Thunderbird down, pilot safe

So which is it -- the pilot was aboard when it landed or not?!

“I can confirm the pilot was safely ejected,” Russell said. The pilot was able to walk away from the crash unhurt, Air Force officials said. [...]
Air Combat Command also said the plane’s pilot is undergoing medical checkup, which is standard procedure following an ejection.
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If an F-16 can survive a pilotless off-airport landing that well, I'm impressed. Of course since there was no fire, we all know what that means! o_O

Let the buffing begin!
 
Can't be that shortly after a flyover. Security, CO is not at all close to the Air Force Academy. It's on the other side of town near Ft. Carson.

I'm a bit surprised that a pilotless aircraft having serious trouble could land in a field so lightly as to remain in one piece.
 
It isn't in one piece. The nose is broken off just about at the cockpit which is what happens to F-16s when they go off-roading.
 
Pilawt said:
So which is it -- the pilot was aboard when it landed or not?!
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Looks like a bit of both! The pilot definitely ejected, but the plane came to rest pretty much in one piece. I guess he had it lined up and ejected at the last minute??
 
Unless the autopilot is still engaged and is able to compensate for it, you'd think that a properly trimmed fighter where the cockpit is forward of the CG would be a bit tail heavy once the pilot, ejection seat and canopy were gone.
 
SkyDog58 said:
Unless the autopilot is still engaged and is able to compensate for it, you'd think that a properly trimmed fighter where the cockpit is forward of the CG would be a bit tail heavy once the pilot, ejection seat and canopy were gone.
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I can't speak to the F-16 specifically, but one thing about modern fighter jets......the flight computer (the airplane's brain) essentially trims the airplane itself. The pilot rarely had to manually adjust the trim in most flight regimes.
 
I would never run up to a downed F-16 with the possibility of hydrazine around ....
 
Velocity173 said:
EPU
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EPU, heh, reading up on that. I'll have to leave it to the engineers that decided on that, but feels like a poor tradeoff to me. What do modern fighters use for this function? They've certainly become even more reliant on electrical and hydraulic power to fly.
 
arnoha said:
EPU, heh, reading up on that. I'll have to leave it to the engineers that decided on that, but feels like a poor tradeoff to me. What do modern fighters use for this function? They've certainly become even more reliant on electrical and hydraulic power to fly.
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Not sure why the 16 uses Hydrazine vs fuel and normal APU. Might be for weight / size limits. I believe most other fighters have an APU that uses Jet A.

They use EPUs / APUs to power electrical and hydraulic systems during an engine failure. Or, in the case of an APU, restart engines. Believe the 16 uses a seperate jet starter unit for that function.
 
arnoha said:
Why the hell is there hydrazine on the F-16?
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The EPU on the F-16 is a dual mode electrical generator and hydraulic pump. It can run in bleed air mode and provide power when A system hydraulic pump fails or electical power when the main gen goes down. The reason hydrazine is used, is that it is a mono-propellant and when it decomposes during a run, has an expansion ratio in excess of 900:1. When the EPU comes online in either mode, it only takes a couple of seconds to come to full speed and capability. Any other type of EPU/APU will take 30 seconds or so to come to power and online.

Hydrazine is highly toxic and we teach anyone that is around an F-16 for any length of time, that if they hear the EPU running, go upwind, call it in and stay away. There is a deactivation and cleanup process, as well as EPU reset procedure. I used to have to do it every almost every night at work, right after a green run on a new aircraft.
 
Craig said:
The EPU on the F-16 is a dual mode electrical generator and hydraulic pump. It can run in bleed air mode and provide power when A system hydraulic pump fails or electical power when the main gen goes down. The reason hydrazine is used, is that it is a mono-propellant and when it decomposes during a run, has an expansion ratio in excess of 900:1. When the EPU comes online in either mode, it only takes a couple of seconds to come to full speed and capability. Any other type of EPU/APU will take 30 seconds or so to come to power and online.

Hydrazine is highly toxic and we teach anyone that is around an F-16 for any length of time, that if they hear the EPU running, go upwind, call it in and stay away. There is a deactivation and cleanup process, as well as EPU reset procedure. I used to have to do it every almost every night at work, right after a green run on a new aircraft.
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Thanks for the explanation. Never thought about spool up time with an EPU vs APU. Our APU did take awhile to come online. I suppose in a single seat fighter, that time gap could be critical in getting things back up.
 
f16a_fa048_hydrasine_verw_e.jpg

This is a working aircraft...I always remember the signs posted on most flight lines around F-16's the general public would not have a clue...
 
Craig said:
Hydrazine is highly toxic and we teach anyone that is around an F-16 for any length of time, that if they hear the EPU running, go upwind, call it in and stay away. There is a deactivation and cleanup process, as well as EPU reset procedure. I used to have to do it every almost every night at work, right after a green run on a new aircraft.
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When I was USAF ATC we had a specific location on the airport for I think a leak if suspected. Been awhile (early 80s) so not exactly how it all goes down now, especially currently.
 
