F16 training intercept on holding GA aircraft

Switch in question:
Wings fall off.jpg
 
Toobdrvr said:
And fwiw, the only issue I had with the incident was where it said he supposedly operated a single switch in the cockpit and immediately lost control of the aircraft…
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Ummm - you haven’t flipped a switch then immediately lost control of the aircraft before? Amateur.

<unbelievable sarcasm if that’s not evident>

but in all seriousness, if I ever flipped a switch or did something and the airplane behaves weirdly after, my gut instinct would have been to undo what I just did and flip I the other direction lol.
 
ppragman said:
Ummm - you haven’t flipped a switch then immediately lost control of the aircraft before? Amateur.

<unbelievable sarcasm if that’s not evident>

but in all seriousness, if I ever flipped a switch or did something and the airplane behaves weirdly after, my gut instinct would have been to undo what I just did and flip I the other direction lol.
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The airplane always behaves oddly when I turn off the autopilot. So i like to keep it on.
 
I now have to read this report. I don't recall the switch that makes the F-16 immediately depart, but there were a hell of a lot of switches in it, three (if I recall) that turned off an individual axis of the FBW, or something to that effect.....
 
///AMG said:
I now have to read this report. I don't recall the switch that makes the F-16 immediately depart, but there were a hell of a lot of switches in it, three (if I recall) that turned off an individual axis of the FBW, or something to that effect.....
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Well more importantly, dude was in a profile where a departure would mean what it means for survivable ejection or chance to recover.

There is a reason he reached down and pulled the “F this, I give it back” handle. He (wrongly) interpreted that movement of buffet and loss of lift in an adverse profile as the jet is about to do what it’s engineered to do and the flight control system keeps it from doing and in no longer going to be a voting member of the committee on where the nose is pointed…

Everything about that report sounds like dude was just behind his aircraft and they went from briefed planned training to “let’s try this out” and it got away from a guy who didn’t have the cards to throw at the problem when it continues down a bad series of events. Good on the Full Bird for not trying to explain it away or anything and say “these guys F’d up, here are the ways… I recommend the following sections be examined.” Considering who this guy’s daddy is, I’m glad he didn’t try to smooth over with some explanation of how it’s ok.


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Oh for sure, I certainly don't blame the guy for pulling the handle in this situation. The panel in question is different than it was in the Block 15, but that's essentially similar stuff. We just had a few extra things that I heard were flight test holdovers, I'm sure removed by the C/D blocks. I also recall (again, very distant memory) the ALT flaps being used to get them down during such an event as a WoW failure or a few other degradations. Might be an accepted work-around for sustained low speed flight, not sure. Never used it in BFM, where you could get pretty slow on the 25 AoA limiter. Regardless,

<---- captain obvious says it sounds like not entirely the best execution of said maneuver/intercept.
 
///AMG said:
Oh for sure, I certainly don't blame the guy for pulling the handle in this situation. The panel in question is different than it was in the Block 15, but that's essentially similar stuff. We just had a few extra things that I heard were flight test holdovers, I'm sure removed by the C/D blocks. I also recall (again, very distant memory) the ALT flaps being used to get them down during such an event as a WoW failure or a few other degradations. Might be an accepted work-around for sustained low speed flight, not sure. Never used it in BFM, where you could get pretty slow on the 25 AoA limiter. Regardless,

intercept.
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You could kind of get that “what the F were you thinking!?!?!!” Vibe the whole time that report explained what the pilot did and what he could have been doing.

Good news everybody! We have a new officer to act as the state guard facilities manager of gyms and swimming pools!”


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Lawman said:
Everything about that report sounds like dude was just behind his aircraft and they went from briefed planned training to “let’s try this out” and it got away from a guy who didn’t have the cards to throw at the problem when it continues down a bad series of events.
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As someone with quite a lot of respect for the fighter pilot community and the usual culture of diligence and flying what you briefed, the events highlighted in the report sure don’t subscribe to that culture I’m familiar with. It sounds like he got behind the jet on the unplanned intercept and got slow, reached to flick alternate flaps to norm and grabbed digital backup switch instead, put the FCLS into an alternate law and then punched out because that alternate law behavior made him think the jet was “departing controlled flight.”

