SUPERSONIC EJECTION SEAT SYSTEM TESTS AT HURRICANE MESA UTAH 84222

[@842qwery]

“Do you enjoy sitting down for extended periods of time? Do you love the great outdoors? Would you like to get paid to enjoy the fresh air and fascinating vistas? Become a seat testing du...technician.” Martin-Baker Industries.

[@WootTootZoot]

My father worked on the Hurricane Mesa track when it was a Top Secret project in the early to mid 1950's. Only problem, everyone in Hurricane and Springdale knew when there was going to be a test and would drive out to the road that went past the end of the mesa. I can remember as a kid seeing sleds and parachutes going over the edge of the mesa. Another "oddity" was Robert Stanley who ran the facility. His only goals in life were test data and an all over suntan. His usual "outfit" while working at the Mesa was a straw hat and Converse high top basketball shoes. If anyone didn't like the idea of working around a naked man with droopy balls, then you could go to work somewhere else, it was his facility to run as he pleased. The Mormon ladies that worked in the lunch room were always in a tizzy over his "attire" but, then again, there were few jobs in the area and they were told to deal with it. One episode where the test sled misfired and several technicians were seriously injured, Mr Stanley was told about the accident, he paused a second and said" Did you get the data"/

[@mattwarrensocal]

Was there a me too movement on the bulletin board?

[@jonfurse3931]

Gotta love how the narrator didn't get the pronunciation of "Hurricane" right, haha!

[@johnp139]

Cool. I’ve been there many times.

[@ponkkaa]

Hearing that voice.... Waiting for him to talk about the turbo encabulator.. 🤔

[@cameronalexander359]

Lol. Classic

[@ricks1314]

I was involved in USAF testing of egress systems for years under the brilliant leadership of Steve Mehaffie. Among a few projects, not limited to ring sliders for ‘round’ canopies, rogallo and autogyro seats, Vacuum packing ‘square’ canopies, we tested the Soviet zvesda K36 seat for possible use in the US inventory! We were never aware that the ‘boom’ idea was really ours!! Steve has long passed, but he’d get a kick out of knowing this. We spent a lot of time at Edwards on the test track, tho based at Wright Pat. We did static testing at Dayton T. Brown’s Long Island Facilities....

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Thanks for your comments and your work on behalf of our national defense.

[@jiml4782]

i worked at the test track for over 10 years

[@reignman40boozer5]

@@jiml4782 Did you work at the hurricane test track?

[@jiml4782]

Yes I did we would mainly do ejection seat tests and some tests for NASA

[@orangelion03]

Test engineer with McD-D ES Div, Long Beach. 1989-1991 (Minipac & ACES ARS). Holloman, Hurricane, China Lake. If you worked the K36 tests at Edwards, you may have known a former co-worker of mine or two.

[@jonfurse3931]

Always fun to see Hurricane get its 15 minutes of fame.

[@johnp139]

Only they need to modernize. Can’t say anything more.

[@allandavis8201]

American aviation industries surly did come up with some crazy ejection seat systems, and complicated to, these systems defeated the KISS principle completely, but I don’t think they and the USAF learnt any lessons from these early systems, in fact they went one better with the F-111 Aardvark system where they ejected the whole cockpit capsule, not a good idea really, especially in the event of a cockpit fire. Martin Baker, arguably the best designers of ejection seat systems used the simple idea of using a “face blind” that when the crew pulled the top ejection black and yellow handle the blind came down over the crewman’s face thus protecting their face from wind and/or debris blast, the action of pulling the blind down also prevented the arms from flailing around because of the position of the arms brought about by the pulling downwards, the legs were pulled in by the simple introduction of leg restraints that when set to a comfortable position for the pilot to reach the rudder pedals would automatically pull in a prevent the legs from hitting anything on the way out of the aircraft and flailing once the ejection sequence was ongoing, a small drogue chute stabilised the seat until the seat reached a safe height when the seat harness was released and after the seat had fallen away the main chute opened and the crewmen floated down to safety with their Personal Survival Pack (PSP) on a lanyard bellow them to give an idea of how far it was to go before touchdown, inside the PSP was/is everything needed to survive on land or in a water landing, and apart from the decent by chute the whole sequence to seconds to complete (depending on the height that they ejected at). Puts these convair seats to shame, sorry but American seat manufacturers made the whole think damn complicated when all that was needed was to KISS, complicated does not always equate to superior or reliable. Thanks for sharing this interesting and informative film 🎥👍😀🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿. P.S Before anyone decries my opinion, or doubts my qualification to comment, 24 years aircraft engineering should be enough to qualify me to comment, but if you don’t agree, DILLIGAF.

[@O4KAST]

Well, one positive of the design in the video is that a person gets ejected in laying down position, thus not potentially damaging their spine. Or at least reducing the risk.

[@danielf1313]

“The pilot (...) was found to be in near pre-run condition” How reassuring that only some bits had come off him apparently 😂

[@phmwu7368]

Lockheed even had downward ejection seats in the early F-104 Starfighter models! North American Aviation had an ejection seat in the X-15 rocket-plane that theoretically allowed the pilot to escape at speeds up to Mach 4.0

[@getsideways7257]

A valid excuse for "being inverted" :)

[@adamskikijowski9139]

Good job for Evel Knevel.

[@Beemer917]

That Damm seat flies real good once ya kinda git er going. Who need an airplane, just a seat some booms an a composite tail. It will need an overhead compartment tho.

