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Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by ColinWright on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @01:23PM (#20032231)
A comment[0] by ehnus[1] from last time this was submitted[2] said:

> My favorite section is emergency procedures which contains gems like this:

> "If both the A and B hydraulic systems fail as indicated by illumination of the A HYD and B HYD warning lights and confirmed by loss of A and B hydraulic pressure and deteriorating control effectiveness:

> 1. Eject"

========

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338777

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ehnus

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338504

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by wolfgang42 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:23PM (#20033417)
In a similar vein, page 3-135[0] describes what to do when e.g. under missile fire ("the pilot is authorized to use the tactical limits listed...to exit the hostile area by the most expeditious means... Subsequent reentry into situations which rely on use of these limits is NOT authorized.") on the same page as the procedure for defogging the cockpit.

[0] https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/3/3-135.php

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by kryogen1c on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:37PM (#20034130)
Nuclear propulsion manuals for the U.S. navy have similar wordings.

>By order of the commanding officer [actually a highranking person on carriers, compared to little ships where COs can be realtively junior and low ranking], this reactor limit may be ignored during tactical situations.

Legend has it that every CO (3, i think i heard) to invoke "when tactical" exceptions have been fired in the following review. The only thing worse than crashing a billion dollar boat is damaging the publics trust in naval nuclear power : )

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by cladari on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:04PM (#20036532)
I'm remembering back 40 years here. I worked in the engine room of a nuclear powered cruiser. We had a switch called something like "battle bypass" that would bypass all the auto scram functions. The military calls a shutdown scram while the commercial industry calls it trip. We had a captain rank captain and I believe all nuclear powered vessels had one.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by ubermonkey on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:11AM (#20039691)
I love the qualifying phrase "captain rank captain."

(And I understand why it's needed.)

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by aoki on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @10:47PM (#20047919)
“battle short”
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by village-idiot on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @08:36AM (#20039334)
When’s the last time a large US navy vessel was in a situation where exceeding limits was justifiable due to tactical needs? I’d probably wager that WW2 was the last time.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by alexis_fr on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @06:26PM (#20035039)
To be fair, on the same page also there is the “taxi slowly if broken tank” failure mode, because it “can be ingested by an inlet”.

For those who don’t have the picture in mind, the first DC-3’s fuel valve was next to the air inlet. One day the operator didn’t watch the refill (They didn’t have autostop valves at the time), the fuel overflowed into the inlet, which certainly mixed it studiously with the air and pulverized the whole into the cabin. Man, aviation was wild at its beginnings.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by rossdavidh on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:00PM (#20033209)
I like to picture a little checkbox next to this, so that you can put a checkmark in that box as your hurtle through the air, then dig out the "parachute operating procedure" checklist and start it from the top.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by danaliv on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:05PM (#20035979)
I flew an L-39 with inoperative ejection rockets. The bailout procedure was:

1. Roll inverted.

2. Trim full nose down. (Down = skyward at this point.)

3. Blow canopy.

4. Fall out.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by kbenson on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:57PM (#20036728)
So... What do you suppose the chance is you would have hit the tail fin?
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by danaliv on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @11:28AM (#20041299)
Less than the chance of the original emergency killing you!

That’s what the full trim is for. It makes the aircraft pitch away once you let go of the stick.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by mshaler on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @01:15AM (#20037023)
Imagine letting the nose fully roll over and having to time the ejection at max inertia... or you are doing a Dr. Strangeglove meets True Lies. So delightful.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by rangibaby on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:04PM (#20036531)
5. Swear or pray (or both!)
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by mongol on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @01:20AM (#20037038)
What about seatbelts?
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by noworld on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @06:49AM (#20038623)
Crap, you're right. We'd better revise the manual.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by danaliv on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @11:38AM (#20041425)
Depends on whether your parachute is integral to the seat or you’re wearing a pack. If the chute is in the seat, I would highly recommend staying harnessed to it.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by ddingus on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:45PM (#20036154)
Every contingency planned for. Love it.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by toomuchtodo on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @01:42PM (#20032447)
If you enjoy such gems, check out the procedures for C130 transport aircraft. An old colleague used to be a load master on them (before going into tech), and said the action required for a situation where your load is jammed on exit and you can’t cut the chutes deployed to extract the load from the cargo hold is “prepare for crash landing”.

