 It does show that with present equipment, you do have the capability to escape successfully from some pretty hairy situation. If you play it right, the margin can be awfully tight. In this case, the pilot made it. Here again, he made it. Sometimes the pilot just gets in too deep, and there's no way out. Many fatal ejections didn't have to turn out that way. Many of the ones who didn't make it would still be with us. If they'd really understood all the factors under their control and used them, better knowledge of your ejection procedures, making an earlier decision to go, and knowing your ejection envelope. How about you? If you're like most, like this Jack here, you've thought about punching out. You're very professional about the condition and functioning of your aircraft, but how much thought have you given to the system on which your life will depend if your bird lets you down? How about your part in the system? How about time? At high altitudes, you have time, but at low altitudes, time is of the essence. How fast can you be ready to eject? If you've got to think about each step in the procedure, you may think yourself into an early grave. So, practice. Get yourself in an ejection trainer and go through the procedure. It's been calculated that you can't get yourself positioned and pull the D-ring or face curtain to the canopy jettison stop in less than a second. Have someone time you. The practice may save your life at that moment of truth. It takes another half-second for the canopy to release the interlock and for you to pull the D-ring or the face curtain all the way to affect ejection. Practice both methods of actuation. Get an idea of how far it pulls to the canopy jettison stop and how far after the canopy clears to the ejection point. Practice keeping your back straight and your head back in the headrest. You may get better leverage by leaning forward, but that puts your back out of line just when it should be straight and increases your possibility of injury. There are a lot of different seats in U.S. aircraft. Know the equipment in the aircraft you're currently flying. It's not very likely that you'd spend precious seconds fumbling for that face curtain handle in a 105. The one that isn't there, that is, but you'd feel pretty foolish if you survive. Know you're equipped. Know it well. You're likely to be in a big hurry when that time comes. Study your flight manual. It's got the full procedure step by step. Then get in a trainer's seat and practice. Once you've ejected, you can still keep your chances through cool actions. Unless your bird has a Martin Baker seat, you should try to beat the system, particularly in a low-altitude situation. You won't beat it, but you're ahead of the game if the system should fail. If it should fail, you've had your belt open manually just about the time you started wondering when your automatic system would function. Remember, though, if your belt is manually opened, you've got to pull your own parachute ripcord. Do you really understand the zero-lanyard? In Air Force aircraft, its function is to override the timer, giving you a shoot up to one second sooner at low-altitude. In Navy aircraft, the zero-lanyard arms the parachute actuator as the seat leaves the cockpit. It's amazing how many pilots disconnected when they're doing low-altitude, high-speed work. They're afraid if they've got to go out fast and low, the lanyard is going to get them in trouble because of the danger of shoot-opening shock. It just doesn't work out that way. True enough, if you've got to go out above 450 knots indicated, you're faced with the effects of wind blast and flailing, but the shoot will not be destroyed by the opening shock. The human body is just not very streamlined and it slows down fast. The human form ejected into a 600-mile-an-hour airstream slows to 250 by seat-man separation. With a zero-lanyard connected, your shoot would open in 3.5 seconds at 160 miles per hour. That's why Air Force and Navy experience shows that out of nearly 6,000 ejections, not one man was lost due to shoot destruction at high speed. One of the biggest causes of fatal ejection is delayed decision. If you don't eject in time, there's no equipment that can save you. This is not the best place to make up your mind. The earlier you make your decision, the better your chances. The best decisions are made in the pilot's lounge. That way, when the moment arrives, you don't waste time thinking. You react. In some situations, the decision is fairly clear-cut. If your bird is out of control at 10,000 feet above ground level or goes out below 10,000, get out. And that's a minimum. Check your flight manual. For some birds, it's higher. Even in situations like this, some pilots will try too long to recover, particularly if they feel the emergency happened because they goofed. There are a lot of factors that lead to delayed decisions. The desire to save the bird is a big one. The desire to pull off a difficult feat with skill looms large. Fear can keep you in that airplane too long. That familiar solid cockpit can seem safer than going out into all that empty space. And then, there's always the fear of being injured during ejection. If you do everything