Sure sounds like the last link in a chain of not so great decisions. “There but the grace of god go I” as they say, but this doesn’t seem like the best hill to die on defending the guy…

Edit:
You could kind of get that “what the F were you thinking!?!?!!” Vibe the whole time that report explained what the pilot did and what he could have been doing.

Good news everybody! We have a new officer to act as the state guard facilities manager of gyms and swimming pools!”
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Never mind, you get it. (I also got that same tone from the report.)
 
Every once in a while, you get a report that has a punitive tone. For those who are unfamiliar, this is also the AIB, not the safety investigation (SIB), so take it with a grain of salt. AIB (like our "JAGMAN" investigation in the USN/USMC) serves a blame finding purpose (potentially usable in legal action), unlike the safety investigation. Either way, I think these reports frequently fall short in identifying realistic expectations. None of them read "they just f'd up, and any of us could have an equally bad day given the right set of circumstances". Sometimes, the findings while correct, place an unreasonable expectation of aircrew doing a bunch of stuff perfectly, when we all know the reality. Not saying this situation falls under this category, I really don't know enough to say.
 
///AMG said:
Oh for sure, I certainly don't blame the guy for pulling the handle in this situation. The panel in question is different than it was in the Block 15, but that's essentially similar stuff. We just had a few extra things that I heard were flight test holdovers, I'm sure removed by the C/D blocks. I also recall (again, very distant memory) the ALT flaps being used to get them down during such an event as a WoW failure or a few other degradations. Might be an accepted work-around for sustained low speed flight, not sure. Never used it in BFM, where you could get pretty slow on the 25 AoA limiter. Regardless,

<---- captain obvious says it sounds like not entirely the best execution of said maneuver/intercept.
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Help me out, @///AMG , did I miss something?

So, he lowers flaperons to operate safely at Cessna-like speeds. Sounds reasonable.

He hears the stall horn. Instead of instinctively lowering nose and advancing throttle he attempts to raise flaperons by switching the ALT Flaps to normal. Shouldn’t we avoid raising flaps in the flare ;) … or while stalling?

That said, I can’t blame him for punching out as soon as he ran out of ideas. It’s very possible that he thought he was lower and thought a brisk departure might roll him and take him out of the optimal ejection envelope. Things happen fast in the pretty jets.
 
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Pilot Fighter said:
Help me out, @///AMG , did I miss something?

He hears the stall horn. Instead of instinctively lowering nose and advancing throttle he attempts to raise flaperons by switching the ALT Flaps to normal. Shouldn’t we avoid raising flaps in the flare ;) … or while stalling?
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So this is mostly just guessing here. It sounds like he was trying to accelerate and climb away, which won't happen with draggy TEF's extended, especially in a fixed extended configuration like you'd have with Alt Flaps. So retracting them would make sense to me.....ie put them back on the FLCS controlled flap schedule (they auto extend and retract based on flight parameters in the normal, non ALT flaps mode). But he didn't actually flip the right switch to do this. The way I read this, DBU (which I don't recall being a mode in the A/B) is like the GAIN ORIDE mode we have in the F/A-18 family. It is a backup mode that allows you to tell the FCCs (or FLCS in this case) to just use fixed gains. Used in situations like AoA probe damage, or other unreliable sensor inputs to the FCCs. Like they mention, flap up settings are typically high and fast, fixed assumptions in terms of CAS, air density, and AoA. It sounds like his departure indications occurred following inadvertent and unrecognized selection of this mode, so basically he got what he didn't ask for or realize he had asked for. For reference, were you to throw the guarded GAIN ORIDE switch in an F/A-18 super far outside the fixed assumed flight parameters, you'd get a very weird response and potentially depart as well. Again, I don't really know if my guess that these two backup modes are analogous is true, but if they are, it makes sense.

Fun fact: there is not a flap switch in the F-16. They are only lowered on command by putting the gear handle down, or by selecting Alt flaps. With the gear handle up and the alt flaps switch off, the FCCs schedule the flaps on their own with no direct pilot input. The F/A-18 has a similar mechanization, though we do have a flap switch with two settings (Half and Full) which both invoke approach mode FCC logic, regardless of gear handle position.

