I also really want to know how he did it.
I slept through a lot of physics class, so my comments are based mostly on observation. One of the most important factors in determining the survivablity of an ejection is the presence of sink rate when the handles are pulled. Past a given amount of downward vector of the aircraft you're leaving, those rocket motors aren't of any use except to delay your impact with the earth/fireball a few more nanoseconds. I've pulled the handles in the sim a few times and was shown the computer's estimation as to me and my crewmate's fates. Depending on the situation, it doesn't take a screaming dive to seal the deal, and the point they were making is to not delay the decision to get out and to trade airspeed for altitude by zooming the aircraft as much as possible before getting out. Zooming not only slows you down in the forward direction, making for less wind blast and flailing injuries, but it negates or reverses your downward vector as much as possible. The way I picture it is, yes I'm leaving the aircraft at a high rate of speed in all cases of ejection, but how fast is the earth "rising" to meet me at the same time? My comments are based on the Aces II seat carried in F-15's, F-16's and for now the F-22 till they get their new seat, but these principles are pretty universal. Seen and heard accounts of folks getting a good chute on ejection, only to disappear into the fireball moments later, usually in a landing scenario ejection where there is definately a downward vector present. We've all seen video of Russians getting out of their jets at various airshows with better results, fact is they have some pretty good seats, and they made the decision before the jet's downward vector was too much to overcome. Not to fault those who don't make it because of factors beyond their control. It's relatively easy to get out of the safe ejection envelope by excessive airspeed, low altitude, bad attitude or once again downward vector.
In the case of a streamer or otherwise bad chute, the going wisdom is not to panic - you've got the rest of your life to fix it
. No kidding, one guy looked up and saw he had a bad chute, so he pulled the whole mess to him and released it back into the slipstream - no good. So he did it again - nothing. On the third attempt he got a good canopy. I've heard the story a number of times from different people, but no names, so not 100% sure it's true, but it makes a hell of a story.
