Sunday, March 30, 2014

Wish I Could Fly Like This


I'm not sure I would want this for my job, as much as I love flying and as exciting as it certainly seems to be. But I would love to do it once. I know from my slow-speed and not-very-recent Cessna piloting experience that any flying requires tremendous focus and attention to detail. But when you're doing it 50 to 250 feet above the ground, at 400+ miles per hour, you can't lose focus for a second.

That makes this video especially impressive, especially in HD on a large screen. It is apparently from a motion simulator ride at the Science Museum in London. The Eurofighter Typhoon is the RAF's current front-line fighter and an amazing machine. This is a first-person point of view video taken from the back seat of one of these airplanes on a high-speed, low-level flight through the mountains of northern Wales. I love the pilot's calm British accent as he calls out things like "there's 8 G." Very cool indeed. Sometimes I really miss flying, even though I've never done anything approaching this, except in flight sims on a PC, which is certainly fun but not exactly the same thing.

There are tons of first-person flight videos on-line. Another one I like is this one, taken from the back seat of a US Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 Hornet during an airshow performance. The videographer's excitement is frequently audible.

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