Jetman crosses channel.

The sceptic in me wonders if he really flew, ie maintained his altitude, or was it just a controlled powered dive.
 
In fact, going by my basic maths, he travelled 14m towards England for every 1m he descended. And at 125mph (55.5m/sec), he's basically descending at a rate of 3.96m every second.

Sounds like falling/gliding to me... although someone with better maths skills can confirm :p
 
I can't believe no-one has thought of the security implications of jet-powered single wing French suicide bombers being able to attack the UK :mad:

Did anyone else think of Ace McCloud from The Centurions?

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Ace McCloud

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Yves Rossy
 
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Wow, really impressed - looks awesome. Would like to see him do it starting from the ground though, perhaps launch off the White Cliffs or something?
 
Jonny69 said:
His wing does fly properly though. I'll have to dig out a video...
Click to expand...

Yes in the test flight you see him do more than just drop out the sky and (IIRC) he does a loop.

Now if he could take off by himself and land that would be awesome!
 
whether he was falling surely depends on how much he'd fallen by the time he reached the other side (distancewise not landing), if it's not vastly different then he could presumably have done it at lower altitude there's just more risk involved
 
Starting out of a plane gets it up to speed (because taking off uses a lot of fuel) and there's a good buffer zone of height in case anything goes wrong.
 
He can't take off period, it is falling and thats it. He's literally got a hang glider with an engine attached. A Hang glider, an actual glider, a parasailer , they can all "ascende" for a bit by hitting thermals, a hang glider and plane glider can even ascend without them though they'll hit stalling speed if they do it for too long. The engines increase the time this guy can do that obviously as decelerating from a higher speed takes longer to hit the stalling speed.

Glad he enjoys it, seems like fun, but the video, flying around like you would in anythign else for the enjoyment might be cool(though personally i'd not risk my life for it), but crossing the channel hardly seems a fantastic "feat" to me. You work out the top speed, the distance needed to travel and how high up you need to start, basic trig and you're sorted.
 
Except it does have a few hundred pounds of thrust so it should be able to fly vertically under full throttle. Not for long, because the wing is quite small and doesn't carry a huge amount of fuel (and probably not enough to fly under its own power a full 22 miles without a bit of gliding) but it can do it.
 
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