-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Spanish Hornet Pilot - Good Day for the Brown Underwear
- Thread starter taxi1
- Start date
DBM
Well-Known Member
A similar thing happened about 9 months ago at a Turkish airshow. Similar movement and everything
Dios Mio!
That was a mighty close one.
That was a mighty close one.
So it looked like he commanded a left roll at too slow of a speed, the right (up going) wing stalled and it rolled off, he stomped a bunch of rudder to get the plane rolling while unloading semi-inverted. But the Hornet won’t let you stall, will it? I’m applying old plane thinking to Fly By Wire?
These guys talk about it, better views too.
These guys talk about it, better views too.
More info
The Spanish Air Force has taken to X to explain what happened, and our initial analysis was correct. See below (translated via X):
“Many of you have been asking us, so in this thread, we’ll tell you what happened during the Gijón air festival.
As you have seen, one of our F-18 fighters performed an evasive maneuver upon detecting a flock of birds in its path. This action is part of the standard protocol to preserve both the pilot’s safety and the public’s security.
Our aviators are trained to react in milliseconds to any unforeseen event. In this case, the pilot acted with exemplary speed and professionalism, avoiding a possible collision without compromising the exhibition.
Safety is, and will continue to be, our top priority at every air show. Thank you to all attendees for your enthusiasm and trust. Let’s keep flying together!”
The Spanish Air Force has taken to X to explain what happened, and our initial analysis was correct. See below (translated via X):
“Many of you have been asking us, so in this thread, we’ll tell you what happened during the Gijón air festival.
As you have seen, one of our F-18 fighters performed an evasive maneuver upon detecting a flock of birds in its path. This action is part of the standard protocol to preserve both the pilot’s safety and the public’s security.
Our aviators are trained to react in milliseconds to any unforeseen event. In this case, the pilot acted with exemplary speed and professionalism, avoiding a possible collision without compromising the exhibition.
Safety is, and will continue to be, our top priority at every air show. Thank you to all attendees for your enthusiasm and trust. Let’s keep flying together!”
I’m calling BS on that one, though from a PR perspective, it’s probably a good move. Having spent a good amount of time in the low level environment, most large birds will tuck their wings and drop if they see you coming. The standard pilot reaction to a co-altitude bird is to just pull. So if bird avoidance was the reason for what’s depicted in the video, the maneuver that was executed wouldn’t be what most pilots experienced in the low level environment would do.
I wasn’t in in the cockpit, but what it looked like to me was a pilot initiating a rolling maneuver, recognizing that they wouldn’t be able to make it work at that altitude, then bailing by reversing.
Thoughts from my Hornet/Rhino drivers?
It certainly will let you. It'll do everything it can to trim to 1G flight and keep going (@sevenhelmet can talk much more intelligently about this than me), but yes, you can stall it. I've even spun the thing. You're thinking of Airbus FBW logic.....things like alpha floors that we don't have. In the Hornet FRS syllabus we did dirty stalls in fams, as well as a dedicated "OCF" flight where you intentionally put it into spins and other stuff like 0 airspeed tail slides.
That's what I saw paddles. Dude tried to do a roll way too low and slow, got a huge sink rate, probably got the GPWS alerts I imagine, and successfully got out of it.
Always the right answer 😎
And all the people on the beach, clueless that they almost were statistics.