Forger Stucky

I’m on X for two main reasons - 1) to give unique insight into aerospace topics garnered from my unusually broad test pilot career. 2) To inject humor (usually sarcastic and sophomoric at best) in the hopes of getting at least one person to smile. Follow me if you want to live…

@astro_reid Yeah, I may be in an equivalent sleeping situation for your next launch ;)

@Stuck4ger I drove halfway across the country with Carroll…snuck onto the airfield and slept in the back of an unlocked Huey in a hangar…to watch his first flight above the Kármán line in 2004. Godspeed, Mike. A true hero.

So sad to hear of the passing of Mike Melville, SpaceShipOne test pilot, commercial astronaut #1, and all around great human. He checked me out in the Proteus.

Actually, it’s Melvill

@NASAAdmin @johnkrausphotos @adamnash @NASA @boomsupersonic People often make a big deal about how early or late a first flight date is. I say you can tell a lot about a program by the period of time between the first and second flights.

@adamnash @NASA @boomsupersonic I am proud of the NASA Aeronautics team for the incredible history at Armstrong and for the history we have yet to make. But you will know we are truly “back” when the second flight of an X-plane is no longer newsworthy.

Strange to see @NASA spending time and money on this when @boomsupersonic exists. Seems like those $ could be better allocated to the space program. cc: @NASAAdmin nasa.gov/centers-and-fa…

@scottiebateman High wing is part of it. Straight (non-swept) wing is another good reason.

This video has been doing the rounds today. Many saying the landing was scary and the pilot would be getting a coffee-less chat with their Chief Pilot. None of these people know what they’re talking about!! High winged aircraft use a different crosswind landing technique when compared to other airliners. They fly using a ‘wing down’ technique and not one where the aircraft flies nose into wind. This technique means that often the upwind wing is lower than downwind, and the upwind main gear often touches down first. In my view, and I’ve done a few of these, this is a text book wing down landing. Good job. #aviation #pilotlife #pilot #FactsNotClickbait

@boomers_ass Nice analysis

Your take on this subject surprises me. Weren't you a KC-135 Aircraft Commander? We stopped flying with parachutes around 1994 at Loring AFB, and there were other Active Duty units that did the same. It wasn't until 2008 that it was finally written into the command-wide regulations. I don't recall ever hearing any crewmember lamenting the fact that we didn't have parachutes anymore. Matter of fact, as the person responsible for checking to see that the parachutes were in good order during preflight, I don't recall any other crew positions ever even looking at the parachutes. The parachutes, as I'm sure you know, were stored at the rear of the aircraft, on the right-hand side, just above the boom pod—roughly 100 feet away from where the pilot, copilot, and navigator sit in the cockpit during flight. The process to put one on and then properly tighten it took a minimum of two or three minutes. Helmets would be required at high altitude, and that would add a bit more time. In the event that the aircraft departed controlled flight, the chance of walking down the cargo bay to retrieve your parachute is zero. And I can tell you that as someone who walked in the cargo compartment in severe turbulence, although never during uncontrolled flight. If the aircraft was still flying but severely crippled, my chances as a boom operator would be better—but what pilot would vacate their seat for several minutes to put on a parachute when the airplane is barely controllable? How much time do you have before "crippled" turns into "departed from controlled flight"? In the event of running out of fuel, it's pretty much the same: plenty of time in theory, so the boom operator might get theirs on and even bail out. One pilot might risk getting out of their seat to don a chute, but the other? How much time do you have before low fuel becomes no fuel? I flew 324 sorties for 1,353 hours in the KC-135A and R models over four years. I did the airbridge at the Azores in Aug '90 and Desert Shield. I rotated home on a fluke and missed the war, only to go right back afterward for multiple deployments. I saw near misses during rendezvous, I saw unauthorized formation flying, I saw more than a couple of breakaways, we had an F-15 do a barrel roll around our jet, and I saw more than a couple of in-flight emergencies. I've also seen both 2 gees and -0.5 gees in the aircraft. I've seen initial buffet demonstrations. Now, I realize that there were a whole lot of other tanker crewmembers out there who had more years, more hours, and more experience, but I have never talked to anyone who had ever considered jumping out of the aircraft. And I never considered it myself as even a possibility. The only time I ever heard of bailouts being discussed in a serious manner was during EWO mission discussions, where the possibility of giving our receiver all of our gas arose because they needed it to get to the target. In that case, our plan was to fly the jet clear of the receiver until it was close to running out of fuel and then bail out. That's it. That is the only serious discussion I ever heard. Of course, pulling alert had ended about 10-15 years before you started flying the KC-135. Now, as I recall, there were several arguments for removing them. The primary was the workload associated with their upkeep. We had about 30 aircraft on base. Each aircraft had 8 parachutes. That's around 240 parachutes. By the way, these parachutes run between $5,000–$10,000 each. So we're talking an inventory value of somewhere between $1.2–$2.4 million. Maybe large contracts bring that price down, or maybe not. Each parachute had to be inspected roughly every 180 days. At 180 days, it had to be pulled from the aircraft, inspected, and then repacked. That takes roughly three hours. Extrapolate this out, and it would take on average 23 hours a week for one Life Support person. That's a fair amount of work. But this doesn't include the effort required to go out and inspect the parachutes in the aircraft or keeping track of them as aircraft deploy and return. Of course, there are other items on the jet that Life Support also has to inspect, so these tasks would be combined. Point is: We are not talking about a trivial amount of work or money to purchase, install, and maintain these parachutes. Scale it up to the fleet: roughly 376 jets, 3,008 parachutes... carry the two... yeah... got it... that's $15 to $30 million. And the likelihood of them being used? Well, let's see now, the fleet has been flying for 69 years, since 1957. A halfway decent estimate as to how many flight hours have been flown: 22 million flight hours. Maybe sortie counts would be a better metric in this case, though. So, if we guesstimate an average sortie is 6.5 hours, that would work out to 3.38 million sorties. And how many bailouts or attempted bailouts am I aware of? THREE. Maybe I don't know about all of them. Maybe there were a few more. Maybe there were some where the crew didn't tell anyone because they'd get in trouble. You're 74 times more likely to be struck by lightning once in your lifetime than to need a bailout on a single KC-135 sortie. You're about twice as likely to become a billionaire than to need a bailout on a single KC-135 sortie. You're about twice as likely to win an Olympic medal than to need a bailout on a single KC-135 sortie. I asked Grok to crunch some numbers about my flight time, and it says "This means you had about a 0.02875% chance (or roughly 1 in 3,478 odds) of encountering at least one bailout scenario over your 324 flights." While I may be doing napkin math with some of these numbers, the overall concept is pretty solid. Do you think this rises to the level of an 'insane decision' and 'unforgivable'?' Cause I don't.

