Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sort of hours do you log for a crash? Does it end when the ejection starts, or feet-on/the/ground?
When the plane comes to rest on the ground.
Every landing you can walk away from is a good landing.
Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
201–210 of 278 posts
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an aerobatic pilot that owns an Extra and has flown with several fighter pilots, I can tell you flying an Extra requires a lot more talent than a fighter jet.
Never got to do aerobatics, just “normal” flying. I saw a RedBull race and was impressed about the agility of the pilots. But I like jets more because they go faster. And they have afterburners. And they go vertical faster than any propeller plane will ever be able to. And the margin of error is smaller. Espcially closer to the ground.
Can't say I've seen a jet get under tree cover and muster cattle .. there's an exciting bit of air work.
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too many comments are trying to overanalyze, or just show off their insightful cynicism. We do airshows because they are cool . Lots of us love airplanes. Humans do all kinds of activities for entertainment that are not strictly justifiable returns on investment. I hope we never get that boring, though every year we do seem to go that direction.
I would say it's part of the US culture. It's not a thing in Europe (one reason might be practical reasons. We have less space to do it safely).
Peak European comment
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#204That was a gnarly stunt. Glad the pilots survived.
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm reminded of a short video clip I saw a while back with a dollar-counter on-screen. Different kinds of weapons were fired, each one bigger and more expensive than the last, the counter spinning upwards all-the-while. And here's me thinking: man, just don't shoot two or three of those anti-aircraft missiles, give the cash to me, and I could buy a house and live comfortably with my family.
If it weren't for the military, you might not have a country left to live in.
This is a strawman argument.
One can acknowledge the necessity of having a military while at the same time questioning the magnitude of defense spending.
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air shows are pilot flight hours training. This could've happened on any random training exercise just the same. Flight hours are one the key differentiating factors in air force quality and a major US advantage is that their pilots have a lot of them.
*a male US advantage major?
Either autocorrect is getting worse or I'm getting lazier...or just phone posting more.
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Healthcare is expensive because we buy fancy airplanes? It seems at least as likely to do with the incredibly high salaries we pay doctors. And the fact that we use like 50% more healthcare services than a typical single-payer society.
> Healthcare is expensive because we buy fancy airplanes?
This is a bad faith rebuttal that intentionally tries to distort the comparison.
Here's the salient point you're trying to ignore: many other countries have lower healthcare costs and better health outcomes because they've prioritized investing in healthcare systems that work better for their citizens.
Government budgets are not unlimited and when your country spends nearly $1 trillion/year on the military (more than double the second-biggest spender) on top of a debt pile rapidly approaching $40 trillion, it's reasonable to question whether the people running the show have their priorities straight.
As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized a long time ago, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
To which I'd add a point about socioeconomic death. Of course, that doesn't resonate with people who measure the country's economic situation by stock prices.
> It seems at least as likely to do with the incredibly high salaries we pay doctors.
Doctor wages account for about 8% of healthcare spend in the US, so even if doctors worked for free, you wouldn't even come close to parity with other countries in terms of healthcare costs.
Don't you think something is wrong when the cost of an emergency room visit in much of the country exceeds individuals' median liquid savings?
> And the fact that we use like 50% more healthcare services than a typical single-payer society.
This simply isn't true. Per Kaiser Family Foundation: "The U.S.’s higher spending on providers is driven more by higher prices than higher utilization of care. Patients in the U.S. have shorter average hospital stays and fewer physician visits per capita, while many hospital procedures have been shown to have higher prices in the U.S. "
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#208It's crazy to me that Americans feel like they can't afford socialized healthcare, but performing tricks in $70M jets is something that must proceed at all costs.
Yes because over in the rest of the world (or "the country of Europe" to be exact), we all have "socialized healthcare" where we pillage the wealthy and just spend shitloads of tax money on it. That would go very great, and is not a flawed idea whatsoever. /s
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#209I don’t know anything about anything but it feels kind of amazing that all four ejected with good looking parachutes given the orientation of the conglomerated plane.
Something that seems interesting to me is that they all ejected at nearly the identical time. I'm curious if those systems are automated in case of scenarios like an unconscious pilot. If so, there may be automated clearance/angle systems, but that's speculation on top of speculation.
It stuck me as well.
My uninformed guess is that it took both pilots roughly the same amount of time to run through their OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop and conclude their plane was not recoverable and eject.
And for both crew members of the same plane ejecting at the same time, I think the ejection of the second personnel is automated should the first one eject. (Not familiar with the F-18 fighter at all but I know it's like that in other fighters with two crew members).
Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.
Too many comments are trying to overanalyze, or just show off their insightful cynicism. We do airshows because they are cool . Lots of us love airplanes. Humans do all kinds of activities for entertainment that are not strictly justifiable returns on investment. I hope we never get that boring, though every year we do seem to go that direction.
Seeing and hearing the last remaining Avro Vulcan pull up over the chalk cliffs at Eastbourne a few years back is something I won't forget for a long time.