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To prevent a mass panic, England’s prime minister kept top secret a close encounter between a World War II pilot and an unexplained flying object, newly unclassified documents reveal. Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill said the unexplained incident should be kept secret for 50 years, fearing it would provoke a “mass panic.” The claim was discovered in files...
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Authorities have alleged that Colton Harris-Moore — the so-called “Barefoot Bandit” who was arrested Sunday and extradited back to the U.S. on Tuesday — is responsible not only for hundreds of burglaries, but also the theft of several airplanes. Harris-Moore is suspected in the theft of at least five airplanes in Washington state and elsewhere...
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When staff at the Island Market on Orcas Island gleefully announced over the loudspeaker Sunday morning that Colton Harris-Moore had been caught in the Bahamas, a cheer erupted across the grocery. Scott Lancaster, who owns a nearby Ace Hardware store, said he was among those whooping it up. Lancaster’s shop, as well as the grocery, was...
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From DIYDrones.com “Here is a project I’ve been working with for several days, and after 2 bluetooth modules and a Corona 2.4ghz exploded, I finally get the connection between my smartphone and a microchip pic plugged with a bluetooth module. As my Corona transmitter died I used my Spektrum DX6i as transmitter via the trainer port. The video...
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SONOYTA, Mexico – Several times a week, drug smugglers somewhere along Mexico’s border with the United States strap themselves into low-flying ultralight aircraft and take off with loads of marijuana. They usually fly at night with no lights and often, they’re guided only by the dim screen of a handheld satellite navigation tool, looking for...
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The Sacramento Mountains that skirt the eastern edge of Alamogordo’s city limits provide a perfect setting for people who want to escape life’s stressors. It’s a place where Tularosa Basin residents and visitors enjoy hiking, camping and sightseeing adventures. Don Davies prefers to take a running leap off those mountains. “This is the highest I’ve ever...
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Ultralight Aircraft Fly Inn at OAK.. Bergen, Norway. A few Sport Pilot planes, a slick autogyro, STOL, and a nice homey feel.
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Adrenaline junkie Martin Cairns is lucky to be alive after plummeting 400ft in a paragliding accident. The 33-year-old said he feared the worst as he spiralled towards the ground. He struggled to regain control of the glider, crash landing in Herrington Country Park. Martin, of Downhill, said: “I was about 400ft up and it was quite windy...
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There is a website for everything. Everything. Including paragliding in the mountains of Pakistan. To quote the site: ”Welcome to Paraglide-Pakistan a place to chat about paragliding in Himalayas, Karakorum and Hindokush Mountain Ranges. Experience thrilling and full of adventure flying in Hunza, Chitral, Booni, Skardu, Muzzafarabad,...
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The step-by-step construction of a Glasair homebuilt aircraft in a garage. The building time was four years or 3200 hours to complete. The aircraft cruises at 200 mph with a stall speed of 60 mph. It has a retractable gear landing system and is FAA approved for instrument flying. The fuselage, wing, tail and...
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Pretty short clip, but what an amazing place to fly.
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A skydiver has pulled off an astonishing stunt by climbing out of a glider’s cockpit, crawling along the wing and then somersaulting underneath and stepping onto the wing of a second glider flying below. Paul Steiner then moves back onto the main fuselage of the second glider while the first glider turns upside down and...
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Some weeks ago, Stark’s Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3) was released by orbx as one of the first addon aiports for their American Pacific Northwest Region. It’s located about 4 miles south of the city of Hillsboro, surrounded by many interesting places for enthusiastic (virtual) pilots. For me it’s the perfect place to take a short trip...
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Arnon Lufi puts the ParaToys Momentum Paraglider through its paces to show it stability in flight by inducing collapse after collapse. Even with a more then 50% collapse and complete frontal collapse the glider is able to recover with minimum effort. Arnon has been a fan of this glider since his first flight and...
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ASHEVILLE — Seven wooden prototypes of experimental aircraft from the 1930s are among items to be sold May 1 at Brunk Auctions. Among the mahogany models is the prototype of the Caudron C450, a sleek propeller-driven French racing plane. All seven models were crafted in France, where they were purchased...
