Raptor Gear Up at Fallon?

[icohftb]

And typically adressed on TR-1...

[matmacwc]

I also think non fighter dudes don't realize how fast this all happens.  I had a Block 50 F-16, clean, have a 700 foot takeoff roll.  I didn't have to use AB, but of course I did, and rotated as soon as I had a speed indication.  Even an F-16 can be a dozen second takeoff roll, max.

Edited November 18, 2018 by matmacwc

[Sprkt69]

10 minutes ago, matmacwc said:

I also think non fighter dudes don't realize how fast this all happens.  I had a Block 50 F-16, clean, have a 700 foot takeoff roll.  I didn't have to use AB, but of course I did, and rotated as soon as I had a speed indication.  Even an F-16 can be a dozen second takeoff roll, max.

You forgot to mention getting the gear up before the overspeed. Doesn’t always happen without pulling power and pitching the nose way up to slow the acceleration

[icohftb]

Nobody has oversped the gear because they rotated late...

[Sprkt69]

25 minutes ago, icohftb said:

Nobody has oversped the gear because they rotated late...

Actually they have in fighters

[BashiChuni]

Guys you’re really trying to justify fucking up rotating?! 

Doesnt matter how fast or slow it happens...don’t rotate 20 knots early and pull your gear up before you have flying airspeed  

Jesus h. 

[JeremiahWeed]

16 hours ago, Kenny Powers said:

I didn't read the whole thing but, what I will say, is that as a single seat fighter pilot you're the Mayor of Cockpit City. I do what I want in my jet. I am more than happy to take lessons learned from others and apply them to my jet to make me better/safer.

This is just a dumbass mistake, nothing more. We all make mistakes at some point, this dude made an expensive one.

Kenny - I thinks it's understandable that someone from a multi-role, multi-ordnance fighter would scoff as you are.  However, don't discount the impact of MDS culture, especially with a single mission, single load-out (more or less) fighter.  An air-to-air fighter doesn't have the myriad of ordnance and potential takeoff variables that say, an F-16 has.  On most take offs, the TOLD data is a square filler.  Sea level bases and an overconfidence in a/c and engine capes could easily create an environment where things like density altitude is not in the cross-check.  I'm not saying it's right, but I can understand how they got there.

For the the first two decades of the F-15's existence, pilots didn't even compute TOLD.  Every takeoff you rotated at 120 knots.  Full aft stick to get the nose moving and adjust after that.  Mil, Burner, missiles, training load, clean, 1, 2, 3, bags... didn't matter.  Or did it?  I'm sure if someone took the time to compute rotation and takeoff speed, they would have varied somewhat in all the different scenarios.  Takeoff speed?  WTF is that anyway?😜  It started in FTU with the aborted takeoff discussion. The guidance for some "issue" on takeoff went, that if you're at or past 120 with the stick moving back to rotate, then you're going.  If you're not there yet, then you abort.  Of course, there was always the caveat that if it was a "no shitter" (whatever that is was up to you) you could abort above that knowing you had the hook.  That was for mil power on an 8K runway.  Anything longer just gave you room to work with, but didn't change the decision process.  How's that for TOLD?  Even after we started putting TOLD numbers on our line-up cards, not much changed.

I also wouldn't discount the effect the FTU training environment may be introducing to this cultural problem.  If you actually read the report and look at the data, it's pretty clear that there's a huge trend throughout the F-22 community to rotate early, even in FTU.  That makes it pretty clear this stuff is being taught early on.  Another thing to consider - There's probably a bunch of ex-Eagle guys wearing coats and ties and teaching sims and academics who may be throwing out some questionable techniques and info from "back in their day" that's being gobbled up and retained by "Stanley" the newbie Raptor dude.  I think back to more than a few bogus techniques I had to unlearn thanks to some retired F-4 guy, now sim instructor, throwing out something he thought worked great.  Some bigger stuff but mostly little things.  I ended up with an audio only version of my HUD tape during what anyone would argue was the highlight of my career thanks to one of those sim instructors teaching me how to set up my cockpit for start.  But, I digress.

It's pretty clear from the report that this is much more than one guy not reading his line-up card and being a dumbass. That's not to say your points about not checking safely airborne, etc. aren't valid.  As others have mentioned, we're not talking about a huge amount of time from brake release to gear up and I'm sure muscle memory and expected timing took priority over a more accurate check.  At least the result was a shiny a/c underside, some personal shame and hopefully a better approach to takeoff ops and not another nickle in the grass.

Edited November 18, 2018 by JeremiahWeed

[HuggyU2]

14 hours ago, Kenny Powers said:

...as a single seat fighter pilot you're the Mayor of Cockpit City. I do what I want in my jet. 

A lot gets lost in the translation when it comes to making a post.  However, this statement significantly stood out to me.  And I thoroughly disagree with the implication it brings with respect to flight disciplined operations.  

Certainly not what you meant... but not the best choice of words. 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by HuggyU2

[icohftb]

1 hour ago, Sprkt69 said:

Actually they have in fighters

No they oversped their gear because they lost track of airspeed. Talking f16 since i dont know the gear limits to the f22 

 

RC for a gear overspeed was not the late rotation.

Edited November 18, 2018 by icohftb

[Sprkt69]

3 minutes ago, icohftb said:

No they oversped their gear because they lost track of airspeed. Talking f16 since i dont know the gear limits to the f22 

 

RC was not the late rotation.

RC is they are behind the jet from the start. Late rotation is a contributing factor for overspeeding the gear. Typically the MP being not fast enough to get the gear handle up with the right pitch angle set for the acceleration and climbing away from the ground. You tell me, if you are doing an AB takeoff on a cold day in your lightly loaded block 50 how close do you get to your gear limit before the lights go out? Or even a block 30/40. How close does your inexperienced wingman get? And did you ever look at the video to verify?

