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SUPERSONIC EJECTION SEAT SYSTEM TESTS AT HURRICANE MESA UTAH 84222

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  • čas přidán 7. 05. 2015
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    Convair Corporation, a division of General Dynamics, was given the task of developing an ejection seat that could be used aboard the Century Series Aircraft (F-100, F-101, F-102, F-106, etc.) that would allow pilots to perform trans-sonic and supersonic escapes. As this film shows, two seat designs were prepared and tested. Only one ended up begin finalized, and tests were begun initially at Edwards Air Force Base on a rocket sled, and then at Hurricane Mesa in Utah.
    The first ejection seat fitted to early F-106s was a variation of the seat used by the F-102 and was called the Weber interim seat. It was a catapult seat which used an explosive charge to propel it clear of the aircraft. This seat was not a zero-zero seat and was inadequate for ejections at supersonic speeds as well as ground level ejections and ejections at speeds below 120 knots (140 miles per hour; 220 kilometres per hour) and 2,000 feet (610 metres). The second seat that replaced the Weber interim seat was the Convair/ICESC (Industry Crew Escape System Committee) Supersonic Rotational B-seat, called the supersonic "bobsled", hence the B designation. It was designed with supersonic ejection as the primary criterion since the F-106 was capable of Mach-2 performance. Fighter pilots viewed high speed ejections as the most important. Seat designers viewed an ejection at low altitude and slow speed as the most likely possibility. The ejection sequence with the B-seat was quite complicated and there were some unsuccessful ejections that resulted in pilot fatalities. The third seat, that replaced the Convair B-seat, was the Weber Zero-Zero ROCAT (for ROcket CATapult) seat. Weber Aircraft Corporation designed a "zero-zero" seat to operate at up to 600 knots (690 miles per hour; 1,100 kilometres per hour). High-altitude supersonic ejections were rare and ejections at relatively low altitudes and low speeds were more likely. The Weber “zero-zero” seat was satisfactory and was retrofitted to the F-106 in 1963.
    You can read more about this at the excellent "Ejection Site":
    www.ejectionsite.com/frame_106...
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Komentáře • 73

  • @842qwery
    @842qwery Před 3 lety +12

    “Do you enjoy sitting down for extended periods of time? Do you love the great outdoors? Would you like to get paid to enjoy the fresh air and fascinating vistas? Become a seat testing du...technician.” Martin-Baker Industries.

  • @WootTootZoot
    @WootTootZoot Před 4 lety +8

    My father worked on the Hurricane Mesa track when it was a Top Secret project in the early to mid 1950's. Only problem, everyone in Hurricane and Springdale knew when there was going to be a test and would drive out to the road that went past the end of the mesa. I can remember as a kid seeing sleds and parachutes going over the edge of the mesa. Another "oddity" was Robert Stanley who ran the facility. His only goals in life were test data and an all over suntan. His usual "outfit" while working at the Mesa was a straw hat and Converse high top basketball shoes. If anyone didn't like the idea of working around a naked man with droopy balls, then you could go to work somewhere else, it was his facility to run as he pleased. The Mormon ladies that worked in the lunch room were always in a tizzy over his "attire" but, then again, there were few jobs in the area and they were told to deal with it. One episode where the test sled misfired and several technicians were seriously injured, Mr Stanley was told about the accident, he paused a second and said" Did you get the data"/

    • @mattwarrensocal
      @mattwarrensocal Před 3 lety

      Was there a me too movement on the bulletin board?

    • @jonfurse3931
      @jonfurse3931 Před 3 lety +1

      Gotta love how the narrator didn't get the pronunciation of "Hurricane" right, haha!

    • @johnp139
      @johnp139 Před rokem

      Cool. I’ve been there many times.

  • @ponkkaa
    @ponkkaa Před 4 lety +8

    Hearing that voice.... Waiting for him to talk about the turbo encabulator.. 🤔

  • @danielf1313
    @danielf1313 Před 5 lety +20

    “The pilot (...) was found to be in near pre-run condition” How reassuring that only some bits had come off him apparently 😂

  • @jonfurse3931
    @jonfurse3931 Před 3 lety +1

    Always fun to see Hurricane get its 15 minutes of fame.

    • @johnp139
      @johnp139 Před rokem

      Only they need to modernize. Can’t say anything more.

  • @alexandrec9372
    @alexandrec9372 Před 5 lety +4

    Very Nice vídeo, thank you for upload!!!

  • @ricks1314
    @ricks1314 Před 5 lety +8

    I was involved in USAF testing of egress systems for years under the brilliant leadership of Steve Mehaffie. Among a few projects, not limited to ring sliders for ‘round’ canopies, rogallo and autogyro seats, Vacuum packing ‘square’ canopies, we tested the Soviet zvesda K36 seat for possible use in the US inventory! We were never aware that the ‘boom’ idea was really ours!! Steve has long passed, but he’d get a kick out of knowing this.
    We spent a lot of time at Edwards on the test track, tho based at Wright Pat. We did static testing at Dayton T. Brown’s Long Island Facilities....

