A thought on BRS

Did you know that the F-104 Starfighter not only would not recover
from a spin, but would not recover from a stall either? A stall would
immediately lead to a departure from controlled flight, generally
unrecoverable.

About what you'd expect from a 20,000+ pound fuselage with a 7.5 foot
long wing stuck on each side.

Yet it had quite a career.

Especially in the German airforce. "What's the best way to see a German
F104?". "You buy a lawn chair and a hectare of land and wait."

Tony V.

"Tom Seim" wrote in message
om...
snip
Instead, we should put the effort into things that do work. The most
dramatic example of this is mandatory seat belt usage. In Washington
state this became a primary law (you can be stopped for it), which
resulted in compliance rates in the 85-90% range (instead of 15-20%
before there was any law). No changes were required to cars since the
belts were already there. Most people have accepted the law, but there
is still a vociferous minority that reject it. Everybody benefits,
besides being safer, with lower insurance rates.

Tom Seim

Noticed the $94 seatbelt fine in Oregon and the $101 fine posted for
Washington (with the cost on a replaceable tag for both states). Here in
Weld County Colorado, the vast majority of fatal accidents are rollover
ejections where no seat/shoulder belt was in use by driver and additional
occupants.

Seatbelts are still a secondary offense in Colorado.

Frank Whiteley

At 13:12 27 April 2004, Michael wrote:
'Vaughn' wrote

Did you know that the F-104 Starfighter not only would
not recover
from a spin, but would not recover from a stall either?
A stall would
immediately lead to a departure from controlled flight,
generally
unrecoverable. Yet it had quite a career.

Michael

As does the Jaguar still and it suffers from the same
problem. The Tornado would be the same if not for SPILLS
(a system that will not allow the aircraft to stall/spin)
and I believe an F16 is not flyable if the computer
system fails, it is so unstable the only way of keeping
it flying is with the computer system. Unstable = very
manoeuverable. All the above are combat aircraft, different
concept entirely.

Speed limits, seat belts, ABS, airbags, crumple zones,
roll over bars, BRS, parachutes, and ejector seats
have nothing whatsoever to do with preventing accidents,
they are only there to mitigate the outcome. Every
accident has the potential to cause death or serious
injury, whether that occurs is really a matter of pure
blind chance. People are the cause of accidents and
the only way to prevent them is to edjucate so that
they do not happen. All the gadgets do is reduce the
chance of injury when we screw up.
Far too often the outcome of the accident is considered
the priority in any investigation instead of the cause.

At 14:12 27 April 2004, Tom Seim wrote:
I'm not saying this is a good tradeoff or a poor one,
but it's
disingenuous to pretend it's not there. It's equally
disingenuous to
pretend that we couldn't prevent 95% of highway fatalities
quite
easily. All it would take is a 35 mph speed limit
for divided
highways and a 17 mph speed limit for other roads
- and draconian
enforcement. It wouldn't prevent the accidents, but
it would
eliminate most of the fatalities. Of course we don't
do this because
we want to get where we are going quickly.

Michael

This has been the argument against raising the speed
limits on our
highways, ever since they were lowered by that benevolent
dictator
Jimmy Carter. The only problem, the argument is wrong!
We learned that
after raising the limits and watched the fatality rates
continue to
drop.

Common wisdom is, sometimes, uncommon nonsense.

I think the problem is tunnel vision safety analysis
by 'experts' that
vastly overrate their abilities. Part of the problem
with the speed
limits is that drivers weren't obeying the limits to
begin with.
Raising the limits merely reflected the reality of
the situation.
Draconian enforcement simply won't work, at least not
(fortunately) in
the U.S., because law enforcement works only by voluntary
compliance.
There simply are not enough cops and jails out there
to impose a law
that the vast majority of the population won't accept.
This clearly
happened with the poorly thought out national speed
limit. But there
still is a group that, even with all of the evidence
to the contrary,
thinks that it will work.

Instead, we should put the effort into things that
do work. The most
dramatic example of this is mandatory seat belt usage.
In Washington
state this became a primary law (you can be stopped
for it), which
resulted in compliance rates in the 85-90% range (instead
of 15-20%
before there was any law). No changes were required
to cars since the
belts were already there. Most people have accepted
the law, but there
is still a vociferous minority that reject it. Everybody
benefits,
besides being safer, with lower insurance rates.

Tom Seim

Marc Ramsey wrote:

Tom Seim wrote:
by that benevolent dictator Jimmy Carter.

I miss the days when we had benevolent dictators,
rather than a not so benevolent one...

