A short film about 1st time carrier Qualifications

Good video, thanks. What are the squiggly lines for in the canopy top?
 
RichNY said:
Good video, thanks. What are the squiggly lines for in the canopy top?
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I assumed some kind of defrost. But maybe a radio antenna?

John
 
I thought it was a point of frangibility in the event of a eject with a canopy jettison malfunction. Hoping to hear the real reason.
 
yes, it's canopy fracturing blasting plastic. no smoking allowed :D
 
thats a short clip from the the documentary Angle of Attack. Good DVD.
 
that squiggly wire is called MDC or "mild detonating cord". Same thing they have on the Harrier. It is designed to disintegrate the canopy when you eject. Unfortunately it is a really poor design flaw in the T-45, as it has historically rained down molten lead onto the face and (if one's visor is up) into the eyes of the unlucky pilot(s) to be ejecting.
 
35 AoA said:
that squiggly wire is called MDC or "mild detonating cord". Same thing they have on the Harrier. It is designed to disintegrate the canopy when you eject. Unfortunately it is a really poor design flaw in the T-45, as it has historically rained down molten lead onto the face and (if one's visor is up) into the eyes of the unlucky pilot(s) to be ejecting.
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Can they override that and blow the entire canopy, or do they have to blast the canopy and go up thru it?
 
Velocity173 said:
Can they override that and blow the entire canopy, or do they have to blast the canopy and go up thru it?
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The canopy is not jettisonable, although I guess if you got it partially open in flight you could get it to depart the airplane :D
You can manually fire the MDC by itself or it fires automatically as part of the ejection sequence. If it doesn't fire, there are breakers on the seat headboxes to break the canopy on your way out.

Nauga,
and his ancient history
 
what nauga said. The canopy, in very uncool style, is manually actuated.....ie you grab the handle, and pull it down over your head and lock it with a lever......which I guess isn't totally relevant to the jettison vs not jettison discussion, but I think the fact that it is hinged on the right side and not the back is maybe part of the reason.

It is a dorky little plane that has a lot of design flaws, but it was pretty fun to fly.....at least until you have your first flight in a modern afterburner equipped digital FBW fighter......then it seems like a real jalopy. It is tough to fly compared to the Hornet though.....after 1000+ hours of that, I doubt I could go back and fly a T-45 any better than the brand new kids coming through initial training. But I'll never fly a T-45 again so I guess I will never know :) Which is fine by me. They tend to flame out their only motor after ingesting anything larger than a 2 oz sparrow.
 
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Velocity173 said:
thats a short clip from the the documentary Angle of Attack. Good DVD.
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Found it and watched the whole thing, pretty good but they did get a few of the Naval aviation history facts wrong. Ely was never in the Navy, nor did he have anything to do with the designs of the Curtiss aircraft that he flew or the landing platform on the Langley.

Had balls though ;)
 
35 AoA said:
It is a dorky little plane that has a lot of design flaws, but it was pretty fun to fly...
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Man, if we ever meet I've got some stories to tell but nothing I'm putting in writing...again.;) The closest I've come to flying a T-45 is a Hawk but still and all, it's a lot easier to fly than the TA-4. And punching through the canopy of a TA-4 is going to *hurt* :mad2: <==simulation

Nauga,
on graveyard shift for the dawn of a new generation
 
Now imagine it's night, raining, some gusts, in an F18 or how about an A3 ( now retired) way beyond my abilities! My hats off to them!
 
nauga said:
The canopy is not jettisonable, although I guess if you got it partially open in flight you could get it to depart the airplane :D

Nauga,
and his ancient history
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It's been done once, inadvertently, with catastrophic results. The aerodynamics of the canopy opening in flight rolls the aircraft inverted immediately. The canopy overextends and hits the side of the fuselage. The breaking glass gets ingested by the right hand inlet fodding the engine. The canopy does eventually come off, but not before you been on a hell of a ride that will definitely not end well.
 
Perezhr said:
It's been done once, inadvertently, with catastrophic results. The aerodynamics of the canopy opening in flight rolls the aircraft inverted immediately. The canopy overextends and hits the side of the fuselage. The breaking glass gets ingested by the right hand inlet fodding the engine. The canopy does eventually come off...
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... causing catastrophe and world strife. Other than that how was your flight? :eek:

Nauga,
and his mousetrap
 
Perezhr said:
It's been done once, inadvertently, with catastrophic results. The aerodynamics of the canopy opening in flight rolls the aircraft inverted immediately. The canopy overextends and hits the side of the fuselage. The breaking glass gets ingested by the right hand inlet fodding the engine. The canopy does eventually come off, but not before you been on a hell of a ride that will definitely not end well.
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I totally believe this story, but I am surprised it never filtered its way down the student/flight school legend train. Good stuff.....or I guess really bad I should say. As a slightly unrelated aside, I know of a guy in my timeframe who punched through a flock of birds on a T&G in lake charles, LA, didn't have his visor down, and after the cockpit christmas tree illuminated and the motor spooled down at a couple hundred AGL, him and his IP punched out. Guy never flew again due to eye damage. In the same several months, my T-45 skipper and opso sucked down a 3 oz sparrow on a night T&G, flamed out and ejected into the woods. Similar MDC damage to his face, and he apparently spent many hours in the ER while they picked pieces of lead out of his face and eyes.....though he flew again.
 
nauga said:
Man, if we ever meet I've got some stories to tell but nothing I'm putting in writing...again.;)
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I've met you and you didn't share any of these stories.

Kyle, who thinks Nauga needs to post some of the good ones for the masses to enjoy...
 
35 AoA said:
I totally believe this story, but I am surprised it never filtered its way down the student/flight school legend train. Good stuff.....or I guess really bad I should say. As a slightly unrelated aside, I know of a guy in my timeframe who punched through a flock of birds on a T&G in lake charles, LA, didn't have his visor down, and after the cockpit christmas tree illuminated and the motor spooled down at a couple hundred AGL, him and his IP punched out. Guy never flew again due to eye damage. In the same several months, my T-45 skipper and opso sucked down a 3 oz sparrow on a night T&G, flamed out and ejected into the woods. Similar MDC damage to his face, and he apparently spent many hours in the ER while they picked pieces of lead out of his face and eyes.....though he flew again.
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Happened two or three years ago near Tallahassee just before Christmas. Spent several days wading through the swamps south of the airport collecting airplane parts. Found the canopy about 100 yards from the rest of the airplane. I conducted the engineering investigation in support of the AMB. Resulted in some revisions in training to NFOs. That is about as much as I can say here, but it was an interesting mishap investigation to say the least. Crew was O.K. but were lucky as hell as it all happened at low altitude and they barely got out before impact.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Perezhr said:
Happened two or three years ago near Tallahassee just before Christmas. Spent several days wading through the swamps south of the airport collecting airplane parts. Found the canopy about 100 yards from the rest of the airplane. I conducted the engineering investigation in support of the AMB. Resulted in some revisions in training to NFOs. That is about as much as I can say here, but it was an interesting mishap investigation to say the least. Crew was O.K. but were lucky as hell as it all happened at low altitude and they barely got out before impact.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
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oh yeah, I remember hearing about that one.....there have been several interesting T-45 mishaps in the last few years.
 
kyleb said:
Kyle, who thinks Nauga needs to post some of the good ones for the masses to enjoy...
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This one is pretty tame, but safe. I was going to post it a while back but couldn't find the poster. Moving boxes in the shop today and it fell off a shelf.

And now it can be told...

16 April 1988, Long Beach airport [noparse](KLGB).[/noparse] McDonnell-Douglas and the Navy have been trying for over a month now to get the first flight of the T-45 in the books. We’ve briefed the flight so many times most of us know all the jokes. There have been three ‘first-flight’ parties already when the reservations couldn’t be cancelled even though the flight was. We’re all getting a little punchy, apparently including the artist program management commissioned to capture the event. Fourth or eights or twenty-third or whatever time’s the charm and first flight is on the books…finally. Several gripes on the airplane but the joke at the debrief is that the artist’s Isuzu Trooper was towed from the MDC employees’ parking lot while he was taking reference pictures.

Several months later, we’re still knee deep in envelope expansion when someone comes into our spaces handing out prints. Hey, we’re famous!
T-45 FF Poster.jpg


Sure enough, the artist has done an excellent job of capturing the spirit of the T-45 test team (closeup of center left region):

T-45 Toad.jpg

Flight Test Trivia:
The MDC telemetry data center used for the T-45 in 1988 was used as the set for the 1977 Charles Bronson movie “Raid on Entebbe.” It was modern in 1977 :rolleyes:

Nauga,
who breaks into a cold sweat when he watches it
 
ha that's a pretty good artist to have around.........pretty wild how long it took for the TS system (redundant?) to become "the" training product. Wasn't it like early 1998 before the TA-4J was gone completely? I know the T-2 was still at VT-86 when I went through P-cola years after that.
 
I was a Navy Aircrewman out of NAS Miramar in the early 90's. I did several CQ debts and watched a lot of guys land F-14's and F-18's on the pigs for the first time. I was quite envious of those guys (no gals back then...that I knew of...). Thanks for the video...brought back some good memories.
 
