How short you guys think this one is?

Neat!!! Looks like it would have been quite a job to get the asphalt up there to make the strip.

Kid of a leap of faith on the take off. Pretty cool.

I'd guess the concrete strip to be around 400 ft.

What a beautiful place.

That looks like a strip built for model airplanes.

Oops, just read the title with "RC" in it. My bad.

I can do that.

All I would need is a steady 25 knot headwind and 0 degree F OAT....

Maybe a valium too.

Very very impressive!

Maybe it's just the gopro/fisheye lens but it looks like he was awfully low on that approach. On something like that I might have been higher and slower with a good sink rate. One little downdraft off the end there might have ruined his day.

On the other hand. That's some damn impressive flying and a beautiful place. Anybody know where it is?

Renegade wrote: Maybe it's just the gopro/fisheye lens but it looks like he was awfully low on that approach. ........

Looked pretty flat to me. I think even with a goofy lens you would have seen more of the strip if it was much of a standard descending approach.

This is at an RC airfield in Venezuela.

Renegade,

Yes, he would have been below the declination line on a windy day. Based on his apparent rate of closure, pretty fast, I don't think there was any wind. He slowed, probably below Vso, in low ground effect over the grass prior to the concrete. I expect this is necessary without the help of headwind.

A brisk walk apparent rate of closure is easier to judge, with the steeper approach, but there is less time in low ground effect to slow below Vso. There was about the same distance over the grass, before the concrete, which he utilized for the hover taxi approach. On a windy day, he could make an apparent rate of closure approach to that grass and have about twice the length of runway.

There is no way to hover taxi prior to the approach edge of the mesa because there is no low ground effect until arriving over the mesa.

If he had to depend on an airspeed indicator, or any other instrument, he would not be able use that field.

flyingpile,

The only people I know who call airplanes piles are crop dusters.

I don't know what it is about those RC strips but I have never seen one that I didn't wonder if it was doable

Huevos Grande

DCO-65 wrote:I don't know what it is about those RC strips but I have never seen one that I didn't wonder if it was doable

+1

There's a video floating around somewhere of a beaver landing on one. Awesome stuff.

Renegade wrote:There's a video floating around somewhere of a beaver landing on one. Awesome stuff.

This it?

https://youtu.be/jNlaI-GnRG4