I supposed it had to happen eventually, everybody has one in time. And I had mine yesterday.
It was a good hop, really. Raging around down low, hiding in the mountains, waiting for a chance to pounce on the unwary. Although this is graduation week at the (prestigious) Navy Fighter Weapons School, and there are very few unwary students left. Still, good clean fun, and your host can say “Copy kill” with the best of them.
Cruised on back to the field for the recovery with few cares, being very nearly the first to land. The students being further away from the field at the knock-it-off, and the instructors taking advantage of whatever fuel they had left to whirl and flail at one another in the best traditions of the service. A tolerably precise landing, there’s the seven thousand feet to go board, and at 150 knots indicated I pulled the drag chute lever aft, bunting the nose slightly out of the aero-braking attitude to ensure a tangle-free deployment.
Which is precisely when nothing happened.
Ordinarily you feel a pretty good tug on the shoulder harness as the drag chute deploys. Not like an arrested landing aboard ship, mind. But the sensation is unmistakeable, as is the effect, particularly at higher speeds. Which I was still traveling at, the chute having either failed to deploy or parted behind me, there was no way to know. Look, there goes the six board. Still about 150 knots indicated. I’ve mentioned to you before how much runway the jet takes up during the take-off roll with the afterburner howling behind you. It takes up a surprising amount of pavement at idle, too. Especially with no drag chute. Time to go.
The procedure calls for full grunt, and drag chute lever forward to cut the chute if it’s a streamer. It takes a little while for the engine to make full thrust from idle, time spent nervously watching the departure end come up. At least I was still going pretty fast, so there wasn’t that far to go to get to fly-away speed. And I was light.
Tower cleared me to land on the left runway, which is a few thousand feet longer. Much to the dismay of a student whose need to land was at least as great as my own, the right runway being fouled by a drag chute, and hizzoner being low fuel state as he subsequently admitted under protest when he was asked to go-around and make room for me. But based on the timing he was now second in line for special handling. There’s a good man, wait your turn and ‘fess up first in the future. I hope you’ve learned something from this.
I was already pretty low on fuel myself, so I didn’t need to burn down gross weight. Flew about as slow as I could without risking a tail strike or hard landing, she does not like to fly slow. Still about 185 knots in the round-out. With no drag chute the book calls for aerobraking until 130 knots, and judicious use of the wheel brakes from that point on, balanced across the length of the runway remaining. You’re a long time holding the aero-braking attitude with no chute. You go by a lot of runway. Depending upon headwinds or tailwinds and runway length, one might even shut the engine down to reduce residual thrust.
I didn’t in the event, but the brakes – and anti-skid – got a pretty good workout. When I taxied back to the line the maintenance guys told me to go away for 10 minutes. Just in case the brakes might, you know: Catch fire. Which they didn’t, so no harm done.
It’s funny how quickly you can go from “comfort zone” to “wrestling snakes” in this business.
But even snake wrestling beats life in the cube, for me at least. In measured doses.
Like all of you, my morning ritual always started with a read of Lex’s blog over a cup o’Joe. A brother in arms and in peace – his writing style was unique and expressly Lex, always bringing a smile to my face even when he was explaining the potential awshit he just averted. I am really saddened and cannot add any words that make the hurt any less. He was a true patriot, a hero for continuing to hone the skills of the fledlings thru his wisdom and hours behind a stick – a giver. God Bless Lex. So Long for Now. Stand down and rest – you deserve it.
[...] A thread on his blog which was opened for condolences, and a less formal one which was taken over by them when the bad news first came. [...]
I checked in at this post last evening before heading for home and felt a thud inside me.
We’ve met but a few times. I had my last Guinness with Lex before having to give it up for life a few years back.
To Lex’s wife, two daughters and son, our family shares your loss.
[...] His last post at the blog was a bit eerie but pretty much stated his philosophy best when it came to what he was doing. He’d had a drag chute malfunction on landing and had to “wrestle snakes”, as he put it, for a bit before finally landing the aircraft safely. When I taxied back to the line the maintenance guys told me to go away for 10 minutes. Just in case the brakes might, you know: Catch fire. Which they didn’t, so no harm done. [...]