Edit #2: these FBW systems are actually very elegant and simple in operation, but the backup modes often get a little funky, necessarily. Somehow you have to be able to take a system that is near perfect and effortless with closed loop feedback, to a system that is still predictable and relatively similar when you open the loop and take that feedback away. The methods for accomplishing this are called different things, but they are generally, from what I've seen, similar in theory and application. But what we are actually talking about is your Tesla in auto drive. The backup mode assumes you are at freeway speed because that is likely where you are 90% of the time. But when you are actually at 15 mph, it still applies the same control inputs it would at 60 mph because you told it that is where you are.
 
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///AMG said:
So this is mostly just guessing here. It sounds like he was trying to accelerate and climb away, which won't happen with draggy TEF's extended, especially in a fixed extended configuration like you'd have with Alt Flaps. So retracting them would make sense to me. But he didn't actually flip the right switch to do this. The way I read this, DBU (which I don't recall being a mode in the A/B) is like the GAIN ORIDE mode we have in the F/A-18 family. It is a backup mode that allows you to tell the FCCs (or FLCS in this case) to just use fixed gains. Used in situations like AoA probe damage, or other unreliable sensor inputs to the FCCs. Like they mention, flap up settings are typically high and fast, fixed assumptions in terms of CAS, air density, and AoA. It sounds like his departure indications occurred following inadvertent and unrecognized selection of this mode, so basically he got what he didn't ask for or realize he had asked for. For reference, were you to throw the guarded GAIN ORIDE switch in an F/A-18 super far outside the fixed assumed flight parameters, you'd get a very weird response and potentially depart as well. Again, I don't really know if my guess that these two backup modes are analogous is true, but if they are, it makes sense.
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Yeah, it seems like addressing that annoying horn would have been high on the priority list prior to cleaning up.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
Yeah, it seems like addressing that annoying horn would have been high on the priority list prior to cleaning up.
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I think you are getting at breaking critical AoA here? I probably didn't read carefully enough to find that part. I can't even remember if we had such a thing in the F-16. I know that there wasn't a "stall horn" in a traditional sense, in either aircraft. We have a ton of tones in the F-18, which all come on regularly in slow speed flight. You have the gear up with excessive descent rate below a certain altitude. You had the >40 AoA tone in the legacy Hornet (not in the SH or Growler). You also have a yaw rate tone, should that become a trend. And then you have the screaming AIM-9 seeker head in your ear. I'll just submit, there are a lot of tones potentially going off at once. I remember the F-16 being quieter in this sense, but there also isn't a fixed stall speed or even a stick shaker region graphically or visually depicted in either aircraft. They will still stall, but it is very very difficult to turn that stall into anything other than mushy controls and a wallowy nose. Unless you are greater than 90 deg nose high, in which case things get a little more violent as the ship rights itself. But generally, you have to work damned hard to actually get into a full departure. And in a lot of cases, you can just power out of a stalled condition, with so much excess thrust. If I get real slow in the -18, I most efficiently get out of it by unloading a few times in full AB......but I can also just generally hold a reasonable climb attitude in AB and it will eventually get there. Perhaps paradoxically, I will get there faster by "cleaning up the wings" which is what I am actually doing when I unload (since the FCCs read this as "schedule flaps up")
 
///AMG said:
I think you are getting at breaking critical AoA here? I probably didn't read carefully enough to find that part. I can't even remember if we had such a thing in the F-16. We have a ton of tones in the F-18, which all come on regularly in slow speed flight. You have the gear up with excessive descent rate below a certain altitude. You had the >40 AoA tone in the legacy Hornet (not in the SH or Growler). You also have a yaw rate tone, should that become a trend. And then you have the screaming AIM-9 seeker head in your ear. I'll just submit, there are a lot of tones potentially going off at once. I remember the F-16 being quieter in this sense, but there also isn't a fixed stall speed or even a stick shaker region graphically or visually depicted in either aircraft. They will still stall, but it is very very difficult to turn that stall into anything other than mushy controls and a wallowy nose. Unless you are greater than 90 deg nose high, in which case things get a little more violent as the ship rights itself. But generally, you have to work damned hard to actually get into a full departure. And in a lot of cases, you can just power out of a stalled condition, with so much excess thrust.
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Good point. Report didn’t mention that he acknowledged hearing the horn.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
Good point. Report didn’t mention that he acknowledged hearing the horn.
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Well your point is of course correct in a traditional basics of aviation sense. If the airplane is stalled, the correction is the same in any aircraft. I think the grey area here is that potentially he wasn't stalled?
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
@///AMG @Lawman