I do enjoy the bluntness of military checklists.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by na85 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:38PM (#20033003)
I just checked a modern copy I have lying around and couldn't find that particular phrasing. However there are lots of other gems such as "a malfunction of the extraction system that causes cargo to move can be extremely hazardous."

Oh really. You don't say.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by yutyut on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:23PM (#20034564)
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by java-man on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:02PM (#20036523)
the video of that crash is just hear breaking. you see how the pilots try to recover, did everything right, but it was an impossible task.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by dotancohen on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @02:19AM (#20037283)
Here is a video of the crash from a dashcam. This is probably the most detailed view of the stages of a plane crash I've ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLAvN4IUzoI
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by toomuchtodo on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:49PM (#20033113)
Might have been a C17A/21/26 instead of a C130. I’ll dig tonight to find it.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by CamperBob2 on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:12AM (#20036793)
"Intentional spins are prohibited. The following technique is suggested if an inadvertent spin occurs; however, ejection may be the best course of action because spin recovery has not been demonstrated and is considered extremely unlikely."
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by foobarbecue on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:24AM (#20036843)
Reminds me of my favorite line in the US Antarctic Program Field manual:

18.1i Crossing Crevasses ... If a snowmobile or sled starts to break through a snowbridge, experience and circumstances will dictate whether to brake and attempt to hold the fall, or continue driving forward in hopes of getting across before a catastrophic collapse of the snowbridge. In either case, a change of underwear is recommended.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by ceejayoz on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:19PM (#20033395)
If you're looking for that page, it's at https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/3/3-98.php.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by yutyut on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:25PM (#20034581)
Must be nice to have that luxury. The same emergency in the AH-1Z basically says "good luck." Granted, a hydraulic failure of two redundant and independent systems is astronomically unlikely (and the outcome will almost certainly be fatal).
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by trhway on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @01:05AM (#20036987)
>Granted, a hydraulic failure of two redundant and independent systems is astronomically unlikely (and the outcome will almost certainly be fatal).

Triple system failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

“The crew contacted United maintenance personnel via radio, but were told that, as a total loss of hydraulics on the DC-10 was considered "virtually impossible", there were no established procedures for such an event.”

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by ptha on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @08:33AM (#20039310)
Fascinating/harrowing stuff: Despite these losses, the crew was able to attain and then maintain limited control by using the throttles to adjust thrust to the remaining wing-mounted engines. By using each engine independently, the crew made rough steering adjustments, and by using the engines together they were able to roughly adjust altitude.

With no control surfaces, and using the engine thrust they attempted a landing - of the 296 people on board, 111 died.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by nradov on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @09:26AM (#20039849)
Cases like that one are the reason that passenger aircraft won't be fully automated any time soon. Autopilots are unable to cope with unexpected system failures.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by jcims on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:31PM (#20034621)
Well in that particular case it’s probably still a better option than ejecting.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by souprock on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:37PM (#20036111)
Because it is a helicopter? Ejection seats have been done for those. Explosive bolts release the blades, and then everything proceeds as normal. Here is one such helicopter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by rangibaby on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:06PM (#20036541)
I believe that was literally the first helicopter with working ejection and is newer than the grandparent’s example (Apache)
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by skwog on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @10:13PM (#20047759)
AH-1Z Viper, a successor to the SuperCobra, which succeeded the original Cobra from the late 60's.

