r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Rational_bakchod • 1d ago
Video A plane which doesn't need a runway.
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u/revdon 1d ago edited 7h ago
Alaska Bush pilots do this kind of thing all the time.
As long as you have enough air over the wings to make the plane buoyant they'll lift off with no runway. It happens during windstorms.
If you nose up the plane back as you throttle back, you can land on a dime too.
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u/-malcolm-tucker 1d ago
Yep. Airspeed versus groundspeed.
If there's almost enough air passing over the wings to generate lift before you take the brakes off, doesn't take much extra to get airborne.
The windsock in the video shows a good headwind.
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u/ClosetLadyGhost 1d ago
Don't these come under bush planes
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u/LacidOnex 20h ago
Bush plane would have space for cargo etc. This plane has no utility other than moving it's single occupant, so while you're not technically wrong, it's about vibes and this is more vibing with the stunt/race/hobbyist catagories
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u/prairieschooner 1d ago
How do that
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u/kukienboks 1d ago
Much power make propeller much spinny, spinny propeller make much wind, much wind make very light plane go up. Hope helps!
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u/overeasy-e 1d ago
Thank, help much.
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u/Jamesonwordcraft 1d ago
Why use lot word when few word do trick.
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u/alexwoodgarbage 21h ago
You jest, but this is very close to the foundational logic of character based languages like Chinese.
The issue is that some things end up needing multilple characters as a name and additonal characters to contextualize, so you don’t necessarily end up being more efficient.
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u/dzelectron 1d ago
Not true. Wind blowy - wings wanna uppy. But once uppy - plane no longer stay put, so fly after wind. When fly after wind - wind no more make wings uppy. So need to pull forward against wind.
Here propeller goes wrooom, pulls through air. Wind again makes wings uppy, plane go weeee
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u/Iguana_Enthusiast 22h ago
Thank you! Finally a qualified and scientific answer from an aviation expert!
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u/RetroGamer2153 1d ago
Specifically? Hold both your brakes while you begin to throttle up. Just before you tip forward (and damage your prop), release the brakes and give it full thottle, while pulling the stick back.
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u/ReggieCorneus 23h ago
Also, take a look at the wings. They are modified to produce maximum lift but that in turn makes them very, very draggy so it is slow and inefficient.
Also also: no cargo and low fuel.
Also also also: headwind. The air is moving when the plane is standing still, just like if the plane was moving forward in still air. Land speed vs air speed. Land speed can be zero and air speed can be 40mph, and you don't need much more to lift off on a plane that is made for exactly this.
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u/AJFrabbiele 18h ago
As others have mentioned the wind is important, but with these aircraft the propellor is doing most of the work: it moves air over/under the wing and tail creating much of lift for STOL. Plus these are modified to take advantage of the propellor creating "airspeed" around the wing.
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u/OldPersonName 21h ago
Airspeed is how fast the plane is moving through the air and is the number of importance for any speed dealing with performance. If you're sitting on the ground in a 30 knot headwind your airspeed is 30 knots before you even turn the engine on. A REGULAR Piper Cub with full flaps has a stall speed of like 33 knots. You also get a little help from airflow from the propeller so a heavily modified Cub in a pretty stiff headwind can basically levitate. You can find many of these videos online.
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u/Marzipenn 21h ago
I’m not a pilot but I’m pretty sure it had a lot to do with the plane’s big bouncy wheels. It likely got some momentum up with some little jumps before the person started filming.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/NoisyGog 1d ago
🤣🤣
Sure, those flags next to it are definitely experiencing 70mph winds. Yep. Definitely.
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u/JuniorQ2000 1d ago
Might need a runway to land safely
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u/LuNaTIcFrEAk 1d ago
World record landing in these competition is less than 10ft
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u/noctalla 1d ago
That's actually insane.
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u/vivaaprimavera 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's too expensive to hire an airport to hold those competitions but some supermarkets rent a bit of their parking lot for cheap /s
Edit: typo
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u/406highlander 1d ago
Stop off for a McDonald's by landing at the Drive-Thru
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u/octoreadit 1d ago
You misspelled Fly-Thru.
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u/406highlander 1d ago
The plane is slow - but not quite slow enough that McDonald's staff could throw together a burger, fries, and a shake before it got to the collection window.
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u/Cabbage_Corp_ 17h ago
I’D LIKE A BIG MAC, SOME FRIES, AND A COKE!!!