right, the danger is minimized, but the apprehension is there. These aren't good reasons for delaying ejection, but they are good reasons for thinking hard about when you'll eject before the emergency happens. Then, you're in the position of making the clean, positive decision that adds another successful ejection to the statistics. But the really tricky situations happen lower down. Here's where you can get sucked in. You have control, and it looks like you have the field made. Here's where things can look right for a flame outlanding at 1,000 feet. Then, suddenly look very bad at 500 feet. At 500 feet, time is very short. Here's where you can yield to the fatal temptation to bring up the nose in an attempt to stretch that glide. Then, you start sinking fast, and you know you can't make it. Here's where the real paradox enters the picture. Here's where too many pilots ask the impossible of ejection equipment. That ejection alternative seemed like a very unpleasant choice back upstairs. But now that things are going clearly against you, you may put too much confidence in its capability. How does that happen? It seems that each time an improved ejection system is introduced, the success rate decreases for a while. It looks as though you expect too much from the added capability. So you drive a 106 or an A7. Haven't you got a 00 seat? Haven't you got it made right down to the deck? Granted, when you see a demonstration like this, it sure looks that way. But that 00 terminology was a poor choice of words. It's true if you're parked on the runway. But if you're not parked, those zero-level figures can lead you right to oblivion. They leave out one very important factor, flight vector. Airspeed, attitude, and altitude are the terms usually used to define the limits of safe ejection conditions. So let's look at two high-performance birds with two of the factors, airspeed and altitude, the same. But their attitudes are different. One's inverted, with its nose 15 degrees above the horizon. The other is right-side up in level pitch attitude. They both have 235 knots airspeed and 100 feet altitude. If they both eject at this point, who has the best chance? According to the usual criteria, airspeed, attitude, and altitude, it looks pretty simple. But in fact, we don't have enough data to decide. For example, if the inverted bird has full power, and Mr. right-side up is flamed out, what looks so obvious becomes a brand new ball game. Simple flight dynamics put the inverted bird in a 15-degree climb, and the one that is right-side up is descending on a 15-degree glide path. The aircraft's flight vector will be the major factor determining each man's ejection trajectory. Mr. right-side up will impact the ground two seconds before full shoot, while Mr. upside down will make it with a few feet to spare. Hard to believe? Let's see how it works. Think in terms of time. In the case of an F-4 at 200 knots, time from leaving the cockpit to full shoot is approximately three and a half seconds. Here's how it works. At one second, the drogue gun fires. The drogue shoot stabilizes the seat. And the main shoot is deployed. The force of deployment causes seat separation. By three and a half seconds, you have full shoot. Remember, that's for an ejection at 200 knots. But at 100 knots, it takes almost a full second longer for the airstream to deploy the shoot. Seats in other aircraft vary in their sequencing. For example, with a 200-knot airspeed and the zero-lanyard not connected, here is the action. It pays to know your time required to get a full shoot which ranges around four and a half seconds. However, for simplicity in what follows, we'll use the three and a half second figure as the time required. Now, let's look at the other side of the coin. Time available. Time available depends on a lot of variables. But they all boil down to directions and velocities, that is, vectors. Let's look at the vectors of the ejection seat. This is one of the first variables since there are a number of seats in use with varying boosts provided by both ballistic charges and by rockets. The vector provided by the seat will differ according to the amount of boost and its duration. To keep things simple, we'll stick to one value. 100 feet per second effective. But here again is one more reason to be familiar with your own seat's characteristics. The next variable is aircraft attitude. When you're straight and level, the seat boosts you almost directly away from the ground. Any change from level attitude, either pitch or roll, reduces your upward seat vector and therefore subtracts from time available. At 45 degrees, you lose 30% of your upward vector. At 60 degrees, half of your upward vector is gone. At 90 degrees, there's no upward component left. If you're inverted, your seat boost is subtracting from time available. The vector resulting from flight path is the last and most important variable. Let's look at some examples. Using ejection altitude as your reference line and the line in the 10 degree flight path with a length proportional to its airspeed of 180 knots, which is 300 feet per second, the vertical component of its travel is 52 feet per second. The 100 feet per second vector of an ejection seat at right angles to the flight path gives us an effective upward seat component of 98 feet per second. These two upward vectors add together to give a total upward vector of 150 feet per second at time of ejection. That would result in a trajectory which would carry you about 300 feet above ejection altitude, before gravity and the deployed parachute slow your climb to zero and you begin your descent. Now let's consider the case of an inverted aircraft with the same speed. 