Apache is very different machine.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by rangibaby on Sunday June 02, 2019 @02:09AM (#20073784)
That proves my point even more if the Cobra is even older. I imagine it would be extremely expensive to add an ejection system to a helicopter that wasn’t initially designed for it.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by rbanffy on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @03:38AM (#20037640)
You can always go B-52 and eject downwards.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by stevetursi on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @09:45PM (#20036153)
This is almost as good:

WARNING Do not pull the secondary ejection T-handle with the canopy still in place.

https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/1/1-199.php

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by closeparen on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @03:26AM (#20037588)
>Foot Retention System
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by dmix on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @01:45PM (#20032497)
What's #2?
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by SketchySeaBeast on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:02PM (#20032673)
I believe you shout "Не стреляй, я сдаюсь." a bunch.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by D-Coder on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:44PM (#20034196)
Google translate: "Don't shoot, I give up."
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by sorokod on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:09PM (#20034447)
"... I surrender"
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by Frenchgeek on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:08PM (#20033277)
No idea, but #3 is probably "change underwear"
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by chrisseaton on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:07PM (#20032722)
What other options would you have in such an extreme situation? It seems to make sense to me.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by FabHK on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:14PM (#20032788)
Yes, airplane check lists do tend to make sense.

Still, there is some humour in the laconic terseness and finality of that checklist, which is probably why it was brought up.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by chrisseaton on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:32PM (#20032951)
It's an emergency checklist - of course it's terse. I don't know what people expect.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by Archsys on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:07PM (#20033275)
Laughter is provoked by a discontinuation of what your brain expects.

If you saw a dog walking a man on all fours, you would most likely laugh, because of the unexpectedness.

In this case, the unexpected terseness causes laughter. You don't expect what follows to just be "Eject". In a technical context like a manual, you expect what follows to be a detailed list of steps and instructions. When this expectation is shattered, you laugh.

Thanks for reading. Have a good day.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by EForEndeavour on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:46PM (#20034205)
Speaking of humour, I can't tell what I find funnier: the fact that someone didn't see how these checklist items could possibly be construed as humorous, or your clinically precise explanation of the concept of humour itself, complete with a mechanistic explanation and example. Together, they're a beautiful example of the tone of HN.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by Archsys on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @01:18PM (#20042823)
Thank you. This is my first time on HN actually, and I was captivated by the same tone you speak of. Are you interested in chess?
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by chrisseaton on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:56PM (#20034317)
Everyone says they're funny because they're unexpected, but simple direction and plain language is exactly what I'd expect from an aviation checklist, so I have no idea.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by lordnacho on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:23PM (#20035416)
It's not just they're unexpected. They're both expected and unexpected. You also expect a manual to have details. It's the sudden ending that is both fitting and not fitting that creates the humour shock.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by patrickmcnamara on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:49PM (#20033104)
It's funny. That's it. People just find it funny.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by chrisseaton on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:55PM (#20033166)
I guess I don't really get that then - it's funny that someone designed it sensibly? Not sure where the joke is.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by gouggoug on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:32PM (#20033500)
I originally downvoted both your comments, but after a few seconds of reflection realized that it's not deserved, and undowned both.

I think you _truly_ are missing the point of why it's funny, and that's fine. Humour is a pretty subjective thing in the end.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by vokep on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @03:11PM (#20033323)
Yes! The standard is so senseless that something sensible is hilarious.

In a mad world, a sane man is considered mad.

Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by nothrabannosir on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @05:23PM (#20034561)
Don't worry, it's just humour being subjective.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by Hydraulix989 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @02:11PM (#20032764)
Right, you have no control over the lift surfaces in this scenario. This would be the equivalent of your steering wheel suddenly not turning the wheels.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by dylan604 on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @04:39PM (#20034150)
Except, even if my steering does go out, I can typically hit the brakes and come to a stop. Airplanes do not have that as on option.
Re:Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) by serf on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @08:37PM (#20035834)
the SR-71 , at that point in failure, would still have the opportunity to 'hit the brakes' like you would in your car.

Both vehicles can still veer wildly out of control even under deceleration, sometimes being exaggerated by the event -- so the plane manual recommends ejection rather than other remediating maneuvers because it's understood that further maneuvers may put the plane into such an attitude that ejection is impossible or futile.

So, that said, the SR-71 can still hit the brakes at the point by which their primary control surfaces fail; it's probably just a mighty bad idea to try to do so. There's a few instances in a car that might be a bad idea, too.

Imagine the steering wheel falls off in heavy moderate speed traffic -- in many cases it'd be safer to let the car drift across the road crowning and slow itself on roadside barriers than it would be to slam the brakes and take the full force of the traffic behind you colliding with your vehicle.

Screw it. Where's my automotive ejection seat?