Besides , with the skills necessary for a landing like that..... I'd reckon the pilot would be a dab hand at the auld Accusim!
:costumes::ernae:
Good one!
Let's stipulate a few things. I think we can agree there is no question that a plane can be landed with one wing missing. It's been done and documented. We just saw the RC video of a very similar one-wing landing which Cody linked for us. There's documented proof of an IAF F-15 having done so as well, and I just watched it. So no one who's researched it even a little will disagree with the fact that this sort of thing is definitely possible and has been done before.
Apparently this happened quite recently and there is little in the news about it. If you look at the film there don't appear to be many spectators at all, it seems to be a practice acrobatic session. (Keep in mind that Andersson never claimed to be one of the twelve Red Bull pilots, only that he participates in certain Red Bull events). So if it's a fake, it's an incredibly good fake of something that could have happened exactly as it's shown.
There are plenty of posts and comments all over the web now stating with great certainty that it's a hoax, but a few exist from folks who are familiar with these kinds of planes and they tend to support the authenticity of the video. These come from
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081030140510AAqZPAb
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Typically on this type of highly aerobatic small aircraft:
The fuel tank is in fuselage.
They don't use control cables for ailerons. They are controlled by torque tubes operating through a sliding universal joint at the wind join.
Ground shadow shows no right wing.
Wings on this type aircraft are removable, usually held on with one or two bolts and a couple of pins to take the wing pitching moment. The bolts are there to keep the wing from pulling out of the spar tube.
Center of gravity is usually set way aft on these aerobatic aircraft to give quick and high response, around 40% of wing chord. The cg would not move very much with the loss of a wing since it is already distributed fore and aft of the cg.
If a model was used, then it was an exact duplicate of the final full scale airplane.
They use large control surfaces with large throws, thus the ability to do sustained straight and turn knife edge flight (where the wing has no lift at all) using fuselage lift alone.
I cannot say one way or the other if it is fake. I see nothing in the video that would indicate that it is. As far as I know, it has only been filmed once occurring on an RC model.
That being said, if it really happened, I would imagine it would have been all over the news, and the news people would have set up several satellite dishes outside the pilot's house.
Finally, I reckon the pilot got out quickly because of the smell in the cockpit. LOL
I am a retired Flight Test Engineer for Aerodynamics and Stability/Control plus 45 years of RC flying.
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From a pilot’s perspective this video looks extremely real. I am an airline pilot with about 20,000 hours of flying time, and to me this is spot on. To an untrained eye it made seem that it is defying the laws of physics. However it is not. Let’s take a look at this one at a time: the reason the landing looks unnatural is because of the amazing reflexes of the pilot and the enormous control services that he controls. If you look carefully just before the airplane rights itself for landing you can see the Aileron the left-wing being displaced dramatically. This forces the left-wing down at an incredibly fast rate. This is completely consistent with what you saw on the tape. Additionally, if you look at the tail and rudder displacement you’ll also notice that his controls are perfectly placed for a knife edge pass as well as that quick motion when he rights the aircraft just before touchdown. The knife edge pass uses the body of the aircraft as a lifting surface which, in addition to the large amounts of thrust/lift created by the propeller, was why he was able to maintain flight. This is done all the time when aerobatic aircraft. The reason that he appears to bounce like a ball is because of the way the landing gear is designed. The “V” shaped metal struts along with high performance tires take a tremendous amount of G force, and is able to provide some “give” when the aircraft touches down. That is why the aircraft bounced instead of collapsing the gear. If I were the pilot, I too would have tried to get out of the aircraft as soon as possible. The possibility of fire is always present after an incident like this, and the best place to be if that occurs is away from the aircraft. That's the way we're trained. The reason there was not fuel pouring from the right side of the aircraft was largely due to the fact that the fuel tank is not in the fuselage, but in the wings themselves. So, when he lost his right wing, he also lost his right fuel tank. He may have had his fuel cross feed valve set to the left wing which would have minimized/eliminated any fuel coming from the exposed fuel lines. (these lines are quite small, and leaking fuel wouldn't be that noticeable at this distance if ruptured) The swinging of the aircraft to the left 90° was an intentional, and very rational, course of action. He was trying to slow down the aircraft as soon as possible without ground looping it. With the “tail dragger” type of airplane this can be done at fairly high speeds. All in all, this video looks completely authentic and in keeping with known laws of aerodynamics to an aviator of 30 years. Hope that helps
These are both written by careful observers with plenty of experience with the real thing. Both corroborate what I had posted earlier, and the second strongly supports my observation of the control surfaces. Keep in mind that the fuel lines would have quickly severed, and any fuel would not have been under pressure so fuel would not have been pouring out as some have suggested. There are no electrical lines as these planes are not equipped with lights and only minimal radios or other equipment. CFS2-style wing breakage, with all kinds of spars sticking out, is a video-game effect. Real planes don't have wings that are attached like that, as was stated before, it is usually just a couple of big bolts. There have been many civil planes, including jets, that have lost engines in flight. The bolts sheared and that was it. In many cases the pilots did not even know the engine had departed the plane.
Another claim is that the prop would never stop spinning so quickly. Wrong. With a high-compression, high-performance engine and a very light prop, the engine would stop turning almost instantly, exactly as we saw. Andersson's website says he's modded the engine to make up to 475 HP which would explain that, although the stock 350 HP version would be about the same. As for the plane being quickly "whipped" around to the left right after landing, that's completely unremarkable. I've seen it done almost as quickly by a pilot in an F6F Hellcat. Training would of course account for the pilot's readiness in promptly cutting the fuel supply to the engine (that accounts for the instant cutoff) and opening the canopy. This is standard emergency procedure for any plane after an emergency landing.
Another misconception is that this occurred at a Red Bull air race. Clearly it did not and neither the killathrill website nor Andersson's website make that statement. It is Andersson, practicing acrobatics at an unspecified airfield and event.
If this is a fake, it is astonishingly good to the last detail. I suspect we will know soon enough whether or not it is genuine, but a good number of aviators with actual hands-on experience seem to be convinced of its authenticity.
