 Good morning. Welcome to Sun and Fun and welcome to a very special program. Our speaker today, Mike Bush, works with Cirrus Design and he is a veteran accident investigator. Mike belongs to the International Association of Aviation Safety Investigation, which is one of the more up and coming and prominent ways we are looking into how to look at an accident in order to learn from it and not have it happen again. Mike will be talking to you today about how to look at advanced systems in aviation in order to contain and maintain your safety. Please welcome Mike Bush. Good morning. Thank you, Kathleen. We all talk about the technically advanced aircraft today and all these amazing systems we have from electronics to parachutes to airbags now. As an accident investigator, we kind of got behind the power curve early on and we were really greatly affected by these new safety systems and we're thinking, wow, this is going to save a lot of lives. What we didn't realize is that if people don't use these systems in the course of having an issue and the aircraft does go down, why then what do you do with, for example, the rocket that's in the wreckage? So I came back to my boss one day and I said, you know, we've got this great system and it works really well and it's saving lives all over the world, but what do we do about it? And I think it could pose a hazard to first responders. And in a very kind way, Bill said, well, you need to go fix that. So for the last two years, I've been out also stumping and talking to accident investigators and first responders all over the world about some of these systems. And I want to share with some of that with you today. I'm not going to talk about how we do investigations, particularly because that's a whole different lecture and a whole different science, but I think an awareness is something that we need to get out to the people of the world. A lot of folks have no clue that these systems exist and they only think that they exist in the technical advanced aircraft such as the Cirrus or Columbia's or whatever. In truth, the majority of these systems exist in smaller aircraft, sport lights and experimentals and what we used to call ultra lights and so forth. In fact, I think the number of them may astound you. There's probably approaching 23,000 of them that we know right now. And if you do the numbers, that's a very high percentage of the fleet that's actually actively flying every day. So I go out and talk to first responders and say, look, you need to change how you're thinking about going out to an accident site now because you have to assume rather than guess, assume that these aircraft have these systems on board so that you're not going to be surprised when you stumble upon one out there. And it's kind of like the loaded gun theory. You always treat a gun as if it's loaded and so we have to now start thinking about airplanes in terms of all of them will have these systems eventually. For example, cars. Today I don't think you can find a car out there that doesn't have an air bank system in it. And so I think it's very appropriate that we caution people about these things and warn them that the future is coming. So I think it's very important that we warn them about these things and that's primarily my audience and that's who I talk to a lot. I did 56 seminars last year just running around the country and the world over season and so forth, trying to talk to Fireman and tell him about this. So we're going to review what these systems look like and what you should do about it when you encounter them and how to treat them safely so you don't get hurt. And one of the things I'm going to show today, if I can see what I'm doing here, my slides aren't working, okay, there we go. Let's see if that's going to come up here, well, there we go. This is what a ballistic parachute system looks like and this is a Cirrus aircraft upon which we tested it for certification. Now we certainly weren't the first people to come up with the idea of a ballistic parachute system and the idea of a parachute system on an airplane was certainly proven in 1924, I think it was when Roscoe Turner as an air show stunt actually deployed one of 5,000 feet in Santa Ana, California, so many years ago. The idea didn't catch on. He was kind of a stunt pilot at the time and so they thought it was just kind of a passing fad and it wasn't until some people like BRS and other folks came along and started working with the smaller aircraft that these things started appearing in numbers. And when we first moved to Duluth, we said, you know, this would be something we really want to have on the airplane because our founder, Alan Clapmar, had been involved in a midair collision and he survived, which is very unusual actually. And he said, you know, if we build airplanes, we want to have something different on this airplane. And so we went down and talked to BRS and we thought about how we should put this on the airplane. And so we did. And this is part of the testing that we did for certification. And now we have some 3,300 airplanes out there. But we were by no means the first. And these systems are very successful. I think we just had the 201st life save with these things about a month ago. And we continue to save them worldwide. The saves that CERIS has had, we've saved 21 lives and worldwide 201 with other aircraft. So the systems are working in the becoming popular and you start going to start seeing them. Also appearing are airbags. Airbags and airplanes, you say, yes. And some of the most advanced, technically, people I've talked to are just stunned when I tell them we have airbags and airplanes to these and not just the CERIS and the TAAs. They're right in the Huskies and some other airplanes out here too. You can see them on the flight line. So we're going to show you these two systems. And in some detail, I've got some artifacts here, which I'll show you. And we'll start with the ballistic parachute system. I want to start with, here is a video that you may or may not have seen, but this happened in France last year. And what we're in is there's a camera in this RANS-6 aircraft. And it's hard to see on the screen, but he's following a high-wing aircraft, which you maybe see in the hillside right about here. He's following this fellow. What you're going to see is an aircraft pulling a glider, towing a glider, that will appear on the screen from the right. And this particular RANS-6 aircraft is going to get tied up with that tow