Tucker Gott
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2018–2023
12:27 · 50M views · Aug 4, 2017
A vlog in which Tucker Gott flies a paramotor to a McDonald's for lunch, showing everyday powered paraglider flying.
Used as a vivid example of personal flight that needs no airport, often in threads on drones and aviation regulation.
3 comments from Hacker News
"Antiquity" is conventionally considered to end about 1500 years ago, though this really only applies to Europe: [LINK] The reason for this is the very sparse historical record from the European Dark Ages. Scholars in the High Middle Ages like Petrarch could look back on their own recent history, and then a vast gap of mostly unknown, and then the impressive cultures of Antiquity among whose ruins they lived. We know more about the Dark Ages now than we did then but still not that much. Here you can see people flying like birds without being canned in metal tubes: this video [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] It seems likely that we have changed. I suspect Merer's workers, even if they had grown up in modern civilization, would not tolerate being employees, being disarmed, and having their children taken away for education; and probably more of them were dyslexic than in modern populations. But I don't really know. Generally the rule is that domestic animals are stupider, smaller-skulled, more submissive, weaker, more neotenous, less aggressive, fatter, lower in testosterone, less sexually dimorphic, and possessed of smaller teeth than the wild type ( [LINK] ). Modern humans have these traits to a very notable degree compared to, as you allude to, chimpanzees and even Neandertals or Denisovans; but perhaps we have also been substantially domesticated over the last 4500 years, maybe even over the last 2000. Not because of driving cars, but because of having kings. Are we the Eloi? I don't thin
The Wright Flyer massed 274 kg. Of course it could take off from an unprepared field-- with a modern engine, it could be doing nine foot takeoffs like in STOL competitions: [LINK] The modern equivalent to a Wright plane would be something like a paramotor: this video
Powered paragliders look like fun. You can fly from your backyard to McDonald's for lunch and fly back. this video