    • @PeriscopeFilm
      @PeriscopeFilm  Před 5 lety +2

      Thanks for your comments and your work on behalf of our national defense.

    • @jiml4782
      @jiml4782 Před 5 lety +1

      i worked at the test track for over 10 years

    • @reignman40boozer5
      @reignman40boozer5 Před 5 lety +1

      @@jiml4782 Did you work at the hurricane test track?

    • @jiml4782
      @jiml4782 Před 5 lety

      Yes I did we would mainly do ejection seat tests and some tests for NASA

    • @orangelion03
      @orangelion03 Před 4 lety +1

      Test engineer with McD-D ES Div, Long Beach. 1989-1991 (Minipac & ACES ARS). Holloman, Hurricane, China Lake.
      If you worked the K36 tests at Edwards, you may have known a former co-worker of mine or two.

  • @adamskikijowski9139
    @adamskikijowski9139 Před 5 lety +6

    Good job for Evel Knevel.

  • @phmwu7368
    @phmwu7368 Před 4 lety +4

    Lockheed even had downward ejection seats in the early F-104 Starfighter models! North American Aviation had an ejection seat in the X-15 rocket-plane that theoretically allowed the pilot to escape at speeds up to Mach 4.0

  • @allandavis8201
    @allandavis8201 Před 4 lety +4

    American aviation industries surly did come up with some crazy ejection seat systems, and complicated to, these systems defeated the KISS principle completely, but I don’t think they and the USAF learnt any lessons from these early systems, in fact they went one better with the F-111 Aardvark system where they ejected the whole cockpit capsule, not a good idea really, especially in the event of a cockpit fire. Martin Baker, arguably the best designers of ejection seat systems used the simple idea of using a “face blind” that when the crew pulled the top ejection black and yellow handle the blind came down over the crewman’s face thus protecting their face from wind and/or debris blast, the action of pulling the blind down also prevented the arms from flailing around because of the position of the arms brought about by the pulling downwards, the legs were pulled in by the simple introduction of leg restraints that when set to a comfortable position for the pilot to reach the rudder pedals would automatically pull in a prevent the legs from hitting anything on the way out of the aircraft and flailing once the ejection sequence was ongoing, a small drogue chute stabilised the seat until the seat reached a safe height when the seat harness was released and after the seat had fallen away the main chute opened and the crewmen floated down to safety with their Personal Survival Pack (PSP) on a lanyard bellow them to give an idea of how far it was to go before touchdown, inside the PSP was/is everything needed to survive on land or in a water landing, and apart from the decent by chute the whole sequence to seconds to complete (depending on the height that they ejected at). Puts these convair seats to shame, sorry but American seat manufacturers made the whole think damn complicated when all that was needed was to KISS, complicated does not always equate to superior or reliable. Thanks for sharing this interesting and informative film 🎥👍😀🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿.
    P.S Before anyone decries my opinion, or doubts my qualification to comment, 24 years aircraft engineering should be enough to qualify me to comment, but if you don’t agree, DILLIGAF.

    • @O4KAST
      @O4KAST Před 3 lety

      Well, one positive of the design in the video is that a person gets ejected in laying down position, thus not potentially damaging their spine. Or at least reducing the risk.

  • @glassytiger6204
    @glassytiger6204 Před 5 lety +4

    00:57 without context is best

  • @Beemer917
    @Beemer917 Před 6 lety +6

    That Damm seat flies real good once ya kinda git er going. Who need an airplane, just a seat some booms an a composite tail. It will need an overhead compartment tho.

  • @nicholasmaude6906
    @nicholasmaude6906 Před 4 lety +2

    I'm flabbergasted as these American aircraft companies don't seem to have heard of something called drogue parachutes (Which Martin-Baker used right from the beginning). Instead of using all of these fancy, bulky, complicated and heavy contraptions to stabilise their seats they could've used drogue chutes to A) stabilise and slowdown the seat, then B) use the same drogue chute to extract the main parachute.

    • @wehraboohunterssvu316
      @wehraboohunterssvu316 Před 2 lety +1

      the aces II ejection seat used on the f-16 and most other modern air force combat aircraft does actually have a drogue chute for moderate/high speed ejection, but I would imagine that in the early days the technology probably wasn't reliable enough to make sure the main chute deployed immediately at lower speeds + altitudes where those extra couple seconds to deploy a drogue are critical in slowing the pilot's descent before ground impact

    • @johnp139
      @johnp139 Před rokem

      I’m flabbergasted that MBA has no concept
      of a pitch stabilization system like the ACRS STAPAC that has been around since the 60’s.

  • @mikecimerian6913
    @mikecimerian6913 Před 4 lety +1

    Silly me. Screams would be a nice addition.