rope. So mid-airs, as so many accidents, as you can see, happen very, very quickly. And it's hard to imagine how fast these things happen. You say, well, I know what I'm going to do, and so forth. Often time is very precious, and you don't have time. So people that understand the parachute and so forth, usually thought about when and where they're going to activate the thing before it ever happens. And this gentleman pulled the handle rather smartly and came down safely. He and the airplane both landed safely. And the airplane's been rebuilt a little bit, repaired. And it's flying again. It gives you an idea of the rate of descent. It's a rather gentle thing. People we've talked to say it's kind of serene, until they see the ground rush coming up at them. But most of these people walk away quite unscathed. And so it's quite rewarding that we have these devices that can save lives. Now, as an action investigator, there's just hundreds and hundreds of things that can go wrong out there on the site that can hurt you. We've got bugs and critters and things that like to bite you and cut you and so forth. And people like to fall down and so on out there. It's a very hazardous environment because it is so different. And I highlighted a couple of things here that you may not think about. We have a lot of these very capable TAA airplanes. They're flying at high altitudes. Our new airplane's turbocharged. And so of course it's got an oxygen system on ball. Oxygen is not new on airplanes, but most people don't think of little airplanes as having oxygen. And of course, in a crash situation, an oxygen bottle can be quite a hazard. TKS fluid is not hazardous in itself. This is a de-icing fluid that we use on the airplane. It's well tanked and so forth. But people are always concerned about where they're going to be able to fill up the tank. And so they carry extra stuff with them and they throw it in the back seat in a plastic container, not realizing that it's sort of like carrying an extra five gallons of gas in the trunk of your car. A lot of people don't think about the little things, the bugs. We have blood-borne pathogens to deal with these days. Unfortunately, and action investigators have to be qualified to go on the site. They have to have had some training on how to deal with blood-borne pathogens. And a lot of little airplanes are used as couriers for medical samples. And so when you go out there to investigate things, you may not see what it is that the hazard is. Composite airplanes are coming to the fore. And of course, composite is a petrochemical product. It's no more hazardous than anything else out there, but it does burn. And when it does, it leaves a particulate in the air, which can be a carcinogen. So you need to be equipped with the proper masks and protective equipment. A lot of people don't know that paratroopers are these skydivers now. They are pretty sporting fellows, and that equipment is very good today. You see it every day at the air show when it starts out here at sun and fun. And these square shoots are very reliable. But occasionally, these guys like to get down really low before they pull the shoot. And sometimes, these things don't go well. And so they carry a backup shoot with them. And to get the shoot out even faster, they have some ordnance on board those packs. One of them is the equivalent of a .38 caliber shot to get the canopy out faster. Another one is the equivalent of a .410 shotgun shell. And they also have something about the size of a Campbell soup can that's called an extender. And it shoots little arms out that look like antennas to help open the canopy faster. So as an investigator, if you're out there and you see a skydiver face down, you want to be careful how you turn him over. We also have these airbags now. And I think they're a lot safer than the carbags that we're familiar with. We'll talk about those at the second half here. And of course, now we have ballistic parachute systems. In comparison to everything else, I don't think the ballistic parachute systems are a huge hazard, but you'd need to be aware of them because they can pack a punch if you're not aware. We think these things are very safe. And they are. And we've made them as safe and reliable as possible. There's no fancy batteries or memories or computers involved. It's just an old fashioned pull the cable, fire the igniter and get the rocket out of the airplane. The rocket's job is to actually pull the parachute out of the airplane. And so its technical term is called an extractor. And they would look something like this in the airplane. I don't know if you can get a shot of this, but this is what we call a parachute rocket or ballistic parachute rocket. This is the one we have in the Ceres. We use a similar one in 182, for example. And oh, did I say that other airplanes have these things? Well, you can retrofit some of the older planes. It's not just the brand new factory sticker airplanes. You can go out and find an older Cessna, for example, that's been an SDC to have one of these things on board. Again, assume every airplane has these things on them. And this is what the basic system looks like. So it's not real big, it's not real heavy, but it does pack a punch. And its job, again, is to get the parachute out of the airplane. So our goal when we go out and talk to people is to protect the first responders when they go out there. Make them aware so they don't get hurt when these things are out there. Because simply stretching the cable on an airplane that's broken up, for example, could in fact fire the igniter. This thing is designed to work, not to not work. So you say, well, why would you want to have one of these things in your airplane? Gee, I'd rather have the 55 pounds of fuel. And we've had that argument also. Well, a long time ago when I made up this list, when Bill said go out and tell people, I made up this list thinking, well, what could happen? And I'm rewarded by the fact that we hadn't even delivered our first airplane, really, by then. And this list has existed for some time. And I'm here to tell you that every one of these things has now happened. Pilot incapacitation. In a light airplane, if the pilot has a bad day or gets sick or is truly incapacitated with a stroke or something, if there's anybody else on board the airplane who's just a passenger, not a qualified pilot, it's going to be a very long day indeed for those folks. You read articles of people, the wife, being able to get radioed down and