Olympic Restrictions of Flying : Part 2

[eharding]

Following the frankly less-than-problematic airspace changes proposed by NATS last month, the CAA and the Home Office have waded in with a sadly predictable full-raving-paranoia-mode Restricted Zone covering most of the South East.

CAA Statement

http://olympics.airspacesafety.com/

I suspect farm-strip space outside of the Restricted Zone will be at a premium for the duration.

[Simpo Two]

Does this mean that anything wandering into the airspace without permission gets a Sidewinder up the bum?

[eharding]

Simpo Two said:

Does this mean that anything wandering into the airspace without permission gets a Sidewinder up the bum?

More like a stiffly worded letter and a possible prosecution.

You'll note that the only manned airframe ever to take an RAF sidewinder where the sun doesn't shine was....an RAF Jaguar.

Edited - alright, apart from the drones.

Edited by eharding on Monday 7th March 18:15

[Simpo Two]

Ooh yes.

Somewhere on the net said:

This is what happened, they were taking part in an exercise, supposedly with safe weapons. Apparently in order to score an air-air kill the pilots of the Phantom's would have to squeeze the trigger in order to trigger the gun camera and get footage of the lock through their HUD in order to substantiate their claims to a kill. Unfortunately an armourer had neglected to ensure the missile was safe, so on pulling the trigger to set the camera rolling,the Phantom pilot instead let fly with an AIM-9 that brought down the Jaguar.

Jaguar GR.1 XX963 On 25 May 1982 it was shot down near Wesel, W. Germany, by a live AIM-9L Sidewinder fired by Phantom FGR.2 XV422 during a simulated combat exercise. The pilot ejected safely.

In hindsight it seems a risk to use live missiles on exercise, but I suppose one carved from wood and painted white wouldn't interface with the rest of the gubbbins.

It must have been rather a surprise for both pilots!

eharding said:

More like a stiffly worded letter and a possible prosecution.

The families of the dead suicide pilot terrorist/s would consider that a good result...

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 7th March 18:36

[eharding]

Simpo Two said:

The families of the dead suicide pilot terrorist/s would consider that a good result...

Give over. Given the price of avgas, Johnny Jihadist and hordes of his chums will be arriving on bicycles in the middle of town armed with assault rifles, thence to "Do a Mumbai". On a daily basis. Plod's only recourse, after a couple of days of this, will be to shoot cyclists on sight, just to be on the safe side.

Edited by eharding on Monday 7th March 18:51

[Mojocvh]

eharding said:

More like a stiffly worded letter and a possible prosecution.

You'll note that the only manned airframe ever to take an RAF sidewinder where the sun doesn't shine was....an RAF Jaguar.

Edited - alright, apart from the drones.

Edited by eharding on Monday 7th March 18:15

"YOU'RE ONLY SUPPOSED TO BLOW THE DOORS OFF"

For the uninitiated, the target towing Jindivik would tow an IR emitter as the "target".
Sometimes, perhaps due to the demanding missile firing exercise flight profile, the missile would hit the Jindy.
Then again, sometimes, perhaps not, fingers.

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

Somewhere on the net said:

This is what happened, they were taking part in an exercise, supposedly with safe weapons. Apparently in order to score an air-air kill the pilots of the Phantom's would have to squeeze the trigger in order to trigger the gun camera and get footage of the lock through their HUD in order to substantiate their claims to a kill. Unfortunately an armourer had neglected to ensure the missile was safe, so on pulling the trigger to set the camera rolling,the Phantom pilot instead let fly with an AIM-9 that brought down the Jaguar.

Jaguar GR.1 XX963 On 25 May 1982 it was shot down near Wesel, W. Germany, by a live AIM-9L Sidewinder fired by Phantom FGR.2 XV422 during a simulated combat exercise. The pilot ejected safely.

That's not exactly correct. During the exercise the crew of XV422 had initially crewed in to another a/c which went u/s on start up. Accordingly they then crewed in to the spare jet, XV422. Unfortunately, owing to a/c serviceability problems, 422 was declared as the spare even though it was fully armed since it had just come off QRA. The crew were aware of this and the circuit breakers in the Nav's cockpit had been pulled. However the c/bs had not been locked off (SOP was to place a tie wrap around the c/b so that it couldn't be reset).

The crew got airborne and, reverting to his training, the Nav inadvertently re-made the c/bs making the a/c 'live'. The pilot, after rolling in on the Jag also reverted to his training, called a 'Fox-2', and squeezed the trigger. The result being that a sidewinder leapt off the launch rail with predictable results.

It was nothing to do with the use of gun camera. For a start it was a missile shot and not a guns shot. Secondly, AFAIAA the F4 had separate triggers for missiles and guns, let alone the fact that it had a stand alone camera to record HUD symbology.

It apparently caused quite a lot of bad feeling at RAF Bruggen!



The funny thing about the incident was that there was a Cloggie F104 who witnessed the incident. He came up on Guard (243.0 MHz) with the immortal line: "I'm going home now, the Brits are playing for real!"

Simpo Two said:

In hindsight it seems a risk to use live missiles on exercise, but I suppose one carved from wood and painted white wouldn't interface with the rest of the gubbbins.

It's usual to carry a Sidewinder 'acquisition round' for training engagements. Basically this is a Sidewider that lacks fins, rocket motor, or warhead, but does have a live seeker so you get the normal audio tones in the headset. The fact that XV422 was armed was/is extremely unusual, the fact that it was 'live' was down to a cock up by the see-off crew.


Oh, and the missile in question was an AIM-9G. RAFG F4s didn't have the 'L' model at that stage - we'd only just got them for the SHARs during Operation CORPORATE.

