Wed Jul 11, 2018 7:23 am
Wed Jul 11, 2018 8:21 am
Kyleb wrote:I'm disappointed that such a unique aircraft was transferred out of Robbins. One of my grandfathers and possibly my father worked on the project at Lockheed GA, which is <100 miles from Robbins. Beyond that, Pensacola (where the testing was done) is only a couple of hundred miles away from Robbins. We had several members of our EAA chapter who worked on the project, one of whom was on-scene for the crash.
I first saw that airframe at Robbins before the Credible Sport program was in the public eye. Not too long after I first saw the airframe (with all sorts of bolt-on mods, but no display information explaining the mod's), CNN had the popular film clip showing one takeoff, one landing, and the crash. I had learned about the program from a friend who's dad was a local shrink, with at least one client working on the program. Adding two and two together, I kind of figured out what they were up to, but it was 20 years before the whole story came out.
As part of one of my discussions with local participants, my grandfather indicated that there was a lot of back and forth about how the retro-rockets should be controlled. An automated system tied to a radar altimeter, or someone in the cockpit watching the altimeter. As I understood it from him, the automated system was implemented and resulted in the crash.