so forth. But those things don't happen very often. And unfortunately, it has usually a bad ending. Well, we've had not one but two different pilots who became incapacitated and were saved by the parachute. And in one case, the pilot's son actually pulled the handle. And in the first case, the gentleman had a brain tumor that he wasn't aware of. And he blacked out while he was flying. And he woke up coming down well past V&E and was able to make a recovery. And then he realized he was paralyzed from the waist down, but he was able to reach up and pull the handle. And he went into a tributary of the Hudson River and was ultimately saved by a boater. So incapacitation is an issue. How about mid-air collision? We've just witnessed that. Happened so quickly. If you're missing part of your airplane, it doesn't matter if you're Sky King or not. You're just not going to be able to maybe get it down in one piece. So we need to pull the handle because we know what those results will be. Loss of controller spin, the FAA will tell you that those numbers are still staggering, very high. And these parachutes are designed to get you out of a spin. If you do lose control of the airplane, the obvious thing to do is to pull the handle. At night over the mountains, I realize in my slide here that that's not a proper English. It's got three dots in front of the at night over the mountains. So you have to kind of fill in blanks where you'd say, let's see, out of fuel at night over the mountains or lost over the mountains or incapacitated or especially disoriented, something like that. We've had that actually happen a couple of times. And those people walked away scratch-free. Terrain not safe for a suitable for a safe landing. That's a nice way of saying making an off-airport landing. Unfortunately, over the years, I've been flying for 41 years. And I've known a lot of friends and had a lot of friends that actually got hurt pretty badly or killed when they made a precautionary landing or had to land because their engine quit or something. And they would pick a field or something only to be severely injured when they got down low where they could see what the details were. Perhaps they could see the power line across the end now that they didn't see when they started to approach the field or got cut by barbed wire fence or ditches or whatever. And so that's kind of a hazardous undertaking. We recommend now that you pull the handle, you know, because we know what the results will be pretty much. And again, many airplanes are being certified with these systems after the fact. You can actually retrofit an older Cessna 182, 172, 152 with these systems. And it's becoming quite acceptable to have this. So don't assume because it's an old airplane that it doesn't have something in it like this. These systems differ from ours. I have here a picture of a 172. And I took this picture one day because I happen to know what the N number was. This airplane at the time belonged to ballistic recovery systems in St. Paul who makes these devices for us. And the airplane, I asked people, you see anything different about this airplane? What is it? Well, it's a Cessna 172. I asked them if they see anything that's unusual about it. And they say no. And that's the whole point. You can't really tell that there's a system involved because we're a little bit behind the power curve on signage, warning signs, exterior signs. So this is the airplane that BRS used to get the supplemental type certificate for the parachute system. And if you look at it closely, they also have a 182 and a 152 that they use for the similar purpose. This is looking in the back window of the 172. You see a little sign that's stuck on there, but it's difficult to read. There is no standard for this. I mean, we stick them on there because we think it's a good idea. But there is, in fact, no particular standard for it. So we're trying to get people to understand that it's sometimes necessary to put some warning stickers on there. And a lot of folks don't want these things to look like an X-Tel race car. But on the other hand, we think that warning signs are important. So you're going to see a variety of them. And because there's no standard, it's difficult to get people to put them on there in proper way. What you're looking at is a container for the parachute, the large box. And the smaller box is where the ballistic rocket goes. And yes, it comes right out the back window. The one on the Cirrus isn't very big. We do have one on there, but it's nothing spectacular. We'd like to see something bigger maybe. If you look in the back of the 182, you could say, well, gee, what's this in the back seat? Is that a beer cooler or a shoebox or what? There's no particular warning signs on it because they're not required. And I love the logo here. You can see that through the baggage door. But there's no sign that says warning rocket on it. So if you're a first responder going to this thing, upside down somewhere, you may not know that these things exist in there, which is a hazard. Let me show you a little test footage here that we took when they were certifying the 182. This is the ballistic rocket system being deployed through 182 as part of their test. I'm going to show this again in slow motion so you can see the full effect of it. And what you're seeing is a solid-state rocket or solid-fueled rocket pulling a 55-pound package of parachute right out the back window. So you can imagine you're walking around the accident site and somebody trips over the cable or something. And you've got an issue on your hands. Two years ago, we went to Oshkosh. And this is kind of taking inventory of how many airplanes might have ballistic shoots on them. And this is the flight-designed CT. It's a very nice little airplane. They're being sold in numbers now. It's kind of small. But because of its real estate available for signage, there's not much on the way of warning signs on this either. So you have to, as a first responder, become kind of a sleuth or detective and look for some of the signs. If you look between the two front seats on this thing, you'll see a little red handle there. And that's indicative that there may be a system on board. The system is, in fact, behind the pilot's seat on the right side behind a bulkhead. It's just out of view. And similarly on the serious, you can't see it. Other aircraft have the system right outside. Here's the whole canister that holds the parachute. And then we have the launch tube for