>>>Canadian F18 augers in at Lethbridge.
>>>
>>>Pics - http://www.msnbc.com
>>
>>There's a pilot who can become a salesman for Martin-Baker!
>
>He'll be a could of inches shorter for a day or two. Fabulous ejection seats in those things. His neck will be sore too. In one of the pics you can see his head has snapped forward, no doubt, fro the "G" force. When I took the F18 ejection course we were told to jam our backs and heads as perpendicular as possible, but I don't think he has the time to do that Oh well, another 32 mil up in smoke. We just invested nine billion in F35s from Lockheed Martin (Skunk works), so there might an F18 garage sale in a couple of years. You might be able to bid as low as 28 million and get one :)

My understanding is ejection seats are incredibly sophisticated and capable. Powered by a rocket engine with steerable thrust and with its own inertial navigation system.

My dad worked on the Avro Arrow, and was involved on other Canadian defence projects through most of the '60s. He once told me about a test, where a plane fuselage was prepared with an ejection seat and a dummy strapped in place. This test rig was mounted on a fixed pylon at some ridiculously low level - I think he said 20 ft - upside down.

They fired off the ejection seat, and by golly, it blew out of the cockpit, righted itself before hitting the ground, and blasted up to a safe altitude to successfully deploy the parachute.

I don't know if a live pilot would have survived the g forces necessary for that kind of manouevre, but he said that test was impressive as hell.