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Industry efforts to find a replacement for 100LL are expected to intensify now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its advance notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the need to eliminate lead from fuel. The ANPRM does not set a date for eliminating the fuel, but invites...
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Not much more to say than wow.  THIS is what flying is all about.  Know of any other great videos we should feature here on MachNoneFlying.com?
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An Eastern Air Lines promo piece with the Lockheed Super Constellation. This is the full length movie and I did my best to fix the sound sync. Eastern Air Lines Aircraft (passenger) Airline operations Godfrey, Arthur Titles Aircraft (biplanes) Pilots Aircraft (historical) Aircraft (Spad) World War I (aviation) World War I (fighter planes) Dogfights Aircraft (crashes)...
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June 15, 2008 — From the PBS documentary series “Carrier” – Rites of Passage. Navy pilots landing aboard the USS Nimitz during rough seas in the Pacific. Thanks Dan.
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Following a series of runway tests late last year the Solar Impulse HB-SIA has taken to the air for the first time in the skies over Payerne, Switzerland. Piloted by Markus Scherdel, the completely solar powered craft reached an altitude of 1,200 meters and executed various maneuvers designed to test control systems and verify...
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PAYERNE, Switzerland — Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard’s team took its round-the-world solar plane prototype into the skies for the first time Wednesday, with four propellers lifting the massive craft off the ground at near bicycle speed. Piccard said the two-hour test flight will examine if the plane, with the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and...
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Making general aviation more environmentally friendly has in the past had an alternate fuels focus, but as batteries improve, all-electric aircraft are emerging in Europe. From Lange Aviation’s Antares 20E in 2005 to this year’s new entrant, the PC-Aero Elektra One, there is a growing European challenge to the likes of China’s Yuneec and...
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So, you take a pleasant hike to the top of a mountain, a really big mountain, so you can launch and fly.   But who wants to carry a PPC with them, or even a PPG Trike.   For that matter, once you see the mountain she is climbing you will know that every...
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20th Anniversary Series Highlights Fly/In Cruise/In Video Magazine Saturday, September 4th, 2010 is the date for the 20th Annual Fly/In Cruise/In at Marion Municipal Airport in Marion, Indiana. The action starts early at 7:00am and runs until 2:00pm. This annual event features antique, classic, homebuilt , ultralight and warbird aircraft as well as vintage cars, trucks, motorcycles,...
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While the MachNoneFlying.com team heads out on vacation for three days, we offer you some “classic:” stories from our past. Enjoy! Experimental RC Blimp at Loring AFB, ME. We are flying in a Cessna 172 as a chase plane for the airship. The video is rather poor, but the airship is impressive. Watch Video:
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Virgin Galactic’s experimental SpaceshipTwo, an aircraft designed to one day carry paying customers into space, has had its maiden flight in the California desert. The spacecraft, brainchild of the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, took off nestled under the wing of its mothership White Knight Two. ”Virgin Galactic announced that its commercial manned spaceship, VSS Enterprise, this...
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From the Ulf-1 website: The ULF-1 single seat foot-launched sailplane was designed by Dieter Reich and constructed by Heiner Neumann of Germany. Designed for ridge soaring and marginal thermal currents (microlift), it has full three-axis aerodynamic control. Its first flight was in November 1977; since that time more than 40 aircraft have been...
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Floatplanes aren’t just fun, they’re stupid fun. In this video, Aviation Consumer’s Paul Bertorelli takes a test hop with Dick Parsons in American Legend’s new amphibious LSA Cub. It has terrific performance and it’s fun and easy to fly. Come on along.
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Broadcast reports in Houston say a pilot buzzed the beach in Galveston County recently. According to KHOU’s Jeremy Desel: The Federal Aviation Administration confirms that it is investigating the incident after receiving a number of complaints, including one from the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. It is a federal violation to operate a plane lower than...
