A (dangerous) quick, little fly-by

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LittleLinky@reddit

Nope. Absolutely dangerous. Doesn't matter how much you practice it - it can be deadly.

I've known two pilots with over 10,000 hours that were killed "skating" on the water like this within 2 years of each other, and another pilot with about 5000 hour severely injured (now a paraplegic on a respirator) from a broken neck with this type of accident.

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Isord@reddit

Yes, though frankly as long as the only people they are endangering is themselves I don't really see the issue. Lots of people have dangerous hobbies. Free-running, auto racing, cave diving, etc.

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LittleLinky@reddit

But a crash is a waste of a perfectly good airplane, and a waste of a life.

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Isord@reddit

How's that any different than other dangerous hobbies? You can trash a car, a hydrofoil etc when racing, and cave diving is vastly more dangerous than this.

As long as everybody involved knows and accept the risk it's not a problem.

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HortenWho229@reddit

This is the correct take but people online love telling other people how to live their lives

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Isord@reddit

It seems to be specific to aviation frankly. Obviously people should be flying extremely predictable and safely in shared airpace but I don't see how this is any different than any other acrobatic performance. A fuck ton of Blue Angels and Thunderbirds have died

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LittleLinky@reddit

How many Blue Angels or Thunderbirds have you seen skimming the surface of the water with their wheels? There is a reason that they don't.

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Isord@reddit

Irrelevant. The point is they are doing dangerous flying and doing it intentionally. Where the cutoff is for a particular maneuver to be too dangerous is up to the pilot/team, the aircraft, and the situation. I'd be more concerned with a regular loop being done above a large crowd than I would with this maneuver done by themselves or away from a crowd.

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HortenWho229@reddit

People spend 2 seconds thinking about something before forming an opinion on it

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FiberApproach2783@reddit

I mean, you can visibly see why this is very dangerous, but what makes it more so than other aerobatics? Is it just the risk of going too deep in the water + possibly losing control and hitting the other planes around you?

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TheSeanski@reddit

Well typically we don’t do aerobatics 0ft off the water/ground…

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LittleLinky@reddit

EXCELLENT answer. If only more people knew this.

I live in an area where I can the ocean, and I can't tell you the number of times I see guys in Cessna 150s do this exact stunt. Flying low level in the military was considered to be hazardous when you're low to the ground, and low-level operations were planned out well in advance...and none of the military flying included touching your wheels to the water's surface.

There is a saying in aviation: "Altitude is life".

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xlRadioActivelx@reddit

Consider all the forces at play here:

The drag on the wheels slows the aircraft down and causes a nose down pitch moment, either of those actions cause the aircraft to lose altitude. When the aircraft loses altitude it puts more wheel into the water and increases the drag and nose down moment, so more wheel goes into the water, and the forces are increased even more etc.

There is a counter-acting force from the shape of the wheel, the water hitting the underside of the wheel also pushes it up, right up until the wheel gets over halfway into the water and now that force suddenly decreases very quickly.

So as the wheels start to touch the water they will almost be pulled down into the water, and the further they’re pulled the harder they pull.

So at any point the plane is just a few inches from an unrecoverable catastrophic crash.

It’s also dependent on factors outside the pilots control, if a slightly larger wave, or a wake, hits the wheels they could easily be ripped off or pull the plane into the water.

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HyFinated@reddit

Not to mention, hitting the water at the speeds of those airplanes would be the equivalent of flying directly into a cliff face head on. Water DOES NOT compress. It will displace, eventually, but the tension of water at those kind of speeds makes it almost like a non-newtonian fluid. The harder you hit it, the harder it hits back.

It will absolutely fuck you up.

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CantDoThatOnTelevzn@reddit

Golden Gate sends her regards

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Blocc4life@reddit

Why dont they patch water to be more soft? Are they stupid

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_esci@reddit

if its more soft, ship.exe would stop working.

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cordialcatenary@reddit

It’s a limitation of the hardware running the simulation right now unfortunately. Once the new quantum processors release they will patch that.

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CantDoThatOnTelevzn@reddit

Warp 9, engage

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Indentured-peasant@reddit

Non Newtonian and fuck used in the same comment. We could have a beer together sir.

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Salt_Sir2599@reddit

It’s mind-boggling to me that you can have very smart and skilled people who can work to pilot aircraft like this, but then go and make these kinds of decisions. What a contradiction.

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IAmElectricHead@reddit

I think of the 1994 Fairchild Air Force Base crash. The pilot had a history of risky behavior but they didn't ground him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash

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FiberApproach2783@reddit

There's old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old and bold pilots.

You have to have some form of ego/over confidence to get to this level, and at some point that causes you to get complacent or make a tiny mistake somewhere. Maybe you try something a bit too dangerous one time.

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nixfly@reddit

It takes a lot of ego, to be this good.

