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F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

cnn.com

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Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#151
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and the tariffs are still there anyway so I don't understand why we aren't following suite and cancelling those orders.

Yep, anyone paying billions in what is effectively tribute to this admin is only playing themselves considering the stable genius seems to flip the game board every 5 minutes.

They're betting on things going "back to normal" eventually. They have neither the imagination or courage to think otherwise.

If it does, the new president/ruling party will probably look favorably on those who respected the crown even when they hated the guy who wore it. Because that's how the normal is.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#153
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless it was flown in a special mode. What fresh hell is that... reboot, jam F8 just as the "Airbus" logo shows up, and then select "Boot in safe mode"?

Fly-by-wire aircraft have changeable “flight laws” that correspond to different levels of computer intervention to mitigate situations incompatible with controlled flight. Think of it as various stability control modes in a modern car. Likely the aircraft needed to be put in the least restrictive flight law mode as a workaround.

‘Incompatible with controlled flight’ is my new ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’.

Notably, most drones have similar levels of control. Everything has to go through the IMU of course (nobody is manually going to be managing 4 separate motor controllers at once), but depending on the modes, the type of control is wildly different.

‘Consumer’/‘idiot’ mode - you tell it which direction to go, and how high/low you want it, and it’ll do that safely. Usually with some sort of object detection/avoidance, auto GPS input, so you won’t accidentally wander into something or hit something. Goal is stable, level flight.

‘Sport’ mode - go fast, usually disables all but the most simple collision avoidance. Sometimes even that. Still provides stable, level flight, but you can easily crash it. Usually goes 2-3x faster than ‘idiot’ mode.

‘Attitude’ or ‘acrobatic’ mode - you’re directly commanding the target 3D pitch/yaw, and aggregate power output. No provision is given to automatically maintaining level flight (won’t auto level), generally no regard is given to airframe integrity, collision avoidance, or engine life, and boy is it fun.

It’s really common to crash in this mode, because people are also doing flips, acrobatic maneuvers, running courses, etc.

Drones in even ‘sport’ mode can’t do flips because it’s fundamentally at odds with auto maintaining level flight, etc.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#154
post #112

I'm wondering why these days, when my washing machine has an internet connection, they can't take over control of a plane remotely. I guess it could be considered a security vulnerability, however i'm quite sure it could be done securely. Like let the pilot eject and you try to land a plane with remote control

When the plane's software misbehaves due to broken sensors and you only now that, because there are human eyes up there, remote control isn't going to improve the situation.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#155
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless it was flown in a special mode. What fresh hell is that... reboot, jam F8 just as the "Airbus" logo shows up, and then select "Boot in safe mode"?

Airbus is fully fly-by-wire. Without some kind of computer intervention, nothing would be stopping an accidental bang against the flight stick from causing a maneuver violent enough to rip the wings off. An Airbus can operate in three modes. With Normal Law, the airplane will refuse to do anything which will stop it from flying. This means the pilot cannot stall the airplane, for example: the computer will automatica…

How does a pilot switch between the three modes? Just switches on the dash?

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#156

> Five engineers participated in the call, including a senior software engineer, a flight safety engineer and three specialists in landing gear systems, the report said. I can't imagine the stress of being on this call as an engineer. It's like a production outage but the consequences are life and death. Of course, the pilot probably felt more stressed.

Currently on a production promotion outage right now and reading this while we wait for some caches to be purged to see if it fixes things. Not quite the same and consequences here are much less than what those guys had to do. Still sucks either way...

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for basically every fighter jet and stealth aircraft

"Modern" jet fighters, yes. I believe it started to be "hard" to fly manually with the F-16 and now it is completely impossible, but feel free to correct me.

F-16 was the first inherently unstable jet fighter, and the first one that featured a full fly-by-wire system with no backup. If you want a jet that is completely impossible to fly without a computer, F-16 is already one of them - there is nothing special with the F-35 about that.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#158
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ejecting from an airplane is no joke: 18g of force leaves 20-30% with spinal fractures, and ejection seats have an 8% mortality rate[1] It seems to me that continuing flight with inoperative/damaged landing gear while you discuss alternatives with engineers is the safest option. Burn fuel, make a plan, let people on the ground mobilize to help, and eject when you've tried what you can and it truly becomes the safest…

It makes you wonder if it would be possible for ejection seats to have a safer bailout mode. Sure, the "compress your spine" mode is definitely appropriate during a wartime situation where someone has shot your wings off, but is it really required when a mechanical failure leaves you unable to land yet in a more-or-less stable flight at a reasonably low speed? Perhaps a 6g ejection might be more appropriate in those…

Did you watch the latest Tom Cruise mission impossible movie? Unless you want to be the bad guy at the end, you need to be very clear of the aircraft if you’re ejecting. For a fighter aircraft, that necessarily requires very violent forces.

It’s a major concern with skydiving too - there are many aircraft it’s impossible to safely exit in flight without impacting some part of the airframe.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#159
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purchasing F35s is paying tribute to the empire so it doesn't come down on you harder with tariffs and compliance burdens. It's not meant to actually be useful.

Yeah and the tariffs are still there anyway so I don't understand why we aren't following suite and cancelling those orders.

Finland just joined NATO, which means that they lost their neutrality and independency for foreign politics. It is now very difficult to do something completely different or unfrienly than the U.S. because of that one country with shared border.

If the U.S really takes more steps towards taking Greenland and works against NATO ally, then it might be very complicated situation for both Denmark and Finland, and the whole alliance. But until then Finland at least is stuck with the U.S.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#160

If a third of the hydraulic fluid was water, it was like that meme video of the woman who added washer fluid to the car’s oil - no way was that going to work properly.

I'm surprised no one is mentioning this, and the fact the article says this is the second of such incidents...

I don't know if this is what actually happened, but it would appear to be a very effective method of sabotage... Simply putting some water in the hydraulic fluid container destined for an F35 is an extremely high risk-adjusted ROI for any saboteurs.

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