USMCFLYR

That may be HIS leadership style - but I certainly would not say that is military "leadership". I saw some GREAT leadership in the military. We flew in the Hornet community for at least a decade with known OBOGS issues too and I felt that the leadership knew of, and were actively working to fix the problem - and as I said in an earlier post - we lost people and planes because of it.

Someone earlier mentioned that maybe the ORM matrix was finally max'ed out and put over the top. I can see that. The Hornet community certainly ORM'ed the crap out of it and I was personally comfortable with the mitigation put into place. Same with the LEX problems the fleet had which were severe enough to actually issue a fleet wide red-stripe!

I work with a guy that knows CNATRA very well. Although he is obviously a very confident person having achieved his position in life - he says that he also DOES care for the welfare and safety of his people. Some accusations have been made on this cite and others against his character using third and fourth hand knowledge of the situation. I personally have no knowledge of his character so will withhold judgment on such things but I did get this little tidbit in the email earlier this morning after having a conversation about this issue with my co-worker.

Quote:

One thing worth mentioning, not necessarily in defense of Dell but interesting, his son just finished at Kingsville and is currently in the RAG at Lemoore. So while all this was going on, he had his son flying T-45s.

At least his isn't hypocritical in that regard.

What a tough situation all around. I sincerely hope that it is resolved and they can get back to the business of training to take the fight to our enemies around the world. The threat isn't going away.

'FIGHT'S ON!'

MikeF16

Well, here is USAF leadership. One must believe it's all the way from the top. If you don't want to read the entire article: Capt Jeff Haney may have become incapacitated by the F-22 OBOGS, the plane crashed and killed him, and the USAF blamed Capt Haney for the mishap. There is zero definitive proof whether this is classic spatial D or incapacitation due to OBOGS. The Pentagon audited the results and disagreed with the USAF. The USAF refused to accept the Pentagon findings. They care far more about their cash cow F-22 program than the lives of their pilots. It is systemic. Generals demand costly weapon systems, generals retire, generals get hired by the defense contractors they so greedily assisted while they were "leading" in the military. Of course there are exceptions, but isn't it sad that the exceptions are the good guys, and not the other way around?

EDIT: Oops, forgot the link...
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/dead-2...ry?id=18490248

F4E Mx

From the Washington Examiner Saturday, April 15, 2017:

"The Navy will resume its T-45C flights on Monday after the training jets were grounded due to pilot protest and problems with oxygen systems, the commander of Naval Air Forces announced.

However, the service has still not found the root cause or a solution to the oxygen system issues that caused a boycott by hundreds of instructor pilots, including Vice President Mike Pence's son, Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker said in a released statement.

The Navy will instead limited T-45C training flights for sailors and Marines to below 10,000 feet using a mask that circumvents the aircraft's on-board oxygen generator system."

So, they are going to bottled oxygen? It would seem the crew has to be using 'aviators breathing oxygen' below 10,000 feet because the engine compressor air used for air conditioning and pressurization is not known to be safe either at this point. Curious.

rickair7777

I assume they're just breathing ambient air (legal below 10K), but wearing a bypassed mask for training purposes.

Grumble

Bleed air isn't what's bad, it's what the OBOGS system is producing. Cabin air should be fine.

F4E Mx

The design of the pressurization system is puzzling to me. The aircraft does not begin to pressurize until 5,000 feet MSL and the maximum differential of 4 psi is not reached until the aircraft reaches 40,000 feet. Most systems you would dial in field elevation +500 feet on the controller and then the planned cruising altitude so you could have max differential no matter what the final altitude. Basically in the existing system a T-45 at 25,000 feet would have a 15,000 foot cockpit. Under a system where the pilot sets the pressurization altitude and final desired altitude he would have a 10,000 foot cockpit, even with the small 4 psi differential.

USMCFLYR

I didn't know much about pressurization systems when I was with an F-4S squadron (even before flight school), but I've never flown a tactical trainer or aircraft which has a pressurization system which you describe. The aircraft I currently fly has such a system, but I'd be very interested if anyone can ID a tactical aircraft with such a system
.

F4E Mx

You can certainly do an automatic system that would be better than what is outlined here. There is no reason to schedule the pressurization to become the maximum differential at 40,000 feet. You could pressurize at 8,000 feet (10.9 psi) and maintain an 8,000 foot cabin (by slowly increasing the differential) to 20,000 feet (6.9 psi) at which point the maximum differential of 4 psi is reached. Above 20,000 the cabin climbs at the rate of the aircraft. Point being at 20,000 feet with an 8,000 cabin you don't need the OBOGS system at all. I believe the T-38 has a similar schedule but will have to dig it out.

hindsight2020

Yes, T-38 and T-6, and the B-52 all have fixed cabin pressure schedules circa 8k cabin, that cap out at 18-25K aircraft altitude, then the cabin increases from there to maintain max differential. No lie, the T-6 T.O. lists the max cabin differential altitude intercept point at no kidding 18,069 ft. LOL Who said engineers don't have crewdog sophomoric humor.

Tac airplanes don't have schedule controllers, though the Buff has a pressure differential 2-position selector, in order to dial down the cabin differential for combat due to AAA/SAM blast overpressure risks; wishful thinking really and most people didn't bother with it.

At any rate, sure, the entire flight's regime on most trainers does not require oxygen immediately available, but you can't just treat it like a crew airliner and go flying around without it on full time (critical phases of flight, which for trainers it's a euphemism for ALWAYS ON) or immediately available (as defined by hanging from your helmet by one bayonet). The highly dynamic nature of the profile, along with the rapid decompression issues, mid air collision risk of formation flying, and having an unqualified member as part of the crew on a full time basis, makes it an operational necessity to have oxygen on your manpleaser 100% of the time, even for what amounts toa 1.0-1.3 ASD sortie. Never mind the logistics of an uncontrolled flight ejection event. So it's not as simple as writing off oxygen requirements via cabin pressurization. These canopies shatter, bird strikes, et al with significant frequency compared to the civil transport pressurized aircraft fleet. Apples and mangos.

Right now, I bet what they're doing is simply flying around with the aircraft oxygen hose disconnected from the CRU-60 (or whatever the squids call that fitting) attachment. Nothing changes from the CRU-60 port to the pilot's face. That way you can breathe cockpit air without any hardware diaphragm restriction, which below 10k is perfectly legal. The CRU-60 still retains the secondary line to the emergency 10-15 minute emergency bottle from the ejection seat, so no hardware changes or complications are added to this interim situation.

To recap, T-6s and 45s are OBOGS, 38s are LOX.

F4E Mx

My point was that with a pressurization schedule like the T-38 the pilot at aircraft altitudes of up to 25,000 would just initially unbuckle his mask if he felt he was getting poisoned by the OBOGS air as he would have a 10,000, or lower, cabin. With the current T-45 pressurization system schedule if the pilot unlatches his mask at anything over 15,000 feet the cabin is already over 10,000 feet.

As I understand it the Navy intends to fly these aircraft now limited to 15,000 feet with the aircraft cabin at 10,000 feet.

At this point in this train wreck I don't think anything less than 99.5% pure 'aviators breathing oxygen' coming into the pilots mask at all times upon demand is acceptable. Whether the pilots wear the mask at all times, or when the aircraft is above 10,000 feet, or when the cabin is above 10,000 feet, is something that can be hashed out. Certainly proposing disconnecting the hose and inhaling cabin air through the end is pathetic. The fact that they are dancing around and not saying that, or anything else, in plain English says a lot.