the extractor and the rocket right there. And notice that these are all cable operated. And this one's kind of hanging right out in the breeze at Oshkosh. It's pretty easy to determine that this one has a ballistic parachute on board. This Quicksilver is a very popular airplane now. And here we see an activation handle on board. So we know that it's got a system. And secondly, that it's got a tie wrap through the safety pin. You have to ask yourself, well, gee, is that a good idea or not? Well, we think it is because at air shows, people like to get in the airplanes and be Walter Minty. And so we've had occasions where the kids get in and say, gee, Dad, what's this? And try to pull the handle. So we try to isolate these systems while we're at the air shows. However, having said that, when the guy flies home, he really does need to remove that because we do have cases of people who forget to pull the pin as part of their pre-flight checklist. And then when they need it, forget to pull the pin and they sometimes meet their demise, pulling the handle all the way to the ground. That pin works really well. Some airplanes are certified. You wouldn't think that they are, but they are. This particular XT, we're looking at the back end of it here, you might think that's part of the exhaust system. In fact, it is the parachute. Here's a canister system. The rounded end is what goes into the wind, so to speak, and the back end is where the parachute would come out. What you may not trigger to right away is this piece down here at the bottom is in fact the rocket. And you're saying, Mike, you're telling me the rockets don't look like rockets? Mike's telling you the rockets don't look like rockets in the traditional sense. So kind of think and close your eyes a little bit and say, well, gee, what does a rocket really look like? And if you're from NASA, you're probably gonna come up with something like this. If you're a kid and somebody hands you a crayon and some paper and say, here, draw a rocket, you're gonna probably come up with something more traditional, sort of a V2-esque looking device, pointy nose, guidance fins and so forth, maybe some exhaust coming out of the bottom. And on the picture, if you look closely, you'll see there's a stow away with a green face inside there. We don't have any of that. In fact, the only thing that's true about this particular rocket relative to our system is that it's red. We don't have pointy noses, we don't have guidance fins on these things, as you can see. So there are reasons for that, which I'll try to get through, but in fact, a rocket can be different shapes. Here's another one. This is a kit fox. It comes out the back window, kind of like the 182 did. Challenger on top, that's not an air conditioner. And here is what we call the launch tube. Notice they do all have cables on board. And it's very important to know where that cable is. This is another smaller rocket, an RDS-133, which was very popular for some of the ultralights in the early days. And this particular kind of rocket actually was involved in a crash in Georgia. And an FAA inspector and some other people were pulling the tubes apart to extract the pilot, when in fact, when they moved the tubes, it stretched the cable and fired an RDS-133 into the chest of the investigator. Had it been one of our rockets, it probably would have killed her. So this is a real hazard, it's a very real hazard. And any time the wreckage is breaking up, you wanna be very careful about moving it or moving anything in it, because it could be tied to the cable. Assessment 150 has a setup that looks something like this. This fits in the top wing. And you see the parachute there and the cover for it and the little rocket in the bottom. Lots of different kinds of cables can operate these things. The one that's most popular is the one on the right. It kind of resembles a TV cable. And if you notice the ones on the left, they may have some electrical wires on them. And you say, well, gee, can they be fired electrically? Well, on the surface, it's a cable fired mechanism. We don't use electrical means to do that, but we do use these electrical ones on the unmanned aerial vehicles. Those are the robots that are in fact, surveillance airplanes and in some cases, are now carrying ordinance. So again, go back to my earlier statement. If it comes out of the sky, it could have a system on it. And that's true for the UAVs. They use these to recover the aircraft. Same system that we have. And this is what a predator looks like. And by the way, there's 3,500 of them out there in the world somewhere. Only 700 of them are in this country. And there's other vehicles like it that also use the parachute. So there's huge numbers of these beyond the 23,000 that I talked about. And so you have to be aware of that. This is how our system's laid out. We have a big package in it. Little rocket next to it there is kind of a squared off nose. We use that to punch the door open. And if we'd had a pointy nose on there, it would have created shards, which could shred the chute. So we wanted a firm impact there. And the rocket comes out of the aircraft at about 155 miles an hour. So it only goes about an inch and it's already accelerated to that speed. So it's a very potent hitting hazard. And on the Cirrus, we have some ballistic straps, actually some Kevlar straps. Three involved, one on each side and one on the back. The activation handle is in red there. And the whole package fits behind the baggage compartment bulkhead. It's out of sight, like so many other airplanes. And this is what it would look like. And this is the cavity in which it fits. You'll notice the yellow straps there are made of Kevlar, they're 20,000 pound tests. So they're very sturdy. This will be looking back over the pilot's shoulder looking aft. And here's what we would call the stack or the rocket assembly itself. What you're looking at is the rocket's actually sitting on its nose. If it were fired, it would go into the table here. But because it was flat, it made a convenient stand. And so you're looking at the rocket in red. The base and heavy aluminum there. And then the black thing on it is the igniter. That's in fact what fires the rocket. And these things come apart, as you can see. My friend Greg here is holding the igniter in his hand. And these things are connected with some nylon shear screws. They're designed to separate. And so if you go out to the accident site, it's likely that you're gonna have