Jetman Yves Rossy Flies In Formation With Jets

smitty777 writes "Slashdot has been following Yves Rossy in his previous exploits across the Grand Canyon and his attempts at international flight. He is now flying in formations with real jets. He even does a barrel roll around the two fighters in the video below."

Comments

Staged photo

[vlm]

Thats a staged photo. Its not how it appears. Breitling uses L-39Cs, which are cool little planes. But, they're 40 feet long.

The aircraft is about 2.5 Rossy length units long. The L-39 is 40 feet long. So, if the aircraft and Rossy were equidistant from the camera, that would imply Rossy is 16 feet tall, which would imply he would make a hell of a lot more money playing pro basketball than flying his jet. Not that he couldn't do both. I'm just pointing out its staged. I would guess the photography plane is about 100 feet from the L39s and about 40 feet from Rossy? I would estimate the two planes are roughly "wingtip to wingtip" which is quite a bit closer to each other than they are to Rossy.

The other thing I don't get is the L-39C stalls right around 100 knots, from memory (you can fly it in x-plane flight simulator, but I haven't done so in probably 3 years). supposedly when Rossy floors it, he tops out around 180 knots. So ... I'm unimpressed than a plane that mins out at 100 kts can formation fly with a "plane" that maxes out at 180.