I write I would never go up to a downed F-16 but once I did...that's how I first learned of hydrazine when securing an F16 crash site. Back in the early days the GE engines were coming apart and if I remember we had had three crash in one day in Germany, one engine out down south, and the sight I secured just outside the perimeter of Finthen Army Airfield on the outskirts of Bodenheim where a low level flight had a mid air with his wing man. All three ejected but one of the mid air pilots never left his seat and we found him deceased still in the seat...I got the call as the SDO for the base when one of the pilots from the mid air who suffered multiple injuries walked into the local bakery that had our number as he was a serial noise complainer...I launched with the QRF to the sight.... it was a bad day for the Air Force. Once the SP's got there a few hours later, they moved everyone back due to the hazard as we did not know.
 
Is hydrazine still the go to solution for electrical and hydraulic backup? I understand that it solves the extant problem very neatly from an engineering perspective in the aircraft. But it sure does have some downsides for everything that isn't the aircraft.

APU, RAT, batteries, fuel cell, accumulators...all sorts of other solutions. What does the F-35 use? (I assume that the F-22 and other twin engine aircraft depend on the second engine.)
 
Report released

http://s3.amazonaws.com/content.gazette/AIB Final Report with Action.pdf

The Accident Investigation Board President found by a preponderance of the evidence the cause of this mishap was a throttle trigger actuation and subsequent malfunction (throttle trigger stuck in retracted position) followed by the MP’s inadvertent full-rotation of the throttle grip while retarding the throttle aft to cutoff position. Substantially contributing factors include maintenance Technical Orders that lack sufficient detail to consistently identify either a throttle trigger clevis pin misalignment or a sticking/binding throttle trigger.
 
This statement in the report caught my eye:

The MA impacted the ground and was destroyed approximately eight seconds after the MP ejected, resulting in a total government loss of $29,466,037 (Tabs P-2 and EE-14). There was no known damage to civilian property (Tab P-2). Initial environmental clean-up costs were $2,181.22 (Tab P-2).
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How the heck do you spend two million dollars cleaning up a crashed F-16? Not only that, is says "initial...costs...", implying that more money was spent afterwards. The airframe was essentially intact, it even appears the fuel tanks may not have been breached.

Crash-landed-Thunderbird-captures-attention-2016-06-03-07-47-pm_3881155_ver1.0_640_360.jpg
 
3393RP said:
This statement in the report caught my eye:



How the heck do you spend two million dollars cleaning up a crashed F-16? Not only that, is says "initial...costs...", implying that more money was spent afterwards. The airframe was essentially intact, it even appears the fuel tanks may not have been breached.

Crash-landed-Thunderbird-captures-attention-2016-06-03-07-47-pm_3881155_ver1.0_640_360.jpg
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That's two thousand one hundred eighty one dollars and twenty two cents.
 
3393RP said:
This statement in the report caught my eye:



How the heck do you spend two million dollars cleaning up a crashed F-16? Not only that, is says "initial...costs...", implying that more money was spent afterwards. The airframe was essentially intact, it even appears the fuel tanks may not have been breached.

Crash-landed-Thunderbird-captures-attention-2016-06-03-07-47-pm_3881155_ver1.0_640_360.jpg
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Two THOUSAND, not two million.

Sending two guys out to look at it can easily cost that.
 
Van Johnston said:
Report released

http://s3.amazonaws.com/content.gazette/AIB Final Report with Action.pdf

The Accident Investigation Board President found by a preponderance of the evidence the cause of this mishap was a throttle trigger actuation and subsequent malfunction (throttle trigger stuck in retracted position) followed by the MP’s inadvertent full-rotation of the throttle grip while retarding the throttle aft to cutoff position. Substantially contributing factors include maintenance Technical Orders that lack sufficient detail to consistently identify either a throttle trigger clevis pin misalignment or a sticking/binding throttle trigger.
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Lot of fancy words for ....ooops, someone messed up.
 
Sounds like they didn't install the mixture cable correctly. And that's why I get nervous when leaning in flight.:)
 
Probably means that there will be a TCTO requiring a one time inspection for the throttle grip for the wear and alignment problem that caused it. There will most likely be some TO revisions on the routine inspections and maintenance for the grip. In all the years I messed with F-16's, I never saw one stick, but there is always a first time for it to happen. With more than 5400 hours on the airframe, and it being a Tbird, there are a lot of cycles of the throttle grip against the idle-cutoff stop.
 
A little, but most of the -16's that I played with were either pre-delivery to the customer, or were flight test aircraft. I think the highest time one I worked on had just over 3000 hours on it. Considering the size of the throttle assembly, the flight hours and the fact that there were probably over a hundred people that flew that particular airframe during it's service life, I'm surprised it's the only time I've heard of it happening. I have a friend in my EAA chapter that is a safety investigator from both the military and civilian side and I'll ask him about it if he's at the meeting Wednesday night.
 
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