Is Shoreham still closed actually?
It’s open with limitations, and has been since Monday morning
Be careful the hard is effectively closed unless onver 4T or with special permission and the grass is very wet with a danger of flooding. Well worth checking as to the precise conditions I would suggest.
Just got this
we are writing to confirm that runway 02/20 will be available tomorrow from 0900 local time. Please check NOTAMs tomorrow morning
Peter wrote:
It must be down to the energy with which it is started, and how much power there is on the way up. On the way down you don’t need any power and actually the slower you go the tighter the radius can be.
That is not quite correct. Airplanes have a corner speed which gives you the best turn performance, this applies to the horizontal as well as the vertical plane. If you’re too fast at the high energy gate (top) of e.g. a loop, that’s bad for obvious reasons. If you’re too slow that can be even worse though, because you will not reach the best (tightest) turn radius and would actually have to speed up to cornering speed, to get around in time.
I am linking a post from someone who knows what he’s talking about here (as opposed to me, who is only quoting what he’s read) – although this is a sim forum it is populated by many real-world pilots, and the guy who has written the linked post (Dudley Henriques) is a very experienced real-world pilot who has probably flown anything with wings on, is a display pilot himself and in the linked posting is quoting from a book he’s written lecture series he’s given on the topic (Survival in the display Environment, by
D.Henriques IFPF ICAS): Survival in the display Environment
Yes, of course, sorry, if your speed is zero at the top of the loop you have no ability to turn on the way down, so there must be a “minimum turn radius speed”. I believe that for a level turn this is somewhere slightly above Vs, but Vs itself is reduced when the wings are unloaded.
Dudley Henriques is very well known. That’s a very good link you posted.
Preliminary report [ local copy ]
It doesn’t say anything of obvious use but reading between the lines (no doubt a lot of lawyers are swarming over this accident) it is full of suggestions that there may have been issues with less than book performance. Perhaps not surprising when one compares the vast funds (both money and maintenance man-hours) thrown at these ancient planes during their RAF service compared with the considerably less than vast funds thrown at them during private ownership.
Peter wrote:
it is full of suggestions that there may have been issues with less than book performance.
To me it rather reads that they found some things in the paperwork which did not correspond to the conditions set for the permit to fly. Possibly, there were also misunderstandings between the maintenance organisation and the CAA.
What I do read between the lines here and looking at some of the safety recommendations is that operation of such airplanes will most probably be very difficult and extremely costly in the future, so that I would not be surprised if a return to flight for the Hunter is going to exceed the financial capabilities of the private organisations running them. The CAA will be under pressure to review conditions under which such airplanes can be given a permit to fly, in the face of this accident, and may well decide that additional conditions need to be met which then overexcert the financial possibilities of the operators yet again.
Another problem I read out of this report is the lack of OEM support for these airplanes. OEM’s are less and less inclined to provide support for both engines and airframes, which was the primary reason why e.g. the Vulcan was grounded despite being in perfect condition and not operating under similar permits (e.g. the Vulcan did not do aerobatics). It is my expectation that following this accident, OEM’s will be even less inclined to provide such support. It should not be forgotten that OEM’s removal of support (or “offering” such support at prohibitive cost) has in recent years lead to the grounding of many airworthy and valuable airframes, to mention Concorde and also the SE210 Caravelle are just two examples which were finally grounded due to the refusal of Airbus to support them. In the report, the ejection seat manufacturer is said to have removed the support for the ejection seat cartridges. In combination with the CAA’s insistence that ejection seat systems must be fully functional and with calendar time valid cartridges, this would mean a no go already there.
Personally I think the outlook for heritage jet airplanes to be flown in the UK has massively changed for the worse. At the same time, the attitude certain European OEM’s take towards their own heritage products will not help at all.
It will remain to be seen what the actual investigation and the subsequent final report on this accident (as well as the Gnat accident) come up with what the REAL technical or human reasons for these accidents were. Depending on that, the AAIB will most probably issue further recommendations as to whether airplanes like that should be allowed to continue flying.
I suppose for the cartridges the questions are:
1) are the specifications available
2) is there any other company that could manufacture cartridges to the specifications and would have an appetite for doing so
3) could doing so be blocked by any patent/copyright issues (presumably not, for old aircraft)?
My suspicion is that the cartridge manufacture and quality control is probably non-trivial.
It really is worrisome if airworthiness of airframes can be invalidated not just by the airframe manufacturer, but also by OEM manufacturers of which there may be thousands.
kwlf wrote:
It really is worrisome if airworthiness of airframes can be invalidated not just by the airframe manufacturer, but also by OEM manufacturers of which there may be thousands.
Worrisome, how? This is a jet fighter, it’s tailor made for the military, it’s a war machine. It has never been certified in the first place, but made to military standards and military specs. There is nothing airworthy about it at all, in a civilian certified sense, nor should it be. For civilian use they should be handled as experimentals, because that is what they truly are, but extremely complex experimentals.
