Airplanes - how brave are you?

[CLL]

He is a she, but you could never tell from the way she acts  smiley_contract_point

[Coon]

He is a she, but you could never tell from the way she acts  smiley_contract_point

All that means is that the screaming will be a little higher pitched?  :D  Still think it would be funny either way.  Humiliation at its finest...... 

[inghamb87]

Interesting concept! It seems like at $26,000 it's cheaper than most cars on the road ;-) As far as being brave goes, umm I think I wouldn't mind sitting on it but going up in the sky...hmm there has to be quite a deal in the package for me to take up on that offer ;-)

[Ianab]

For the Helicopter types, this is the rotary wing version. More like one of those Propellor caps on steriods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Pbq6cqY40&feature=related

:D

[metalspinner]

At least he was prepared for the worst by wearing a helmet. :D

[Warbird]

http://gizmodo.com/5511236/the-thrill-of-flying-the-sr+71-blackbird

"Keep the pointy end forward."  ;D

[Gary_C]

That's an awesome link Warbird. When I read about some of these top secret programs that were going on back in the 1960's, I wonder about some of the amazing things going on now that we do not know about.

That SR-71 Blackbird was an awesome plane. I read once there was a sign at the entrance to one of the bases they flew out of that said:

Yea though I fly thru the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing.

[Warbird]

Yea though I fly thru the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing.

That used to be my signature on every email I sent from work.  ;)

[DanG]

Yea though I fly thru the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing.

That would be really cool, but it don't trump doing 120 knots, three feet above the trees! ;D

[CLL]

or a dead stick landing into a rice paddie. Bad enough when your in the pilots seat, worse when your a grunt in the back. 

[Ianab]

That would be really cool, but it don't trump doing 120 knots, three feet above the trees!

For sure. Passenget seat of a topdresser plane with the fence posts whizzing by and the cows on the ridges looking down at you. Seemed a lot faster than sitting in the cabin of a SuperJumbo doing 550 knots anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loy2n8s_l00

Ian

[Gary_C]

That would be really cool, but it don't trump doing 120 knots, three feet above the trees! ;D

I would jump at a chance to sit in one of those fighter jets or that SR-71 Blackbird and would even readily get in one of those navy jets being blasted off a carrier, but the idea of riding in one of those things without any wings at treetop level gives me the willies. I know what the glide path would be if the only thing that keeps that thing above the trees would fail.    :

Back in my days in the Army, I had to take a Sgt. out to the local airfield for an aerial reconnasiance school and he came back from that ride in that L-20 white as a sheet and said that crazy pilot had him looking up at the tree tops and kept saying "is this close enough?" 

[CLL]

Cropduster was a good pilot, all you have to do watch how he lands.

[DanG]

or a dead stick landing into a rice paddie. Bad enough when your in the pilots seat, worse when your a grunt in the back. 

CLL, did you ride a dead Huey down?  Now THAT would be scary, since you wouldn't know what to expect.  Heck, it was scary up front when we knew exactly what was going to happen.  You have to save all of the energy until the last second to cushion the landing, so the ground is coming fast at that point.  I can imagine your life would have passed before your eyes by that time!

[Slabs]

DanG

In three and a half years of instructing I have probably done between six and ten thousand touchdown autos.  Of course many were in the hands of students but all were eventful.  The one I remember most was when a Cambodian Major (student)tried to do a snap roll about pitch-pull time.  He was strong but I was SCARED!!

And in 20+ years I never had to do a real one.

We were priviledged to be able to do full dead-stick landings in choppers.  Not many schools did then or now.  Few people understand the autorotation and just how great it is to be able to land a chopper without power.  Most think that if the motor quits, so does the rotor and crash you do.  Wonderful thing that free-wheeling clutch between the motor and transmission.  Makes me remember some manufacturer's comment I heard here on the forum abour their prduct not flying high enough to make autorotative capability practical.  Dumb, really dumb.

[DanG]

I'm with you Slabs.  I never did one that wasn't premeditated by someone, either.  I didn't have the priviledge of scaring the britches off of students, or them off of me.  I got stuck as an instruments instructor.  Hated every minute of it! :-\   I only did two autos in RVN, one on my "in-country" checkride, and one on the six-month checkride.  I either impressed the SIP, or scared him so bad he refused to do another one. :D :D :D

That 50 foot flare altitude looks a lot like 10 feet from the cockpit.  I can just imagine how it must look to a grunt in the back when he never even heard of autorotation!   I can't even begin to imagine how he must feel when he discovers that he's still alive! 8) 8) 8) :D

[fishpharmer]

I just want to say how much I appreciate you fellas sharing your stories, this is a great thread. 8) 8)

[pigman]

Now DanG, I knew what an autorotation was when I was in the back, but of course I was not a grunt. ;D I was just glad the pilot wasn't required to do try an autorotation when I was on the ropes. Of course from a hundred feet, all he could do was try.

[CLL]

DanG, yep the ground comes fast. Since you can only see out the side all your looking for is what your going to hit.
Thankfully we hit in a rice paddy full of water and lots of mud. Still had several hurt, but could have been worse.
In a year of flying almost daily, that was the only one that went down, had a couple that had plenty of holes, but we got out and let the have it. ;D  Never did figure out why grunts needed to fly.

[DanG]

We did a lot of practice autos in Flight School, but always in a lightly loaded aircraft.  I never got to find out what it was like in a fully loaded one.  CLL, I think your pilot probably did an excellent job of getting it down.  The termination in the rice paddy was likely planned on the spur of the moment.  Hurt is a lot better than dead.

Pigman, on the ropes is an uncomfortable place to be in the best of circumstances!   It is definitely not the place to be if your skyhook fails.  100 feet at a hover is probably the worst possible place to have an engine failure, and is also about the most stress those engines ever saw.  That's a rotten combination.

[Papa1stuff]

I read a book about Hewey pilot in V-Nam,I believe it was a true story.
He told of times when picking up men in the jungle  he wood be triming trees as he went in to get them.
I flew single engine 150 and I liked to keep way a way from trees.
Kind of miss my old plane ,but guess it's better I don't have it!

[DanG]

I kinda miss flying too, Papa, but it's better to miss the trees. ;) :D

The story you read was probably true.  Truth is stranger than fiction, ya know.  I rarely flew a bird that didn't have grooves in the blades from clipping branches.  Some of those "hover holes" were pretty tight.  A good crew in the back seats was invaluable.  It was sweet music to hear, "Your tail rotor is clear Sir" over the intercom, and know that you were clear to drop in and pick up a wounded soldier.  The main rotors could take a lot of punishment, but the tail rotor was pretty fragile, and just as important.  Also, the tail rotor is about 40 feet behind the cockpit, and there were no rearview mirrors, so we had to rely on info from the back seats.  Flying with a good experienced crew was an absolute joy!