  • @x-man5056
    @x-man5056 Před 5 lety +9

    Hence, GD build the F-111 with a crew escape module because "safe ejection" in an open seat from supersonic speeds is a ludicrous concept and this whole effort was confirmation of that.
    Although there is a least 1 known survivor of ejection at supersonic speeds (F-15/ACES II seat and only 1 of the 2 crew members survived), one must remember that the speed of sound goes down as you go up in altitude. So supersonic at 20K ft. is a good bit lower mph speed than at sea level.
    I can just imagine the look on pilots faces when told or shown what these seats were going to do to get them out at mach+ speeds. LOL
    500 mph is about tops for safe ejection in a seat and even then aircraft attitude should be within a certain envelope. Ejection at any speed is still a better choice than riding a falling rock into the ground though. Flying a fighter is not for the squeamish, it's always going to be dangerous regardless of the capability of the egress system.

    • @thetreblerebel
      @thetreblerebel Před 3 lety +2

      Pretty sure SR 71 pilots have ejected at Mach 2 plus and lived. It's not impossible.

    • @x-man5056
      @x-man5056 Před 3 lety

      @@thetreblerebel Yeah, well, pretty sure they haven't but if they did, it was miraculous luck. Not going to look it up. That's your job when you make a statement like that.
      There have been many safe ejections well beyond design intent from many aircraft over the years. But damn few if any above mach 1.
      Ejection with any seat, from any aircraft at mach+ speeds is beyond design capability. Bank it. Why? Because the human body is understood and excepted NOT to be unable to withstand the forces of mach+ ejection.

    • @x-man5056
      @x-man5056 Před 3 lety

      @@thetreblerebel It is unlikely to the extreme. Ask any fighter pilot.

    • @creepingjesus5106
      @creepingjesus5106 Před 3 lety

      The pilot who survived the breakup of the SR71 did so largely by luck, and definitely not by design. His co was much less lucky.
      Besides on an F104 for example, the best advice would be jump out immediately before it becomes a lawn dart, and hope for the best...

    • @x-man5056
      @x-man5056 Před 3 lety

      @@thetreblerebel OK Stevie, you were right, under certain conditions. Because the SR-71 usually flew at extraordinarily high altitudes, there was an incident were they survived a mach 3+ ejection.
      See it here, but listen to the caveats.
      czcams.com/video/4o8KpEYOYQQ/video.html

  • @creepingjesus5106
    @creepingjesus5106 Před 3 lety

    I can't help but laugh at the Hurricane Mesa footage. I shouldn't, but the cartoon rocket whoosh, seat tumbling for seemingly ever, and the thought that the 'dummy' was only still because it hadn't stopped screaming yet, made not laughing near impossible. Sorry, not sorry etc...

  • @briancooper2112
    @briancooper2112 Před 5 lety +6

    F-106 ejection seat injured alot of pilots.

  • @sherrigaskin5656
    @sherrigaskin5656 Před 4 lety +1

    I wonder where one would apply to be an ejection seat test jockey. Im interested. Steve

    • @aixaburlison4
      @aixaburlison4 Před 4 lety

      You wouldn't last long, 14-16 he's. I worked ejection seat for 28 years. 18 years in U.S.A.F retired. And Navy contractor for 10

  • @jetvette66
    @jetvette66 Před 3 lety

    I wanna see what happens to the sled at Hurricane Mesa.

  • @htomerif
    @htomerif Před 3 lety

    It would be interesting to see Soviet media from the same time on pilot survivability systems.
    Oh wait...

  • @lw216316
    @lw216316 Před 5 lety +1

    The sled goes from 0 to about 700 mph quickly.
    I wonder how that compares to top fuel drag racer 0-330 mph in about 3 1/2 seconds ?

    • @jiml4782
      @jiml4782 Před 5 lety

      the sled goes a lot faster ,we would only use about a mile of the track ,with the water break starting at 8000 ft to 12000 ft to stop the sled ,we would start at around 6000 ft ,so in less than 2000 ft we would could hit over 700 mph ,we would never use the whole track

    • @jiml4782
      @jiml4782 Před 5 lety

      the seats we have now are so much better but for the time the seats back then would save a pilots life

    • @lw216316
      @lw216316 Před 5 lety

      @@jiml4782 I take it you rode on the sleds?....no permanent injuries from it?
      I can't imagine those g forces. 3g - 3.5 g is the most I've experienced and that was enough for me.

    • @jiml4782
      @jiml4782 Před 5 lety

      @@lw216316 no we had mannequin for that ,but i loaded the rocket motors, set track ,set the water break ect

  • @johnp139
    @johnp139 Před rokem

    Don’t these people know about Reynolds (not Bert) numbers?!?

  • @uberkloden
    @uberkloden Před 5 lety +1

    I would like to be the tester in ejection.

    • @Tinker1950
      @Tinker1950 Před 5 lety +3

      There's always an unknowing idiot waiting in the wings isn't there?

  • @pennise
    @pennise Před 4 lety

    Ahem, make mine a Martin-Baker.

  • @johnp139
    @johnp139 Před 6 lety +3

    Yeah, that’s stable...NOT!

  • @zefkosta
    @zefkosta Před 4 lety +1

    Not much of a problem if you were German.

  • @sherrigaskin5656
    @sherrigaskin5656 Před 4 lety

    $22.50/hr

  • @guaporeturns9472
    @guaporeturns9472 Před 2 lety

    No thanks