Thursday, March 12, 2020

More bomb dropping fun


20 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. A-6. the flowing exhaust gasses from the engine exhausts have created a low pressure area and turbulent flow which has sucked the dark weapon shapes into the stream of exhaust. the lighter color weapon shapes are released from a more forward position of the ejector racks and aren't affected as much because there is time to fall below the low pressure stream aft of the engine exhausts before they begin to lag to the rear. several solutions are presented, such as not using those stations for lightweight shapes as a larger mass probably wouldn't be as affected by the flow. using a powered ejector on those stations to move the shapes out of the flow rapidly so the flow would have less time to exert forces on the weapons. If ground and landing clearance allows, extending the ejector rack further down in the airstream would help but wouldn't be practical. pretty much anything that moves the shapes away from the turbulent air flow and not disturb the weight and balance or weapon accuracy or aircraft safety would have been a good thing.
      in the days before finite element analysis and fast computing and of heating lunch over a warm vacuum tube, a guy would build something and go test and fix what broke and test again until it worked as envisioned or ran out of funding.

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  2. The very definition of clusterf@$k.

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  3. Follow up
    Could the plane have been doing a turn when all that happened? Seems like some centrifugal force might have been at play.

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    1. Possibly, but not likely. Planes turn by rolling the aircraft so as to point the lift vector where they want to go. At that point the air going over the wings is aligned with the velocity vector, so no lateral motion. The only way I know of, is to have released the weapons with considerable rudder being applied. That would yaw the aircraft and cause the air to have some lateral (side to side) vector. It also would make it almost impossible for the weapons to hit what they were being aimed at (even if they didn't hit the aircraft itself.)

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    2. Additionally, if you notice the noses of both the left and right bombs initially moved towards the fuselage. If the strike was yaw induced, the noses would have gone the same direction.

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  4. Is that the targeting pod that got ripped off, or the external fuel tank?

    Both would be bad. Fuel tank might be worse if you're the pilot and you're out of range of a tanker.

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  5. Replies
    1. I'm thinking A-6 Intruder, but I could be wrong.

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  6. Sort of looks like a test of some sort, where all the stores are released in sequence to see what happens... Would have thought someone would have tried a model to see if there would be conflicts in the stream-flow.

    N A H, let's just do it LIVE! :)

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  7. it looks like a safe separation test. Any time you put a new weapon on an air frame you must do a number of safe separation tests to determine in what attitude and G forces is it safe to release the weapon. Lots of video, lots of repetitions until you have the data you need. Some weapons might need to be released in straight and level flight, some must be under positive G forces. Simulations are great but the aerodynamic forces near the aircraft at speed can be tricky. In the beginning modeling does much of the work but in the end someone has to strap on some weapons and give it a go.

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  8. Fin deployment seems to be to quick, they should drop out of the way before that happens.

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  9. Someone said 'would have tried a model'. I'd say from the lack of digital quality in the video, that this was back in the 'stubby pencil' era, and what we're watching is how they did a 'model test'. The bombs are almost surely dummy mock-ups, and probably the only time they 'tested' this configuration.

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  10. I read an about safe safe separation tests. On one occasion they were dropping bombs from helicopters and found if they flew too slow the bobs could get sucked up into the blades. Makes for a bad day.

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    1. Yes, I really hate it when Bob gets sucked up into the blades.

      Paul

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    2. Not a much as Bob - the guy just goes off!

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  11. The video makes me think the "bombs" or missiles were just empty shells, the air flow lifted the suckers and buffeted them. A 500 lb bomb does not buffet much when released. Something is just "off" on the whole exercise.

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    1. I don't know; I once saw a 750# fly up over the wing of a F-4D then bounce off the left stabilizer before obeying the law of gravity. someone had an interesting day at Tyndal. always interesting to watch the test films, learn something new every day.

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  12. WTH happened to the likely appropo comment I made close to 12 hours ago, anyway?

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