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Leo Callahan can tell you what it’s like to plop uninvited into the middle of a top secret spy base. And live to laugh about it. Last year Callahan, a Hampton man, was forced to make an emergency landing of his experimental aircraft at Camp Peary, the CIA training facility for rookie agents. Callahan is a member...
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Hi all, Here is a little video of Fred Byrons amazing HM290.It is a montage of old and new footage. Some came from old tapes, so is a little flickery, but I hope you enjoy. Ed note: There is some newer and clear footage in the second half.
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​A Utah man apparently has seen too many “extreme” Mountain Dew commercials. Bill Heaner, a 49-year-old “professional extreme athlete,” plans on attempting a world-record-breaking stunt that defies all laws of gravity and common sense: he plans to jump out of a hot-air balloon, paragliding for a little while and landing back in the balloon as...
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The videos aren’t too good, but the end result is kinda slick. Seems more flame thrower than jet engine at some points! Lots of work and lots of fun.
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The Jetpack is constructed from carbon fiber composite, has a dry weight of 250 lbs (excluding safety equipment) and measures 5 ft high x 5.5 ft wide x 5 ft long. It’s driven by a 2.0 L V4 2 stroke engine rated at 200 hp (150 kw), can reach 8000 ft (estimated) and each...
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The Lavorini brothers build an amazing little aircraft based on the Flying Flea, and it’s electric!
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Students at Virginia Tech’s Unmanned Systems Laboratory are perfecting an autonomous helicopter they hope will never be used for its intended purpose. Roughly six feet long and weighing 200 pounds, the re-engineered aircraft is designed to fly into American cities blasted by a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb. Its main mission would be to...
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Look! Down on the lake … is it a boat, a plane … it’s neither. It’s the “hoverwing”,  a hovercraft that flies. New Zealand mechanic Rudy Heeman spent more than 11 years of his spare time (and tens of thousands of dollars) building the hoverwing, a wing-in-ground-effect vehicle that flies on a cushion of pressurized air...
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A gathering of homebuilts, private planes and warbirds at Valkaria Airport, just south of Melbourne FL. Nice fly-in, I’d go again.
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The airplane-chopping guillotine in action at the aircraft boneyard (AMARC) at Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, AZ. Took this video with my Canon Powershot A40 from a tour bus that goes through the boneyard. Apparently, seeing the guillotine in action is quite rare, you can hear the tour guide say this is only the second time...
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Designed for skiers, but what about PPC or other pilots? Michael Jackson of Zeal Optics gives us a sneak peek at the Zeal Transcend GPS integrated goggle system at the 2010 SIA snowsports show in Denver, Colorado, January 29, 2010. The Transcend has a Heads Up Display giving the wearer speed, altitude, temperature, vertical rate...
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Pretty slick video from British Parachute Schools, which is the UK’s busiest civilian Skydiving Centre (around 29,000 jumps a year) and has provided top-class services year-round for both Beginning and Experienced Skydivers since 1977. We fly 16-place turbine-powered Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft.
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In the heart of Canada’s only desert, there lives what locals call the “mad scientist.” Doc Holloway, a chemist and serial inventor, is constantly sidetracked by curiosity and his latest invention is the culmination of a five-year tangent: a home-based flight simulator. Watching him scurry around his utilitarian computer shop in Penticton, BC, you might miss...
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We’ve seen the value of using multiple rotors in unmanned microcopters like the CyberQuad, DraganFlyer X8 and more recently Parrot’s AR.Drone. The HexaKopter is another case in point – the 1.2kg, six-rotor device has a flight-time of up to 36 minutes and can carry around 1kg along with a high-definition camera that delivers some...
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This amazing cockpit is based on Flight Simulator X and was built by Mr Andras Kozma. Other cockpit projects worldwide. Another worth checking out.
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Dave, the man behind the video series from Ultralight News, shares his thoughts on Sport Pilot and the SLSA aircraft requirements. He thinks the FAA made some incorrect assumptions, especially when applied to those who fly ultralight aircraft. He thinks we are at a crisis point.
