The Ultimate Limit

I'm pretty sure this has may have been posted before, but it is just so awesome it's worthy of another run.

The ultimate test of man and machine! Just an incredible display of skill and nerves of steel under extreme pressure! They took this aircraft to the absolute limit of it's structural and performance capabilities without failure.



You just don't do this in a commercial airliner! But they did it, and they lived to tell about it.

Description - Stall testing in a Boeing 717-200 (essentially a smaller DC-9/MD-80 style commercial airliner). Incredible footage.

The way the sun shadow rolls around the cabin when they go over just sends chills right down my spine.

Enjoy.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Great video. Thanks for sharing!

Here are a couple golden oldies.




Sure don't make them like they used to. Even if they did, the FAA wouldn't let them up for long.

MD-80 landing.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Good GRIEF!!!

I can hear it now..."Hang onnnn!! This one's gonna' leave a mark!!" **BOOM!!**

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

That aircraft later became the unducted fan test aircraft and flew until 94. The crew didn't even know the tail fell off.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Did not know that! So then, that's the same plane which went on to be a Space Shuttle training aircraft then? Because I thought that what happened to the aircraft used in those tests. If so, that airframe lived a really hard life! Those Space Shuttle approaches are nothing to shake a stick at either (maybe not, for some reason I thought the approach test aircraft was a modified Gulfstream G-II)

In any case, that's amazing! You can literally see the fuselage flex and then rebound when the nose wheels come down. I can't tell if it was just a video artefact or not, but it looked like the mains flexed forward on impact, erm, touchdown.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

No, that one was scrapped. The shuttle birds were G-IIs with a heavily modified hydraulic system that could be set to stimulate the shuttle system.

They said there was heavy damage to the landing gear, the skin was buckled in several places, and obviously, the tail separated.