Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetjok
Interesting thing to note is that could have represented 1300 hours of fighter time, which could equate to 7 years of flying, prior to getting hired into the right seat of the Mad Dog. Not saying that's the way it is, just that although 2300 hours does sound like low time, it could easily be real quality time over a good number of years.
JJ
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Walrus
I think by low, he meant that 2300 with 800 in the aircraft would probably mean that he was hired at Fedex with 1500hrs, which is well below the average hrs to be hired here with.
My comment was innocent and I was trying to infer anything negative about certain classes of pilots or bring hate. TheWalrus said it best as to what I had been thinking.
I was interested in this accident because the USAF has had several KC-10s lose parts of the stab/elevator while encountering buffet. In one instance, I believe it was enough to cause damage to the stab trim jack screws/motors and the crew ended up with a jammed horizontal stabilizer.
I once had a TCAS RA which commanded a 3,750FPM descent. During the maneuver, it reversed itself and switched to a climbing TCAS RA. We were at FL280, 0.83M, and 565Klbs when it all started. Per the flight manual, I used the vertical speed wheel and autopilot to fly the RA (Air Force rules, not the TCAS maker's) and set the VVI in the green arc. When I rolled the vertical speed wheel from a descent to a climb, the aircraft shook violently ... very violently. Even though we were still at .83M, somehow the aircraft accelerated stalled?? I had our first set of receivers do a damage check of the tail and they didn't see anything unusual. We flew the mission and landed uneventually. I notified maintenance and they inspected the tail but found no damage.
A few months later, a safety rep from the Air Force and Boeing got in touch with me. It seems they were interested in my story and were investigating how the TCAS system could command rates of climbs, descent, and rollouts which could be outside the performance envelope of the KC-10. I've never heard back from them and I don't know what was or was not discovered.
One thing I know for sure, I'm not the only one who has had a KC-10 get into buffet like this.