180 knots or 300 feet per second in a 30 degree climb. The vertical component of flight path is 150 feet per second. Since the aircraft is inverted, the seat thrust vector of 100 feet per second has a downward component of 87 feet per second. Subtracting this downward vector from the upward vector of 150 feet per second, you still have a net upward vector of 63 feet per second. You will continue to gain altitude for two seconds before beginning your descent and you'd have full shoot about 20 feet above ejection altitude. The situation changes drastically with a descending flight vector. In a 30 degree dive, 240 knots airspeed or 400 feet per second, half the airspeed is converted into descent, 200 feet per second. The ejection vector of 100 feet per second provides 87 feet per second upward to counteract this, but the net vector is still 113 feet per second downward. This man is shooting himself at the ground. The shoot still takes three and a half seconds to open, but this time that will be about 600 feet below ejection altitude. Unless he has more than 600 feet airspace, he buys the farm. With the same example, if the pilot had traded airspeed for up vector using the zoom maneuver, we'd have a very different picture. Let's say he established a 10 degree climb and went out at 120 knots. That's 200 feet per second with an up vector of 36 feet per second. The seat boost of 100 feet per second gives an effective 98 feet per second upward seat component for a total ejection vector of 134 feet per second. This gives him an open shoot at the top of his climb, about 250 feet above ejection altitude. That's a pretty good trade. Airspeed for up vector. But what about altitude? Remember, raising the nose may or may not increase your ejection altitude, but it gives you better survival potential due to a more desirable seat vector. An instrumented zoom capability study on the F8 under simulated flame out conditions shows that a zoom maneuver started from level flight at air speeds between 185 and 220 knots results in a net altitude gain. By contrast, zooming up from a glide results in net altitude gains at 200 and 220 knots. But because of the glide angle at 240 knots, the zoom results in a net loss of 100 feet. Let's look at the case of the net loss. With a flame out at 240 knots at 500 feet, a maximum glide angle is established. The bird would be on the deck during roundout and would zoom back up to 400 feet as ejection speed of 130 knots was reached. The ejection vectors look like this. 130 knots or 220 feet per second in a 10 degree climb gives a vertical component of 38 feet per second. The seat vector of 100 feet per second gives an effective vertical component of 98 feet per second. Total ejection vector is 136 feet per second. It will take four seconds to halt your climb, at which time you will be about 250 feet above ejection level. In free fall, it would take six and a half seconds to reach the ground from here. The zoom put you in trajectory for a total of 10 and a half seconds, two and a half times as long as if you'd gone out at 400 feet on the way down. However, using the three and a half second shoot opening time, you had full shoot before you started your fall, which gives you a nice margin. To get the same margin in the gliding situation, you would have had to eject at about 1,400 feet instead of at 400 feet. Actual tests with line pilots in F100 simulating the zoom maneuver showed they were able to convert a 35 knot excess above touchdown speed into an average peak rate of climb of 690 feet per minute. The average altitude gain was 160 feet. From this, you see that you can zoom and eject from a flame out on flannel down as far as flare. It should be very clear by now that in low altitude escapes, flight path is more important than altitude or attitude. That high sink rates can cancel the boost of our most capable escape equipment. And that if you've got control of your bird, your best safety reserve is air speed. Air speed, which you can trade for an up vector when it's time to go. The zoom maneuver, zoom and boom, can give you that margin when you most need it. A good example was the opening sequence. The RO went out at 75 feet. His ejection vector gained him an additional 200 feet. The pilot went out at 250 feet at the top of the aircraft's climb. Without up vector from the aircraft's attitude, the pilot gained only 25 feet and had full shoot at 69 feet. The equipments got the capability to get you out safely if you make use of those factors under your control. Know your equipment and procedures and know them well. Make your decision early so your actions will be positive and correct. Understand ejection vectors so that you won't expect more of the system than it can get.