Flying RIB ride; photos of NW Corsica, France

jfm

jfm

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You may have seen or heard of these Wacky Races/Inspector Gadget style flying RIBs by Polaris of Italy. Well, a guy has one for rent at St Florent beach, NW Corsica, so I had a go last week. It was loads of fun and highly recommended if you get the chance to go on one of these - fantastic weather, 300-600m altitude mostly and 45-50kts airspeed, and a long time hang glider/parachutist/moutaineer etc etc French dude called Leo driving. His business is www.altore.com.

A video I shot is below. St Florent and the NW coast of Corsica are so fantastic I'll also try to dig out some stills and post a bit of a cruise report later too. The big beach midway through the Youtube is Saleccia beach which is one of the best in the Med. I've posted pics of it before on here. It is always fairly quiet becuase there are no roads to it - see the completely uninhabited landscape for 10miles behind it, and also the googlemaps link above shows the absence of roads. Jimmy le Builder take note of this and the other beaches - 3.5 hours from Antibes and you haven't blasted over to them yet :D. The squadron 58 anchored in centre frame at 0:33 of the movie is A+K's; it's the 4th last one ever built and is a fantastic boat. They kindly let me use it for this holiday - thanks guys



We also shot video using a camera on the wingtip looking at the flying machine, but the SD card shows a "file error" when i try to view it. There is a 550Mb .mov Quicktime file on the SD card, but it seems to have a small fault, even though the 5 second clip we shot just as a test immediately before is ok. Anyone have any ideas/expertise to fix a slightly busted .mov file?
 
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Love it and the craziness(a flying rib is crazy) these 'dudes' introduce and bring to life.:cool:
 
jfm said:
...We also shot video using a camera on the wingtip looking at the flying machine, but the SD card shows a "file error" when i try to view it. There is a 550Mb .mov Quicktime file on the SD card, but it seems to have a small fault, even though the 5 second clip we shot just as a test immediately before is ok. Anyone have any ideas/expertise to fix a slightly busted .mov file?
Click to expand...

Looks like fantastic fun!

You could try Project X -> http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ProjectX

Takes a few minutes to get the hang of the functionalities, but it's pretty good with a variety of formats.
 
Lovely flight and landscapes, J. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Re. the mov file, I'd try opening it with VLC player instead of Quicktime, before attempting anything else.
It's more fault tolerant than Quicktime and most other players, though of course it depends on what parts are missing/damaged.
 
mjf said:
Bimey that looks ace.

Did I spot an O/B too on the back of the RIB for trip back to the beach.

This may catch on in the solent methinks if CAA approve such a beast.

In fact some dinghy wheels too and Hey Ho avoids the A3/M3 slog on fri/sun.
Click to expand...

No there isn't an o/board. There is a pedal control rudder for steerage duing t/off and landing

You can get a version with no RIB and a set of wheels instead. On polaris's website

Talking of steerage, it is important to get it right. See below for a landing where the pilot was turning right a bit on the approach. Leo was very careful about this and delayed a take off waiting for wakes to pass etc.

 
It's almost like he's trying to line up with a runway and compensating for a cross wind and needs to kick her straight just before touch down.

But I guess without a (flight) rudder, easier said than done.

That must of hurt!!
 
The first video looked great fun, the second one put me off a bit, what speed do you think that was doing when it touched down onto the water?

I'm away to look out my Chitty Chitty Bang Bang dvd now..
 
paultallett said:
It's almost like he's trying to line up with a runway and compensating for a cross wind and needs to kick her straight just before touch down.

But I guess without a (flight) rudder, easier said than done.

That must of hurt!!
Click to expand...

Yup, see exactly your point, but it's a wide open bit of water with no runway so you'd land into the wind. Cross winds shouldn't come into it.

With the high up weight of second passenger and wing the thing must be tippy if you get into any kind of swerve
 
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