n5lp said:
Ok, Kevin, you got my attention! It must be an interesting story and I and others would like to hear it.
Way back in 1991 two of us from the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, AB were hopping across the country in a
Canadair Tutor. We had an engine compressor stall while on approach to North Bay, ON. The engine was still running, but it had a much higher than normal EGT, and wouldn't accelerate above 65% rpm, which was not enough thrust to maintain level flight. The checklist for unrecoverable compressor stall said to shut the engine down and try a relight, but we were below 1500 ft when it occurred, so we both agreed that there wasn't enough altitude to try that solution. We raised the landing gear, jettisoned the external fuel tanks, and went to best glide speed, all in an effort to make the airfield. Initially, as we decelerated to best glide speed, it looked like we might make the field, but after the speed stabilized we eventually had to admit that the runway was slowly moving up in the windscreen.
We were over forest, with no roads to put the aircraft down on, so it was time to go. After making the decision to bail out, we saw that an electrical power substation was right in front of us, with high voltage power lines going in all directions. This wasn't a good place to come down in a parachute, so we stayed in the aircraft until we were safely on the other side of it.
I was in the right seat for this leg, so I went first. I pulled the ejection handles, and sat straight up in the seat, with my head against the head rest, waiting for the ejection sequence to start. I knew that the first event would happen a half second after pulling the ejection seat handles - the canopy would be removed by its pyrotechnic cartridge, followed a half second later by the ejection seat firing. I waited, and waited, and waited, and I concluded that the canopy wasn't going to go, and I would have to manually jettison it. I reached for the canopy jettison handle, but it fired before my hand got there - I realized that my sense of time was all screwed up by the adrenalin that was flowing, and now I knew how long a half second was. So, I got straight back in the seat again, and waited an eternity for that next half second.
The seat fired, with the biggest kick in the butt I have ever felt (old technology seat, with a pyrotechnic cartridge, rather than the smoother rocket motors on newer seats). I still have this image in my mind of watching the nose of the aircraft fall away below me as the seat went up the rails. I must have blacked out for a moment, as my next memory is starting through my automatic actions as I tried to "beat the seat" - there were a number of actions that should happen automatically after the seat fired, but we were trained to attempt to do them manually, just in case there was a malfunction. I reached to undo my lapbelt, but it had already been released. I reached back to push myself away from the seat, but it was no longer there. I reached to pull the D-ring, but I felt the shock of the chute opening before I could get my hand on the D-ring.
I looked up to check the state of the chute canopy, and saw that it was intact, with no shroud lines over it. Big relief. I looked down to see where I was heading, and was very dismayed to see that I was being blown towards the fireball from the aircraft impact. I had thoughts of being burned to a crisp, but fortunately the fireball only lasted a second or so, then it collapsed. I crossed overhead the wreckage, and landed in woods less than 100 ft from it. I had my feet together, and my knees bent for impact, and fell back on my butt. I looked up to that there was a small piece of something burning about 5 feet out in front of me, so I wasted no time in getting out of my chute harness and getting away from the wreckage.
I found Perry, the other pilot, on the other side of the wreckage - we were both OK, so at that point I didn't have a care in the world. We walked out to a field on the edge of the woods, and almost got run over by a farmer who came over the hill in his pickup truck at about 80 mph. He had seen us eject, and was coming to see if we needed assistance. He took us out to the road, and a few minutes later the crash convoy from the base arrived. The medical techs insisted we get in the ambulance, and they took us to the base hospital, where we had to spend the night under observation.
Perry had friends at North Bay, and several of them came by our room in the base hospital with a whole bunch of beer. We got absolutely snookered. The next morning my back was a bit sore, and the X-rays showed a very minor compression fracture. I was grounded for three weeks while it healed.
The engine tear down found that a shim had been misassembled in the linkage that went from the fuel control unit to the variable inlet guide vanes. It is likely that this linkage jammed, causing the compressor stall, as the stall symptoms were similar to what had been seen in the test cell on another engine with the same shim problem.
Several months later, the Safety Systems techs presented Perry and I with our ejection seats - all refurbished, and mounted on steel stands. Mine is sitting in my workshop in the basement. It is a reminder to expect the unexpected. Try to be ready for every possible problem, as much as practical.
Lessons learned - don't be afraid to admit that you can't save the airplane. We tried too hard to save the airplane, and this led to a low altitude ejection. I'm not sure exactly how high we were when we punched out, but it was certainly below 300 ft.
Do frequent practice bail out exercises. Every year we would review bail out procedures, and I would mentally practice the required steps every month or so. Once we had made the decision to go, I knew exactly that steps to take.
