>> ^Sagemind:

"...killing one of the pilots" ...leads me to believe there were more than one pilot.
I don't know why, but I was imagining one in each copter...
>> ^rychan:
Here's the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piasecki_PA-97
From the video I got the impression that this was the first test flight, but apparently not. Also the entire contraption was controlled from the left-rear helicopter. It seems in one of the shots you can see a pilot in that helicopter being violently thrown around.



Yeah I found that phrasing odd as well. It does definitely imply multiple pilots. But if only one pilot is operating the thing, it seems idiotic to put more test pilots at risk. But that seems to be par for this course.

I wonder what the engineers behind this think. Maybe management forced them into the ridiculous situation.

Don't underestimate this ant!

In reply to this comment by curiousity:
Did you fix the embedding right after I made the comment?

Because if you did, your lightning fast reflexes caused me to question reality itself. (Well, maybe not that much...)

In reply to this comment by ant:
>> ^curiousity:

dead - copyright by Warner Bros.
Luckily I got to see it, but my friend is disappointed.


Try again. We go far as Hungary!

Did you fix the embedding right after I made the comment?

Because if you did, your lightning fast reflexes caused me to question reality itself. (Well, maybe not that much...)

In reply to this comment by ant:
>> ^curiousity:

dead - copyright by Warner Bros.
Luckily I got to see it, but my friend is disappointed.


Try again. We go far as Hungary!

>> ^curiousity:

dead - copyright by Warner Bros.
Luckily I got to see it, but my friend is disappointed.


Try again. We go far as Hungary!

Alvin M. "Tex" Johnston (August 18, 1914 - October 29, 1998) was a jet-age test pilot for Bell Aircraft and the Boeing Company.

Tex Johnston is best known for barrel rolling the Boeing model 367-80 (better known as the Dash-80, the prototype of the KC-135 Stratotanker, which was the basis for the very first US transport jet B-707) in a demonstration flight over Lake Washington outside of Seattle, on August 7, 1955. The maneuver was caught on film and is frequently shown on the Discovery Wings cable channel in a three-minute short as part of the Touched by History series. Called before then Boeing president Bill Allen for rolling the airplane, Johnston was asked what he thought he was doing. Tex responded with "I was selling airplanes". Johnston kept his position as a test pilot, and got in no legal troubles for his actions.

*history *documentaries

Tags for this video have been changed from 'tex johnson, test pilot, airplane' to 'tex johnston, test pilot, airplane, boeing, 707, barrel, roll, 1955' - edited by demon_ix

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by kulpims.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Bell-Aircraft-Helicopter-Test-Pilot-Pulled-Into-Blades

>> ^notarobot:
A pretty video, and some impressive engineering, but I still think there are better ways to spend 65 BILLION Dollars.


Apparently the Secretary of Defense agrees with you and cancelled the F22. It is a ton of money, but what a bad ass jet. I've been looking forward to it for years.

WikiPedia:

Lieutenant General Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin (Russian: Владимир Сергеевич Илюшин) (born 31 March 1927) is a son of aircraft designer Sergei Ilyushin and a noted test pilot in the Soviet Union. He spent most of his career as a test pilot for the Sukhoi OKB.

Ilyushin is purported to be a cosmonaut; it is alleged he became the first man in space on 7 April 1961. This honor is generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin whose spaceflight, Vostok 1, took place on 12 April.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital spaceflight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descent capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, which resulted in its landing in the People's Republic of China whereupon the pilot was held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from having their pilot held is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight and instead focusing their adulation on the subsequent successful flight of Gagarin.

However, there are reasons to disbelieve this allegation, notably that although both were Communist governments, relations between the Soviets and Chinese were strained, and the propaganda value to the Chinese of a Soviet pilot captured flying over their territory would have given little reason for Chinese complicity in a coverup.

According to Mark Wade, editor of the well known website Encyclopedia Dramatica, "The entire early history of the Soviet manned space program has been declassified and we have piles of memoirs of cosmonauts, engineers, etc who participated. We know who was in the original cosmonaut team, who never flew, was dismissed, or was killed in ground tests. Ilyushin is not one of them."

The test pilot is the inventor's son, who now no longer has to keep his job as (un-patented) JetPack Test Pilot a secret from his high school friends.

This is documentary footage of Joseph Kittinger, a test pilot who holds the record for the highest, longest free fall. The music in the background is Boards of Canada, because this edit is the first half of a Boards of Canada music video ( http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=11718 )

I saw an interview with Kittinger once, and a cool side story about this dive is that he was to abort if anything went wrong... well one of his gloves failed to seal properly, so one of his hands nearly froze off as he was ascending.

Ooh, I missed that Joemawlma, thanks! My uncle worked with Buzz for several years in one of the test pilot programs and says he was one tough S.O.B. ...guess he still is!

"I don't think I posess any skill that anybody else doesn't have."

Seems like all great tests pilots are this humble. Noted pilot Scott Crossfield said something similar:

"The opportunity to be a test pilot...is there for all--and probably within the grasp of most. In my mind, we should divest ourselves of this idea of special people (being) heroes, if you please, because really they do not exist."