GO!!! said:
hmmm,
So the pilot ejects, seperates from his seat, then releases his equipment, and tries not to land on top of it.
I feel for the guy that landed on his kit - this can create pretty bad injuries even in intentional parachuting!
The seat pack is attached to your hips, and is the seat cushion that you sit on. When you eject from a Martin Baker Mk16 seat like the ones you find in the Hawk and Harvard II, the pack hangs off your hips on two D rings that you clip and unclip like a seat belt buckle for normal ingress and egress. When you are hanging under canopy, there is a yellow and black lever on your right side that you pull up on to cause the seat pack to separate and dangle below you on a length of lanyard that is still attached to your harness.
The pack isn't all that big, it wouldn't hurt you much to land on it, the problem was this guy landed with it still attached to his butt. I would imagine it'd be similar to landing with your ruck still attached to you vice hanging below you. It prevents the body from bending like it should and puts enough pressure on the bones to break them.
recceguy,
Close, but the Mk 16 is a little different, no green apple to pull (it's all automatic), there are leg lines to pull your feet in for you, and the ejection handle is right between your legs so your hands are already in your lap (it takes approx 2.5 sec from the time you pull the handle until you're both under canopy, hence the need for leg lines since if the other guy pulls the handle, you won't even have time to think about pulling your legs in before you're hanging in the chute).
Also with the Harvard II and Hawk, the canopy doesn't jettison, it's fractured by det cord prior to you going through the hole. If the det cord fails, you've got a giant spike on the top of your seat to break the canopy on the way out.
And perhaps one of the nicest features of the Martin Baker Mk 16, it's a staged ejection. A gas cylinder fires you up the first few feet and the rocket doesn't fire until you're at the top of the rails. This means there's far less compression on the spine which means fewer back injuries during the ejection sequence.
. I also don't think the'd be screaming in. The Flexback chute was a 24' canopy and the high speed BA-18 chute was 28' IIRC.