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martianfrog@reddit

Replace the word dangerous with stupid.

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CptClownfish1@reddit

It’s pretty obvious if you think about it. If something goes wrong while you are doing acrobatics a few thousand feet in the air, you have a little bit of time and opportunity to recover before you hit the ground. If something goes wrong 0 feet in the air on the other hand there is no opportunity to recover and avoid death and/or dismemberment.

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martianfrog@reddit

It does strike me as very stupid, I thought this must be fake video.

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GeraintLlanfrechfa@reddit

Yeh, it feels like 1 ripple on the surface would be enough to grab the wheel and iirc hydrodynamics taught us about round bodies and great speed on water surfaces..

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hogtiedcantalope@reddit

Or a fish?

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Final_Luck_1010@reddit

I was just thinking about how the contact might flip the plane forward. It’s nice to know I want crazy thinking that

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Typical2sday@reddit

Reason 1,301 Why women live longer than men

Cool? Yes. Any utility at all? Not much. Unnecessary risk of death? Yep.

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funnydud3@reddit

And yet this appears insufficient warning for those pylots. 1 million hours cannot save you if the plane drop just enough inches to catch too much water - not a fucking pilot but an engineer fuck sake why people do this shit

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Strega007@reddit

I know highly experienced pilots who were killed in the traffic pattern. It can be deadly.

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Suckatguardpassing@reddit

"highly experienced " and incredibly dumb

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CantDoThatOnTelevzn@reddit

~~Low~~ No Altitude

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CantDoThatOnTelevzn@reddit

~low~ no altitude

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PresentationJumpy101@reddit

NIGHTMARE FUEL!

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SnooPineapples9136@reddit

Crazy South Africans.

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planes01@reddit

Complete idiots

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Babna_123@reddit

T-6 Texan

or Harvard

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Babna_123@reddit

Its a WWII trainer

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blinkersix2@reddit

What is the team performing this unnerving stunt?

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Babna_123@reddit

Puma? not sure but it’s written on the fuselage

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Zabroccoli@reddit

I could see a Texan pulling this stunt. Not a Harvard graduate though. They’re smarter than this.

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Hardworkinwoman@reddit

You pay money to get into harvard usually. Just means dude was rich dont mean he was smart

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MarkF750@reddit

I see what you did there.

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MASSochists@reddit

Live in Cambridge then decide.

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Efficient_Sky5173@reddit

There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

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imperator_rex_za@reddit

The leader of this aero team is Scully Levin. He’s 79 years old lol.

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Efficient_Sky5173@reddit

Exceptions don’t make the rule a rule. They just crash the party and act like they were invited.

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nukethecheese@reddit

I'm definitely inviting this guy, seems like a legend

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Efficient_Sky5173@reddit

You even got the cake day.

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nixfly@reddit

My DE and the owner of my flight school would do 206 demonstrations by taking off from the ramp.

Him and his brother had competitions of kicking refrigerator boxes down the runway with their wing tips.

There were many more stories told to me by others.

So there are two more in their 70s.

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Efficient_Sky5173@reddit

Now tell the stories you heard and the pilots died. Kicked the bucket. Pushing up daisies. Became worm food. Checked out.

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Aerobaticdoc@reddit

This is so wild. Very clearly highly experienced pilots, but also there’s levels to skating on the water.

It isn’t the same to do it at 80 knots on a cub with tundra tires than at 140 with tiny retractable gear. The physics of this is unbendable: if more than 50% of your wheel is under the water, the force vector will immediately bring the nose down and you are in the newspaper. Large tires and slow speeds you have a bigger buffer before that happens.

Wild to see it done, cool pilots, couldn’t pay me enough money to do that.

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outdoorsgeek@reddit

I guess I’m surprised it would even take 50%. I would have guessed 10 or 20 percent of the tire and you’re face planting.

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patrick24601@reddit

“Very clearly experienced pilots”. You can’t tell that from this video.

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Aerobaticdoc@reddit

I mean, a weekend warrior with 200 hours on a cirrus doesn’t just join a group of formation flying T-6s… there’s definitely a lot of experience to just get to sit in there.

Whether it’s enough experience to do this safely… jury still out

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WWYDWYOWAPL@reddit

This is what I was thinking - fat bush wheels on a slow cub? Sure.

This nonsense? Hell no.

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[removed]

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FriendlyHermitPickle@reddit

Terrible AI slop

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KM4CK@reddit

This video is legitimate.

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FriendlyHermitPickle@reddit

Link to it? The video is certainly at least altered

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KM4CK@reddit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPzv-Lhv7Ws Look up Flying Lions water Skiing and you will see others

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Ice4Lifee@reddit

People were still faking stuff before modern "AI"

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jamesmoss85@reddit

The amount of people exclaiming AI slop! on clearly non-AI videos is as bad as the actual AI videos themselves.

