[throw827474737]

Wow.. so much bad luck (the original failure, ejection failure, parachute failure) countered by that much luck (not hitting the plane during "manual" eject, not bleeding to death because havin his spleen removed 4 years earlier) ..amazing unbelievable story with some good end :)

[cdelsolar]

i didn't understand something. he said impact with the plane tail will usually kill someone during a manual eject, but why? the plane and the person are going at the same speed at first?

[bbojan]

The airplane is dense and very aerodynamic. We would say it has a high ballistic coefficient [1].

The pilot is light would leave the cockpit flat or even bent over, which is a very non-aerodynamic shape. His ballistic coefficient would be low. He would decelerate quickly, and the tail would catch up with him and slam him from behind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_coefficient

[Guest9081239812]

Imagine pushing a balloon out of your car window while driving on the highway and taking your foot off the accelerator. It doesn't float outside the window beside you, but it comes to a stop almost in an instant.

[quickthrower2]

Go into neutral would be better comparison but the same thing would happen.

[suzzer99]

Until the air catches the person and slows them down much faster than the aerodynamic and much heavier (attached to the plane) tail fin.

[tunesmith]

It's why it was pretty brilliant that he skewed the plane.

[elteto]

"Rolled" :)

[tgarv]

Sounds more like a combination of pitch and yaw: "I trimmed the aircraft to fly in a kind of sidelong skid: nose high and with the tail swung around slightly to the right"

[elteto]

That makes sense, it not only gets the tail out of the way but also pushes it down, making it much more unlikely to hit it as he gets sucked out.

[Diesel555]

He skidded the airplane. He applied rudder trim so that the tail was not directly behind the aircraft. He also mentions trying to be nose high.

What this would look like I think. Slow down to increase angle of attack in level flight. The nose is now high (likely already occurred after flameout and ejection attempts without thinking about it - check). Go full deflection rudder trim to skid the aircraft. Now trim the ailerons and elevators to fly level based on drag and adverse yaw. Get out.

[csallen]

As someone who doesn't fly planes, it's almost impossible to understand this comment or the author's original passage lol

[sangnoir]

Imagine if a car had a setting for every input equivalent of setting speed via cruise control - this is what trimming is.

A car equivalent would be applying the handbrake and "trimming" it so it sticks with your hands off, then steering into a skid so you're drifting, then trimming the steering wheel; now your car is moving in an otherwise dynamically unstable configuration (drifting), but it maintains the configuration hands-free because you have locked-in the settings. A driver could then step out of a moving vehicle without the risk of being run over by their own car

[hinkley]

Do some of the weird shit planes do while they're landing, but also while flying crooked.

[BenjiWiebe]

As someone who, years ago, spent a little time with an RC flight simulator, I think I followed it.