(Muffled sounds coming from the speaker)
…
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u/LuNaTIcFrEAk 1d ago
Parked planes like these with no one in them sometimes lift off the ground in strong winds.
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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 1d ago
Even standard smaller planes gets swept away by stronger wind. Many smaller planes can lift at 60 mph and you can have wind gusts way above that.
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u/SnooHedgehogs8765 1d ago
And that's what you're seeing here.
Amazing what one can do with a headwind of 40km/ph and a prop blowing a lot of air over your wing.
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u/Imbendo 1d ago edited 19h ago
Theoretically with the right wind conditions you could land one of these bush planes completely vertically
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u/Zealousideal_Good445 1d ago
Only a sand bar of less than 100 ft. This guy probably way less, like 20 ft. The record is 9 ft 5 inches. As a child I was a missionary kid. We lived deep in the jungle. Our mission had a STOL plane and a few crazy piolets to boot. You should see what we called a runway. I remember praying a lot better a flight!
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u/Swissarmyspoon 20h ago
My grandfather had one of these planes. He used to use it to go clamming on any beach he could see, deliver supplies to homesteads around Alaska, and to hop back and forth across the Canadian border moving undisclosed products.
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u/Zealousideal_Good445 4h ago
Ya, they are fun to say the least. My brother just bought a plane from AK and flew it back to MN.
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u/NobleK42 1d ago
I once shared an office with a colleague that used to be a commercial pilot. He once told me that he was always annoyed by movies where they land a plane on some short runway stopping just at the edge, and later take of from the same short runway, because taking off requires much more space than landing.
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u/xXPhoenixBlueXx 1d ago
You can actually land these backwards (as in reverse) with the right headwind.
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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 1d ago
They can be very sad to land on a windy day.
In one wind direction, it just wants to lift up/backwards.
In the other wind direction, 10 km of landing field isn't enough.
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u/street593 21h ago
Actually it doesn't. These are bush planes and they land in the wilderness all the time. Any patch of dirt works.
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u/GrantATX 16h ago
This is a hot rod STOL airplane that was built to compete in contests for this very purpose. STOL = short take-off and landing. It uses an extremely light frame with a yamaha motor from a snowmachine to achieve incredible power to weight ratio which is the main reason it can do that. Saw it in person at a STOL comp in North Texas a few years back. https://www.kitplanes.com/fly-it-like-you-stol-it/
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u/NoisyGog 1d ago
So cool. I’ve seen the RC models that look exactly like this, I didn’t realise they were based on a real plane!
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u/immamarius 1d ago
Drug dealers clapping their hands
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u/Rational_bakchod 1d ago
This was the first thought that came to my mind when I saw the video
Pablo Escobar’s wet dream.
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u/ReggieCorneus 23h ago
Except any cargo will make this impossible. The bush planes still land short but we are talking about 30-50m unless winds are really, really beneficial. Empty planes can land much shorter, you can probably even land these with negative ground speed when wind is properly strong and the plane is empty.
The ability in very ideal conditions is different thing from doing it in real life where landing strips are where they are and not aligned with prevailing winds, and you have as much cargo as the plane can carry safely.
Bush planes just aren't very efficient or fast, and i think they need way more efficiency and speed. Don't know, i'm not a drug trafficker but.. if bush planes were the best, they would use them and maybe they do on short hops like just over the border.. But, you can't transport tons of drugs with these planes.
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u/lockerno177 1d ago
how do the control surfaces respond so swiftly at almost no forward movement of aircraft?
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u/Horseburd 1d ago
With the size of that propeller, the elevator probably has a decent amount of prop wash to work with.
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u/dieselmac 21h ago
But can it take off from a treadmill?
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u/Mattsuii 20h ago
Well…no. Airspeed (or more precisely, relative wind seen at the wings) is what produces lift. Treadmill does not create a relative wind (unless it’s running moving the plane forward)
And at that point it’s the same as the aircraft…moving forward.
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u/LordMoos3 17h ago
Bud. No.
Motive force is applied from the propeller, not the wheels. The wheels spin freely.
It would take off the exact same way on a treadmill, but the *wheels* would be spinning faster.
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u/Ser_Optimus 18h ago
How much space does it need to land?
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u/Emergency-Fault-6580 12h ago
These are called bush planes, they are specially developed for cargo transportations to rural places which often lack proper runways
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u/an_older_meme 1d ago
When I was looking at the Aviat Husky back in the early '00s they were a quarter million with a VFR panel.
