T-38 incident?

[FastCargo]

Couple of things from the T-38 loss:

A bird did go through the top part of the front seaters canopy. The front seater lowered his seat all the way down.

It was found that this causes problems the lower the seat is. The rocket in the seat is inside a flex tube. The tube bends into a sort of L shape as the seat is lowered (with the rocket at the upper part of the tube). The idea is that as the seat moves up the rails to exit the aircraft, the tube restraightens to let the exhaust point straight down (as I understand it). That didn't happen, and instead the rocket burned through the tube, causing the exhaust to split (some out the hole, some down the bent tube) and the seat to spiral out. The front seater got lucky that he still got a good man-seat separation. The T-38C fleet is now being retrofitted to fix the issue.

What SATCFI said is correct, the IP's chute was basically a streamer because of the heat of the fireball. He's lucky to be alive at all...I hope he can get back to flying someday.

Gallows humor...this is not the way to reinforce your callsign...

FastCargo

 

[Huggyu2]

FastCargo,
This is the first I've heard about the seat.
Just to clarify: you say the entire T-38C fleet is being modified. Do you know if the T-38A fleet is getting modified too? The C and A models have the same seat, don't they?

I just read the accident report: very unfortunate events. I hope he is recovering well.

 

[talondriver]

It was found that this causes problems the lower the seat is. The rocket in the seat is inside a flex tube. The tube bends into a sort of L shape as the seat is lowered (with the rocket at the upper part of the tube). The idea is that as the seat moves up the rails to exit the aircraft, the tube restraightens to let the exhaust point straight down (as I understand it). That didn't happen, and instead the rocket burned through the tube, causing the exhaust to split (some out the hole, some down the bent tube) and the seat to spiral out. The front seater got lucky that he still got a good man-seat separation. The T-38C fleet is now being retrofitted to fix the issue.FastCargo

I just talked to the Boeing egress shop here in Mesa and they know nothing of any TCTOs dealing with this issue. I also called CBM's T-38 maintenance chief and he said the only recent TCTO came out three weeks ago and it deals with checking the rails and relay any seat maintenance accomplished to Mother Randolph.
The catapult is fixed to the airframe and doesn't move when the seat is adjusted. There are two tubes at the top of the seat where the catapult is bolted (the two bolts you can never see during preflight) to the seat. When the catapult is fired, it "pushes" the seat up from those tubes at the top. Is that what you were talking about?
I'm going to observe Boeing remove the seats from a jet going through C mod tomorrow and I can get you more words after.
Cheers

 

[FastCargo]

I just talked to the Boeing egress shop here in Mesa and they know nothing of any TCTOs dealing with this issue.

Truncated for space.

Yea, it seemed kind of strange the way it was explained to me. One of our pilots was on the SIB and briefed the squadron...which I wasn't present for, so I had to hear it secondhand. So I may have screwed up the details.

The essential things I got out of the brief was that lowering the seat somehow increases the probability of a rocket catapult burn through, which causes the seat to not track true on the way out. I was told a fix was already being retrofitted to the fleet (assuming both As and Cs) but no details.

Maybe I'll go talk to the guy who was on the SIB...get the info first hand...I'll have to wait a week though.

FastCargo

 

[FastCargo]

Talked to the guy who gave the SIB brief today. The info I briefed before was essentially correct. The rocket motor (the fuel itself) is inside a metal tube that does deflect as the seat is lowered. However, the fuel is old and has started separating from the tube. So instead of the fuel burning from the inside out, it sometimes burns from the outside in, aggravating the burn through problem, and resulting in sideways vectors.

The fix I mentioned before is simply replacing the rocket motors with new ones. But this problem has actually been known about for several years, with the fix going on for the last 4 years at least. Of course, no one decided to brief the pilots that there was a problem until now...

Other things about the brief were very interesting, especially from the human factors and bird awareness points. There were some very eye opening things regarding bird impact info...some enviromental impact stuff has had unintended side effects.

FastCargo