Edited by Ginetta G15 Girl on Monday 7th March 20:17

[speedtwelve]

Don't forget the F4 at Leuchars years ago that scored an AIM9 kill on the River Eden while parked on the pan. I gather the armourers needed a change of coveralls afterwards.

[Simpo Two]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

He came up on Guard (243.0 MHz) with the immortal line: "I'm going home now, the Brits are playing for real!"

Excellent.

You know, if everybody listened to GG15G, the internet would only be half as big.

[john_p]

I hate the Olympics even more now. How ironic that my sport gets ruined for two months just so some other stty sports get special treatment.

[Simpo Two]

Put the Red Bull Air Race through; that'll fox 'em.



Oh, and drop some window...

[anonymous-user]

eharding said:

Plod's only recourse, after a couple of days of this, will be to shoot cyclists on sight, just to be on the safe side.

Edited by eharding on Monday 7th March 18:51

I suspect, that might put a bit of a dampener on events at the er, Velodrome....... ;-)

[Mojocvh]

speedtwelve said:

Don't forget the F4 at Leuchars years ago that scored an AIM9 kill on the River Eden while parked on the pan. I gather the armourers needed a change of coveralls afterwards.

The old 100 way plug saga.

What do you get when you "employ" felons in a penitentiary to manufacture stuff for a US government contractor that involves pouring prc into an electrical connector?

An electrical connector full of prc and swarf, that's what you get!

[dnb]

Simpo Two said:

Oh, and drop some window...

That's just cruel.

I have some on my desk... Couldn't decide what to do with it until now - if only I had a launch mechanism, like that old Sea Petrel sitting around under the stairs...

[eharding]

On a more serious note, once the implications of this have sunk in, it isn't pretty.

For General Aviation aircraft owners and operators in the South-East, it's a major ball-ache, but we have the option of moving the aircraft out of the South-East for the duration, and frankly I've got mates who have grounded me for longer than two months by bending co-owned airframes.

For a lot of the aviation-related businesses in the South-East, this is a death sentence. Flying schools, engineering outfits, airfield operators and associated businesses operate on very tight margins - well, most businesses do - but having two of the most profitable months of the year arbitrarily shut down by the CAA on the cretinous notion that light VFR traffic poses a terrorist threat is an act of criminal vandalism...and to do so for a period four times longer than the event itself is sheer idiocy.

You might have thought that after the volcanic ash fiasco, the CAA might have moved some of the more panic-prone hysterical feckwits out of the decision-making process. It appears they have not.

[Mojocvh]

eharding said:

On a more serious note, once the implications of this have sunk in, it isn't pretty.

For General Aviation aircraft owners and operators in the South-East, it's a major ball-ache, but we have the option of moving the aircraft out of the South-East for the duration, and frankly I've got mates who have grounded me for longer than two months by bending co-owned airframes.

For a lot of the aviation-related businesses in the South-East, this is a death sentence. Flying schools, engineering outfits, airfield operators and associated businesses operate on very tight margins - well, most businesses do - but having two of the most profitable months of the year arbitrarily shut down by the CAA on the cretinous notion that light VFR traffic poses a terrorist threat is an act of criminal vandalism...and to do so for a period four times longer than the event itself is sheer idiocy.

You might have thought that after the volcanic ash fiasco, the CAA might have moved some of the more panic-prone hysterical feckwits out of the decision-making process. It appears they have not.

I quite agree, it does seem that the CAA and other regulatory bodies, are still trying to suck from the endless bounty of Gordon Brown's billion-pound left tit.

Learnt yet?

[john_p]

My gliding club a little way north of you is particularly affected by this.

We can't even fly locally, within our own ATZ, something which probably makes up 80% of the club's revenue (lessons, gliding experiences, aeros etc)

Gliders don't fit transponders and probably 90% of pilots don't have a radio licence, let alone know what an APEX or AFPEX or whatever is.

fkers.

[Mojocvh]

john_p said:

My gliding club a little way north of you is particularly affected by this.

We can't even fly locally, within our own ATZ, something which probably makes up 80% of the club's revenue (lessons, gliding experiences, aeros etc)

Gliders don't fit transponders and probably 90% of pilots don't have a radio licence, let alone know what an APEX or AFPEX or whatever is.

fkers.

total CF, and dumb Dave and Co are going to get it the neck again because they are soooo out of touch.

[eharding]

Mojocvh said:

I quite agree, it does seem that the CAA and other regulatory bodies, are still trying to suck from the endless bounty of Gordon Brown's billion-pound left tit.

Learnt yet?

Indeed they are.

The difference being that I propose to have them dealt with whilst still hanging from the wrinkled, empty left tit, before they manage to clamp themselves to some other more succulent nipple, thence to drain the host dry.

I fear I might be too late to stop the transfer, but it is never too late to cut out and burn parasites.

[mattdaniels]

eharding said:

On a more serious note, once the implications of this have sunk in, it isn't pretty.

For General Aviation aircraft owners and operators in the South-East, it's a major ball-ache, but we have the option of moving the aircraft out of the South-East for the duration, and frankly I've got mates who have grounded me for longer than two months by bending co-owned airframes.

For a lot of the aviation-related businesses in the South-East, this is a death sentence. Flying schools, engineering outfits, airfield operators and associated businesses operate on very tight margins - well, most businesses do - but having two of the most profitable months of the year arbitrarily shut down by the CAA on the cretinous notion that light VFR traffic poses a terrorist threat is an act of criminal vandalism...and to do so for a period four times longer than the event itself is sheer idiocy.

You might have thought that after the volcanic ash fiasco, the CAA might have moved some of the more panic-prone hysterical feckwits out of the decision-making process. It appears they have not.

Unless I've misunderstood the link, flying schools etc. can still operate (eg. circuits etc) provided the aircraft is squawking. Doesn't sound like being completely shut down.