Eagle TAKING THE WIRE!

[CookyBoy]

Had an afternoon at Lakers today and witnessed my first wire catch, LN 97-221 looks like it had an air intake problem. enjoy

1Taking the wire by Steve Cooke-SRAviation, on Flickr

2Taking the wire 2 by Steve Cooke-SRAviation, on Flickr

3The Wire!! by Steve Cooke-SRAviation, on Flickr

cheers Steve

[johnwayne]

Brilliant mate !

[Bolar]

Nice catch Steve Boy!!

[Jammo]

Well captured Steve

[Skip]

Now there is something you don't see every day

[Flyingmonster]

Well caught!

[Jazz]

Hell yeh, awesome catch

[GhostFlight91]

Nicely done mate

[HERKY22]

BREW11?

[Vulcanone]

That is a cracking shot.

Tim S

[CookyBoy]

BREW11?

Not sure, was the last F15E to land this afternoon.

Thanks for the remarks S

[Lightningboy2000]

Hi Steve, fantastic photos & lucky to be there eh? Never seen this happen with an F-15 before.
Would that mean that other airframes would have to be looked at for similar problems then?

Martin

[DanBeeden]

Brilliantly captured

[captain scarlet]

Right place, right time . . . superb sequence of shots.

[eagle1]

Excellent shots Steve. I must have been alongside you yesterday. What a great day down there wasn't it ?

Cheers

Martin

[Samgriffo]

Very nice catch Steve!!

Sam.

[KINROTATE]

I guess then that this was a hyd failure perhaps. Intakes wouldn't be electrical I wouldn't have thought?

[NGAutoArt]

Brill!

The only time i've been to Lakenheath, this happened. Think it was between Christmas and New Year 2011/2012. Met Stig. Nice chap.

Anyway, same thing, one of the air intakes was stuck in the "up" position. Not sure what it meant, whether an engine was shut down, if it was a drill, or whatever.

Looked great though. Stopped the base for about an hour IIRC.

Neil.

[Malcolm]

We saw this happen once back in the 80's when the Holloman F15A/B's used to deploy to Gilze. One of the Eagles tried to take the cable, missed (because it wasn't even rigged!) and ended up on the grass. Next day we tripped over the pilot in the local MaccyD's.

He said that it was a hydraulic problem, and with no/restricted hydraulics an F-15 has no ABS brakes, and limited steering. Without ABS brakes it is very difficult to stop the wheels locking, resulting in burst tyres and possibly brake fires and other such damage. So the procedure is to take the cable.

This instance looks like a single (port) engine shutdown though. Port intake is up, exhaust petals fully open, not much heat haze from the exhaust and slight right rudder due to asymmetry of thrust. No idea what effect this would have on hydraulics though.

[TeeJay]

Well caught Steve, right place right time
Lovely pictures
I was thinking much same as the above comment, from Malcolm, about shut down engine etc... one thought about the hydraulics... are they all driven by both engines or just the one? or some parts driven by one engine, some by the other? Its just a pure guess though...
Thanks for sharing
Trev