Red Arrows Thread

I saw this on Thai TV morning news with the sound muted the day after the Red 4 crash and thought, from the hangar in the background, that it was a UK airfield:

news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8288147/stunt-...in-us-air-show-crash

As usual, the national press comes up with history. I suppose they think it was a birdstrike because they found a Hawk at the scene of the crash. Mindless speculation, as ever.

My sincere hope is that the the cause of the accident was not a technical issue. The Hawk T Mk 1 is near to the end of its life. The Red Arrow aircraft damaged at Blackpool is unlikely to be repaired and will probably be canibalised for spares. With the Hawk T Mk 2 now becoming operational, we can expect a weed-out of the T Mk 1 fleet, especially as the pilot-training requirement has dwindled and can be handled by the T Mk 2.

I therefore suspect there will be a major Hawk fleet rationalisation over the coming year. If the culling of the Nimrod, Harrier and Tornado fleets is anything to go by, expect some Hawks (and Tucanos) to be on the market before too long - and the numbers could be swelled if the Army and the Navy get their way and the Reds also get axed.

All the RAF Hawks have been cleared to fly again and the Reds will be returning home tomorrow (Friday 25th) to Scampton.

www.raf.mod.uk/reds/teamnews/index.cfm?s...318-A86C0CBA2B62C50E

Mention has been made of the Hawk T1 running out of fatigue life. This must be a great tribute to the manufacturer, they have been in service as a training aircraft for over 30 years. Given the hammering that they will have had by hamfisted trainees its amazing theyve lasted this long. Although, those of you who ever read the RAF magazine "air clues" will know that the Hawk fleet suffered from whats known as "fleets within fleets".

You are right there Canberra - when you think of all those low level sorties through the Welsh Valleys at low level with all the tight turns, a very well built aircraft.

As built, the aircraft was supplied fitted with a Fatigue Meter that indicated 'counts' of G loads but measurements were coarse due to it recording accelerations at the installed point only. The main factor enabling extension of the initial fatigue limit of the Hawk was the installation of a On-board Load Measurement System (OLMS). This enabled recording of flight loads via strain gauges over the airframe and could be downloaded post-sortie to be processed in a PC application and provide a near real-time view of individual aircraft usage. The Hawk is a fine aircraft but some of the features reflect a lack of understanding by the design team of 'maintainability'.

I doubt that there has ever been a serious suggestion of a technical/structural issue with the crashed a/c,watching the poor quality video showing the descent towards the ground - it is pretty clear that the a/c is not having much if any pilot input on the controls.
The probable cause would have been known fairly quickly but i would imagine that the investigation team would go through the complete a/c anyway.
The Hawk is a tough little Jet - the 2 RAF medical flight Hawks regularly fly to 8.99 'G' without any structural beefing up.

IIRC the Hawk was the only aircraft in the RAF cleared for 10g in daily service.

From new the normal G limit for the Hawk was 8.5 clean

Was that G limit from the manufacturer or was it RAF imposed?