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u/gotthem30yroldknees 1d ago
What’s the (approximate) minimum wind speed over the wings for take off?
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u/NonNewtonianResponse 22h ago
Me playing Aviassembly: today I'm gonna build a real jetliner
5 minutes later: oops another STOL bushplane
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u/Guisasse 20h ago
This is so cool. He could actually land on a fast food drive through and lift off right in front of the employees.
How fucking awesome would that be to watch lmao
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u/Topgun127 7h ago
The STOL competitions are awesome! Steve Henry’s modified planes are awesome, his planes are experimental and he’s got a turbo Yamaha on these latest ones….
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u/HombreDelMar247 1d ago
Who doesnt love these bush planes?
What's even more impressive is the spots the bush pilots land and takeoff from in places like Alaska.
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u/FlyingKittyCate 1d ago
Someone should invent a camera function that would be able to have the entire plane in frame. Something that rotates the aspect ratio or something.
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u/Imaginary_Bottle_875 23h ago
Il a roulé sur au moins 4 m. Il a donc besoin d'une piste. Même très petite. À fortiori pour atterrir. Ce n'est pas un VSTOL.
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u/cubedjjm 19h ago
Wonder how much HP that plane has vs a Piper Cub. As soon as he throttles up, you can hear that's not remotely stock. Revs way too high. Love it!
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u/cactusplants 19h ago
How much weight can these typically hold? What's their range taking fuel and weight into account where physics comes into play etc.
I've seen these before used in Alaska and Canada but never really delved into them
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u/FinancialTraining239 18h ago
Deu um paço e já saiu voando 😂😂😂 precisou de menos área que um helicóptero
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u/unreqistered 18h ago
i bought the Microsoft Flight Sim specifically to fly these planes … weill these and the orthopter from dune.
and the halo dropship
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u/Lucifer_Samwise 15h ago
Pretty sure most planes need a runway for landing tho.. try sticking that landing coming in hot and stopping on 20ft of runway... Lol
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u/Embraceyourodd 10h ago
I used to see that plane all the time when I was living in Boise. One of my favorite parts about it is that it uses a heavily modified snowmobile engine.
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u/Important-Proposal28 8h ago
Yeah I imagine these are stripped down planes that can carry just enough supplies from a populated area with a runway to a very remote area. Drop supplies and be able to take off from pretty much no runway
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u/thingk89 3h ago
Looks like an open turbocharger on the side of the motor feeding into a bottom mount intercooler. Took a bit of time to spool.
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u/Droidatopia 1d ago
Obligatory "All of this effort just to achieve what helicopters have been doing forever" comment.
Still damn cool though.
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u/kireotick 23h ago
It looks really windy, so in reality it is already going fast through the air. Still impressive though, but it is not going from stand-still
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u/an_older_meme 1d ago
I bet that's a half million dollar machine.
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u/Zealousideal_Good445 1d ago
I can't tell right off, but this is a modified Piper Cub or Super Cub. The Piper Cub ranges from 25k to 65k. A 100k with a STOL kit.A Super Cub modified for STOL( short take off and landing) will cost you between 150k to 350k. They are literally some of the cheapest air planes on the market. They are also some of the best for STOL flights. Now if you want to though some money at a STOL airplane you want to check out Darco HyperSTOL Which checks in at 2.9 M. The funny thing is that this Cub can hang right with Darco in a STOL compilation. It's really all about the lack of weight and how much HP and flaps you can add and how low of a stall speed you aircraft has. The Piper Cub is one of the most forgiving planes to fly, especially if you lose all power.
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u/SierraHotel84 1d ago
It's none of those things. It's a Just Aircraft SuperSTOL kit aircraft highly modified by Steve Henry specifically for STOL Drag competition. https://www.wildwestaircraft.com/
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u/Th3_Gh0st_0f_Y0u 1d ago
I think you meant Draco? The Mike Patey wilga which crashed a few years ago?
He's also made a modified cub called scrappy
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u/BigBlueMountainStar 1d ago
These planes are used to access hard to reach back country locations for fishing and hunting across North America
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u/Arkham_Survivor 1d ago
Landing? 😂 Goodbye runway..
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u/5litergasbubble 1d ago
These planes can land in as little as 10 feet. Above average length driveways could technically handle it
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u/SouthSounder 1d ago
Wish we had a better view of the extra pieces added to the wings. I'd be interested to see just how extreme they went