Crash of the X-31 near Edwards AFB in 1995

[fiverats1]

Owned

[mouloudo]

cool channel

[Mitsdat]

This would have been eliminated if the pilot could over-ride the system, Its commands would have still been modified by the computer but only by a small percentage, enough to put it on its belly a landing strip, All facts listed are from a book on the X-31's history. Excellent plane for the late 90's. Pitty its program was canned

[Mitsdat]

The problem is the keil probe heating system had been disconnected during routine maintenance, The keil prob supply's the planes computer with data to preform standard tasks and to alter those given by the pilot with out stalling etc. It's unconnected connection froze because cold temps are speed sending a mixed message to the computer causing to malfunction, Even though the pilot ejected the air craft still tried to recover from its stall, Lucky it didn't recover a keep flying by its self!

[bigisezhi]

@Mitsdat Wow! Excellent recall of the salient details leading to the marked divergence from controlled flight shown here in the video clip. I remember the unusual complexity of that probe seeing it in person on static display at the always excellent Edwards AFB airshows. The loss of the X-31 aircraft was regrettable. Proposed flight test if the airframe hadn't crashed would have incrementally cut the height off of the vertical stabilizer forcing the other stability systems to provide control.

[earthman202]

:O..

on another note, my gramps works there

[1969LEO1969]

Sad crash, the X-31 was an amazing airplane but if I had the card for the day I would get out too. It was it's last flight and experimental planes end up sitting out back at some museum after their project ends any way.

[aflads]

do not so worry about rus su and migs;)

aerodinamiks in rus plaine forever batter

and iven amer constructors accepted it and tolk so in one of a dokumentaly mouvi

[pinchecabron666]

lol

[alexx86hater]

That's why ALL modern Russian fighters has manual override.

You cannot fully rely on computer, especially in extreme situations.

[admiralnomad]

You can't manually override an inherently unstable airframe. An F-16, Mig-33, Gripen, Eurofighter, etc, wouls all be completely uncontrollable without computer asistance.

[1969LEO1969]

@admiralnomad does the computer still control the flight surfaces in an engine out situation becaue there are a couple of instances of dead stick landings in f-16's

[33vortex]

@admiralnomad

Not sure about the others but the Gripen has a function which stabilizes the aircraft by disengaging the servos for the canards. That way the airframe become naturally stable and will rectify itself given that it has enough altitude to recover.

[101andrewj]

@admiralnomad sure u can, hop out the window, and surf on the plane until u get 2 the runway, then climb and manually lower the landing gear and ajust the flaps until u touch down. then u can slow the plane by dragging your feet along the ground

[cutty02]

@admiralnomad yes you can override them... Actually in a stall you may need to override the FLCS.

[123456789mischief]

@admiralnomad you tell the computer what you want and it makes the aircraft do the proper corrections to its controll surface's. so your right you could never make all the corrections required to keep it flying

[spencercjohnson]

@admiralnomad Don't be so sure, not all planes are this way mr civilian expert. :)

[KARASAWA40]

You actually have to fully rely on computers a lot of the time, some planes can't fly without them. They're no less reliable than older control systems.

[Cabuncle]

must be hard for the designer to see their work dropping down like a stone and explode...

[cutter043]

well that stress test went wrong .... anyone got any more quarters??? lol

[AirpowerAirforce]

the instrament probe on the nose iced over making it imposible for the fly-by wire computers to get accurate readings. the piolet safly ejected afterwords

[Savak22]

Such a terrible loss, that plane was an engineering masterpiece.

[krpinckney]

Damn, never seen that footage of that.. Damn.

[pwnage0013]

he was killed and then buried!

[CheckSixDotCom]

Or not... Follow the link in the info box.

[Strykaas]

Did he eject ?

Nice vertical manoeuver btw.

[joshuatzu]

he safely ejected at 18,000 ft. and parachuted to the ground.