Marc

LOL
not that its funny, really :-(

I still have reservations about BRS, not because of the philosophy, but I'm
not sure the engineers have all the bugs out of it. Any system that will
lower a disabled aircraft and its occupant(s) to the ground safely is a very
good thing. The short history of the Cirrus BRS is very encouraging, at
least I haven't heard of any injuries to the passengers.

I know BRS has a long and exemplary record with ultralights but they are
slow and light and usually flown by the young and able. The idea of hitting
the ground in a seated position at 20 FPS is disturbing to a 60 something
glider pilot. I know using a personal 'chute is just as problematic but I
would land with my legs under me. A broken leg is vastly better than a
broken back.

For now, personal 'chutes with egress aids like DG's NOAH look better to me.
At least this idea could be retrofitted to an older glider. The 35 pounds
or so the BRS adds to the non-flying part of the glider bothers me too.

Bill Daniels

On 27 Apr 2004 06:02:52 -0700, (Michael) wrote:

....snippage...

Did you know that the F-104 Starfighter not only would not recover
from a spin, but would not recover from a stall either? A stall would
immediately lead to a departure from controlled flight, generally
unrecoverable. Yet it had quite a career.

I thought I'd read that it would recover, but needed around 15,000 ft
to do so and that there was a placard on the panel saying to punch out
if you spun it below 15,000.


--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 10:59:39 -0400, Tony Verhulst
wrote:


Did you know that the F-104 Starfighter not only would not recover
from a spin, but would not recover from a stall either? A stall would
immediately lead to a departure from controlled flight, generally
unrecoverable.

About what you'd expect from a 20,000+ pound fuselage with a 7.5 foot
long wing stuck on each side.

Yet it had quite a career.

Especially in the German airforce. "What's the best way to see a German
F104?". "You buy a lawn chair and a hectare of land and wait."

...... from an album by Captain Lockheed and the Star Fighters (aka
Hawkwind) IIRC. Great cover art too.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

Bill Daniels wrote:
I still have reservations about BRS, not because of the philosophy, but I'm
not sure the engineers have all the bugs out of it. Any system that will
lower a disabled aircraft and its occupant(s) to the ground safely is a very
good thing. The short history of the Cirrus BRS is very encouraging, at
least I haven't heard of any injuries to the passengers.

I know BRS has a long and exemplary record with ultralights but they are
slow and light and usually flown by the young and able. The idea of hitting
the ground in a seated position at 20 FPS is disturbing to a 60 something
glider pilot. I know using a personal 'chute is just as problematic but I
would land with my legs under me. A broken leg is vastly better than a
broken back.

I believe the current designs lower the glider nose down, and the
cockpit has to be properly designed to avoid injury to the pilot, as it
must absorb the impact. It's not a simple problem, and gliders that
aren't designed for it from the start almost surely won't be suitable
for retrofitting.


For now, personal 'chutes with egress aids like DG's NOAH look better to me.
At least this idea could be retrofitted to an older glider.

Certainly a much more practical addition!

The 35 pounds
or so the BRS adds to the non-flying part of the glider bothers me too.

It would likely reduce the allowable cockpit load.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Pretty interesting that rescue-the-aircraft parachutes have been
considered basic-responsibility common sense in the ultralight
community, while the presumptively far more properly trained pilots of
presumptively far more airworthy certificated aircraft consider them
controversial and possibly dangerous.

To me, the objections to these systems keeps reminding me of the World
War I debate about allowing pilots to carry parachutes. They don't
always work, you will have people taking unnecessary risks because
they know they have them, people will bail out of damaged but landable
aircraft, and anyway real men don't need that sort of thing. Maybe
the powers that prohibited parachutes back then were onto something!

Mind you, I'll never forget the look on a hang glider pilot's face
when her sailplane-ride pilot explained that a) you have to bail out
of the aircraft to use the parachute and b) there are no parachutes
anyway!

Just to nitpick with John Cochrane, I don't know that Pelzman actually
proved that spikes in the dashboard lower the accident rate (this
would require doing the experiment, which I didn't think he had done),
although it seems likely they would! I think his point was that the
primary effect of safety equipment in cars is to increase speeds:
essentially, drivers limit their speed to keep their fatality risk to
an acceptable level, so increase the safety equipment and they can
increase their speed while keeping the same or lower fatality risk.
Their priorities are correct: limit risk first, THEN drive as fast as
possible. What is counter-intuitive is that with those priorities,
safety equipment will alter the speed, not the safety. Speed is not
the issue in aircraft, but there is indeed a similar question: when
the safety margins are improved, will light aircraft travelers consume
the benefit as higher safety margins or as increased utility of the
aircraft? Even if it's the latter, they still gain from having the
BRS on board, and all that remains is to determine whether it's worth
the cost.