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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 3:19 pm 
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Aside from the obvious dangers what should someone expect to deal with when it comes to these systems? Is there an alternative to LOX?

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:10 pm 
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262, a lot depends on which seats you are maintaining. Some are inherently more dangerous than others. But if you can find someone who knows the seat and you have the proper manuals and follow the proper procedures you'll be OK.

As far as the LOX, there are basic safety precautions but it's not rocket science. Again follow the established safety procedures and you'll be OK. We like the LOX because it gives much more duration and is good for multiple flights if they happen over a short timeframe. Be advised that you will always be refilling the bottle, the higher the outside temp the faster it bleeds off. The good news is that if you are using the standard 10 liter Essex bottle that it is a low pressure bottle and there is no need for periodic hydro. The vent valve opens at 120 psi.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:19 pm 
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If you don't know what you're doing with ejection seats... HIRE AN EGRESS GUY! While an A&P DOES qualify you to sign off the seat, it doesn't guarantee your safety or that of the guy who's pink rear is strapped to the seat.

I've seen some seats that were certified "hot" in warbirds that you couldn't pay me truck loads of money to go fly!!!

Remember Tigers... They can kill you as quick as they can save your life!

Signed..

An "Egress Guy"


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 9:54 pm 
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Not to nitpick or start some kind of stupid fight, but I think that ejection seats are, in a way, indeed "rocket science"...

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:19 pm 
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RickH wrote:
As far as the LOX, there are basic safety precautions but it's not rocket science. Again follow the established safety procedures and you'll be OK.
Not rocket science certainly, but what is, besides of course actual rocket science? Nonetheless, someone blew off part of their hand servicing an aircraft at a Boeing aircraft depot a few months back. Lots of procedures and recurring training there in a sue-happy environment, but that doesn't preclude human error. I'm sure the employee would prefer to have his fingers back!


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:35 pm 
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Having been a crew chief on B-52's and F-16's both of which have LOX and ejection seats - and now being an A&P - I recommend two things: make sure that you have all of the proper manuals for the seat(s) and hire an egress guy if you can find one. I never took an ejection seat class in A&P school, but I did learn a lot in the AF on how one can kill me in nano seconds. No matter what treat it like it's always armed.

As far as LOX goes, like was said earlier, follow procedures, use the proper protective equipment and know what you're doing and you won't have body parts freezing, falling off and shattering.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:42 pm 
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Thanks guys! I have never serviced LOX or an ejection system. I have serviced regular old aviators O2 and I am very aware of those dangers. I have no plans of attempting LOX or ejection systems!!!!!!!!! This is only for my nerdiness.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:48 pm 
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You're welcome, anything to keep someone from getting hurt or damaging an aircraft. Good warbird people are as valuable as good warbirds!

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:50 pm 
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What about Remove before flight safety pin's? I would think an owner of such an aircraft would take lots of pride in it, and learn about when to remove the pins and when to keep them in.

I would venture to say that possibly the accidents occured due to ignorance by unfamiliar maintenence people "slipping" a pin out and firing the seat. Heard about it alot in the Navy, when plane captains were messing with the plane and fire the seat. Many occurances.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 10:14 pm 
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A2C wrote:
What about Remove before flight safety pin's? I would think an owner of such an aircraft would take lots of pride in it, and learn about when to remove the pins and when to keep them in.

I would venture to say that possibly the accidents occured due to ignorance by unfamiliar maintenence people "slipping" a pin out and firing the seat. Heard about it alot in the Navy, when plane captains were messing with the plane and fire the seat. Many occurances.


The key phrase in your statement is "unfamiliar maintenance people". Like I said in my first post, "make sure that you have all the proper manuals", I guess that would assume that one would actually open and read said manuals.

Even if you're not going to perform maintenance on an ejection seat, if you're going to be working on an aircraft equipped with one you should learn the proper safety precautions and measures associated with the seat. In the AF we trained anyone who might possibly have a reason to be near the seats - crew chiefs, avionics, weapons, etc on what to look for to ensure that the seat was properly safed. I have chewed out more than one pilot because he didn't do his part in disarming the seat before he got out of the cockpit. We were taught on F-16's that before you sat on the canopy rail and leaned into the cockpit to check that the 3 seat pins were installed. Crew chiefs did basic visual inspections of the seat when installed in the plane, and the egress shop did the more detailed maintenance on the seats in the backshop as well as removal and installation of the seats in the plane.

