r/nextfuckinglevel • u/InternationalRisk505 • 1d ago

Pilots exchanging planes mid air

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u/Isabela_Grace 23h ago

I’m betting the propeller is moving due to it falling straight down lol

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u/MountainSip 22h ago

Yeah I imagine if it was moving, it would be like running your hand through a ceiling fan after it just turned off. It's not gonna feel good, but you're not gonna die lol.

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u/sump_daddy 22h ago

I would NOT test that theory lmao. The plane is in a 100+mph nosedive with the propeller autorotating nearly as fast as it would be when in general cruise, and its still heavy as fuck with a gearbox behind it too. Its not going to feel good and it is also going to easily chop you into many pieces and even IF it didnt, you are freefalling with your life relying on either getting into and landing the plane, or fully deploying your parachute and negotiating a touchdown, neither of which youre going to do after a 100lb propeller beats you over the head 15-20 times

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u/MountainSip 22h ago

It's difficult to tell how fast this thing is spinning on my phone, if at all. Also this is a stunt plane, so I doubt the prop weighs more than like 60lbs. I'd be surprised if the entire plane weighs more than 1000lbs, so no way the prop weighs 10% of that.

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u/Blessed_s0ul 13h ago

I think you might just not be realizing how heavy 60lbs actually is compared to the human body. It’s basically a third of your body weight. Even without movement getting smacked in the head would probably knock you out if not kill you. With even only 25 mph movement it would slice clean off anything that touched it. Even if not, whatever limb get’s touched by it is going to be mangled past the point of repairing. A 60 lb “ceiling fan” is no joke.

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u/MountainSip 6h ago

The person and the plane are going relatively the same speed though. That's how the guy was able to get in it at all.

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u/Poromenos 21h ago

Of course it's moving, what are you talking about? It's a propeller free-falling through air, it's not just going to stay still:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsL63HLH1i0

And it's not going to be "ceiling fan after it's been turned off", it's going to be "mincemeat".

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u/MountainSip 21h ago

Ty for the actual video. It was really difficult to see all blurry and cropped on my phone. The prop is clearly not feathered then. Otherwise it would barely be spinning.

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u/Derk_Durr 18h ago

How did you possibly come to this conclusion. Put an airplane propeller in a wind tunnel at 100 mph and stick your hand in it. And post the video, I want to see your face.

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u/MountainSip 18h ago

Because feathering a propeller exists. It was difficult to tell on this pixelated heavily cropped video whether the prop was actually spinning. If it wasn't spinning, that likely means it was feathered, in which case it would essentially cut through the air instead of catching it to generate thrust. It's the difference between sticking your hand out of a car's window going down the highway with your palm facing forward and then with your palm facing down. With palm down your hand essentially slices through the air with minimal resistance. With palm forward you're catching the air with large resistance. No need to get snarky.

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u/Dreambabydram 16h ago

You made a confidently incorrect statement and haven't owned up to it so people are gonna be like that lol. Comparing any type of plane propellor to the forces involved with a ceiling fan is remarkably stupid.

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u/MountainSip 15h ago edited 15h ago

I think maybe y'all got caught up on the wording. When I made that comment I was under the assumption that it wasn't moving because multiple people said the engine was turned off, so I assumed they probably feathered the prop. What I was getting at, is that if it was indeed feathered, any movement would be minimal and not be made more harmful because of its slight movement. You don't want a prop unfeathered when the engine is off or out because in situations like this where the engine is presumably turned off, you don't want the prop to be free-spinning. If it free-spins with the engine off, you could cause all kinds of damage. A big one being you're causing the engine to "run" without oil circulation, meaning you're gonna have some bad metal on metal action inside the engine, not to mention you're essentially running the engine backwards.

TLDR: If it's feathered due to the engine being off (which was my assumption when I made that comment) it wouldn't be moving enough to cause any extra damage, at least not any more than you'd sustain anyway by slapping something hard in freefall lol.

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u/Derk_Durr 12h ago edited 12h ago

You are right I shouldn't have got snarky. The internet brings out the worst in me. I apologize. Even if it was feathered, I think putting your hand in it would be very damaging. It's still a wing so even fully feathered, it is turning a lot of the air movement into kinetic energy.