The episode, which airs in December, finds Savage and Hyneman tackling a question baffling everyone from bloggers to pilots: If a plane is traveling at takeoff speed on a conveyor belt, and that conveyor belt is matching the speed in reverse,
can the plane take off?
We put the plane on a quarter-mile conveyor belt and tested it out,'' says Savage about the experiment using a pilot and his Ultralight plane. I won’t tell you what the outcome was, but the pilot and his entire flight club got it wrong.‘’
Don’t miss it, this myth has been argued about forever. :ponder
the idea that people have trouble with is that it’s not sitting on a short conveyer, its a long-ass strip.
so, in theory, if the props are making it go fast enough, it will move forward on the conveyer, and at certain speed will generate enough lift to take off.
question is, how long is the conveyer, how fast is it moving, and how powerful is the plane.
OK, If the plane doesn’t move with respect to its original position, IT WILL NOT FLY. There isn’t going to be any lift because the plane isn’t acually moving. Its like putiing your car on a dyno… There isnt any “moving air (hense, thats why you need a big ass fan)”, but your car is still “driving” at XXmph.
I find it funny that people dont underdtand that concept…
I had the same misconception about it initially.
i imagined a short conveyer on top of which the plane sits, and somehow is supposed to take off.
as i understand it now, this is not the case.
the conveyer is long, as in long enough to be a runway.
they want to see if the prop will push it forward and get enough speed to take off. wheels won’t put up
much resistance, think of them as bearings.