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For as long as she can remember, Val Paget has reached for the sky and felt at home there. She got her first taste while climbing a 14,000-foot mountain with her father at age 3. Yet today the 66-year-old retired English teacher living in the Heights is pushing herself beyond any mountain summit. That’s why she...
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Amazing new Flight Sim Cub. There is a brief talking head intro, then there’s some amazing footage. Jaggyroad Films is proud to present the A2A Piper Cub in coordination of a secondary broadcast here on the Cessna154 Channel. Piper Cub A2A Simulations – Jaggyroad Films was created under Microsoft’s Game Content Usage Rules...
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Thanks to those who have signed up for the MachNoneFlying.com newsletter, our “weekly” update.   Be sure to check your spam filter if you didn’t get it! We promise we will never send you spam… just an occasional newsletter, with perhaps a word from a sponsor or two. Our newsletter is evolving, as is all of...
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Fred Morrison, a pilot and carpenter most often credited with inventing that most ubiquitous of backyard toys, the Frisbee, died Feb. 9 at his home in Monroe, Utah. He was 90 and had lung cancer. Inspiration for Mr. Morrison’s flying-saucer toy came in 1937 at a Thanksgiving feast in Southern California. He and his girlfriend,...
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On October 6 2009 Martin Aircraft Company had its first five customers pay to be jetpack pilots and fly the Martin Jetpack. You can see from this video the thrill they had. All five customers were novice pilots, and they all made safe solo flights. As part of the development of the Martin Jetpack Experience...
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SALISBURY — Paul Ennis put his arm around his wife, Ellie, as she started to cry. They stood Thursday in front of the hangar that had been the crown jewel of Salisbury’s first full-service airport when it opened in 1936, built by Ennis’ father, pilot Fred Ennis. Snowstorms had dumped several feet of snow and...
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Three paraglider pilots are planning a Himalayan Odyssey, a vol-bivouac adventure, travelling the length of the Himalaya and exploring the legends, myths and life of these remote mountain regions and their inhabitants. Brad Sanders (US, Parahawking tandem pilot), Antoine Laurens (FR, founder of Airzone Parapente) and Mike Laengle (AU) have 24 seasons flying in the...
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MikroKopter – HexaKopter from Holger Buss on Vimeo. Mikrokopter FPV with a modified 56g Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35. The composite output is redirected to the video TX while onboard recording is done at the same time on SDCard. A post treatment is done with VirtualDUB and its plugin Deshaker. There are still some noisy vibrations I need to fix....
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Over the radio, Jay McCombs tried hard to understand the slow, slurring words muffled among the blaring sirens sounding in the background. The radio was poor, and the pilot difficult to understand, leaving only unintelligible transmission and uncontrollable noise to be heard. Controllers at Cleveland Center were now faced with the complex and difficult task...
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This is another flying adventure that we had on the schedule to do in 09. There was a couple of Gyrocopters and a Trike that decided to fly down to Red Stewart Field for the Pancake breakfast on a Sunday morning. I was there Saturday evening and caught the fireworks show. This is the...
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Recently I rented a DVD of the award-winning 2003 documentary Winged Migration. Famed as one of the most unique and beautiful films ever made, Winged Migration literally takes the viewer up into the sky as it follows birds on their long-distance seasonal flights around the world. Somehow, seemingly as if by magic, the cameras are right...
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Gyro Hang Glider Tow from Russia – Shumeyko built this gyro glider in the early 90’s.
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Can Dan conquer his fear of flying with a slow, patient therapy? Probably, but straping him to an airplane is much more fun. A British show that puts a man up as a wing walker. What’s it like? Check the video!
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What do you do if you find yourself free-falling from a plane without a parachute? In this month’s issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, Dan Koeppel offers a survival guide, based on simple physics and the stories of a few people who have found themselves in that situation and survived. “There are two ways to fall out...
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A German acro pilot is missing in Nepal after a stunt to celebrate his 200th flight in Pokhara went tragically wrong. Christoph Andreas Sattler, 26, jumped from his harness while still 30 m above Phewa Tal, the lake in Pokhara, on Friday 5 February. According to friends he was celebrating his 200th flight in Pokhara and...