Great posts here that help understand what happened.



Now for us civvies, can anyone explain what this button was that no qualified pilot would ever push?




www.businessinsider.com

A pilot who lied about his flying experience to secure a job at British Airways was said to have been caught when he pressed a button 'no qualified pilot would'

The former pilot was sentenced to 12 months in jail after pleading guilty to four counts of fraud, the UK Civil Aviation Authority said.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
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hahah oh man, I wonder what such a button could have been? This is amazing
 
///AMG said:
Well your point is of course correct in a traditional basics of aviation sense. If the airplane is stalled, the correction is the same in any aircraft. I think the grey area here is that potentially he wasn't stalled?
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And to explain this better, I'd use an example, in my own plane. Let's imagine a dogfight, and I want to execute a vertical maneuver, which largely resembles a loop with a lift vector reorientation in the pure vertical (think a lateral stick input), followed by a nose position adjustment once pointed back down to facilitate cueing a missile or gun shot. Say I do this with too little airspeed initially, or with too aggressive of a pull throughout. I might come over the top at 100-150 knots, and lets say I just program and hold 40+ AoA from there to nose low. The bleed rate is insane in that regime of flight. I will probably not get the nose "below the horizon" before I hit 48 knots indicated (the lowest indicated airspeed in the airplane). At that point, the plane is effectively stalled, and the jet is fighting me trying to trim to 1G (its constant in flaps up flight). But it is still flying, albeit mostly straight down, with the nose hung up above the horizon due to a combination of the FCS autotrimming, and not having enough aerodynamic authority to keep the nose tracking down. I release the controls and it flies out, inverted, and the nose starts tracking down again as airspeed increases. The aerodynamics are just weird in these airplanes designed for really high AoA flight.

I think my whole point, if you managed to read all that, is that "stalled" is a lot more vague for us. Contrasted with the 121 training world, where the instructor says to just hold altitude (or leave it in A/P with the ILS captured maybe) while you decelerate in the high altitude (or approach stall) demo into a region that no person with an ounce of air sense would ever let themselves arrive in. There is the buffet, then the stick shaker, then the stall tones and the FFS literally shaking itself off the mounts. And unless you are Rambo, it would be a whole lot easier to just let the nose come down than keep fighting it like Air France does. It couldnt possibly be a more black and white "you are stalled and are going to die with hundreds of people" situation in that instance. In the fighter, it is more like, "damn, I screwed that up, need to get some speed back and get back in the fight" and then you just do.
 
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Lawman said:
Did you read the report?

Are you familiar with what you’re looking at?

Because I can tell you from both its history and the choice of how it phrased the comment, military.com is one of the last places you should be looking for definitive truth and context with regards to mil aviation.


There was absolutely nothing in that report saying non participating GA aircraft are off limit and thus the intercept is “unauthorized.” It was however improperly planned/briefed and since they didn’t do that any explicitly permitted maneuvers could be classified as “unauthorized.” The failures to follow AF training rules have to do with keeping the aircraft in defined parameters so as to leave the pilot sufficient outs to lessen likelihood of a mishap. He let the aircraft get ahead of himself and in the process went into those defined limits at which point he should have recognized and terminated. The rules however aren’t there to create some sort of protected exclusion for GA declaring them off limits. In fact to the contrary they actually define how to go up and treat “non participating” aircraft for training evolutions.


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Bruh, you're so getting a cat tree. All I need is that address.

Then you wouldn't get so grumpy at one of the Patron Saints of JC! :)
 
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