I don't understand why they are qualifying the Marines on landing on an aircraft carrier when the guys in the video said they won't ever be back. Is that a training ship only? Can't imagine that. If they are never going to do it why spend the money, I assume the currency requirements to land on a ship are very stringent and more than 3 T/O and landings in 90 days.
 
Getonit said:
I don't understand why they are qualifying the Marines on landing on an aircraft carrier when the guys in the video said they won't ever be back. Is that a training ship only? Can't imagine that. If they are never going to do it why spend the money, I assume the currency requirements to land on a ship are very stringent and more than 3 T/O and landings in 90 days.
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Because they still might get assigned a squadron that goes to the boat when they graduate. Used to be 2 Marine Hornet squadrons east coast and 2 west coast that went to the boat.

To stay current they do field carrier landing practice (FCLP) at the air station like in the vid below and periodic trips to the boat. I believe the Lexington was the last carrier that was strictly devoted to the training wing.
 

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35 AoA said:
ha that's a pretty good artist to have around.........pretty wild how long it took for the TS system (redundant?) to become "the" training product. Wasn't it like early 1998 before the TA-4J was gone completely? I know the T-2 was still at VT-86 when I went through P-cola years after that.
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It might have been 99 for the Skyhawks. I was at Miramar at the time and a few out of El Centro did GCAs. I went downstairs and talked to a 1Lt student. I remember him saying he was glad to get TA-4s instead of T-45s for advanced. I suppose that would have been pretty cool to be one of the last students to fly that airframe.
 
"The first time you're overhead the boat, you get the chills . . ."

Hell, 23 years later (ouch!) watching a silly Vimeo short you still get the chills, son.

Cat
Who's really impressed that Nauga has enough brain cells left to leave a relevant tagline to each of his posts.
 
Getonit said:
I don't understand why they are qualifying the Marines on landing on an aircraft carrier when the guys in the video said they won't ever be back. Is that a training ship only? Can't imagine that. If they are never going to do it why spend the money, I assume the currency requirements to land on a ship are very stringent and more than 3 T/O and landings in 90 days.
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Most of the time they do, but not always. It is all about the initial qualification. Once you have your initial day/night qual in the jet, the process of getting re-"current" is much less painful. You do like a billion day traps, 4 night traps and IIRC 2 night T&G's as well (or maybe more if your first T&G's sucked) during initial day/night FRS CQ. Once you have that under your belt, it is either 2 day T&G, 2 day traps + 2 night, or if you are further out of currency, it is 4 night traps w/o the T&G requirement and many less day requirements than the FRS (initial qual). If you go outside 365 (like Marines who don't go to a boat squadron would be eventually) days, you have the same requirement I believe, but the LSO's have to be FRS LSO's instead of squadron/airwing LSO's. I could be a little off in that, but that is what I remember.

As for the Marines, in my short time with them when I was going through the Marine FRS (as a Navy guy), it didn't seem very common for Marines who weren't originally boat guys to then later go to a boat squadron. That probably isn't an "always" statement, but it seemed to be the norm. The initial qual isn't a hard requirement. If the fleet needs guys, and you are a guy that has been identified as a 2 seat dude or maybe just ready to fill a shore based single seat squadron that really needs a guy, that can be waived. The catch 22 (which a friend of mine went through) is that if you are a Marine who does not have it waived, AND you disqualify at the boat, you will not have it waived after that. So either you qualify on your second look (very rarely a 3rd opportunity is offered), or you go find some other line of work, probably not involving flying. The friend in question did successfully qual on his second try, and then went to a 2 seat squadron like he was originally intended to go to, and very very likely will never go to the boat again. So I agree with the sentiment that it is dumb, but whatever I guess
 
The Navy/Marine aviators have all the fun!!! :yes:
What does the Air Force do that is challenging? :dunno:

Any clips? :stirpot:
 
LT4247 said:
The Navy/Marine aviators have all the fun!!! :yes:
What does the Air Force do that is challenging? :dunno:

Any clips? :stirpot:
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What??? Army Aviators have all the "fun." :wink2:
 

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I love watching the helicopters maneuver around here. I live about a mile from Ft. Riley. I was at the airport one day and an Apache hovered over the ramp. It was creepy that the turret was following me. I am just glad they didn't want to turn me into menced meat.
 
Get a load of the A3 ( the whale)and its size! think about wrestling that beast onto a deck at night , in the rain the next time you land the 172 ,on a bright sunny day , on a 3000 foot runway.
 
Jimmy cooper said:
Get a load of the A3 ( the whale)and its size! think about wrestling that beast onto a deck at night , in the rain...
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Hehe...the A-3 NATOPS even had a note the divert EP's that made bailout an option if pilot performance was "marginal." What was considered marginal was left to the reader (or bailer I suppose)...:D

Nauga,
who hated crossing the hatch to change crewstations mid-flight
 
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