Martin Baker seat part i.d please

3-sec barostat

May be it’s for a slower aeroplane?

Anon.

Hmm interesting. I copied this piccy of a Mk2 seat that went on ebay recently. It shows a 3 second barostatic unit fitted, which got me wondering about different units for different applications / Mk’s of seat.

Timing

I think the 1.25 sec is the time the unit takes to operate from being tripped on ejection or by altitude. This time delay prevents the chute deploying immediately on ejection and fouling the airframe and will be standard for all seats.

Perhaps certain aircraft may require a longer delay for some reason and this can be calibrated in to the unit but I think I am correct in saying that the 1.25 sec is standard so does not in itself infer a particular mark of seat.

Anon.

Thanks Mike. I’ve noticed some with a different time release marked on them and wondered if that helped identify the seat Mk or variant. This one is stamped 1.25 second. It came with (but not fitted to) a very early MK1 seat i have dated 1950, but is not necessarily part of the same seat.

Seat part

I’ve got one of those fitted to a Mk.2E (Meteor) seat. I think they may have been on Canberra (2CA) seats too, so it’s a Mk.2 seat bit.

Anon.