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MattRubin@reddit

These are South African Harvards, same frame as the T-6 Texan

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No_idda-8964@reddit

Remind me some wwii type of aircraft attack

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forever_colts@reddit

Years ago in the army we were flying an OH58 Kiowa over a lake in Kentucky, on the way back to the landing zone after doing some "unofficial" drug detection work with the DEA. We got low enough at 100 knots to catch the spray from our own rotor wash. Yeah, I know, not too bright.

Another time we were near Brownsville, TX doing some more drug detection "training exercises" with the DEA. 100 knots at night (near full moon), using NVGs, following a creek bed with the radar altimeter reading 3 ft., trees rushing by above us on both sides.

I'm actually surprised I wasn't taken out of the gene pool at an earlier age! Some skill, but mostly all luck. Young and dumb.

We were damn low but never tried what these planes did.

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Biochembob35@reddit

Flying that low in a helicopter is one thing, in a plane it's even crazier.

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forever_colts@reddit

Agreed.

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OutrageousAd1880@reddit

Quite possibly the dumbest thing a pilot could do.

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windjetman62@reddit

They look like AA Batteries lol

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Emergency_Four@reddit

Imagine clipping a submerged log/tree trunk.

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Ok-Bar-8473@reddit

Or sneezing, burping, hiccups, farting, etc

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aweesip@reddit

Imagine doing all at the same time!

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avanti8@reddit

I absolutely would if the gear clipped an unseen log/shoal/muskellunge

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eswifttng@reddit

Takes a screenshot

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BTMarquis@reddit

My grandpa said you would explode if you did that, and I’m not even sure if he was joking.

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NecessaryLeader7565@reddit

It's the flying lions. A South African aerobatic team in Harvards take a look

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RepairHorror1501@reddit

I was told by an ag pilot who used to ski his bull thrush on the dam that you pretty much cant push through the surface

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West-Organization450@reddit

The ag pilot knew the truth…most of Reddit doesn’t seem to

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LounBiker@reddit

I was thinking this too

Surface tension and ground effect must push hard against the desire to become a submarine.

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Burgers4dayz@reddit

Can go ass over tit real quick

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Quantiad@reddit

Once upon a time I’d have said, ‘coming soon, to LiveLeak’. More people putting likes and subs above their life and family.

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Fly_U2_the_sunset@reddit

At that speed, the water is about as hard or harder than concrete so it’s not as scary or dangerous as it appears.

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Vulture2k@reddit

Is the gif sped up? I don't know, my brain tells me something looks off about it. T6 are usually so chill and here they look "nervous".. I don't know xD doesn't matter I guess.

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BRAIN_JAR_thesecond@reddit

They look nervous because they should be. Being so close to the ground also makes things look faster.

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Virtual_Leading1201@reddit

I had the honour of being a guest during one of their aerobatic displays about 20 years ago. On our return to Rand we did a little water skiing on the dam. Absolutely one of the highlights of my life. Scully and his team are in a class of their own.

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AbletonUser333@reddit

This is dumb, point blank. Doesn't matter if the pilots have done this 1000 times, it's still dumb. That said, if they're ok with risking annihilation so they can look cool with a party trick, I guess that's up to them. Some people never seem to move past the brain of a 20 year old.

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Klatty@reddit

Stupid unnecessary risk

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Full_Piano6421@reddit

How doesn't the plane violently pitch down when the landing gear touches the water?

Sorry if it's dumb I don't know much about airplane physics, but it looks like a very stupid thing to do?

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Fun_Appointment8235@reddit

Skills! Only ever have seen that by planes with oversized bush tires.

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ChapterThr33@reddit

AI, maybe? This seems insane.

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MarkF750@reddit

I don't usually add repetitive, me-too comments, but I'll make an exception today: this stunt is so obviously dangerous and stupid, it's hard to put words to it.

I'm sure the pilots are skilled and experienced, but jeez, just one taller ripple on the water, a sneeze, an involuntary muscle twitch and it's cartwheel time.

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dazw1988@reddit

Sneeze and it’s game over

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kiwiphotog@reddit

T-6 Harvards from the Flying Lions team in South Africa. I don’t think it’s especially dangerous since this is their party trick and they’re very experienced and trained for this

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Rc72@reddit

Yes, if I'm not wrong this was the "signature trick" of the official SAAF aerobatics team, on Texans, already decades ago.

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strat-fan89@reddit

You can be as trained and experienced as you want, but this here leaves absolutely no margin for error and that is how accidents eventually happen. It will work 99 times and go spectacularly wrong the 100th time.

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LounBiker@reddit

Well that's easy then.

Just make sure you keep your log book accurate and you'll never do the 100th

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Strega007@reddit

Yes, planning, training, and practice is how risks are mitigated in high performance aviation.

If it isn't worth the risk to you, then don't do it.

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