HeyEng

The preliminary report of the Swift Air 737-400 crash in Vilnius has come out and the report indicates that the Pilot Monitoring (which was the Captain) accidentally shut off Hydraulic Systems A and B while trying to turn on the Engine Anti-ice. Both the Anti-ice and Hydraulic systems use the same lever-lock switches instead of red guarded switches for the hydraulics seen on other aircraft and the hydraulic switches are just below the switches for the Engine Anti-ice. The overhead panel layout shares the legacy design of the first 737 produced which had the option of having a Flight Engineer who would sit in the jumpseat. The overhead panel allowed easy access to the controls from the jumpseat but can be awkward from either pilot seat. Furthermore the Captain probably neglected to observe the blue Anti-Ice indicators come on indicating the Anti-ice valves opened and most likely just moved the levers by feel as he was monitoring the approach. Both pilots missed a vital clue as well since they could not engage the Autopilot with both A and B Systems shut down.

Some new insights into the Langley and other military base drone swarms from 60 Minutes.

Yea the barrel sections for the 707,727, and 737 have a very slight figure eight cross section like the old Stratocruiser but very subtle from a casual glance. You have to dig into the maintenance manual diagrams for the FS, WL, and BL to really see it.

Several arrivals into DCA reported false TA/RA notifications.

The British Army has more horses (for all the ceremonial duties) than tanks!

Yea unfortunately the warhead fragments managed to pierce all three hydraulic systems but otherwise the airframe managed to absorb the damage pretty good.

Great video by Juan Brown of the Blancolireo channel of the shoot down of the E190. There was quite a lot of confusion prior to the incident with the Russian ATC controllers not understanding that the GPS jamming wasn’t allowing the crew to accept RNP and RNAV approaches.

I came from the AF AMC community so VHF is our goto radios since we operate in ICAO airspace around the world. I do not think we are going to find any single fix for this accident but hopefully some changes come about.

From what I have heard they were on UHF and ATC were dual transmitting on UHF/VHF so you can hear ATC talking to the -60 but any civilian traffic could not hear the -60. Also I still have not heard if this was an older -60 with legacy avionics or a more modern one with glass. If it was legacy it probably had the small “fish finder” type of TCAS whereas glass typically overlays the TCAS on the HSI display. TCAS is probably moot anyhow since the TA/RA is disabled below 1000’

Yet another concern related to the LEAP engines is the LRD (Load Reduction Device) which can dump sump oil from the fan section and into the compressor section resulting in smoke in the cockpit from the AC packs. This video explains it much better than I can and it’s not an insurmountable problem as long as you know about before hand but apparently was poorly explained in the manuals given to flight crews!

I hope that one outcome of this accident is that we start installing more VHF radios in military aviation. I don’t expect every helicopter or fighter to have a VHF radio but certainly this helicopter flying and training in a dense civilian airspace environment should be a priority!

I have not been at McGuire (Sorry McGuire-Fort Dix Joint Unified Base) since I retired so I was wondering if the “Cornfield Cruiser” is still in use outside of Morgantown. It’s some sort of Naval Ship Superstructure used to test radars and would be a logical “target” for drones although testing over large civilian populated areas seams suspect especially when there are more suitable MOA to choose from (most of Nevada is basically a test range).

As to that last paragraph, boy was I wrong! What a difference a year makes!

Thanks!

Could my post on “WB-57F and Drone Swarms” over on the General Discussion be move over or combined as well? There’s three pages so maybe just the last few threads.

Judging by the size and scope of the Drone swarm story over New Jersey maybe this needs its own thread. I saw a report from a local broadcaster who was sort of a sceptic and thought most of the sightings was hysteria (some sightings are definitely conventional aircraft) or misidentification and was doing a report on the New Jersey State Police deploying drones of their own and attempting to track them when drones started appearing while broadcasting. The NJSP drones were quite large and sophisticated in themselves but the Police said they had no luck tracking them due to the speed and lack of any infrared signature of the suspect drones!

And non-standard (I.e red/green) lights at that? The who thing is weird! If it was a major power doing some sort of synthetic radar reconnaissance of major bases for intelligence you would think they would be blacked out. Yet this seems too big for just some miscreant drone hobbyists. As I mentioned in the beginning of this thread the Langley incursions were supposedly imaged by NASA WB-57F planes but the results of that imagery and where the drones were heading to/coming from are completely unknown. If one image of the type of drone released it might help in figuring out who might have made it. We were very quick to point out China’s involvement in the ballon over N.C. (but very silent in the others we shot down) as well as pointing the finger at Russia with the attempted DHL bombings but are very reluctant in these increasing drone incursions.

There was also a drone swarm over New Jersey with witnesses claiming car sized drones were flying all night long. I doubt they were quite that big and it would be hard to accurately judge the size of something flying at night but it does seem that these are not hobbyists sized drones and I wonder how long even a large sized quadcopter type of drone could stay aloft. or are these fixed wing drones? Also while the operators could be anywhere, these things still have to be recovered, refueled (or recharged?), servicing and maintained, etc. You would also think that sooner or later a bearing would seize up, a linkage would break, a signal lost and one of these things would crash to earth.

It appears England is getting the drone swarm treatment with Mindenhall and Lakenheath seeing nightly incursions. Also in Arizona Air Force pilots are reporting drone encounters at military ranges with one being the size of a Reaper!

Actually I have found some good information on News Nation. In additional to Langley, there were several Navy bases near the area that were targeted as well. Despite the size of the drones they flew in a precise synchronized formation (some sort of data link synthetic radar?) Some appeared to be quadcopter style drones while others were fixed wing and probably launched off a ship out at sea.

Wait, there’s been other large scale drone swarms over bases lasting over two weeks that required NASA surveillance aircraft to track them?

What I meant is why is Langley targeted at the exclusion of other bases? Is it because Langley is near the water and these drones (which witnesses are saying are as large as cars) are operating off of ships and more inland bases are out of reach or launching and recovering these drones over land are not practical without getting caught? If so I would think you would see many Naval installations targeted as well. And for that matter why stop at installing anti-drone netting at just Langley? I would think that any base that has F-22, F-35, B-2, etc. should have anti-drone protection installed.

The War Zone is reporting that Langley is installing anti-drone netting around the enclosures for the F-22 to help combat drone intrusions at and around the base. In addition to being a physical barrier, the netting is assumed to help protect the aircraft from electro-optical snooping as well. It’s still curious as to why Langley is the base being targeted for these drone swarms, maybe its proximity to the ocean?

Is your job primarily Title 32 orders or Title 10? The Guard can be quite stingy when the State has to pay. Also the Guard sometimes forgets their own regs. I remember when I first went to the Guard they insisted they were not allowed to do digital signatures on any documents, only wet signatures. Since the Guard did have all their Regulations on the web it was an easy matter to do a search to find the equivalent regulations that matched the AFI for paperless signature requirements.

I would love to report that my friend’s retirement pay issue has been resolved but since he ran out of options he got his congressman involved and MyPers basically said we are going to halt what little effort they were doing to try and resolve this and just let the congressional process play out!