The Flyby: Red Bull Gives You Wings
In this Flyby:
Red Bull’s cycling team gets an aircraft airborne
ForeFlight vs. Garmin Pilot vs the rest
Red Bull (–BORA–hansgrohe) Gives You Wings
Airplanes and bicycles—maybe my two favorite things.
Strapped together on a sled like the huskies in Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Snow Dogs, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe made history by towing an aircraft into flight via human horsepower.
Averaging over 650 watts for more than 90 seconds provided the pilot with enough airspeed to successfully get airborne.
650 watts x 9 cyclists = 5,850 watts—or roughly the equivalent of an 8-horsepower engine commonly found in outboard motors.
Which is insane… but for context, a Mercedes Formula 1 engine produces almost 1,000 horsepower.
As I write this, I’m realizing just how impressive the Industrial Revolution really was. I’ll add that to my list of old man fascinations right behind World War II and the Roman Empire.
I’m Officially a Proud ForeFlight Subscriber
I’ve been using Foreflight since Primary, and every squadron since then has provided me with a free Military Flight Bag subscription—until now. For whatever dumb reason my current squadron doesn’t offer it, which has made life way more difficult than it has needed to be.
For those who aren’t familiar, ForeFlight is an all-in-one flight planning app that provides weather, NOTAMs, routes, waypoints, and more. It’s almost a necessity in today’s modern aviation. Especially if, like me, you have the dead reckoning skills of Helen Keller.
So, after lots of deliberation I finally just bit the bullet and subscribed. I tried the other main competitor, Garmin Pilot, and a free alternative, FltPlan Go, but neither quite fit the bill. I’m a creature of habit so Foreflight is familiar to me. As I’m getting into more GA flying, I didn’t want to have to relearn a new app just to do some basic flying. That Cessna deserves 100% of my below-average-pilot-focus.