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"The Ghia had good aerodynamics from the start..."
It has terrible aerodynamics. That rounded front pushes air underneath the body.

Over 300kph? (~190mph) I don't think so.
Only in very short bursts. They show him hitting 174mph but I'm guessing he backed off quick.

I have about 130hp in mine and I once had it just under 120mph At that speed, the front wheels were scary loose. It felt like a sudden headwind would have sent me airborne. It's fun for short bursts of acceleration though.

..."It was precisely at that moment in which the sedatives began to wear off. Suddenly, the headwind of her dream ceased its warm caress, and became a howling vortex of hot pain. Instead of the familiar lilt of the flight, her nails clicked on something solid, smooth and inorganic. Realizing she was standing, her natural equalibrium returned and she forced an eye open, cocking her head away from the screaming heat. Her mind reeled. Mere inches away stood a looming, bleached ape.
A voice screeched for freedom, her senses flooded back to her, a bubbling, growing force of awareness and energy that grew with speed, and slowly subsided, spreading into her muscles, bones, limbs and feathers. Her mind's haze receded, sharpened, returning to the familiar, welcome, finely-honed edge of a predator.
She went for the eyes..."

Not being a pilot here, can someone explain what was insane about that take-off? The only thing I can figure is maybe a strong headwind, but I don't know.

>> ^Barbar:

Applying the oversimplified version of laws that you learned in early physics classes to reality can often leave you in stunned silence when reality seems to defy them. Things like the dimples on golf balls or sailing ships moving upwind are classic examples of things that you wouldn't expect to even be conceivable unless you saw it in action.


Conceivable or not, none of the things you mentioned break the first law of thermodynamics.

One situation where the system could work would be if the car was driving into a strong headwind. This would give an energy input into the system. It could be perhaps developed to extend the blades if there is a strong enough headwind, and retract them if there isn't, but if there is no breeze, there will be a net loss from using the blades.

If the car is driving through stationary air then the air it's passing through will have no kinetic energy. After passing over the blades the air will be moving, it will have gained kinetic energy. That energy will have been taken from the car. It's as simple as that. No complicated equations needed. You'd need the complicated equations if you wanted to calculate exactly how much energy is lost, but you don't need them to see that energy would be lost.

If wind is factored into it then the air already has kinetic energy, which would be extracted by the fan, but the wind would be and external source of energy (in the same way that a wind turbine isn't in any way a perpetual motion device, it's obvious where the energy is coming from).

I did a little amateur investigation, a bit of reading and some numbers but you can skip to the bottom for a summary.

The plane is a Stinson 108-3, 16500 foot service ceiling, 2400 pound gross weight limit (1300 empty weight), 50 gallon fuel capacity. Thats about 1100 of useful weight (2400-1300), with full fuel that lowers it to 800 (6lbs per gallon*50 gallons=300lbs), I saw 3 men in there the 4th passenger I'm gonna assume male, so lets say 180lbs for each (200 for the pilot) that comes to 740lbs for passenger weight. That leaves 60lbs for cargo. Although I couldn't see the cargo, they were still close to the weight limit but still could have been within normal limits.

The airport Bruce Meadows (U63) has a field elevation of 6370 feet. I couldnt find the airport temperature for that day but I did find nearby Stanley Airport 23 Miles southeast of Bruce Meadows. Their METAR history shows a high of 27 Celsius/81 Fahrenheit for June 30, 2012. Definitely a hot day but was it too hot? The closest I could find on performance data shows a 675 Feet per Minute climb at 75 Fahrenheit at sea level. Thats pretty close to what many small planes of that nature can do, so I took those numbers and transposed them over what a Cessna 172N could do. The 172N has a slighty higher climb performance about 750 for sea level and 75 Fahrenheit, a difference of 75 feet ill subtract out. At 6000 feet at 27C/81F the 172N climbs at 420FPM. Taking out the 75 feet brings it to 345 FPM, now I know this isn't perfect but I'm going with what I have. The plane began its climb out at 1:13 and crashed at 2:55, that leaves 1 minute and 42 seconds in between or 1.7 minutes. 1.7*345 means about 590 feet possible gain. But the plane isn't climbing at its best the entire video, at 2:35 it is apparent something is giving it trouble, that brings it down to about 1.58 minutes climb time which is 545 feet. Theres still another factor to consider and thats how consistent the altitude at the ground was.

