Eieleson AFB is outside Fairbanks fucking Alaska. They have nothingness for a thousand miles in every direction.
I flew Vipers out of Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. We still had ~180 degrees of azimuth where from over the field you were aimed at nothing. The other ~180 degrees you’d be killing innocents in suburbia w high probability.
How do you know he didn’t aim it at the trackless AK wilderness before jumping out? Or that due to the nature of the failures, he had no meaningful control over the direction it was pointed when he jumped out?
Ballpark, modern ejection seat aircraft of any nation have artificial stability. They’ll impact very close to the straightline vector along where theyre aimed at when the lastvlilot departs.
A better video of the Polish crash:
That “Matter of Millimeters” article was excellent. Personally the only “engineering” I’ve done where tolerances mattered is hammering nails or drilling screws to hang framed art, but the article showed me how the process is similar to fabricating machined parts like oil pipes. There’s often a moment when you have to move or replace or hide something temporarily, introducing a possible “datum shift.”
(A “datum,” as most of you know, is a fixed point from which everything else is measured. I encounter it in GIS and cartography — e.g., every few decades, the official datum for a coordinate system is shifted, as geodetic science better models the shape of the earth — or, for continent-specific systems, has to account for tectonic plate motion.)
A notable aviator but, alas, a crooked politician: Duke Cunningham - Wikipedia
Indeed he was. I grew up in San Diego, and spent a lot of my childhood at NAC (now MCAS) Miramar. It kind of hit hard when he turned out to be a crook. But then… Republican in a city where David Duke was headquartered, and where as a child we found nazi newspapers on our lawns (which were quickly confiscated by our parents).
That’s why I didn’t comment on his dying. Great pilot, not-so-good human being.
Great cite. Thank you. It appears they were flying a climbing half-loop, then a level inverted segment, then a descending half-loop.
It’s impossible to tell from the angle of the camera whether the level middle segment was actually level or they were descending unnoticed. There would presumably be a pre-planned target and min altitude and target and min speed to begin the pull downwards. To slow or too low and the half-loop would necessarily end in an impact.
The general feel I get is the pull-down was not very vigorous. They’d gotten through a lot more than half the available altitude before getting halfway around the turn, so velocity vector straight down. In reality, due to radial G and the changing airspeed, you want to get the first 90 degrees of pull done well above half the available altitude, not below half the available altitude. Moment’s inattention, partial G-LOC? No clue.
One thing seems clear; the engine was performing in full afterburner throughout. So an engine problem was not part of the scenario.
Got a private tour of a D-Day vet C-47 this weekend. Not only did the C-47 participate in the 80th D-Day festivities in France last year but they had the most incredible shot hanging on the wall. They were flying trail down the Hudson. At the bottom of the photo was the GW, at the top was One World Trade, & in between was four or five more C-47s ahead of them! Had I known about that flight I would have definitely gone to watch it. If I get that genie opportunity I’m going back to a WWII base in England & watch the skies filled with dozens of radial planes flying in formation!
As an added bonus, when we walked out of the hangar there was a Stearman starting up & then taxiing for takeoff. I’ve been around them on a grass strip before, but this is the first time I believe I’ve ever seen one with a tower in the same view.
As a double added bonus, I may get tasked with getting some photos for them of another C-47 that has something they haven’t restored yet, which means another airport & a different private tour & they have a couple of different cargo planes there, including a C-5. I’ve only ever been around those things at an airshow, which means dozens of general public in them at the same time so no good photo ops.
As I came down the steps disembarking at Stansted on Saturday a Qatari C-17 landed a few hundred metres away. Not that momentous perhaps, but I enjoyed it 
I launched my drone from a (closed) airport runway, after parking a vehicle on it (not mine, mine was on the grass edge of the taxiway) I had coordinated with the two powered parachutes for deconfliction purposes, I was flying in & among the balloons up for the glow but it gave me the “manned aircraft nearby” for the helicopter taking off from the other end of the runway, then flying over the river & then south of the airport, IOW, nowhere near me. 15+ manned aircraft closer than that helo but no notifications about any of those. 
because one only needs ADS-B if one has an on board electrical system, at least until if & when the proposed changes go thru for drone delivery, which will be a REALLY BAD IDEA!!!
This happened a couple days ago at the BizAv airport nearest me.
Nice footage of how well EMAS works. It’s a shame the vid has some skips & starts during the last of the run on the runway; makes it harder to assess what they’re real stopping rate was.
But it’s real clear they had nowhere near the decel rate to keep them out of the road unless something intervened. EMAS is great for situations like that.
It would depend on the mass and speed of the plane. It’s not going to stop stupid.
The could make it softer and put in an arresting cable at the end of it to make it more robust.
Every EMAS is customized for the kinds of airplanes using it. Modulo how much runout room there is after the runway ends and before obstacles begin.
Like any safety device, they have limitations beyond which they fail to prevent catastrophe. But that’s not the measure of merit.
If you make it softer, heavier airplanes sink enough to be stopped so abruptly that landing gear tears off, fires start, etc.
I’m reminded of a DC-8 that landed long and fast at ORD years ago. The Airline Captain that taught me to fly witnessed it. The plane hit so hard the tires exploded. The only thing that kept it out of the road was mud.
Now that that EMAS has done its job, how difficult/expensive/time consuming is it to put it back to its original condition in readiness for the next overrun?
As LSL stated they’re custom made so the price and time to build varies greatly. From $1.8 million to $22.6 million and between 2 months and 2 years.
I’m wondering if they could look at something like a variable arresting cable that would accommodate different loads in a progressive manner.
All those ideas were looked at. And rejected in favor of EMAS. EMAS is the best way to stop runaway jets. Everything else, including arresting cables, is a dumber idea.
Actually, once the get the jet out of there, the used EMAS is still ready to stop another jet. Better if that second jet doesn’t plow the same furrows with its gear, but one of the benefits of EMAS is that you don’t have to hit it on center nor perfectly parallel with the runway axis.
I’ve seen them repaired pretty quickly, a month or two since most of it is still intact. Cost? No idea.