{"id":23562,"date":"2019-07-23T12:08:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T16:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=23562"},"modified":"2019-06-30T23:18:22","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T03:18:22","slug":"how-to-get-a-free-tie-and-wristwatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/23\/how-to-get-a-free-tie-and-wristwatch\/","title":{"rendered":"How to get a free tie and wristwatch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Day 2 of EAA AirVenture<\/a> and the air is filled with fast jets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin-Baker<\/a>, the family-run English company that makes ejection seats<\/a>, won the Aero Club of New England’s Cabot Award<\/a> this year. The British executive accepting the award failed to adhere to American Facebook standards. He said “it is an honor and a pleasure,” not “we’re honored and humbled.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking of taking politicians’ advice to go into STEM? One engineer in the early days ejected 18 times. Those first devices required the pilot to pull a parachute rip chord after being rocketed out of a plane (the company still operates two Gloster Meteor <\/a>World War II jet fighters plus a Wile E. Coyote-style rocket test track near Belfast (for which expired air-to-air missile rockets are used)).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roughly 80,000 seats have been made and 7,600 used (latest<\/a>). The company refrained from offering a “Mk 13” version of the seat. Martin-Baker is managed by engineers and the product is far more complex than one would expect. Numerous airbags deploy in precise sequence to try to prevent a pilot from being injured during the ejection. (John McCain is the most famous pilot to have been injured by the process; the injuries that some people imagine he sustained as a POW were actually inflicted by not being positioned properly during ejection<\/a>. The latest and greatest Martin-Baker seats require less of the pilot.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highlight of the award lunch was meeting Col. Joe Kittinger<\/a>, who has used a Martin-Baker seat twice. He wore the tie that the company gives to everyone who ejects<\/a> and the watch that Martin-Baker gives to pilots who shoot down an enemy plane and then are forced to eject. (Apologies for the iPhone photos taken in dim light; where’s the Google Pixel when you need it?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n