@BLackgold_5 It depends, are there Kuwaiti pilots behind you?

Which F-Series fighter jet do you want to fly?

@Joyce063 @johncc2014 @ShorealoneFilms I know a young lady that got scammed by fake PayPal twice in a week 🙄

@johncc2014 @Stuck4ger @ShorealoneFilms I had to really keep an eye on my mom when she got into her 80s. She got fooled easily!

Dear Toll Scammers, if you’re gonna use fake documents to try to scam Forger, well, you should probably first download the actual NM court and state seals.

The Honorable Judge John Smith really gets around!

Might want to spell the county correctly, too.

@NessyKarrat @Combat_learjet Once they go out of control, the acceleration forces are impossible to walk against, you are unable to get to a parachute, let alone to an exit. They may have a vertical ladder out the bottom but most of that stuff is more wishful thinking than usable.

@NessyKarrat @Combat_learjet Typically, if a large airplane that doesn’t fly in a threat area isn’t land-able, then it also isn’t bailout-able.

As a former KC-135R pilot, this tragedy really hits close. By the looks of this photo, we almost lost lost two aircraft and crews. The aircrew did a fantastic job getting this one back on the ground safely. May the Warriors of the fallen KC-135 RIP, praying for their family and friends.

@stevecrye I was right, speculation was wrong since they weren’t refueling. Now it sounds more like the horrible Navy P3 midair a number of years ago off the coast of SoCal. Very lucky one KC made it back.

@stevecrye Speculation will likely make an ass out of me but it’s hard to picture hitting a vertical tail as the receiver. So I envision a big evasive maneuver that resulted in the cockpit or wing of the receiver clipping the vertical tail of the tanker. In which case they almost missed 🥺

Tanking a Naval Fighter on a KC-135 is so much more dangerous than any other aerial refueling that I know of. It isn’t nearly as hard in a Hornet than it was in the F-4 Phantom but still…

@Mangan150 @davidasinclair I heard the shingles vaccine cures COVID, right @Mangan150 😂

@davidasinclair I'll be getting one never.

Will be getting a shingles shot ASAP

@lockhidmartinez Isn’t that what we’re talking about?

@Stuck4ger How about the iron maiden?

@stevecrye Yes, there is a photo of a KC-135 on the deck missing the top of the vertical tail.

@Stuck4ger I just heard that it was a mid-air with another KC-135! This is from a report on the radio I have no other details or no confirmation.

@notPeachessab @zyzzek @johncc2014 KC-10 had hose pods on each wing. LOVED the KC-10!

@zyzzek @Stuck4ger @johncc2014 Because the -135 wasn’t designed in the ‘50s to refuel Navy aircraft. The -46 has a dedicated drogue.

@johncc2014 It was a real joy in the Phantom. As you got heavy you’d find both throttles at MIL power & then that wouldn’t be enough so you’d have to select MIN AB on one throttle & jerk the other back a handful & try to correct for all the transients without falling out or hitting anything.

@johncc2014 It’s always probe & drogue with naval aircraft but the KC-135 just puts a 9’ fixed hose on the end of the boom. Standard hoses are ~80’ long, have hydraulic take up, and you have a lot of leeway to move around. With the dead hose you have to hold very tight tolerances.