Warbird Information Exchange

I caught a little bit of the story on Night Line - what made me smile was Sen. McCain's comment to the question of "What will the Air Force use the F-22 for?" He responded by dryly saying, "There are a lot of air shows that would love to see the Raptor".

I was under the impression that the OBOGS issue was resolved but this report made it sound like the Raptor still has issues and is a maintnance hog and pilots are still pretty nervous about the life support system.

Tom P.

Last I heard there were pilots asking not to fly it. Can you imagine? The newest hottest bird out there and pilots are scared to get in it. And considering most fighter pilots attitudes, that says a lot about the aircraft.

_________________
"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

According to an article in this mornings birdcage liner, it still involves the 02 supply reliability issue.

_________________
Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

There have been 19 incidents of pilot hypoxia since the aircraft was cleared for flight status after the investigations that revealed no cause.

_________________
If God had wanted man to fly behind a flat motor, Pratt Whitney would've built one.

I think the problem ends up with the F-22 that the problems aren't happening under the same circumstances and there is no trace of the problem once back on the ground, making it nearly impossible to trace. Additionally, the OBOGS system is also used on the F-15E and F-16C/D Block 50+ aircraft, and they haven't been having the problem, so there is no clear reason why the F-22's are having issues. I think eventually someone will figure it out, but as long as the pilots are aware of the issue and transfer to the backup system when symptoms onset, the impact will be minimal and will allow the guys to at least keep flying.

The thing that makes me go "hmmm" on this thing is that considering how many hours the first production aircraft were flown at Edwards and Eglin, why didn't it crop up until after almost all the planes were delivered and on airframes that had significantly fewer hours than other identical aircraft that'd been flown much more strenuously than those?

Intermittant problems are the devil's work. VERY hard to diagnose.

If I am not mistaken, MSOGS (Molecular Sieve Oxygen Generating System) as used on the F-15E and OBOGS as used on the F-16 and (presumably) the F-22 operate in a completely different manner. I am reasonably familiar with MSOGS since I worked on the F-15E, but not so much with OBOGS, so someone may be able to tell me if they are the same.

However, that still does beg the question, "Why does OBOGS work so well on the various models of the F-16 and apparently not so well on the F-22? What engineering change occurred in the different aircraft?"

John

The problem probably occurred when they introduced the twelve pound lead plug into the air line.

_________________
"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

While they may be different in some ways, from what Cobham shows, it looks like the delivery is essentially the same, just how the oxygen is stored is different.

Here's a list of all their installations: http://www.cobham.com/about-cobham/miss ... gs%29.aspx