[@x-man5056]

Hence, GD build the F-111 with a crew escape module because "safe ejection" in an open seat from supersonic speeds is a ludicrous concept and this whole effort was confirmation of that. Although there is a least 1 known survivor of ejection at supersonic speeds (F-15/ACES II seat and only 1 of the 2 crew members survived), one must remember that the speed of sound goes down as you go up in altitude. So supersonic at 20K ft. is a good bit lower mph speed than at sea level. I can just imagine the look on pilots faces when told or shown what these seats were going to do to get them out at mach+ speeds. LOL 500 mph is about tops for safe ejection in a seat and even then aircraft attitude should be within a certain envelope. Ejection at any speed is still a better choice than riding a falling rock into the ground though. Flying a fighter is not for the squeamish, it's always going to be dangerous regardless of the capability of the egress system.

[@thetreblerebel]

Pretty sure SR 71 pilots have ejected at Mach 2 plus and lived. It's not impossible.

[@x-man5056]

@@thetreblerebel Yeah, well, pretty sure they haven't but if they did, it was miraculous luck. Not going to look it up. That's your job when you make a statement like that. There have been many safe ejections well beyond design intent from many aircraft over the years. But damn few if any above mach 1. Ejection with any seat, from any aircraft at mach+ speeds is beyond design capability. Bank it. Why? Because the human body is understood and excepted NOT to be unable to withstand the forces of mach+ ejection.

[@x-man5056]

@@thetreblerebel It is unlikely to the extreme. Ask any fighter pilot.

[@creepingjesus5106]

The pilot who survived the breakup of the SR71 did so largely by luck, and definitely not by design. His co was much less lucky. Besides on an F104 for example, the best advice would be jump out immediately before it becomes a lawn dart, and hope for the best...

[@x-man5056]

@@thetreblerebel OK Stevie, you were right, under certain conditions. Because the SR-71 usually flew at extraordinarily high altitudes, there was an incident were they survived a mach 3+ ejection. See it here, but listen to the caveats. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqCbfKN7jrSMh7M

[@alexandrec9372]

Very Nice vídeo, thank you for upload!!!

[@nicholasmaude6906]

I'm flabbergasted as these American aircraft companies don't seem to have heard of something called drogue parachutes (Which Martin-Baker used right from the beginning). Instead of using all of these fancy, bulky, complicated and heavy contraptions to stabilise their seats they could've used drogue chutes to A) stabilise and slowdown the seat, then B) use the same drogue chute to extract the main parachute.

[@GG_Allin_Dulles]

the aces II ejection seat used on the f-16 and most other modern air force combat aircraft does actually have a drogue chute for moderate/high speed ejection, but I would imagine that in the early days the technology probably wasn't reliable enough to make sure the main chute deployed immediately at lower speeds + altitudes where those extra couple seconds to deploy a drogue are critical in slowing the pilot's descent before ground impact

[@johnp139]

I’m flabbergasted that MBA has no concept of a pitch stabilization system like the ACRS STAPAC that has been around since the 60’s.

[@glassytiger6204]

00:57 without context is best

[@mikecimerian6913]

Silly me. Screams would be a nice addition.

[@jetvette66]

I wanna see what happens to the sled at Hurricane Mesa.

[@sherrigaskin5656]

I wonder where one would apply to be an ejection seat test jockey. Im interested. Steve

[@aixaburlison4]

You wouldn't last long, 14-16 he's. I worked ejection seat for 28 years. 18 years in U.S.A.F retired. And Navy contractor for 10

[@creepingjesus5106]

I can't help but laugh at the Hurricane Mesa footage. I shouldn't, but the cartoon rocket whoosh, seat tumbling for seemingly ever, and the thought that the 'dummy' was only still because it hadn't stopped screaming yet, made not laughing near impossible. Sorry, not sorry etc...

[@briancooper2112]

F-106 ejection seat injured alot of pilots.

[@nicholasmaude6906]

Conveyor would've been better off fitting Martin-Baker seats instead.

[@thetreblerebel]

Killed a few too

[@htomerif]

It would be interesting to see Soviet media from the same time on pilot survivability systems. Oh wait...

[@lw216316]

The sled goes from 0 to about 700 mph quickly. I wonder how that compares to top fuel drag racer 0-330 mph in about 3 1/2 seconds ?

[@jiml4782]

the sled goes a lot faster ,we would only use about a mile of the track ,with the water break starting at 8000 ft to 12000 ft to stop the sled ,we would start at around 6000 ft ,so in less than 2000 ft we would could hit over 700 mph ,we would never use the whole track

[@jiml4782]

the seats we have now are so much better but for the time the seats back then would save a pilots life

[@lw216316]

@@jiml4782 I take it you rode on the sleds?....no permanent injuries from it? I can't imagine those g forces. 3g - 3.5 g is the most I've experienced and that was enough for me.

[@jiml4782]

@@lw216316 no we had mannequin for that ,but i loaded the rocket motors, set track ,set the water break ect

[@johnp139]

Don’t these people know about Reynolds (not Bert) numbers?!?

[@johnp139]

Yeah, that’s stable...NOT!

[@zefkosta]

Not much of a problem if you were German.

[@pennise]

Ahem, make mine a Martin-Baker.

[@uberkloden]

I would like to be the tester in ejection.

[@Tinker1950]

There's always an unknowing idiot waiting in the wings isn't there?

[@sherrigaskin5656]

$22.50/hr

[@guaporeturns9472]

No thanks