The runway at Bruce meadows faces at 05/23 (Northeast/Southwest) but most likely he took runway 23 (Southwest) as immediately to the north east theres a wildlife preserve (Gotta fly at least 2000 feet over it) and he flew straight for quite some time. Although the ground increases in the direction he flew, by how much is difficult using the sectional charts. That means that although he may have been able to climb to about 545 feet higher than his original ground altitude, the ground rose with him and his absolute altitude over the ground would be less than that maximum possible 545. The passenger in the rear reported the plane could only climb to about 60-70 feet above the trees. The trees looked to be around 75-100 but thats still difficult to tell. That would mean according to the passenger they might have only been about 170 feet off the ground. It could still be wildly off as we cant exactly see the altimeter.

Finally theres that disturbance at 2:35 described as a downdraft. It could have been windshear, or a wind effect from the mountains. I don't have too much hands on knowledge of mountain flying so I cant say. If it was windshear he might have suddenly lost a headwind and got a tailwind, screwing up his performance. It could have been a downdraft effect. The actual effect on the aircraft may not have been much (lets say 50 feet) but near obstacles it was definitely enough to have a negative impact.



Summary:

Yes he was flying pretty heavy but he may not have been over the weight limit

The temperature in the area was definitely hotter than standard and the altitude was high, but he still had climbing capabilities within service limits. However he didn't give himself much of a safety threshold.

He might have been able to climb about 545 feet higher than the runway elevation, but the terrain altitude rose in the direction he flew, so his actual altitude over the ground was probably smaller than that.

The disturbance at 2:35 might have been some form of windshear which has the capacity to reduce airplane performance, and with his margins of safety so low already, that could have been the final factor.

Basically he may very well have been flying within the service limits of the aircraft, but the margins of safety he left himself were very low and the decision to fly over obstacles like those trees in that mountain enviroment could be the reason this would be declared pilot error.

Other notes:

The takeoff looks pretty rough but he trying to get off the ground as quickly as he can and ride ground effect until he gets up to speed.

I cant find anything resembling a proper PoH for this aircraft but I did find some data that looks pretty close to it. However this aircraft was a model from the late 40s, so the standards of performance may not be the same as now, and the transcribing I did to the 172N could be thrown off more.

On that note, I do realize that a 172 would have different aerobatic effects with altutude and temperature than a Stinson 108, but its the closest data I could use.

I also couldnt not find balance information to get a rough idea of how the plane was balanced. The type of balance on a plane does have effects on performance.

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N773C.html (The aircraft)

http://www.aopa.org/airports/U63 (The airport)

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120701X65804&key=1 (The NTSB link posted earlier)

http://personalpages.tdstelme.net/~westin/avtext/stn-108.txt (Closest thing I could find to performance data, the actual numbers are at the bottom)

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/cgi-bin/gen_statlog-u.cgi?ident=KSNT&pl=none2&yy=12&mm=06&dd=30 (Weather data at nearby Stanley)

http://skyvector.com (sectional chart data, type U63 into the search at the upper left, then make sure that "Salt Lake City" is selected in the upper right for the sectional chart)

>> ^deathcow:

Did she back off right before the line?


Looked like she hit a really specific headwind if she didn't.

The one about headwinds? Yeah.

When I was a kid, my dad told me about take-off speeds of airplanes. He said the plane's ground speed plus headwind speed must add up to at least the minimum take-off speed, or the plane won't leave the ground. I then saw that a plane could then take off with headwind alone. Dad agreed. What we both didn't see in our heads is that once the plane leaves the ground, if the propulsion system isn't engaged, the plane will be pushed backwards, lose speed, and crash again.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'airbus, a330, fly, hover, headwind, airspeed vs groundspeed' to 'airbus, a330, fly, hover, headwind, airspeed vs groundspeed, relative wind' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'airbus, a330, fly, hover' to 'airbus, a330, fly, hover, headwind, airspeed vs groundspeed' - edited by calvados

Headwind is your friend - it's like riding a bike with training wheels.

Well considering the plane could take off in zero feet with gusts.. It appears they have a 80 mph headwind which means relative to the ground the plane is already going fast enough to stay airborne.