I want everyone here to understand how impressive this is. Yes, its a dead stick situation. The F16 is a fly by wire aircraft and the F16 is an inherently unstable airframe. It needs the flight control computer AND a generous amount of thrust on tap to stay in control and simply not fall out of the sky. How he was able to bring an inherently unstable aircraft down with ZERO thrust is beyond me. That's why he does what he does and we sit here in awe on our computers. So damn proud of our military and the fact this pilot is on OUR side.
My Dad shared a story of how he was a crewman aboard a B17 Bomber that crash landed somewhere in Greenland when they were ‘ferrying’ their Aircraft home after Wars end. He said the crash landing was scary but they all made it. Then the polar bears were scary b/c they were trying to get into the fuselage, but they survived them too. He said the worst thing were the mosquitos. When they were finally rescued (by the Canadians) their eyes were nearly swollen shut, and their faces were bloodied from all the mosquito bites.
Something doesn't make sense here. The video suggests the incident was in 2009. I'm sorry, but in 2009, surely the world's elite fighter jet had video capabilities far, far beyond this grainy nonsense. 1080p was available - to the public - in 2009, let alone the military. My only conclusion is that there is a mandatory downgrade of video quality for anything released to the public. Maybe this explains the frustration of the UFO crowd who complain that modern jet video looks like grandpa with Parkinson's disease using an old 8mm movie camera from his closet!
You'd be surprised how unbelievably cheap the military is. "Oh, this camera from the 90's still works, so you'll use that, and we'll save 200 bucks on a 2 million jet!"
A test pilot for General Dynamics showed us a video in our A&P class about his landing dead stick. It was not as slick he tore both strakes off the back great landing!
"Nice... Now get it stopped!"... LOL!!!! This super STUD got it on the ground dead stick... Whoever is doing the background static wingman talkie talkie.. WHY didn't you roll equipment ahead of time wile the pilot is doing everything he can to get this plane to the tarmac...
Superb flying, helped by excellent resource management from the other birds in his flight. All in all, the absolute best possible outcome. No doubt got an Attaboy added to his file.
For those below who don't know the term "Dead stick". ---A dead stick landing, is a type of forced landing when an aircraft loses all of its propulsive power and is forced to land. The "stick" does not refer to the flight controls, --The F16 is a fly by wire aircraft (No wires or rod linkages, only electrical wires.)
And the stick is? The propeller, originally propellers on aircraft were wooden and so sometimes they were known as "sticks". If it stopped spinning, you had a dead stick.
Nice to have that level of resource management. No one in the cockpit to deviate tasks to, so the wingman steps up and makes the radio calls. That’s a Battle Buddy right there!
I understand tower is worried but they really should do their best to sound as "normal" as possible, its one less thing the pilot needs to worry about and makes the situation feel more like training than a real emergency. You're much more clear headed in a sim than you are in real life, and that calmness can vastly improve your chances of survival should you need to make a split second decision.
They are, but that has nothing to do with whether they can glide or not. The software that makes the minute corrections to keep the plane under control doesn't suddenly stop working just because the engine is out. If they lost all electrical power but the engine(s) were still running, then you would have no choice but to eject.
Don't lump all fighters in one non-maneuverable basket. Sure, some of the stealth stuff is very unstable without computer controls. F-16 is not a radical design.
With the APU running, all flight control surfaces and instrumentation was up and running. Even as an unstable design, the computers would still be able to keep the platform stable. Stability is the only requirement for gliding. The F-16 has a glide ratio of around 6:1. Not great, but it'll get you either home or to a suitably harmless ditch point as long as you start out with enough altitude.
You're right in that it's confusing. What they're referring to as the 'stick', is the propeller blades. I know this is not a propeller engine, but that's where the term comes from, from the early days of aviation: dead engine = dead stick (propeller is not moving, or dead in other words). Control stick, flight stick, side stick (cause it's on the side in an F16, and not in the middle), hands on throttle and stick (HOTAS) are terms that would be accepted as correct to varying degrees, depending on the aircraft and the setting among other things. So you're not wrong there either.
Tough choice... try to land dead stick and possibly not make it or eject with ejection injuries, survive and have the aircraft crash on people or its engine restart and it crash on people elsewhere.
They said that to Capt. Haynes on Flight 232 (the one they crash landed with differential thrust only, 1/3 passenger fatalities.) I'll always remember how Haynes said "ahahaha, you wanna be particular and make it a *runway*, huh?"
@@mjproebstleyes but once he’d made the decision to stick it in the Hudson (rather than crash it into built-up area) for which he had no real choice, all he had to do was keep the wings level and pull back on the stick all the way and the Airbus flight control managed the rest. It kept the plane from stalling so they touched the water at as a low a speed as possible. Sully did very well but he had a lot of help from how the plane was designed to operate.
