What makes me think it’s fake is that the guy doesn’t have a parachute on.
Lots of people have crawled out of an aircraft without a parachute. Also, notice the man’s left leg. It appears that it’s still in the cockpit, and that he has it hooked over the sill.
I doubt that would stop him falling.
Speaking of ‘Real Or Fake?’, here is footage of a Caribou crash (Warning: Footage can be disturbing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8EiiHR_igY
A startling number of commentors say the footage is fake. However, this site has a citation that it is real.
What, you never hung off the monkey bars? Certainly the man’s position is dangerous; but it does not strike me as being particularly precarious.
To be fair, the commentators asserting it is fake are clearly idiots. I’m not sure why they think it is fake, there is nothing particularly unrealistic about it.
I think the photo is real but staged.
Obviously staged for the reason that a second airplane, that just happened to have a photographer in it, happens by the ‘emergency repair’.
It’s a stunt.
The guy on ( out ) of the Piper Cub = real
Staged = Yes
In that type of airplane if the engine is in good shape, it is not difficult to stop the propeller. On the that Cub, starting the engine is always done by hand as there is no starter. When by your self at a place where there is no place to tie the plane down, ( or you are to lazy or in a hurry ) standing there on the right behind the propeller is how it was usually started. You are near the throttle and mag switches, you probably will not get run over, you can physically hold the plane back if the RPM is a little to high, ( No emergency brakes nor anyway way to ‘set’ the little heel applied wimpy brakes anyway.) and that engine starts very easily if it is set up correctly and in good condition.
I have shut down and completely stopped many single engine aircraft and restarted them using the electric starters or by diving them to a speed that would start the engine to ‘windmilling’. With a freshly overhauled engine in a Cub that could involve an unsafe diving speed, even if you had room, and would not be sufficient to get the engine to spin due to the compression.
So, gliding along at 50 MPH or so, going outside as he is doing with the pilot controlling the glide and reaching out to flip the engine through to get it to start windmilling is quite plausible and doable.
Yes, it was done as a stunt ( IMO ) but that does not change that it would be easy to do if the guy going out has the stones to do it.
The ground in the background is freshly cleared land and the small square thing is a water reservoir with at least one cement wall. ( IMO )
I always try to restart my engine even as I am flying the plane (always the # 1 job), looking for an emergency landing site, and messing my pants.
Most engine stoppage in general aviation is due to lack of fuel. It is much easier to switch to a tank that has fuel and restart the engine than it is to make an emergency landing. ( You may not ask me how I know this. ) YMMV
The freedom we had in flying from 1945 to 1970 is almost impossible for pilots who have only flown after that and especially after 2001 to comprehend.
Not off monkey bars at a few thousand feet.
Right, but as any tight-rope walker will tell you, it’s no different. The *landing *might be different, but the balance and strength required to stay put is identical. 
You know, whenever one of you old codgers say that I get really, really depressed.
(It certainly doesn’t help I got weathered out this weekend, too)
And as rock climbers will tell you, there’s precious little difference between 30 feet up and 500 feet up. Your chances of dying from 30 feet are very high.
Just adding my $.02
It is a Cub (if there is any doubt) you can tell by the cub logo on the tail if you know what you are looking for.
I have almost all my flight time in a Taylorcraft - which is basically a cub with side by side seating instead of tandem - and I can tell you that restarting the engine in flight is possible but dangerous. You have to get the plane up to about 140 MPH to get the prop windmilling. The VNE (velocity - never exceed) on a Taylorcraft (the cub is probably similar) is 145 MPH. So, you wouldn’t want to risk those kinds of speeds unless it was necessary. With all that open terrain, it would be much safer to land.
The pilot in command sits in the back seat for weight and balance issues (as it was suggested earlier). The saying is that a nose heavy airplane flys poorly, a tail heavy airplane flys once.
By putting the passenger in the front seat, it makes the plane slighty more nose heavy which is better than the alternative.
Sorry **Broomstick[//b], I was not trying to be mean.
I get depressed when I think about how much flying you have in front of you as compared to what I will be able to do.
Just do not ever lose the joy.
What I should have posted… *:: my bad, was not using the ‘check list’ like I should. ::; *
Sorry Broomstick, I was not trying to be mean.
I get depressed when I think about how much flying you have in front of you as compared to what I will be able to do.
Just do not ever lose the joy.
And just for the record I did notice my link was not the plane in question a short while later. (though I should have looked at the manufactured date before posting)
Brian
I can’t open the link either, but assuming it’s the familiar picture of the guy hand-propping a J-3 in midair, that’s Roland Maheu of Lewiston, Maine, a stunt pilot who did it to get into “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” in 1946. The clip is on the wall of the diner at KLEW even today.
Not quite right. If there’s a passenger then both seats are occupied and it makes no difference which one is the pilot. With no passenger, having the pilot in the back moves the CofG aft. So the reason can’t be to move the CofG forward. More likely, with just the front seat occupied, the CofG is too far forward.
Later cubs weren’t designed like this. I flew a PA18-100 (100hp Rolls Royce engine) and it was flown from the front.
It’s not just the early Cubs that were flown solo from the back seat, a number of planes from that era are the same, including the Stearman I got to fly. I’m not sure why they balanced them out that way, but they did.