It had been showcased during the 14th of July celebrations in Paris earlier this summer. 1st attempt at the Channel had failed. 2nd try succeeded. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-49225566/franky-zapata-french-flyboard-inventor-crosses-channel

George, George, George of the jungle--Watch out for that tree!

110 years, almost to the day, after Blériot crossed the Channel in an aircraft for the first time ever, on July 25th, 1909 ! 

Very proud of him 😊 !

 

 

Edited August 4, 20196 yr by domkle

Full video can be found below--he does not lift off until 26 something minutes into the video....

 

Edited August 4, 20196 yr by John_Cillis

Wow, I didn't know such a thing existed!  Not since Sean Connery's early 80's one-off comeback Bond movie anyway.

There must have been some advances in fuel efficiency.

I wonder if he go-pro'd the whole trip? that would be some amazing footage.

44 minutes ago, Mace said:

Wow, I didn't know such a thing existed!

I have known about it for a while.  He has posted a lot of videos but the product does not seem to be marketable given how much it would cost, and the inherent danger involved with it.  Xplane11 has a flyable jetpack, but I cannot remember the author, I believe it is a payware vendor.  It is rather fun to fly, works like you imagine a jet/rocket pack might.

When I flew it in the sim it made me feel like Professor John Robinson from the TV series of my day, Lost in Space, the black and white episodes which were good science fiction, before it became so campy and more of a comedy the following two seasons.

John

Speaking of the Channel, the NASA History twitter account recently reminded its readers that on the 1st of August, 1911  Harriet Quimby became the first American woman to receive a pilot's license. She would later become the first woman to fly across the English Channel. 

That took place on April 16th, 1912 on a Blériot XI. 

A century after these exploits, the Channel still is a proving ground for daring pilots. !

Edited August 5, 20196 yr by domkle

15 hours ago, domkle said:

110 years, almost to the day, after Blériot crossed the Channel in an aircraft for the first time ever, on July 25th, 1909 ! 

Very proud of him 😊 !

 

 

Zapata`s 1st attempt indeed was on July 25th; departing from Plage (i.e.beach) Blériot in Calais. Zapata crashed attempting to land on his refueling stop on a boat.  

22 hours ago, Mace said:

There must have been some advances in fuel efficiency.

Not enough fuel to make it the entire way, he had to land on a boat to refuel and continue. Therefore technically it is not a full crossing yet if you are landing on a boat to refuel

True enough, but the original Bell Textron jetpack (a la James Bond) was good for only about 20 seconds of flight time... 

 

Oh, they need to do it non-stop.

Still it is an achievement.  You couldn't pay me any amount of $$$ to get me to stand on top of that candle.

4 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Not enough fuel to make it the entire way, he had to land on a boat to refuel and continue. Therefore technically it is not a full crossing yet if you are landing on a boat to refuel

Why not?  Sea gulls land on buoys to refuel and say "Mine, Mine, Mine".  I know, I saw it in Finding Nemo while Dory was learning to speak whale....

1 hour ago, John_Cillis said:

Why not?  Sea gulls land on buoys to refuel and say "Mine, Mine, Mine".  I know, I saw it in Finding Nemo while Dory was learning to speak whale....

HAHA

One day the technology will get better and someone will do the exact same thing but without refueling and claim to be the first to cross the channel. If Charles Lindbergh landed on an aircraft carrier half way to refuel that wouldn't count either. 

Edited August 6, 20196 yr by Matthew Kane

16 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

If Charles Lindbergh landed on an aircraft carrier half way to refuel that wouldn't count either. 

Lindbergh almost hit the drink, in his book he mentioned his fight to combat sleep, since he was awake for a long while before he even took off from New York. 

I used to work the night audit shift at my first hotel, and when I was a business systems trainer, sometimes I'd be awake 36+ hours straight when we cut our clients over to their new systems and LAN's we had trained them on.  I'd be as exhausted as Lindbergh when the job was done.   I had to do so because I was always training new colleagues, and my supervisors were finicky about us doing balancing reports against the client's old system to our new one. 

We could not even be one penny out of balance and many of my new colleagues, with little to know accounting experience, did not understand how important that was and would forget to print our required reports.  My only recourse then was to stop the hotel's operations long enough for me to grab a cutover backup, then restore their operations because data had been entered, throwing it out of balance with their old systems.  My colleagues complained I was too finicky, but I knew a client could sue us if there was any discrepancy between the two systems, claiming ours had lost data. 

We were required to get our clients signatures and one know it all manager, a European who managed a hotel in Mexico I was converting, who did not want the system they were required to have because he was cooking the books to avoid franchise fees, said I was extorting him although I knew full well he was doing the opposite.  His hotel got shuttered for a number of years until new owners brought it back to life.  Many European hotel managers would try to extort the Mexican owners of the hotels they managed, sadly. 

But in my teachings I found US hotel managers were guilty of the same thing--I caught my own boss stealing from us and I had to go to the owners, who sent me on a week's vacation for my own safety while they "dealt" with the situation.  They could not arrest my boss, but they made him an offer he could not refuse, and the owners wanted to make sure I was innocent during that process.  He was gone when I left, another example of a seagull saying "Mine, Mine, Mine"....