found these things in the wreckage separated. They're gonna be spread out all over. So you're likely to see the rocket over here and the igniter over there. These pieces may be all over the place. So don't expect to see them in the fully assembled condition as you see there. What we're looking for is a red canister. Looks something like this. It could easily be mistaken for a hydraulic filter or cartridge of some sort. Some of the lighter folks think it might look like a Canadian beer can or a Massey Ferguson oil filter. I don't know. But this is what it looks like. If you see this on the site, then you know that there's a system on board and you need to mark it and get somebody on the phone who's qualified to deal with these things. Don't try to be a hero and disarm these things yourself. That's not a good idea. If you take the cover off, you're gonna be two, what we call grains of rocket propellant inside. They're stacked in there kind of like flashlight batteries. And you'll notice that there's a hole in the center of them. We call these core fires or actually, because the propellant burns from the inside out, you know, we call these core burners and that's how it's designed. We shoot a big flame up the middle of this thing. It lights and then starts burning outwards producing thrust. There's one pound of propellant here. So it's a very powerful package. A lot of propellant on board. And it's made of HTPB, which is the same stuff that Bert Rutan used in his spaceship for propellant. It's also the same materials that NASA uses on the solid booster rockets at NASA. We all use different oxidizers, but it's the same basic stuff. It's very stable. It's very good stuff. It's essentially called synthetic rubber. And it's very good to use. In our case, we use ammonium perchlorate as the oxidizer, which classifies as a 1.4 hazard. So we have to be aware of that when we're dealing with this. After we've been out on site when we come home, we've gotten that stuff on us. The TSA tends to wanna have a little conversation with us privately. I'm gonna show you how the system works really quickly here. See how we do it on time. This is the activation handle in the surface. You notice there's a pin involved. That pin actually only prevents the handle from being moved. It has nothing to do with safety in the rocket or neutralizing the igniter in any way. And this is a pilot activated device. Unlike some of these automated devices, this has to be done by the pilot. The successful people have sat and thought about what their mission is, who they fly with, where they go, and what if. And they've already made the decision under which condition to pull this handle. People who wait for that last minute to make that decision typically are just not gonna have enough time. And so we have to be aware of the fact that the pilot has to do this. And again, that's where the problem is. They don't wanna scratch their shiny new airplane many times, and so they say, well, I'll fix this. And they wind up getting it in a heap, and now we have an unactivated rocket to deal with at the accident site. So we can't shut this thing off. And it's never gonna go away. This is what we call the igniter. It's got no stored energy in it. It's basically fired with two shotgun primers at the top. A spring kind of propels a plunger there. And the plunger hits two firing pins and fires the two percussion caps. And that's what produces the flame, which ignites the rocket propellant. I have a little cartoon here that we can go through kind of quickly, showing you how this works. Basically, we'll pull the handle here. And if you look at the bottom, you'll notice that there's a black area there. That's the igniter. You'll see the spring compressing. And as it fires inside, then it lights up the propellant and away we go. The little extractor is doing its job. And all it has to do is get that package up and half to the tail, and then it's done. So here you see a 55 pound package being pulled out of a Cirrus. The little piece just above the parachute is the cover, which was knocked off with the flat lid of the rocket. Rocket performance only burns for 1.1 seconds. It's a very short burn, but it's a very powerful device. And as we say, if it was untethered, it could go to 10,000 feet in 1.1 seconds, which is really moving. And so obviously it does provide a heck of an impact hazard to people on the ground. We have sequenced the parachutes so we don't damage the canopy. And we have to go through a number of steps to do that. And one of the devices that we use to help slow the whole thing down and regulate how the parachute opens on the canopy, we use what we call a slider ring. And as you can see, this is quite a big parachute. It's a night if you were a first responder and didn't see this thing right away, you might think it was a circus tent coming down on top of you. And there's of course all the shroud lines you can get tangled up in. And so you have to do some thinking about parachutes when you're out on the site as well. Beware of the wind. This is a very powerful sail as well. We've had some issues with that. So I'll talk about that in a minute. Basically we have to change how the attitude of the airplane changes as it inflates the chute. And we use some little pieces of ordinance called reefing line cutters to do that. And basically that helps adjust the last strap, the third strap on the rigging so that the airplane comes down a little bit and nose down so that we can take the initial shock with the nose gear and then the main gear, the bottom of the airplane and then the 19G seats. So it is a system that really makes this thing happen for us. This is what a line cutter would look like. They're not particularly hazardous but when fired they can get pretty hot. So we just want to make people aware of them. And you can see them laying around the site. And sometimes they look like this. If they do, they're live. And if they have no pin in the back and the front orifice is closed then it's an inert line cutter. Looks something like that. And we have a deployment. People say, well, how do these things land, Mike? Well, they land about like I do, about same rate too. There's a range here, depending on how many components are still on the airplane, of course. And the rate is, of course, 26.6 to 30 feet per second. It's a steady landing and it's a good one. We had one couple who had a bunch of Christmas tree balls on the back seat. Went through a complete deployment, didn't break any of