[...] His last post at the blog was a bit eerie but pretty much stated his philosophy best when it came to what he was doing. He’d had a drag chute malfunction on landing and had to “wrestle snakes”, as he put it, for a bit before finally landing the aircraft safely. When I taxied back to the line the maintenance guys told me to go away for 10 minutes. Just in case the brakes might, you know: Catch fire. Which they didn’t, so no harm done. [...]
I can’t get past the irony of the words he chose to begin this post: I suppose it had to happen eventually.
damn it.
I am stunned. My friend is gone.
@Homefront. Thanks for the kind thoughts. Xo
RIP; damn it, Lex…
My thoughts and prayers to his wife and children. May Lord give you all strength and comfort in this trying time.
Fair winds and following seas, Captain.
[...] is apparently his crash. If so, his drag chute failed to deploy properly, again (for he blogged about that happening just yesterday), and he may have gotten caught in a dead man’s corner where he couldn’t take off and [...]
words fail me.
prayers for his family, and a toast to his memory.
What the heck were the ground crews doing?! Did they even inspect the Kfir for the next flight or talk to the pilot?! If it’s the drag chute, the crew and the crew chief are utterly incompetent! Condolences to his family and friends.
I hope to God it doesn’t turn out to be something like that, but it is the first thought I had as a previous Aviation Maintenance Chief/MMCO.
IT WAS NOT THE GROUND CREW, IN ANY WAY. YOU SHOULD REFRAIN FROM COMMENTING WHEN YOUR LACK OF KNOWLEDGE WILL PROVE YOU TO BE AN IDIOT. THE DRAG CHUTE HAD ABSOLUTELY “NOTHING” TO DO WITH THIS VERY UNFORTUNATE MISHAP.
TORRENT; YOUR IGNORANCE TRULY SHOWS FROM YOUR COMMENT HERE. THE DRAG CHUTE HAD ABSULTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS VERY UNFORTUNATE MISHAP. THIS IS IN NO WAY THE GROUND CREWS FAULT. A LOT OF VERY BAD CHAIN OF EVENTS, NONE OF WHICH CAN BE LINKED TO HIS MAINTENANCE TEAM.
YOUR BEST BET IS STOP BLOGGING !!!!
Meanie,
We don’t do mean here. Even when we disagree, we do so civilly, something that apparently escapes you at the moment. How about a little respect for our Captain’s blog.
Of all the thousand plus that posted, You are the first and only one to come across nasty.
Her hear, CG-23 Sailor. In the best traditions of the service..
I’ve lurked behind the wall of anonymity as a reader here for several years, but for the first time, I’m compelled to comment. Lex’s corner of the internet was a daily read for me I thoroughly enjoyed.
My prayers go out to his family, and to many of you that maintained a relationship with the Captain, no matter how distant.
With full credit, I decided just moments ago to use the last two lines of this post as a quote in my signature line on my favorite web forum. (A bunch of fellow USAF retirees.) As a retired USAF flyer I understand the sentiment exactly. I just wish I had the wordskills to put something like that into words with the skills he did.
I just threw a nickel on the grass.
[...] His last post at the blog was a bit eerie but pretty much stated his philosophy best when it came to what he was doing. He’d had a drag chute malfunction on landing and had to “wrestle snakes”, as he put it, for a bit before finally landing the aircraft safely. When I taxied back to the line the maintenance guys told me to go away for 10 minutes. Just in case the brakes might, you know: Catch fire. Which they didn’t, so no harm done. [...]
[...] cryptically, one of LeFon’s last entries details a close call he had as a trainer for student fighter pilots at Naval Air Station Fallon. He [...]
[...] dead… but others. While I was not a commenter nor someone who interacted with his blog… Lex died. Many of the bloggers I do know personally and have met have written about him. It makes me sad [...]
[...] wrote this in a blog post the day before he perished…its an erie epitaph, fitting perhaps. He will be missed. [...]
[...] next to last post, Streamer, ended with these lines, which perhaps seems almost a premonition now: It’s funny how quickly [...]
Been reading through all the postings relating to the good Captain getting back into the “saddle” .. somehow, with 20/20 hindsight , it makes for some slightly uneasy reading — PARs, GCAs … issues almost from day one.
Have been putting together an “iPad” optimized ibook, for my own private viewing (who knows, others may be interested) – LEX TALES (Rhythms and Kfir tales), but am having issues with the ‘Ahab’ posting – keep getting an error when trying to “save” the video .. does any one have a copy???
