Over 100 T-6 Texan II trainer aircraft have been grounded

Following reports of 'Physiological incidents" that involved 4 instructor pilots and one student, Vance AFB, home to the 71st Flying Training Wing grounded over 100 of the aircraft while they investigate. The AF is calling it an operational pause. You can see tons of them in the air on ADS-B exchange usually during the day

So oxygen rears its ugly head again. Are all of these aircraft using the same system? This is not a high performance jet pulling 8 G's here

www.enidnews.com...

wiki page on the aircraft
en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: FredT

Hey, you beat me this time.

To borrow the motto of the Weasels, YGTBSM.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: FredT

Hey, you beat me this time.

To borrow the motto of the Weasels, YGTBSM.

LOL it does not happen often. you had a way better op though so Im happy to put yours back in and kill mine.....

a reply to: FredT

Nah, it's good.

This is getting really old though. They need to find out why the hell OBOGS is causing all these problems.

a reply to: Zaphod58

i'll take going with the lowest bidder for 100 alex

a reply to: dashen

It's multiple manufacturers, and multiple problems and solutions. It's about as far from one size fits all as you can get.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The big question is why only on modern aircraft.

What changed between the F/15, F/16 and FA/18 and the more modern ones.

All of the older aircraft have been upgraded now and again so what is fundamentally wrong.

I would suggest that it may be a problem with a change in theory that led to a new way of doing things. It seems to be at this very fundamental level.

It is a bit embarrassing.

Of course it could be just a few pilots making crap up ... but that is not very realistic either.

Puzzle it is, answers we must find.

P

a reply to: pheonix358

OBOGS changed. The older aircraft used LOX until recently. The F-15C/D still use LOX I believe.

We had testing requirements to make sure the LOX we were putting on our older aircraft was pure and free of contaminants. Does the on-board generating system have some sort of filtering system to screen out contaminants? Perhaps it's not being checked often enough to ensure it's remaining effective?

a reply to: face23785

It's not a contamination issue. They've torn through some of the systems backwards, forwards, and sideways and there was no sign of contamination. And each aircraft is affecting the pilots differently, sometimes different pilots differently.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Gotcha. I figured that would've all been covered by now, but damn you'd think they'd narrow down what's going on by now too. If they can't find the cause, might be time to go back to a tried and true method.

a reply to: Zaphod58

So ....

LOX stored all O2 required for the mission.

OBOGS takes air from the atmosphere and extracts the O2 for the crew.

LOX would be the better system and if I remember (from many years ago) was touted as a system that would allow the aircraft to fly through clouds of irradiated air without having the pilots breathing in contaminated air.

With an OBOGS system ... what happens if you fly through your own or another aircraft's exhaust fumes?

Just doing donuts through the clouds.

What do we win if we figure this out?

Just having fun Zaphod!

P

The entire fleet was grounded Thursday, and solo flights have been suspended after 13 PEs were reported in a week. Ten were at Columbus AFB.

www.airforcetimes.com...

According to one pilot posting in a pilot forum, they found four out of five systems with dirt, water, kinked hoses and other issues during the grounding.

www.expressnews.com...-15207550

originally posted by: Zaphod58
According to one pilot posting in a pilot forum, they found four out of five systems with dirt, water, kinked hoses and other issues during the grounding.

www.expressnews.com...-15207550

What!

They are just now finding this after all of the SHTF. I thought they were 'checking everything' quite a while back!

This does not ring true unless ... they are really bad at this maintenance stuff.

Seems fishy.

P

a reply to: pheonix358

They were checking systems on affected aircraft. Until January of this year, the T-6 had a yearly high of something like 5 PEs. They haven't gotten the scrutiny that other aircraft have, simply because there wasn't a reason for it until this year.

The problem is caused by inconsistent oxygen concentrations during flight. The Air Force is redesigning the system to be more consistent. They're looking at 2-4 years to complete the process.

www.airforcemag.com...