them. Here you see a test on the ground, a couple of them. These are what the parachutes would look like going out on the ground. And we pulled these two off the line just to do a test one time. And you have to imagine yourself as a first responder at a site coming up on an airplane that perhaps doesn't have any wheels under it and getting close to the back end of it and noticing that this could be a hazard. This is where it comes out. It would be like looking down the barrel of a gun. So you want to try to avoid that area. I'll have one more shot here and then we'll show you an in-flight sequence. Many of you may have seen this before, but this is always interesting to me how well this thing works. And here you have Scott Anderson with the flaps down test that we did. We did five in-flight deployments. Here we go. We noticed the airplane has pulled up initially by the rigging to slow it down. Then it noses over to inflate the chute. The slider ring sort of regulates the canopy. The line cutter's fire and the airplane has now a fully deployed chute. We only used 300 feet and this was deployed at 10,000 feet. If you get a little more sideways than that, we did a spin test basically where we kicked the rudder to, did a full 360 before pulling the handle and then the whole sequence starts again. In this case, we lost 620 feet just as the spin. Of course, there was no parachute involved there and the parachute then took up 300 feet again to deploy. So a total of 920 feet. But 300 feet is pretty good deployment rate. If you're in a traditional airplane and try to correct the spin at 300 feet on short final or something, it's probably gonna be a difficult thing to do. So the chute works really well for that. We had an example here where we had a guy with two passengers take off out of South Dakota. Notice how flat it is. And I lost control of the airplane, pulled the handle. They landed safely. They all exited the airplane. And then when the investigators got there, the airplane was on its back. And I say, well, gee, that doesn't look right. And so we flew over it later. And if you'll notice that there's about 100 yards of movement there. And you say, well, gee, how come the airplane got moved like that upside down? Gee, well, the parachute is a very powerful weapon. And when they got out of the airplane, apparently they lightened it up some and it was gone with the wind. It flipped the airplane over backwards and dragged it some distance. So you have to be aware of the fact that it can be an impact hazard as well. And just be aware of which way the wind's blowing. You want to approach this thing from downwind. Upwind, rather. And we've learned that you can douse the canopy with water if you're a fireman. And it'll deflate it. It's very difficult to get these things deflated. They're very huge. And so once you get it down, you can put your car on it and keep it from it re-inflating, I guess. We encourage people to approach the aircraft from the front of the sides, not from the back. From the back is where it's likely to come out if it's activated on site. And we also ask you not to cut into the top of the aircraft because this is where the cable run is. And it doesn't take a whole lot of cutting to twist the cable. If you twist the cable, it could actually fire the rocket. So people seem to want to cut into these things all the time. And so we're trying to tell them not to do that. You can easily get people out through the large doors. Doors come off quite frequently in the accident anyway. And so typically there's really no need to cut into these things. If you go to an accident and look down the back end of this thing, you're likely to see this particular picture. You'll see the rocket in the upper left corner of the cavity with the parachute packet still on board. That means that the rocket's still on board and it's probably still alive. You need to get on the phone and call somebody. Don't try to deal with this with yourself. We have an 800 number. We take calls, 724, and you get a live person and we'll walk you through a risk assessment right down there. And of course we do send people out there to do this sort of thing. We are accident investigators. We're fully qualified to be there. And we should be there as part of the investigation. We also get calls from the NTSP and the FAA on aircraft that aren't services. In fact, I had five of those last year myself. And we treat them the same. We're here to help. And so we walk them through the risk assessments. And it's a good thing. This is what the cover looks like. If you can see an imprint on it like that, typically that means that the rocket is fired. It leaves an imprint on it like that. And it could be that the rocket is now spent, not a hazard. If the lid comes off on this thing, usually it's because the airplane twisted as it crashed. And we can usually find the lid just a few feet from the aircraft fuselage. This is what the cover looks like when it goes by-by. We have a little rocket in the cover there. We've only recovered two of these from our services. Had nine deployments. And we've only recovered two of these. They tend to go where they want to go. And they do come down, yes. If you see one of these rockets on a site, you have to consider it live. And try not to handle them. We want to keep heat from them. And the FAAI-100 department, which is aircraft investigation, 100, a rather small department, nine people. These are kind of the elite investigators for the FAA. They're the ones that kind of govern how the other FAA guys do their investigations. And they have a policy now that says identify and notify. What does that mean? If you're doing an accident and you identify the fact that it has a rocket in it, then you need to notify somebody and not be a bomb squad guy yourself. And that's our number. It's an 800 number, 279-4322. And you're going to get a live person there. And they will hook you up with the accident investigation department and the on-duty investigator, and he'll do the job. So we're going to walk through a little hands-on here. This is the ballistic rocket on site. You might confuse it for something else. This is actually sitting in a ditch. And I don't want to show any gory pictures, but we have to identify what this is. And in fact, it is a rocket. And how do we treat this thing? We treat it as if it was live. That's correct, a loaded gun. And just for perspective, this is the airplane that it came out of. This is an SR-20. And we had a case of a VFR