[brabus]

It's not hard to avoid a gear overspeed - increase pitch attitude/reduce power as required.  A plan of "raise the gear as soon as I break ground" is not a good plan for overspeed mitigation; sounds like that thought process may be fairly widespread in the Raptor community. This should be something briefed in motherhood to a young guy when an AB takeoff in cooler weather is planned.  Also worth bringing up to the squadron at large at a pilot meeting as winter flying approaches. 

[pawnman]

Doesn't get you that awesome video of the jet screaming down the runway at 20', though.

[Kenny Powers]

4 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

A lot gets lost in the translation when it comes to making a post.  However, this statement significantly stood out to me.  And I thoroughly disagree with the implication it brings with respect to flight disciplined operations.  

Certainly not what you meant... but not the best choice of words. 

 

 

 

Maybe not the best choice of words but it certainly sounds worse when you clip the sentence immediately following it, where I mention using lessons learned to become better and safer, out of your quote.

Point was that guys should not be blindly applying someone else's technique to their jet without putting some thought into it. Teaching techniques to a young guy in the B-course is a slippery slope and, for the most part, they should just be teaching from the books. Techniques are for people with experience to understand the assumptions behind them.

[Danger41]

I wonder what the report/fallout would’ve been if this was an AMC crew, lol.

[10pilot]

From an AMC perspective.....We ignore the TOLD card and just apply back pressure until it goes airborne......Russian technique......"not yet, not yet.....ok now"

[ayz33]

5 minutes ago, 10pilot said:

From an AMC perspective.....We ignore the TOLD card and just apply back pressure until it goes airborne......Russian technique......"not yet, not yet.....ok now"

Every takeoff is a soft field takeoff

[ThreeHoler]

I wonder what the report/fallout would’ve been if this was an AMC crew, lol.

Luckily, the crew I know of that had completely invalid TOLD mushed it into the air (unknowingly) and it was just flyable (bad speed on card, bad zero fuel weight from the boom meant really out of limits CG for takeoff). They figured it out when they couldn’t get from precontact to contact. Closest I know of to someone in my community dying from bad TOLD (although they did rotate at the speed on the card).

[ThreeHoler]

The other crew I know of took off from a short runway (8000ish feet) with a steep climb gradient about 40k lbs over max for that runway because they didn’t know how to run TOLD without an SDP. Again...luckily they did not lose an engine and they didn’t know how off their TOLD was until after they were back at home station.


Always remember: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

[HossHarris]

21 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

Guys you’re really trying to justify fucking up rotating?! 

Doesnt matter how fast or slow it happens...don’t rotate 20 knots early and pull your gear up before you have flying airspeed  

Jesus h. 

You do realize the difference between 20 knots early and 20 knots late (and a gear overspeed) is 3-4 seconds.... right ?

[HossHarris]

20 hours ago, brabus said:

It's not hard to avoid a gear overspeed - increase pitch attitude/reduce power as required.  A plan of "raise the gear as soon as I break ground" is not a good plan for overspeed mitigation; sounds like that thought process may be fairly widespread in the Raptor community. This should be something briefed in motherhood to a young guy when an AB takeoff in cooler weather is planned.  Also worth bringing up to the squadron at large at a pilot meeting as winter flying approaches. 

Yup. 

Modulating the throttle, slowish and lowish, especially if you can go out of and back into blower is a fine way to avoid a gear overspeed. 

Those motors almost never cough when you do that. 

We haven’t planted jets off the departure end at Luke doing that. 

We havent killed people doing that. 

 

 

[HossHarris]

Fighter told experts, both in theory and application, are coming out of the woodwork!

[BashiChuni]

26 minutes ago, HossHarris said:

You do realize the difference between 20 knots early and 20 knots late (and a gear overspeed) is 3-4 seconds.... right ?

please tell me how difficult it is to rotate correctly without over speeding your gear in the CAF. sounds hard...thank you for your service

22 minutes ago, HossHarris said:

Fighter told experts, both in theory and application, are coming out of the woodwork!

experts in rotating at flying airspeed and not settling our jets gear up on the runway!

shit i never knew the hardest part of a fighter pilots mission was the takeoff!

hey hoss....maybe if you're worried about over speeds you dont try to keep her on the deck at 10' and maybe you increase your pitch a little bit...what do ya think big guy? or am i not qualified to talk about BASIC airmanship cause im not a fighter pilot?

Edited November 19, 2018 by BashiChuni

[HossHarris]

2 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

please tell me how difficult it is to rotate correctly without over speeding your gear in the CAF. sounds hard...thank you for your service

experts in rotating at flying airspeed and not settling our jets gear up on the runway!

shit i never knew the hardest part of a fighter pilots mission was the takeoff!

hey hoss....maybe if you're worried about over speeds you dont try to keep her on the deck at 10' and maybe you increase your pitch a little bit...what do ya think big guy? or am i not qualified to talk about BASIC airmanship cause im not a fighter pilot?

I’m not saying this dude didn’t fuck up, he did. And likely while shining his ass, which is worse. 

But yes, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Taking off isn’t any harder or more critical than the other phases of flight ... but it also isn’t done by committee with time for discussion and deep meaningful introspection between V1 and VR

[BashiChuni]

That’s a total cop out and bull shit. 

[HossHarris]

1 minute ago, BashiChuni said:

That’s a total cop out and bull shit. 

Come fly a raptor and lemme know. 

Fuck, I was a block 50 F-16 guy and raptor takeoffs in the sim felt fast paced