With footage of six cameras including from inside the aircraft. Whilst filming how a small aircraft does aerial photography at sea, the “just in case something goes wrong” flat area for emergency landings just looks too good, so I cannot restrain myself and get away with landing on the moving ship. Tom and Aalbert save the day by courageously helping me to take off.
What is misleading is that control is perfect at several metres above the deck but as soon as you get a metre or two above the deck to land 1) there is curlover turbulence coming off the bow and sides 2) you have only some visual reference like the mast in front. I won’t do it again. But it worked – thanks to the most amazing aircraft, the extreme STOL Foxbat A22.
[image src=”http://www.aeroprakt.kiev.ua/img/a22ldraft.jpg” responsive=”true” lightbox=”true”]
The ship was sailing at 9 knots speed over ground, the true windspeed was 14 knots, just about the full flap stall speed with just myself in the plane and full long range fueltanks. Thanks everyone for the help, quite a dream come true.
The ship by the way, is not a “big oil tanker” of hundreds of thousands of tonnes (like some people put in the title when they copied the video illegally to a certain big other video site where it got 80,000 views in three days) but a modest 3,500 tonne multipurpose vessel total length 93 metres, deck in front of bridge 60 metres x 15 metres.
The ship, due to its unique design, has twice the deck space of conventional ships. It is designed for volume, not for weight by Global Seatrade.