pilot trying to descend below a cloud from 9,000 feet in a snowstorm. And he actually never saw the ground, so he hit pretty hard. And the airplane tumbled a fair distance. And in the process, as you can see, it broke up pretty severely. And as you see this picture, it's interesting to say, well, yeah, it's OK. It's a busted airplane. But the thing that's unique about this picture are the two yellow straps, the two Kevlar straps that you see toward the bottom. Those are what I call the yellow brick road. That should be a very strong indicator that, in fact, there is a system on board this airplane. And so you say, well, where is it? And if you notice, there's no engine on this thing. There's no propeller. What happens is all the heavy stuff left and kept going when it finally came to a halt here. And so it was also with the rocket itself. It tumbled out of the airplane away from the igniter and from the line cutters. So when I checked the line cutters and the igniter, they had fired. But they did not fire the rocket. The rocket left the airplane intact, went into a ditch, as you saw in the picture there, almost in line with these straps, along with the propeller and the engine that we found not too far from that. So we had a live rocket on our hands. That was a live rocket. So you always treat them live. You have a lot of people out there who don't know what to do with ELTs. And so quickly we know now that we have to tell people how to shut these things off. Typically it's a little switch on our aircraft. Sometimes they get encouraged to go rummaging through the airplane to find these things. And they wind up in the rocket compartment, which can be bad. So we just show them where to shut it off electronically. This is where it is on our airplane. The rocket compartment is directly above it. So you can see how you could get confused there. I showed this picture of a 150 here. This was a windstorm accident. And a number of airplanes got destroyed on this particular field in Ohio on this particular day. And I got a call from one of our customers who was pretty upset because she had a Cirrus down there and they were trying to move the airplane. When we went down there, we took pictures of this. And I have this picture because we know that Cestas can have ballistic shootings installed. You don't think about this. And in this case, there's no federal oversight at an accident like this because it's not an accident. It's an act of God. But if you look at the airplane closely, you'll notice that on the hatch at the top, there is no hatch at the top, which means there's no system on board it. And so you don't have to worry about a rocket on this particular Cessna, but it could have one. So you have to think about that. This is the Cirrus. It was in the hangar all snuggy. And the wind picked it up and the hangar and deposited it on the ramp some distance away and put it back down with such force that when it did, the main beam in the hangar broke and broke the airplane in half. And I don't know if you can see it, but just above the wheel paint, you'll see a shoe sticking out. That's one of our investigators disarming this thing because they were trying to move the airplane with all this fuel around and a live rocket on board. We asked them to kind of hold on until we could get somebody down there. And we did so very quickly. And it's not cause for alarm, but it is cause for calling the right people at the right time. Here's what the handle looks like with the pin in it. And we can save it like this. If you notice that we've got a tie wrap through the pin there that holds the pin in it, it keeps it from going. If you don't have the pin, you can just wrap a tie wrap through it like that. That will secure the handle, keep it from being pulled inadvertently if the airplane's moved or somebody's in there rummaging around. And if, if you are a first responder and we talk about this and we decide that the thing to do is to cut the activation cable for safety's sake before the aircraft is moved, then right there is where you wanna do it. This is the cable. It's easily accessible underneath the upholstery, the headliner, just pull it up a little bit. It's held on with Velcro just after the opening of the baggage compartment door there. And then you apply the proper cutter. You need a true cable cutter to do this. Do not use electrician's pliers or bolt cutters because it will tend to twist the cable. And that's enough sometimes to fire the rocket. So we want you to use, you know, bicycle brake cables cutters or the kind that you can use to cut a clutch cable on a bike. I've actually used all four of these types at different times and they all work fine. The one up in the top left corner is probably the best. But they're about $30. And when you get one of these, you just place it over the cable like that and make a single snip without twisting it. And you'll have disarmed the cable and that will at least keep the rocket from being fired in that manner. Of course, if there's a fire, if it gets heated enough, it could go. But at least this is a modicum of safety. If you're working with an external package or one of these ultralights, we want to snip the cable as close to the igniter as possible. And we have what we call a go bag and we carry all this stuff with us. And so we have recommendations to people, but we found that one of the biggest problems with this is that our customers will come down in a serious, totally unscathed. We have one couple landed on a walnut tree out in California. And of course, the airplanes got two GPS's on it. And of course they had talked to ATC and they had a five minute descent. So I think everybody in aviation probably knew where they were and they knew where they were. The airplane knew where it was. But the people on the ground didn't know where they were. And it was the old problem of communicating with the ground crews. Nobody was talking to the first responders and none of them had a GPS. You could have given them a lot lat long to find the airplane, but they couldn't find it because they didn't have the device, you know, $89 device to go find it. So we had several trucks driving around the county looking for this downed airplane. And as it turned out, there was a fire somewhere. And of course, airplanes always burn, you know. And so they went out to the fire and found out, nope, that wasn't the airplane after all. So the poor people sat, they got cold, got back in the airplane for shelter and they were actually