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Flying Individuals (Powered: Yves Rossy; Jet Packs; Etc.)

Sharon Hill said:
Now we are getting into Red Panda territory. There will be more and more reports and no additional evidence. I am far from convinced the sightings are of actual people in jet packs.
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Jakin said:
Sorry...Link: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...-the-elusive-los-angeles-jet-pack-guy-emerges
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Having lived in San Pedro (the closest bits of land to the sighting)....

That area is one of the busiest shipping channels in the US, with freighters handling US-China trade constantly coming and going at all times. (You can even see one in the video). The Port of Los Angeles is in San Pedro/Long Beach.

It would be incredibly dangerous to be flying a jetpack there. You are both over the ocean, and the mainland side has a rocky shore with a several hundred foot sheer cliff. There is no easy access to that section of shoreline. The island in the video and shown on the map is 26 miles out to sea, if you were to try flying between the island and the mainland, I'm not sure of the range of jetpacks.

There are hundreds of people looking in that direction at any given time. At the top of the San Pedro cliffs there is a hilly ridge, so there are thousands of houses facing in that direction, as well as an extremely popular park along the cliff.

Given that last point there's basically no way you could land on the mainland without being seen. Which does raise an interesting point, even if one assumes this was a balloon of some sort, there have to be numerous people who saw it. Presumably at least some additional people got video on their cellphones since it does seem to look like a guy in a jetpack (the park along the cliff is very picturesque), but this is the only report we have of this event. So we have an event the presumably many people saw and some at least likely videotaped, but only a single report has reached the media of the event.
 
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It wasn't me.

These wings are for sexual display and keeping warm only.

I cannot actively fly for more than a few yards and the effort exhausts me and I have to have a good lay down.
 
The UK gets drones, the US has to go one better.
 
Sharon Hill said:
He's baaack.

Mysterious 'Jetpack Man' may have been spotted again in the skies near LAX​

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/us/lax-jetpack-man-trnd/index.html
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Whoever he is, he's got some serious technology there. Which is probably why he's keeping it secret.
Achieving such an altitude is no mean feat.
I'm guessing he has a parachute. The only way a parachute would be useful is at a high altitude, and probably the only reason for flying so high is to test the jetpack's climbing ability. Most of the other jetpack users tend to fly at a low altitude, I suspect primarily for safety reasons.
 
GNC said:
The UK gets drones, the US has to go one better.
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Drones are old news here. Every other person has one. Now, a JET PACK, those things are cool.
 
Did anyone notice Lawnchair Larry before he was in controlled airspace? Admittedly, a jetpack surely must make more of a racket taking off than an improvised balloon, but...

Having lived in the Los Angeles area for some time, my impression is that most locals are remarkably incurious about things outside their ken (i.e. work, traffic conditions, where the hot sales are, and which celebrities are in town).

Few look at the sky, because it's almost always the same uniform shade of brownish blue. Only geeks like my dad roam around with binoculars at the ready. Those who do look up typically focus on the aircraft lined up in their final approaches, which look close enough to hop from one to the next.

People wonder why there aren't more pictures of bigfoot, UFOs, or Elvis now that everyone has a phone with a camera, but they seem to forget that the operators are mostly busy posting pictures of their latest meal online and counting LIKEs ten times a minute.
 
Reading up about the LAX Jet Packer, it seems he would have to have a heck of a lot of fuel to be able to pull off the stunts he's been accused of, as the jetpacks available don't have much distance capability. He would have to be very careful not to run out of fuel while high in the sky. Some are saying he might be a model or dummy attached to a drone.
 
GNC said:
Reading up about the LAX Jet Packer, it seems he would have to have a heck of a lot of fuel to be able to pull off the stunts he's been accused of, as the jetpacks available don't have much distance capability. He would have to be very careful not to run out of fuel while high in the sky. Some are saying he might be a model or dummy attached to a drone.
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Agreed ... Assuming Jetpack Guy is sane (not a given in Southern California) he should be packing only enough fuel to go straight up and come back down without much lingering or zipping around.

With each new sighting I'm tilting more and more toward the theory it's a dummy attached to some sort of drone apparatus (which may be a jetpack).
 
GNC said:
Reading up about the LAX Jet Packer, it seems he would have to have a heck of a lot of fuel to be able to pull off the stunts he's been accused of, as the jetpacks available don't have much distance capability. He would have to be very careful not to run out of fuel while high in the sky. Some are saying he might be a model or dummy attached to a drone.
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Yes, that may be the most likely explanation.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Yes, that may be the most likely explanation.
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Even so, the operator will have to be a real expert at using it to ensure the drone doesn't come crashing to the ground, I would have thought? What are the safety features on those things, anyway?
 
Having spent some time thinking about the technical aspects of the apparent LA-area jetpacker, I must admit that my training in atmospheric physics is not adequate for evaluating an apparent feat of engineering.

However, intriguingly, this phenomenon does seem to share at least two features with the "airship" sightings reported in the late 19th century:

A) The phenomenon appears to be accomplished using readily recognizable technology and materials. For example, nobody has opined that it might be a magician on a flying carpet.

B) At the same time, the device used appears to be slightly, but unmistakably, more advanced than publicly known contemporary devices.

What these similarities might mean, I have no idea. Maybe the apparent jetpacker is actually a tulpa?
 
Aether Blue said:
Having spent some time thinking about the technical aspects of the apparent LA-area jetpacker, I must admit that my training in atmospheric physics is not adequate for evaluating an apparent feat of engineering.

However, intriguingly, this phenomenon does seem to share at least two features with the "airship" sightings reported in the late 19th century:

A) The phenomenon appears to be accomplished using readily recognizable technology and materials. For example, nobody has opined that it might be a magician on a flying carpet.

B) At the same time, the device used appears to be slightly, but unmistakably, more advanced than publicly known contemporary devices.

What these similarities might mean, I have no idea. Maybe the apparent jetpacker is actually a tulpa?
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Maybe he's come out of retirement?

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42 Balloons: New musical follows man who flew over L.A. in a garden chair

In 1982, a truck driver made headlines when he tied 42 helium balloons to a garden chair and flew over part of Los Angeles. A new stage musical reclaims him as a hero, although questions remain over his story's tragic ending.

lawnchair-larry-the-og-balloon-man-who-flew-into-federal-airspace-by-mistake_9.jpg


When he came back down to Earth - somehow unscathed after floating in the chair across the approach to LAX airport and landing in power lines - Walters' escapade caused a minor sensation.

Walters did have everything planned out. He had calculated how many balloons he needed, attached 13 plastic jugs of water to his chair as ballast, and took an air pistol to burst the balloons to control his descent.

The chair is now in the US National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

42 Balloons is at The Lowry in Salford until 19 May.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68811305

Wikipedia on the flight.

maximus otter
 
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