In 1998, the last SR-71 Blackbird landed for the last time, but there’s reason for celebration: Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works is planning a more advanced version, Blackbird 2.0 if you will. The SR-72 will use a hypersonic engine that combines turbines and ramjets, and Lockheed says it will be TWICE as fast as the original SR-71 […]

Ever see fly buzz a room, bouncing off windows and walls and somehow continuing on its insect mission? Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have created Gimball to borrow from the insect world. It uses sensors to navigate and its elastic cage and gyroscopically stabilized to bounce back from impacts, stay oriented and continue on […]

Multi rotors aren’t just useful for spy missions and getting great photography. In this emergency drill, the Roswell Flight Test Crew works with the local fire department in Eugene, Oregon to help save lives. Their mission is to assist firefighters in conducting a Hasty River search in a training scenario: a man floating down the river […]

This story about Lucky Lindy’s Monocoupe comes to us from our sister publication, Flight Journal. The video is great! Charles Lindbergh’s plane, which had previously hung in Terminal 1 at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport since 1979, has returned to its place of welcoming passengers to the St. Louis airport. The famous aviator’s 1934 Model D–127 Monocoupe, an […]

Raise your hand if you remember the days of single-channel, escapement RC! According to the poster, “This model uses a 45-year-old radio control system (Futaba F-66) that only controls the rudder using a rubber band powered clockwork mechanism.  The radio has one button which you press in the correct sequence to get right, left , […]

In this great TED talk, Patrick Egan of Skyborg UAV Aerial Photography shares his thoughts about the positive potential of drones, from improving agriculture to cell tower inspections and more. He notes that although drones have gotten a lot of bad press, especially for their use in surveillance and in war zones, we should re-examine this technology and how […]

This video clip highlights what might be the personal transportation vehicle of the future! Here’s the scoop from the Smithsonian: Martin Jetpack has unveiled their latest jetpack prototype, a model that could be available next year. Called “P12,” the machine will cost something between $150,000 to $250,000 when it  becomes available, and pilots will have to […]

Gunkanjima (“Battleship Island”) is one of the world’s most well-known “ghost towns.” Originally developed as a seabed coal mining facility, more than 5000 people inhabited the island at the peak of its prosperity. The last inhabitants left in 1974, and today the island remains uninhabited. Using a radio-controlled helicopter equipped with a Sony’s Action Cam, […]

What do you get when you combine 500 bottles of glue, 753 square feet of paper and 200 bottles of superglue? A flight-worthy 54-foot-span paper airplane that’s breaks the world record! The 24-pound aircraft was launched off a 7.2-foot platform and flew for 54 feet, longer than the distance flown by the previous record holder. […]

Hold on to your hats: this video will take you down on the flightline as F/A-18 Super Hornets, T-45 Goshawks, and even a V-22 Osprey tilt rotor take off and land just feet away from the camera. Great video, great music … you will get chills watching this! Video poster PlaneVideoArt notes, “This video was shot during […]

When Tuomas Kalliomaki crashed and damaged his foam jet, he took a unique approach to recycling his model: he took the power and control system from the damaged fuselage and added the wing halves and tail to a cardboard box. Did it fly? Check out the video and find out!

The F-16 is familiar to airplane enthusiasts as the nimble American jet fighter, in service since the 1970s, with a nose like a heron with a severe underbite. Last week saw the maiden flight of the QF-16, which is just an F-16 with one modification: no pilot inside. Drones are everywhere these days, from battlefields […]