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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

#361

Post by harshreality »

Yokolos wrote: post #257
cyclecount wrote: post #79

These planes are huge pieces of shit. No country should be spending money buying these from the US / Lockheed Martin.

They're really not. You're basing this on misinformation and propaganda. The only reason why nobody should be buying them is because the US has become an untrustworthy partner. Otherwise, there is no credible evidence of any kind that I've seen showing the F-35 is anything other than a great fighter jet.

Its stealth is good. Its EW and Avionics are probably good... now, after a decade of production, and with Block 4 around the corner.

As planes, they were terrible when introduced a decade ago, and mediocre now.

Too much functionality was promised too soon without adequate project management. Instead of modularity being the design philosophy for the NGAD, and shoehorned into the F-35 during production, it should've been the design philosophy for the F-35A/C from the start.

Too many compromises were made to make the three variants share a similar design despite radically different missions.

The F-35B should never have existed.

The parts commonality numbers say it all. Initially projected to be 70%, but when it neared production the actual commonality figure was 25%. I haven't seen that broken down, but I bet the F-35B is a large part of that.

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

#362

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #352
mulmen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the uninitiated: SOF is Supervisor of Flying.

Classic DoD with its overloaded acronyms. I first read the sentence thinking "what does this have to do with Special Operations Forces"?

> Classic DoD with its overloaded acronyms.

What does Depth of Discharge have to do with anything?

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

#363

Post by eastbound »

MostlyStable wrote: post #294
RyanOD wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, of course, CNN only links to their own articles. Why bother linking to the actual report? The rise in sites that only link to themselves 99% of the time really frustrates me.

Journalism's failure to adopt linking to sources etc in the internet age is kind of infuriating. I get it, back in physical newspaper/magazine days, linking wasn't possible, and it takes a while for new norms to change and habits to form, but articles have been internet-first for well over a decade at this point. It should be completely unacceptable not to have linking to sources whenever relevant. I'm not sure I hav…

It’s infuriating because, when debating, we’re asked to cite our sources.

We’d like to cite sources but journalists don’t cite theirs.

Now consider this: When you know journalists are spreading a lie, you can show the article and the scientific study which says the opposite, because people always claim that it isn’t the study cited by the article.

Case in point: I remember this article from the BBC titled “It’s proven, women are smarter than men. [In a scientific study about multitasking, …]”

The scientific paper published the month before on the same subject had an abstract that finished with “…, therefore we cannot conclude that women are smarter than men.”

I was particularly angry because it participated to the 2017 wave, and it was about multitasking, and once again it said women are 5s faster on a 170s task (with 15s stddev), but the study didn’t underline the accuracy of the two tasks in parallel, which was worse for women than men.

Anybody who mocks me about competing with girls, should respond why the BBC need to publish a petty news article about women being smarter.

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

#364

Post by LorenPechtel »

MostlyStable wrote: post #294
RyanOD wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, of course, CNN only links to their own articles. Why bother linking to the actual report? The rise in sites that only link to themselves 99% of the time really frustrates me.

Journalism's failure to adopt linking to sources etc in the internet age is kind of infuriating. I get it, back in physical newspaper/magazine days, linking wasn't possible, and it takes a while for new norms to change and habits to form, but articles have been internet-first for well over a decade at this point. It should be completely unacceptable not to have linking to sources whenever relevant. I'm not sure I hav…

If you link to something external the eyeballs leave and that's undesirable.

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

#365

Post by charlieo88 »

diggan wrote: post #267
dfox wrote: post #223

The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that: The pilot was not part of the conference call! What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers. The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentiall…

> The article is somewhat sensationalistic somewhat sensationalistic?! The article clearly tries to give the impression the pilot was on the call: > A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected Knowing the quality of media these days, it wouldn't surprise me if it CNN just got it really wrong,…

dang, I was looking forward to reading about the same F150 CarPlay and MS Teams being available in f35.

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

#366

Post by forgotTheLast »

soorya3 wrote: post #357

Just a thought (I am no airline expert), If it costed 200 million to build the plane that was destroyed because landing gear can not be deployed then maybe it's time to think about building a catcher similar to spacex booster catch. This would probably need different plane design like vertical landing and horizontal landing gears.

You're describing the F-35B/C

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

#367

Post by LorenPechtel »

stackskipton wrote: post #308
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report actually says it could have landed. A week later, another F35 at the same base had the same problem, it landed with its nose gear 6 degrees off center and the pilot barely noticed. Basically, Lockheed Martin engineers told the air force to attempt re-centering with touch-and-go landings, but didn't realize that this could mess with the weight-on-wheels sensors and cause it to switch flight modes.

I’ve always wondered why weight on wheel modes don’t have more checks, detecting weight on wheels but seeing 150+ Indicated Air speed and RALT is greater then 15ft, maybe issue caution instead of screwing with flight mode.

Yeah, they put too much faith in their sensors. Too many planes have crashed because of blind reliance on sensors that sometimes fail. Cross check whether things make sense before doing potentially catastrophic actions.

And don't skimp on the maintenance budget. Sounds like they had too much to do, too few people to do it, leading to not taking proper care.

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

#368

Post by foxyv »

potato3732842 wrote: post #213

Everyone in these comments making quips about software is missing the elephant in the room, where the heck did that water in the hydraulic system come from? Pretty much any hydraulic fluid for outdoor use will suck up a lot of water so as to prevent situations like this so this clearly isn't a teaspoon or even cups of condensation problem.

Hydraulic fluid is very hydroscopic. It will happily suck the moisture out of the air if it is exposed long enough. This is why you don't use half empty bottles of brake fluid. I suspect that the fluid was left in opened containers for too long before being installed in the jet, allowing it to load up on water.

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

#369

Post by eduction »

jasonlotito wrote: post #332
eduction wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One clear indication he was not, from PDF p14 (8 as numbered) ("MP"="mishap pilot"): "At 21:12:52Z, the SOF informed the MP, “Alright the engineers uh are not optimistic about this COA but, extremely low PK [probability kill, meaning the probability this would fix the issue], but we’re going to try anyway is a touch-and-go on the runway, mains only, do not touch the nose gear, uh lift back off in all cases and have t…

From the Report: > The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action. "though the SOF" implies a middle-man, but I imagine that's because you don't want literally hook up a conference call directly to the cockpit. That being said, seems like the pilot was effectively on th…

What I said is he was not on the call /directly/.

You can argue over whether he was “effectively” on the call because someone was summarizing it for him per what I quoted.

I just think it’s worth nothing he was not “on” the call the way someone is traditionally on a conference call.

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

#370

Post by HPsquared »

Aurornis wrote: post #142
crote wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The ejection force is to ensure the pilot clears the airplane as they enter the airstream. Think about how much force you feel when you hold your hand out a car window at 60MPH, then remember that wind resistance increases with the square of speed. You have to be launched hard to get away from the tail. Also the last thing you want in the critical emergency safety gear is more levels of complexity and additional thin…

That airspeed is highly variable though, the plane can go supersonic or at approach/landing speed with flaps extended. Probably 10x+ less aerodynamic force going at low (indicated) airspeed.
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