Thunderbird Crash Footage

Jay

QFE

QFE is a Q code used by pilots and air traffic control to refer to the
current air pressure which will calibrate the pilots altimeter to give
actual height above the ground at a particular airfield.

Sometimes it's easier to go to Google and type the word or phrase in
to get an answer vs asking the group and waiting around for an answer
G

Big John


On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 10:56:21 -0700, "Jay Beckman"
wrote:

----clip----

Newbie ignorance:

What does QFE stand for?

Jay Beckman
Chandler, AZ
Student Pilot
3.2 Hrs ... Nowhere to go but up?

Jay. Remember what goes up must come down (hopefully under control)
G

you can't set QFE when the field elevation is that high above sea level

BT

"Joe Morris" wrote in message
...
"Jay Honeck" writes:

The pilot survived, right?

His health is fine.

His career, I sadly suspect, is not.

A comment from one of the ASF people at a CFIRC I was at over the
past weekend was that he is now flying a desk at the Pentagon.

The same man stated that the problem was that the pilot had become
too comfortable with practicing the maneuver at his home base, which
was about 800 (+/-; I don't recall the exact number) feet lower
than the airfield at which the accident occurred. At the accident
location he set up the split-S so that the top was at the proper
altitude MSL -- at his home base, meaning that the entire maneuver
was executed 800 feet lower than it should have been.

I have *no* military jet experience, but especially for airshows I'm
somewhat surprised that there isn't an altimeter set to QFE to serve
as a sanity check against exactly this sort of problem.

Joe Morris

Why not
"BTIZ" wrote in message
news:fg81c.12502$id3.1896@fed1read01...
you can't set QFE when the field elevation is that high above sea level

BT

"Joe Morris" wrote in message
...
"Jay Honeck" writes:

The pilot survived, right?

His health is fine.

His career, I sadly suspect, is not.

A comment from one of the ASF people at a CFIRC I was at over the
past weekend was that he is now flying a desk at the Pentagon.

The same man stated that the problem was that the pilot had become
too comfortable with practicing the maneuver at his home base, which
was about 800 (+/-; I don't recall the exact number) feet lower
than the airfield at which the accident occurred. At the accident
location he set up the split-S so that the top was at the proper
altitude MSL -- at his home base, meaning that the entire maneuver
was executed 800 feet lower than it should have been.

I have *no* military jet experience, but especially for airshows I'm
somewhat surprised that there isn't an altimeter set to QFE to serve
as a sanity check against exactly this sort of problem.

Joe Morris

"BTIZ" writes:

you can't set QFE when the field elevation is that high above sea level

Perhaps not on a regular (civilian) aircraft altimeter, but given the
number of toys that are part of a typical military bird it would seem
that something as simple as a parachute jumper's alitmeter (which *is*
designed to be set to QFE) would be a good, inexpensive way to do
a sanity check on altitudes used in low-level aerobatics.

Joe Morris

If you think the videos are something you should have seen it first
hand like I did... very surreal to see it happen when you aren't
expecting it.

Dean

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:_HO0c.450298$na.1090802@attbi_s04...
Many thanks to this group's own John Osterhout for forwarding me these cool
videos of the Thunderbirds crash from last fall:
http://www.alexisparkinn.com/aviation_videos.htm

There are two separate videos -- one shot from inside the cockpit (that many
of us have seen, but is still remarkable) -- and one taken by a spectator
that I'd never seen before. It shows the entire event from start to horrible
finish.

Having seen the T-Birds do their show dozens of times, flawlessly, it's
still hard to believe that they made such a simple mistake. (The final
judgment was that the pilot had set his altimeter incorrectly, resulting in
insufficient altitude for the maneuver.)

If you think the videos are something you should have seen it first
hand like I did... very surreal to see it happen when you aren't
expecting it.

That describes a plane crash pretty well.

I witnessed a fatal crash at an airshow ten years ago, (the "stolen Piper
Cub" routine gone very, very wrong) and it STILL seems surreal in my memory.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
snip
still hard to believe that they made such a simple mistake. (The final
judgment was that the pilot had set his altimeter incorrectly, resulting in
insufficient altitude for the maneuver.)

He didn't exactly (allegedly) "set" his altimeter incorrectly.
According to Avweb:

"The pilot incorrectly climbed to 1,670 feet AGL instead of 2,500 feet
before initiating the pull-down to the Split-S maneuver, according to
the Air Force news release. The pilot, Chris Stricklin, 31, apparently
flew by mistake to the MSL altitude used when practicing the maneuver
at his home base, Nellis AFB in Nevada, which is 1,000 feet lower than
the Idaho field elevation."

Regards,

Rob