Adam made sure the plane didn’t slide off the treadmill backwords and Jamie applied power. It went forward. For the full-scale they had a plane on a big tarp attached to a truck. The truck pulled the tarp and the plane took off.
I feel empty.
Gotcha. Thanks, 
To fill in a bit more detail, the full scale involved a very large ultralight with an enclosed cockpit; takeoff speed of 25 mph in about 85 feet. The conveyor belt was a tarp dragged behind Jamie’s pickup. Even the pilot predicted that the plane would sit there “like a brick”. Despite their best efforts, the plane still took off.
So basically two pickup trucks traveling at 25mph in the opposite direction, one towing a plane and the other towing a tarp underneath the plane.
Considering the plane took off like it should, can anyone see any reason why they’d have to revisit it?
Edit: the differences in friction between an actual treadmill and the tarp would be negligible, no?
No, the plane was moving under its own power, with a propeller.
There’s no way anyone accepts that result as definitive. This thing will never just die.
Sorry, misunderstood. Hopefully it’ll be on in Canada soon (unless I missed it).
It shouldn’t matter as long as the wheels weren’t powering it.
Sweet Jesus I’m going to regret this…
I thought the deal was that the treadmill was stationary and the hypothetical aircraft was moving in relation to the treadmill, but not moving in relation to the outside world and the air.
The answer is obvious either way.
I’m new to this myth, it never occurred to me to put a plane on a treadmill.
Doesn’t that boil down to:
Treadmill is stationary.
Plane is moving relative to treadmill.
Plane is stationary.
One of us is missing something.
I’m a bit out of my league on this whole plane-treadmill thing, but did Jaime’s assertation that it’s because the propeller moves the plane and not the wheels have even an ounce of merit?
Yes, that’s it exactly.
Edited to add: Let me phrase that a little more succinctly. A car works with an engine turning the wheels, and the wheels push against the road and that moves the car forward. An airplane engine turns the propeller, which pushes against air to move the plane forward.
absolutely, it’s the whole point. The plane always moves in relation to the world not the treadmill because it isn’t powered through the wheels. The only effect the treadmill has on the plane is friction.
Edit: What Robot Arm said.
Here we go again.
yeah…sorry about that.
I think they did a great job. I’m amazed that they managed to pull of the full-scale test; I thought the fabric was likely to billow and twist.
I can’t see any holes in their tests (aside from those in the fabric), and I think they laid this thing to rest. I am, of course, probably wrong about the latter.
Not to derail the thread, but I thought I’d address this for anyone that cares (all two of you).
Airbus airplanes (all the newer ones that are fly-by-wire) have software limits that prevent exceeding certain pitch and bank angle limits, so doing a loop is not possible (and the simulator would reflect this). This is true when either hand-flying the airplane or with the autopilot engaged.
Boeing airplanes (even the fly-by-wire ones like the 777) do not have any pre-programmed limits, so you can do whatever you want with the airplane - roll, loop, whatever. If flying on autopilot you will be limited to 30 degrees of bank just like any other autopilot - but who tries to roll an airplane with the autopilot engaged anyway?
Anecdotal story - one of my favorite things to do in the C-141 simulator (after all of the required training was done) was to take off, stay low (about 50 feet) and accelerate to about 300 knots. Then pull up, chop the power and do half of a Cuban 8 to land back on the runway I just took off from. A Cuban 8 looks (from the side) like 3/4 of a loop, at which point you roll back to normal. Here is a pretty good link - imagine the runway I took off from at the left edge of the screen and you can see what I was doing. The whole point of the story is that according to the engineering data and software of the C-141 simulator something like this was possible.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion…
Actually, on the small-scale test, the treadmill was too short and the model just went off the end without achieving flight. So they measured the plane’s takeoff distance and speed. Then they set a length of butcher paper down on the floor and Adam towed it with his SegWay in the opposite direction of the model plane’s heading. The model took off before it reached the end of the butcher paper. They replicated that in the full-scale test with the tarp and Jamie’s pickup truck.
I am a little disappointed that they didn’t take it one step further. They should have had Jaime floor it and see how long he could keep the plane on the ground for. Probably not very long, but I bet you could measure it.