Cheers
Dave Scott aka kiwidave
Got a phone last week from a shipmate, told me about CAPT LaFon. I knew him as CDR LaFon (OPS O of the USS CONSTELLATION). BEST DAMN OPS O the CONNIE ever had. When I heard the news it gave me goose bumps. My prayers are with his family.
This is something I don’t think belongs on the Open Thread. It belongs here, under Streamer, where so many of us first got that uneasy feeling.
Lex gave me an insight into flying that I’d never seen from the pilot side of the equation. Insight into the risks, snakes in the cockpit, fighting the unexpected and weighing the options. He reminded me of a friend I once knew only from on-line (Usenet, back before the World Wide Wait, when the internet was 7-bit ASCII and 1200 baud was fast and 4K of RAM was enough and, oh, Real Men wore pocket protectors), and later met once over lunch.
Mary Shafer. At the time she was, to me, a veritable Stephen Hawkins of aerodynamics. I hung on her every word ever posted. She was a Real Engineer, like those guys in the white short-sleeved shirts with pocket protectors smoking Lucky’s I saw during the Apollo launches. From her I Could Learn What It Means to be an Engineer. She and Lex were the same mentor, just on different sides of the cockpit glass.
I never told this to Mary. Never told it to Lex either. It seemed so insignificant, like telling Hawkins that, oh, because of you I took an interest in physics. Yeah, that’ll break the ice at parties.
After the bad news I went searching and found what it was she had written that reminded me of Lex. It was a post she had made after the Challenger explosion, when so many people thought flying was all “seat of the pants” and we were smart enough to land a person on the moon so why can’t we simply calculate all the risks in a bombing run or make flying as perfectly safe as driving, and where’s my flying car Popular Mechanics promised me?
http://yarchive.net/air/perfect_safety.html
Life is risky. Nobody knows that better than the pilots or the engineers who sign off on the flight. Everybody is also aware that what you can’t predict may well rise up to bite you.
I am sure there is a Mary, or many of them, at ATAC. There are other pilots at ATAC, though none as eloquent and dashing and dare I say above-average as Lex.
They mourn as we do. They are even now questioning themselves, engaging that 20/20 hindsight of Monday morning quarterbacks and news announcers. And they’ve the same job, the same decisions, to make today. And tomorrow.
Pray for Lex’s family, as we all do. Pray for his co-workers, too, that they do not compromise themselves over their grief, or compromise the mission.
We are not above grief, but we can put it in a box, examine it later, and not let it control us.
And that’s probably the most powerful thing I’ve learned from Lex. And Mary.
– Max
Max:
Yes I am sure there is a long list of people asking themselves, “what if?”. And to some extent it is good they do so that the future might be made a little bit more safe. I’m saving that post as a reminder that we all have to do our best and live with the results even when they don’t turn out the way we had planned. Mostly they do – and the result is progress.
V/R
OldT6
I looked up some of Mary’s other postings on Usenet. She is a sharp old gal, and a hell of an engineer. She has a blog, you should know; It’s http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com.
I think she might be a bit BAPish, which endears her to me. Her current perseveration, uh, I mean, Special Interest, seems to be knitting. She still preserves her Special Interest for McDonnell F-4s, acquired when she worked at Edwards.
Funny thing: A large number of female Aspies, and female borderline Aspies, seem really into knitting.
Oh. My. God. My Good Wife has been seriously into knitting for about ten years or so. Also had a fling with origami, bakes our bread from scratch almost daily, and did I mention she’s so self-sufficient I’m pretty much here for vehicle maintenance and stomping on spiders?
Mary must have had more of an effect upon my then-fiance than I had thought possible.
I shall have to contact her soon (Mary, not my wife). She may not even remember me, or those little die-cast SR-71 pencil sharpeners I gave to her over lunch. But I’d like her to know I hold her responsible for some of my choices in life, and they’ve turned out well.
– Max
Female engineers are rare, and wonderful, and should be cherished.
Oh, you know how I know she has autistic tendencies, aside from being a female engineer, and the knitting?
She thinks McDonnell F-4s are good-lookin!
That is obviously the result of an autistic perseveration, of a bad and perverted kind.
As any sensible autistic person possessing the slightest bit of taste and discernment will tell you, the Folland Gnat is the purtiest jet fighter ever built, and not only that, gave a very good account of itself in actual combat against F-86s!