We Lost Lex

[kham]

Cant think of much else to say.
There isn't much known yet, the news article is pretty thin so far

I know he'd been having some issues with the jet recently from his posts, canopy seals, drag chute streamer, but nothing like this.

It's a sad day

[Duncan Edwards]

Wow! That's an interesting photo with the article. Almost like he expected to ride it to a stop. At least he was flying when his time came.

[schlamm]

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[kham]

That building is at the west end of the long runway at Fallon. It's way too early to say what happened, although someone has speculated that already , that he may have rode it in rather than punch out. Thats not far from the ammo handling area so, its possible. Backchannel stuff is suggesting GCA screwed up, but again, its way to early to say.

We'll miss you Captain

Plan on hoisting a glass of Guinness in his memory
For Strength

[schlamm]

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[DangerGirl]

That really sucks. I'll be watching for the accident investigation board results.

A toast...

Okay, so he's Navy, not Air Force. Still,

A toast.

[kham]

It will be NTSB DG, since its a civilian aircraft, technically.

Cheers, some good single malt and Guinness , just like the skipper would want

[Mynock]

That really sucks. I wasn't a huge fan but I was aware of the blog thanks to Kham. Have to wait for the NTSB report to see what happened but that's the most intact crashed fighter jet I've ever seen, weird that he wouldn't have had a chance to eject.

[kham]

NTSB will likely take the usual process to sort things through, but a couple of the guys have been doing some back and forth.

Quartermaster's post:

At this point it looks like GCA screwed the pooch. BillT and I have swapped a few emails on the matter and it looks like GCA had him overshoot, and also put him on the taxiway just to the west of the longest runway. The building in the pic is the magazine storage building just to the north of the arming pad. On Google Earth it resembles a concrete slab.

When I was in NAS Norfolk and Oceana did not have ILS or localizers and PAR was the only means of making a precision approach. The low visibility combined with the high landing speed of the lawn dart conspired with GCA to put him down long on the taxiway. Either the drigue did not have enough time to deploy, or didn’t deploy properly. Soot patterns on the building and fuselage indicate the tires were on fire before the under carriage sheared off. The impact with the building would have supplied enough force to kill him.

I want to emphasize that this is my speculation (with guidance from BillT – he recognized the magazine storage and put 2+2 together on the GCA problem from a post on 3 Mar), but it is plausible from what I can see about Fallon from Google Earth and what I can see in the pic of the wreck in the local paper.

Given the type of work done at Fallon, and the weather conditions they get, Fallon needs a precision approach that is not dependent on GCA. Had one existed at Fallon, I’d be willing to bet lex would still be alive. My take here is that GCA killed Lex.

using google maps, the sat photo shows the building clearly. The Kfir comes in at about 185 knots - Starfighter speed - so its approach speed is about 50 knots higher than a Hornet. He had posted the day before that GCA had him overshoot his approach -again. Damn it

[DangerGirl]

I'm sorry, but a PAR doesn't guide you in all the way to landing; it gets you 200' above the runway threshold, at which point you're supposed to execute a missed approach of you don't see the runway. If Lex descended below the decision altitude without having the runway in sight and landed on the taxiway instead, that's not the GCA controller's fault. Even if the controller didn't make the "at decision altitude" call, Lex should have known the DA and initiated a missed approach himself if he didn't have the runway environment in sight. That's Instrument Flying 101.

I'm finding it extremely hard to believe the PAR controller was at fault. Contributory, maybe, but not causal.