262crew- I'm not sure what type aircraft you're working on that has one (ME 262 I'm guessing?), but it is critical that you learn the do's and don'ts of ejection seats. Like I said, I've only worked on B-52's and F-16's, I'm sure there are some people on here that are more familiar with the older seats installed on the jet warbirds that can give you some good advice. PM me if there's anything else I can do for you.

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PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 5:16 am 
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There is an alternative to LOX, but it isn't cheap. You could run a few hundred gallons of LOX for the engineering cost of the conversion by itself. Engine bleed air from the ECS is routed to an onboard oxygen concentrator and the O2 is stripped off and routed to the Ox system and accumulators. There a two big drawbacks to the system.....no long term storage on the jet and you have to have a bleed air source anytime you want O2. The advantage is that you don't have LOX to deal with and as long as you have bleed air, you will be making O2.


As to seats...Where I work, you have to attend and pass a class prior to being able to enter the cockpit. Not a long class, but it only covers the basics of egress safety. Seat inspection, canopy work and seat removal/install is a longer, more detailed class. Finally, working on the seat for anything other than regular maintenance items is it's own, much longer class.

I don't know the current rules for the civilian world, but vitually all of the pyro on a seat or canopy remover system are of sufficient power that they probably fall under one or more ATF explosives classes and require the appropriate licenses when removed from the aircraft and/or seat. If you have to deal with someone on a seat, be sure and ask about it and verify. You don't want those guys in your hair as they never go away....[/quote]


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PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 11:36 pm 
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CrewDawg wrote:
A2C wrote:
262crew- I'm not sure what type aircraft you're working on that has one (ME 262 I'm guessing?), but it is critical that you learn the do's and don'ts of ejection seats. Like I said, I've only worked on B-52's and F-16's, I'm sure there are some people on here that are more familiar with the older seats installed on the jet warbirds that can give you some good advice. PM me if there's anything else I can do for you.


Like I said this is for my own nerdiness, however if a project should come up with LOX and a ejection seat :wink: I will not even attempt to work on it! Potentially a certified LOX/ ejection seat mechanic will be called!

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 11:42 am 
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I was an Aviation Mechanic Egress (AME) in the Navy Air and worked with ejection seats and LOX systems. This was back in the 60s and we trained on FJ2s and 3s that were setup in the AME hanger at NAS Memphis.

At the time we were trained on the Martin Baker and Raypack seats. The Martin Baker seat used explosive cartages for thrust and the Raypack used a rocket. Safety was a major aspect of the training on the seats because a simple mistake will kill you in a heartbeat. Often the mistakes made were simple dumb, dumb things AMEs did and it was the end for them. Sometimes they didn’t know it was a dumb idea until it was too late.

One example that was a killer, was disarming the Martin Baker seat so it could be removed from the aircraft. To disarm the seat the upper explosive cartage and firing pin assembly had to be removed and to do that you first had to remove the cable that connected from the face screen to the sear clip on the firing pin. The sear clip was a little ramped (cam) part that went through a slot in the firing pin. The sear clip had a hook on one side that the face screen cable attached too. When the pilot ejected they would grab the handles on the face screen that projected above their helmet and pull them forward and the screen would come down in front of their helmet to help with the air blast. As the screen was pulled forward the attached cable would pull the sear clip forward lifting the firing pin slightly and as the high part of the sear went past center it would fly out letting the firing pin snap down with heavy spring pressure igniting the top explosive cartage. On the opposite end of the sear clip from the cable hook there was a hole that was used to insert a safety pin that had the “remove before flight” flag that was used keep the seat safe when the aircraft was on the ground.

Typically about the only way you could reach the cable to remove it was to stand in the seat, lean over it and reach around the top of the seat. The sear clip had to be pushed forward against the safety pin that had the “remove before flight” flag and then the hook moved away from the side of the firing pin so there was space to pull the cable out of the hook. A few times AMEs, sanding in the seats had a hard time getting sear clip forward enough to get the cable out of the hook, so not thinking clearly, they pulled the safety pin out of the sear thinking they could push the sear forward a little bit further. Without the safety pin in place the sear could easily be pulled over center and fire the seat and you do not want to be around a seat that fires off on the ground let alone standing on it.

There are a lot of sad stories about AMEs working with seats and LOX systems.


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