Awesome Airplanes

Just 17 years too late, Screen Junkies is here with their take on these mother-f**king snakes on this mother-f**king plane. We still have no idea how the makers of this completely implausible B-movie ever got an actor of Samuel L. Jackson’s caliber to sign on, but it’s a camp classic for the ages.

We love watching giant R/C airplanes take to the skies. In this video from Ramy RC, we get to see the full build process. He created this 11.8-foot-long model of an Airbus A380-800 by 3D printing forms and lining them with carbon fiber and resin. He made the underlying structure from laser-cut wood and plastic. Maiden flight at 17:45.

This crazy-looking flying machine resembles some kind of angry dragonfly as it takes to the skies. Instead of engines, the remote-controlled Serenity Ornithopter flies by rapidly flapping multiple sets of wings. The back half of the video is entirely in Russian, but it provides a brief up-close look at the unusual aircraft.

Now that they’re done building their foam board Iron Giant, the guys from FliteTest are headed back to the skies. Their plan: build a working version of the Iron Vulture from TaleSpin, a massive airship that doubles as a flying aircraft hanger. In this video, they work on getting its 14-rotor airframe to fly.

Zealous and his pals set out to break the record for the highest paper airplane drop. So they engineered a plane that could handle the weight of a camera and a GPS module, launched it to the edge of space on a balloon, and waited for it to fall back to earth. Naturally, it was much more complicated than they thought it would be.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when taking a flight on a commercial airliner was something to look forward to, with luxurious meals, comfortable seats, and a high level of service. This video from Phil Edwards looks back at the glamourous days of flying and why it went downhill for most passengers.

We’ve seen the airport at Antarctica’s Troll Research Station. Now Extreme Aviation Iceland gives us a first-person view from the cockpit as an Icelandair Boeing 767 comes in for a landing and faces the frigid conditions at one of the world’s Southernmost air strips. Stick around to the end to see them take back off.

San Francisco Internation Aiport’s runways 28L and 28R run in parallel, just 750 feet apart. As a result, jumbo jets often land next to each other. NickFlightX captured footage of a number of flights landing in this formation. They’re not always in sync, but some of them come in perfectly side-by-side.

These days, a typical non-stop flight from New York City to London takes about seven hours. But when the Concorde was still operating, it could perform the feat in just three hours. Bright Sun Films looks back at the rise and fall of this iconic supersonic jet that never reached its true potential.

Red Bull skateboarder and X-Games gold medalist Leticia Bufoni performed this crazy stunt called the “Sky Grind”. She started out on her skateboard inside an aircraft. After a brief rail grind, she let the board fly and deployed her parachute as she headed 9,000 feet to the Earth below. Behind-the-scenes footage here.

Brick Science host Riley Scott wanted to see if he could build a flight simulator out of LEGO bricks. With the help of his friends Christian and Marcel, they came up with a tabletop machine with a remote joystick and throttle which control the airplane’s propellor, pitch, and roll. Its motors are controlled by a Mindstorms EV3 module.

The smallest plane we’ve flown on was a 4-seat Cessna, and the biggest was a Boeing 777. But there are much smaller and much larger airplanes out there. RED SIDE created this computer-generated clip of these flying machines ranging from a 12.8 feet long single-seater all the way up to a gigantic 275-foot-long cargo jet.

We’ve seen lots of beautiful and unusual items turned on a lathe, but we’ve not seen a woodworker use the method to create a model of a jet airplane engine until now. Gao Wood Lab used walnut, magnolia grandiflora, and red cedar wood to create this wonderful miniature engine, complete with a spinning turbine fan.

A typical rubber band airplane is maybe a foot long. Project Air took the idea of a rubber band-powered plane and supersized it to create a lightweight foam board and carbon fiber flyer with an 11-foot wingspan. The trickiest part was getting its eight propellers to all start at the same time.

We already know that it’s possible to turn angle grinders into a drone. Now aviation enthusiast and maker Peter Sripol has proven it’s possible to fly an R/C airplane propelled by the fast-spinning power tool. That propeller could do some serious damage once it gets up to speed.

We’ve seen lots of things made out of popsicle sticks, but they’re typically larger structures. In this video from 3JWings, they show us how they made a 1:300-scale replica of a Gulfstream G560 jet airplane by stacking, gluing, and carving the wooden sticks.

Wonder what happens to your bags after you check them at the airport? We’ve seen how a conveyor system moves bags around but not how they get into an airplane. Baggae handler djsugue shared time-lapse video of how he works in cramped quarters to stow bags in the cargo hold of a 737. He says unloading is easier.

Electromagnets can be very powerful. They’ve even been used to get roller coasters and trains rolling and to launch fighter jets. Tom Stanton made a miniature system of homebrew linear synchronous motors which use electromagnetism to propel a small sled and launch various items including a hot dog and a paper airplane.

Peter Sripol teamed up with FliteTest to build a massive R/C airplane out of foam. After launching the 34-foot-wide plane to the skies, the plane participated in the annual FliteFest battle royale, where hundreds of model airplanes compete until only one remains. Not enough time to watch the build? Skip right to the battle.

Released in 1952, the de Havilland Comet was the world’s first commercial jetliner. Sadly, engineers did not know at that point that a seemingly innocuous feature – square windows – would doom the pioneering plane and many people’s lives. Real Engineering explains the physics, and how we ended up with oval windows.

We recently saw a tiny remote-controlled airplane that could fit in the palm of your hand. The guys from Tail Happy Productions attempted to do the opposite and built an R/C plane that’s the same size as the real thing. They built the low-budget plane primarily from PVC pipe and styrofoam sheets. But will it even get off the ground?

We’ve seen some big remote-controlled airplanes, but this tiny flyer sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Joe Malinchak built this minuscule R/C tri-plane with a 1.5″ wingspan. It weighs just one gram, and in addition to its tiny motor, it has a working rudder mechanism for steering. Watch it fly at the 3-minute mark.

After taking a soaking in a water gun fight, maker Handy Geng decided he and his kids needed to step up their game. So he got to work building a ridiculous motorcycle that looks like a fighter jet and loaded it with high-power water guns and wing gunner seats for his kids. The other children don’t stand a chance.

This 5000-passenger nuclear-powered flying cruise ship would have numerous observation decks and a massive entertainment area with a shopping mall, theaters, restaurants, and swimming pools. Concept artist Tony Holmsten came up with the idea, while Hashem Al-Ghaili animated and expanded on the design.

Etsy seller PlanePieces makes all kinds of home accessories and decor from used airplane parts. These aluminum tea light candle holders got their start as pistons from a Continental Motors engine from a Piper J-3 Cub, a single-engine airplane that dates back to the 1940s. Makes a great gift for an aviation enthusiast.

This pure-electric jet plane can take off and land without a runway. The Lilium Jet can transition from hover to airplane mode once airborne, using a proprietary Ducted Electric Vectored Thrust Jet that can transition between vertical and horizontal. The aircraft shown in the video is their 5th-generation test vehicle.