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They say it’s space debris, and it looks like space debris, but that’s mighty big space debris. What is it?
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Antoine Montant has a cravate while doing some amazing acro. He tries to clear the mess without throwing his reserve, and eventually lands in the trees.
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When it comes to adventure sports, there always seems to be someone looking to push the boundaries in new, and sometimes unusual, directions. Take, for instance, the relatively new sport of speed riding or sky riding, as it’s sometimes called. The sport is a combination of skiing and paragliding that often sends the daredevils...
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A group of 30 paraglider pilots who sparked a callout for police and the harbourmaster in Queenstown on Tuesday evening will not face charges. The paragliders from the Southern Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club were planning to fly from Cecil Peak across Lake Wakatipu to land at the usual paraglider landing spot at the Queenstown...
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Now published to the Federal Register February 1, 2010 Title 14 CFR Part 43, 61, 91, and 141. In the new world order of more regulations, the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rules are not nearly as many changes as origionally proposed in the 2008 NPRM. They did not add the category and class categories...
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What’s special about preflighting the Rotax engines found on most LSAs? Tim Brooks, Director of Maintenance for Heart of Virginia Aviation, takes you on a just-the-facts tour explaining what you’re looking for and why it’s important.
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How do you get into the air as a paraglider when you live in a flat area? You use an Electro-Winch! Or how about using your truck? Paraglider Towing 2 from Andrew on Vimeo. Paraglider Towing 1 from Andrew on Vimeo.
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In full HD video a flight in a sailplane…from the tow to the landing. Cadet Gliding in HD (Pilot: James Harding) from James Harding on Vimeo. Overview Air Cadets is an organization for youth between the ages of 12 and 18. The three aims of the air cadet program are to: Develop leadership and good citizenship Promote...
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Beck and I flying on our summer trip to Europe. Slovenia is quite easily the coolest place I have ever flown. Paragliding in Italy and Slovenia from Justin Brim on Vimeo. Compilation of video from my trip to Valle. Good peeps and good flying. Valle De Bravo MX 09-10 from Justin Brim on Vimeo. A paragliding flight in...
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Brightly-coloured red and orange Chinese lanterns are being  mistaken for distress flares,  sparking search-and-rescue operations off Northland’s coast. In January police launched six night-time searches after people believed they had seen a flare indicating a marine emergency. The objects were actually lantern-type fliers powered by small candles. They have also been responsible for starting  at least...
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This ones been around for awhile, but in case you haven’t seen it, we share it again. Sure, many of us fly WITHOUT wires, but this still looks fun.
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Thunderstorms are very powerful events. They can produce grape fruit sized hail, terrifying lightning, strong winds, torrential rains and tornadoes. But another less noticed product of a thunderstorm is the updraft … unless you happen to be caught in one while flying a paraglider. That’s exactly what happened to a German woman who was flying...
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Amazing acrobatics from a flying show. This is some crazy flying.
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Home built pulse jet stainless steel construction first test run. Using spark ignition, venturi fuel system & regular unleaded petrol.
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I flew twice with the neighbour Laurent in calm conditions with only slight thermal activity. I have completely lost my rhythm with wingovers so I did a 50% collapse with auto rotation. Fun fun fun! Filmed with a Contour HD 720p at 30fps. GoPro HD Test flight from Simon D on Vimeo. Butterfly Paragliding on the Isle...
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Sure, suicide bombers deftly gliding into a crowded city sounds terrifying, but in reality such an attack would be incredibly difficult to pull off. First of all, paragliders must take off from a high point, meaning that an attack would either have to be launched from close hills or buildings (with a strategic location...
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From the website:  The Quasar Aircraft Company, LLC  was a dream of Frank Porter and it was born with the burning desire to bring an unlimited source of energy and light from the celestial Quasars and deliver its energies to the aircraft industry. The idea was first to build a Quasar Jet, this will occur at a...
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