saving an aircraft in the air

"SteveM8597" wrote in message
...
Any F-111 maintainers here? It has been my understanding that
the egress
sysrem
on the plane and its 600+ pryotechnics charges were major
maintenance
headaches.

Far from a major maintenance headache, the components that you
refer to were
static items that didn't wear out any more than the capsule's, or
any other
ejection system's, rocket motor. I'm not sure what information led
you to
this
understanding. Can you cite some sources?


Sure. I was an F-4 maintenance officer at RAF Lakenheath UK in the
70s until
the F-111Fs repalced the F-4Ds. We (the Lakenheath maintenenace
staff) had
numerous dialogs with the F-111E (IIRC) guys at Upper Heyford not
far away.
They showed us the major system maintenance manhour drives and the
capsule
pyros were right near the top. All the pyros were time change
items and many
required pulling a lot of hardware to access and change. Not a
problem on a
low hour plane but as the plane accumulated hours the time change
requirements
increased.

Presumably in modern aircraft with digital data buses most of the
wiring harnesses would be replaced by the bus thus substantially
reducing the number of charges.