LiveLeak has great video on a little-reported crash last week involving an Iranian Air Force Su-24. You have to wait about 90 seconds for the action to start. To understand why I'm now so impressed with Russian ejection seat technology, you have to watch another 10 seconds after that.
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Moral: Buy Russian ejection seats -- they work (VIDEO)
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on March 18, 2009 12:10 PM | Reply
Their quality has been known for two decades, but they're a bit overweight and Western models are supposedly no worse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL1FblthxQ0
on March 18, 2009 2:02 PM | Reply
It's not a Mig 29!
on March 18, 2009 3:04 PM | Reply
Can you explain why this is so impressive? This seems to be a fairly simple ejection to me, achievable by any zero-zero rated ejection seat (zero altitude, zero speed). These have been around since the early sixties (Martin-Baker etc.).
on March 18, 2009 3:19 PM | Reply
It might be merely a consequence of the camera angle, but it looks to me that the ejection occurred several seconds after the Fencer became an inferno. I know that's when ejection seats are supposed to work, but it's very impressive to watch all the same.
on March 18, 2009 3:33 PM | Reply
Not exactly a textbook approach here... The speed seemed a bit high (flaps inop?) and the sink rate was excessive leading to the bounced landing. (jeeez those Sukhois smoke like F-4s in burner)
Moral: Don't operate old Russian attack aircraft with questionable maintenance and/or training.
on March 19, 2009 2:13 AM | Reply
It looked like he was leaking oil on the approach. That was a lot of white smoke coming out behind the aircraft.
on March 19, 2009 5:26 AM | Reply
I must be missing something but why is the soviet ejection seat any more impressive than the Martin Baker or the U.S. seats? It did what a zero/zero seat is supposed to do and the pilots got out. My question is did they survive?
on March 19, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply
Some more videos from Zvezda .....
http://www.zvezda-npp.ru/engl/video.html
Please, click on the image of the Yak-38U and you'll see something extraordinary .....
on March 19, 2009 10:31 PM | Reply
"Please, click on the image of the Yak-38U and you'll see something extraordinary ....."
So instead of Zero-Zero, Say Zero-Negative 10?
May have been shortest take off, crash, and ship/pilot recovery ever.
on March 20, 2009 4:47 PM | Reply
While touring a aviation museum with a retired air force colonel in our family, he said that the ejector seat was always the first thing they removed from the soviet planes. He said they were total crap and they couldn't get any of out pilots to test fly the planes without the replacement seats installed. He had some great stories on how they talked pilots into delivering their planes to them for as little as $20,000 cash