchanged some books to CWH’s library for the seat after the RAF left some bits of XL191 to the museum. (CWH didn’t want “modern” artifacts back then. The other bang seat from XL191 ended up as an office chair in Burlington; the shell of the nose section from the Victor is now in the Walter Soplata collection in Ohio).
Cheers
S.
By: laviticus - 13th April 2006 at 20:38
Hi 7A2 welcome….
Isn’t there a test rig still out there,i recall seeing one at a show in the eighties ,the seat was fired up a track about thirty feet i think, the instructor said it wasn’t as fast as an actual ejection but as a bystander it looked fast enough to me.
BANG,WIZZ,MAN GONE!!!!!!!
By: BIGVERN1966 - 13th April 2006 at 20:17
It’s much less of a problem with modern rocket powered seats compared with the old ballistic seats.
Craig Penrice damaged his back very badly when he banged out of XF516 a few years back because he used the seat pan handle rather than the face-screen and so his posture was all wrong. His day job meant that he was used to modern rocket seats which often only have seat pan handles though so it’s understandable I suppose.
Modern Martin Baker Seats are also fitted with a harness retraction system that pulls you right back into the seat before the gun fires. One of the reasons the MB put the face blind and handle on the top of the early seats was to given the correct posture for ejection. The design feature was on the very first seat live fired with Benny Lynch on board out of a Meteor in 1946(?).
By: Arabella-Cox - 13th April 2006 at 16:06
We have a couple of complete Mk4’s for our JP 4 , which are sat looking frustrated, in a fish out of water state at the moment, as they can’t go back into their home until it’s been decorated.Things get a bit tight once the seats are in.
XS186 CREW
By: wv838 - 13th April 2006 at 14:21
Thanks for all the replies. Does anybody own any?
I suspect a lot of us do.
Mine (awaiting restoration) is here: http://wv838.com/eject.html
Roy.
By: FMK.6JOHN - 31st March 2006 at 19:11
Found another good site with some very interesting video footage of actual ejections……
Regards
John
By: David Burke - 31st March 2006 at 16:35
The rocket from memory is also very useful to actually right the seat and occupant when a traditional type of seat in a lot of cases struggled.
By: 7A2 - 31st March 2006 at 16:08
Ejection seat
Thanks for all the replies. Does anybody own any?
By: bloodnok - 27th March 2006 at 19:05
Even rocket seats are cartridge initiated (or used to be) which is where the kick up the derriere comes from.
yup, the main gun is to get the seat out of the aircraft, and the rockets are to get you high enough for the parachute to work.
By: mike currill - 27th March 2006 at 11:52
It’s much less of a problem with modern rocket powered seats compared with the old ballistic seats.
A rocket seat has a relatively smoother ‘push’ sustained over a longer time period, i.e. the time the rocket motor burns. The old ballistic seats used explosive charges to literally bang the seat out. Some seats had two charges which fired one after the other which meant that the jolt was about as gentle as it could be, but it was still similar to one big kick up the backside rather than the sustained push from a rocket seat. The firmness of the seat ‘cushion’ is also very important as it can affect the way in which the force of the ejection is transmitted to the pilot’s spine.
For example the Hunter seats were upgraded from using a 60 ft/sec gun to an 80 ft/sec gun and that was found to be about as far as the human body could go without very serious damage every time. There were still a lot of damaged backs, but if the correct posture was adopted (use of the overhead face-screen type of firing handle helped with that) then it could be kept to a minimum. Craig Penrice damaged his back very badly when he banged out of XF516 a few years back because he used the seat pan handle rather than the face-screen and so his posture was all wrong. His day job meant that he was used to modern rocket seats which often only have seat pan handles though so it’s understandable I suppose.
Remember to Mig mid-air collision at Fairford a few years back? If I remember correctly the pilot’s ejected, then calmly walked away uninjured from the carnage! Also the Harrier crash at Lowestoft – I believe the only injury the pilot sustained was a broken ankle when, after ejecting in the hover, the wind took him back over the aircraft and he landed back on top of it before it sank.
Even rocket seats are cartridge initiated (or used to be) which is where the kick up the derriere comes from.
By: mike currill - 27th March 2006 at 11:49
Scariest thing I’ve ever been told – “Your ejector seat is now live” straight after the pins were removed.
Steve.
Yep, I recall that feeling.
By: mike currill - 27th March 2006 at 11:48
Oh yeh. I have in my mind that an effect of bang-seats is (always/sometimes?) crushed vertebrae – ie. you trade off a broken back for your life. Is that right – or yet another urban myth?
The guy that flew me in a Harrier survived an ejection with a trapped nerve in his neck which left him with a permanent twitch but he said that if he ever had to do it again he wouldn’t hesitate.
By: MarkG - 27th March 2006 at 11:05
Oh yeh. I have in my mind that an effect of bang-seats is (always/sometimes?) crushed vertebrae – ie. you trade off a broken back for your life. Is that right – or yet another urban myth?
It’s much less of a problem with modern rocket powered seats compared with the old ballistic seats.
A rocket seat has a relatively smoother ‘push’ sustained over a longer time period, i.e. the time the rocket motor burns. The old ballistic seats used explosive charges to literally bang the seat out. Some seats had two charges which fired one after the other which meant that the jolt was about as gentle as it could be, but it was still similar to one big kick up the backside rather than the sustained push from a rocket seat. The firmness of the seat ‘cushion’ is also very important as it can affect the way in which the force of the ejection is transmitted to the pilot’s spine.
For example the Hunter seats were upgraded from using a 60 ft/sec gun to an 80 ft/sec gun and that was found to be about as far as the human body could go without very serious damage every time. There were still a lot of damaged backs, but if the correct posture was adopted (use of the overhead face-screen type of firing handle helped with that) then it could be kept to a minimum. Craig Penrice damaged his back very badly when he banged out of XF516 a few years back because he used the seat pan handle rather than the face-screen and so his posture was all wrong. His day job meant that he was used to modern rocket seats which often only have seat pan handles though so it’s understandable I suppose.
Remember to Mig mid-air collision at Fairford a few years back? If I remember correctly the pilot’s ejected, then calmly walked away uninjured from the carnage! Also the Harrier crash at Lowestoft – I believe the only injury the pilot sustained was a broken ankle when, after ejecting in the hover, the wind took him back over the aircraft and he landed back on top of it before it sank.
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March 24, 2006 at 3:26 pm