On 2005-12-14, Morgans wrote:

Oh come on, those guys never had to land with a crosswind - how hard
can that be? G

Now if they had to do all that WITHOUT arresting cables then I'd be
impressed..

Perhaps they could do like they tried with the C-130, and the JATO bottles
pointed backwards.

They also did some other tests with the C-130 and backwards JATOs.
There's a video of one of their attempts.

It shows the C-130 on final, then they fire the rockets. A bit
too early, as it turns out - the plane comes to a complete halt
when still around 50 feet in the air, and predictably, falls out
the sky. The wings break off, bits of propellor shower the scene, flames
shoot out the stubs of the broken wings. While this is going on,
the narrator of the video in a bored voice says dryly, "Due to
a combination of factors, the rockets were fired prematurely
leading to an excessively hard landing"

I suspect "excessively hard landing" is probably a euphemism for
"crashing".

--
Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
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