A Wing and a Prayer......

[PraiseCaster]

Now I had thought that this was fake, but check out the rudder and Airelon (sp?) towards the end of the video (the pilot has em cranked hard):



And he makes it look so easy.............

[brgminicooper]

I wanna believe that it's real... but I don't know...

[spotface]

very probably a fake, using an identical large r/c model. In the last shot you cannot see the side of the full size plane that is missing the wing....it is a well done piece. I've flown r/c and real planes for over 45 years, and watching that plane land suggests the mass of a model... Give me a hi-rez copy and let me look at it in Final Cut Pro.
Spotface aka Airplane Bill

[PraiseCaster]

That is what I thought at first too, but if you can do some stop-frame views as he lands, you can watch the pilots head snap forth and back as he lands. I dont know if a little figurine in an RC plane is gonna do that so well. I could be wrong though......

[eryque]

That one's pretty well known as a fake now. The editing is pretty good so it's hard to tell that there's a transition between the model and the full size model that the guy climbs out of.

There are a lot of you tube videos of R/C guys landing planes with one wing.

[endzone]

It's been a while since I first saw this video so my memory is a little fuzzy but there's an aviation website out there somewhere that has discussed this video saying that it was fake. I forget what details they cited, but it was pretty solid evidence that the whole thing was somehow photo shopped.

[Cam]

snopes.com has this classified as undetermined
http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/onewing.asp

[boneyguy]

I can't prove it in a court of law but my gut says fake.

1) The wing mysteriously falls off like a knife cut it, absolutely no debris comes off with it. No bolts, fluids or cables. Very unlikely

2) After the wing falls off the plane continues to do aerial acrobatics. It does not look like the plane is in distress and even as a non-pilot I can recognize the manoevures as standard aircraft acrobatic moves.

I don't have a clue how it was done but I'll stake my unsullied reputation on it that it's a fake.

At least a fake in the sense that it was no accident.

Is it plausible that the plane itself was designed and counter balanced etc. in order that the wing could 'fall off' and it would still fly in a controlable manner? Neat trick!!

[PraiseCaster]

Found this link to the pilots website where he supposedly talks about it (I dont know, because I have no speakers at work):

http://www.jamesandersson.com/video01.html

But then I found this too, which seems to debunk it all:

[Joe-Bob]

I dunno...

Those kinda planes have enough power to literally hang from the prop. Also, the aileron is the full length of the wing...which is way bigger than a regular plane. Looks to me like he helicoptered down for the most part, and then flipped horizontal by steering against the one wing to land. He wasn't going very fast.

[garytelecastor]

I don't know one way or another, but my understanding of physics says "horse doo-doo".

[e-merlin]

Well, I thought this was going to be about the Gerry Rafferty album of the same name.

[eryque]

Originally Posted by Joe-Bob

I dunno...

Those kinda planes have enough power to literally hang from the prop. Also, the aileron is the full length of the wing...which is way bigger than a regular plane. Looks to me like he helicoptered down for the most part, and then flipped horizontal by steering against the one wing to land. He wasn't going very fast.

Most planes in this category don't have enough power to hang on the prop. In fact, I've only seen or heard of one. Sean Tucker does a neat trick with a biplane that makes it look like he's hovering, but he manages to set up a vortex to provide enough lift to keep him up.

In any case, this one's been thoroughly debunked.