sitting in the airplane for some time before they were found. So I encourage all these departments to go buy an $89 GPS so we can help find people. That's the first item on the list. We also want you to have a cable cutter that's a proper one. And these tie wraps are great for securing the handle. And in some case, we need a ladder to get up in the tree to access the rocket and the ELT. So that's something we think about. And of course, the 800 hotline card. These are the components we're looking for at the site and I'm gonna kind of go through this quickly. Why don't we just go up to the airplane and pull the handle at the accident site? Well, the reason for that is simply that we don't know what the condition of the propellant is inside that canister. And if it's all broken up, it's going to burn much more quickly than it was designed to do so. And it will exceed the nozzle rating. So essentially you're gonna have the possibility of the world's largest road flare or worse, okay? As this thing burns kind of out of control. So we don't want you to go up and just yank the handle. You need to get on the phone and call people. That's what you need to do. We'll come out there with trained people and tools. If you can see this slide, it shows the back of a T-shirt and a guy that says I am a bomb squad technician. If you see me running, try to keep up. And I say, well, that's what I do. And a number of us are trained to do this and we've done it numerous times. And we have a good sense of humor, but we don't want people messing with us while we're out on the job, like this Larson cartoon that I love. So we gotta find this stuff and deal with it. Of course, the FAA and the NTSB write all this stuff down. It's under part eight to 30. And one of the first things they say, which the firemen find hilarious, by the way, is remove injured persons. I mean, is there a fireman that doesn't live to save people? That's what they do. And they say, you have to write it down? We knew that. So they were pretty excited. But we also wanna protect the wreckage from further damage so that we don't set these things off inadvertently. And it is federal evidence. So we don't want people running off of souvenirs and things. And we wanna protect people from injury. So the hazardous components should be removed from the airplane before it's transported. That's why you need to call us. And so my question is to you out there, how can we best inform first responders in your area? I'll do a seminar. I'll come out. We also have something now that we will send to you free of charge. It's a DVD. It looks like this in a nice little pouch. And it comes with my card, along with a hotline card with the numbers on it, both internationally and domestically. It's about a 15 minute DVD. BRS helped us with this and we're involved in it. It's about 15 minutes long. And it shows you all these things in detail. It's a great training aid. It's a good recurrent training aid. And they're free of charge. All I have to do is contact me and we'll send one out to you. So that's what it looks like. At this point, I'm sort of running out of time. So I'm gonna ask for some questions if there are any from the floor. I didn't get much into the airbags, so forgive me for that. But I'll just quickly show you what the airbag canisters look like. These little bottles right here, there's one for each seat for each seat belt in the airplane so equipped. The problem is you kind of have to go through a scavenger hunt to find them, okay? This holds 6250 psi of helium, okay? That's what inflates the bags. So we want to be careful about these. But these bags are pretty safe. They're not difficult to disarm and they're really doing a good job. The NTSB's got a survey going right now on every accident that we've had that all aircraft have had that are using these things and I think they're finding out that they really do a great job. So at another time, I'll talk more about the airbags. Questions from the audience? Yes, sir. Okay. Mike, I just want to say that the later rockets coming out of the factory now have a sticker on them identifying the rocket. There's a lot of them in the field that don't but any of the new airplanes, any of the new systems from actually most companies right now will have a sticker on those rockets. Right. We're trying to spread the word as fast as we can. We're working with the small aircraft director to encourage the use of these things. I think it won't be long before we do see them. It's been one of my pet peeves and so I do tend to dwell on it a bit and I apologize for that. But Greg's right. We're doing a much better job with signage and I hope soon that everyone out there will have them. Any other questions? Yes, sir. On that mechanism you have, when you pull the cable you only have a one time hit on the primer. Is that correct? Well, it's a dual system in that it's got two shotgun primers. It's got one spring. You're right. It's got one plunger but it does fire two different igniters and either side is enough to fire the rocket. So there is some redundancy built into it. These are very, very reliable. I mean, I don't know of any case even in tests and so forth that we've had anything that would even be resembled as a minor inconsistency. They work really fine. I've never seen it. There's a requirement to change these things from time to time. That's part of the maintenance. Hey Mike, just a quick question. Do you see that these BRS systems will also be employed with some of the emerging VLJs? I know that Sears themselves are working now on a jet. Nobody knows much about it yet, but can't hint. Those of us who do can't talk about it. Yeah, okay. We believe that some of the VLJs will eventually have shoots on them. Yes. There are folks that say, well, what are you gonna do about a 747? I don't think there's enough shoots in Christendom to make that work. But it's a dynamics issue of speed and weight. And we are dealing after all with fabric here and there's a limit to that technology. But I believe the VLJs, the very light jets or the personal jets, I believe some of them will be equipped with the shoots. And at this point, that's about all I can say about that. I will say that Sears has always believed in this particular system and I believe that you'll see that on whatever airplanes we build. Anybody else? Okay, I thank you for your time and you can see me more about the airbags if you wish. I'm sorry, I ran out of time. Thank you very much for your help this morning.