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Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

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Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#311

Post by mehrdadn »

tim333 wrote: post #205
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

>> They are also very high-profile in nature and require a mothership to launch from, such as a helicopter, or at least a very high point to leap from. No. Yves "Jetman" Rossi's design can now launch from a standing position on the ground. It is able to launch, hover, transition to forward flight and zoom-climb to several thousand feet. Other than the landing, which is currently still via parachute ... ironman.

Wow - so he can - here's a video https://youtu.be/lK75XLUIKUk?t=8

You might like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj-Iwv5NJKg

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#312

Post by irlib »

cglace wrote: post #247
sandworm101 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I probably have 5000+ hours driving cars. That doesn't mean I don't occasionally confuse one type of road vehicle for another, especially when dealing with odd/rare types.

You often confuse motorcycles for cars?

I do. Those 3 wheel cars/bikes in California...

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#313

Post by rocqua »

emilecantin wrote: post #191
justsid wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of such relics in aviation, for example distance is measured in nautical miles, speed in knots and the uniforms and ranks are also very much like their naval counter parts.

Nautical miles are used in navigation because one nautical mile equals one minute of latitude when you're traveling North/South, making it a very useful unit of measurement on oceans. Planes use it for the same reason. A knot is simply a speed of one nautical mile per hour, so it's a useful unit for speed when you're using nautical miles for distance. So I wouldn't call these two specific examples relics, but I agree…

Specifically, the nautical mile thing means that any chart with coordinates on it also has a scale in miles built-in.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#314

Post by phs318u »

jandrese wrote: post #294
sandworm101 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a TWR anywhere near 1.0. You need that to take off vertically, but if you are willing to jump out of a helicopter you can probably get away with TWRs closer to 0.35 to maintain level flight.

Even the Helicopter may not be necessary if you can start with a BASE jump. Or set up a catapult.

Preferably an ACME catapult.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#315

Post by pixelbash »

mstade wrote: post #310
cglace wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You often confuse motorcycles for cars?

At night, sure. Many times I've met a car with a broken headlight, only realizing it's not a motorcycle as we're passing. I don't know if this happened at night, but visibility can be reduced for other reasons as well.

In those cases were you certain what you saw was a motorcycle before realizing otherwise? Or did you wait until you passed to be sure?

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#317

Post by amelius »

janlaureys wrote: post #287
tim333 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - so he can - here's a video https://youtu.be/lK75XLUIKUk?t=8

Whenever I watch this video and the other jetman videos I can't help but try to find anomalies or something wrong in the video to somehow try and prove that it is CGI (which I know it's not).

From another viewpoint: people fly turbine-powered model aircraft all the time. Why wouldn't you believe it?

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#318

Post by YetAnotherNick »

throwaway373438 wrote: post #119
mdorazio wrote: post #8

I'm surprised that there's not a single picture of this from any of the passengers on the landing flight and that ATC didn't seem to confirm it via radar, either.

It seems crazy we don't have cameras recording at all times on airplanes. Even cars have dashcams.

I searched this on many places. Only valid reason I can find is the extreme temperatures on the out of the plane. Also, from what I can find airplanes generally have camera near landing gear to aid taxiing.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#319

Post by behringer »

tobib wrote: post #174
Johnny555 wrote: post #91

As amusing as this is, it highlights how fragile air travel is -- someone managed to fly a 200 lb payload within a couple hundred feet of an airliner on final approach. And apparently did so anonymously since there was no mention of who or exactly what it was. It wouldn't be hard to maneuver it right in front of the airliner and cause a collision. While the aircraft would likely survive an engine strike, at only a fe…

Very fragile. It always baffles me how close to the ground airplanes fly during take-off and landing and how there aren't lunatics messing with them more often. In the US there are places where it is legal for a regular Joe to stand underneath an airplane on approach, 200ft off the ground with the type of gun/rifle that could cause serious damage and bring it down.

Airplanes fly close to the ground during take off and landing because that's where they're going or coming from...

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#320

Post by enneff »

hnlmorg wrote: post #172
mark-r wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't claiming that ATC isn't one of the most stressful jobs on the planet. Merely agreeing with GP that the pilot has more skin in the game.

The point of the conversation was about which is more stressful. Obviously having "more skin in the game" would directly increase the stress levels but yourself and others who posted like you completely miss the point that the ATCs are there to ensure safe travel and they very much are invested in that mission too. Comments like "well they're not going to die so why would they lose their cool" are just harsh and enti…

In addition to what you say here, most of the ATC job is about maintaining order and safety, while for a pilot there are many other factors (and accidents happen when pilots get distracted by those other factors). The ATC is constantly thinking about possible accidents, while the pilot has more opportunity to have their thoughts elsewhere.
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