about ejection seat mishaps i posted this some pages ago
I had a nice meeting tonight with many fellow pilots, and we happened to talk about the “accidental ejections” at airshows.. Well, apart for the accidents happened to the ground crews it seems like the ones happened to children at airshows and such are legends.
The Martin Baker ejection seats have a double lever: one to detonate the glass charge or to shoot off the canopy, and the other to eject. The reason for this double thing is that if u want to go for a belly landing u can decide to shoot off yr canopy to ease yr way out of the frame instead of shooting yrself out.. anyway there are two safety pins for these levers, and it’s impossible to remove them even because everytime u enter in a cockpit there’s a pilot or a ground chief staring at u. Last but not least u need a 40 lbs pull on the lever to activate it, so eventually it really sounds impossible, unless u r a techie working inside the pit and pulling the wrong lever..
cheers
Alex
The mobile phone thing might work out as long as u keep the phone right up an open barrell of avgas.. I think we’re all going a bit paranoid about safety lately..
Another nice flying mishap my canadian friend told me about happened to a flying officer while landing: he had an american F-15 Strike Eagle landing in front of him, the back seat taken by a ground techie, who pulled by mistake the canopy release lever: the canadian pilot on the Harvard 2 had a camera installed and recorded everything. There are other funny stories he told me about, but a forum page wouldnt be enuff I guess.. the dumbness of some military pilots is creepy guys..
Never heard the story of accident happened to the ground techie driving a tow vehicle with a F-104? Seems like a heavy braking caused the tow bar crack points to break and the poor sod was killed by the pitot tube of the 104!! YKES!!!
Mechanics FODs are another recurrent accident.. everything started with the Sabre and her nice air intake!
Alex
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