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Have You Ever Seen a Boeing 747 Land on a Grass Strip? You Kind of Will Now

Despite the new Airbus A380 being larger, more efficient and sufficiently bizarre-looking to grab a lot of attention, the Boeing 747 continues to be the most instantly recognizable airliner.
Boeing 747 RC Model 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
You can put it down to the fact that it’s been with us for a much longer period of time, or that it’s got that hump at the front that makes it look more organic, more animal-like, but the fact of the matter is that, unless you’re a French airplane geek, you’re likely to be more fond of the old Jumbo Jet than the new flying beluga whale.

Seeing the two side by side, the 747 instantly gets dwarfed in size, but it looks the more agile with its slightly longer body (if we’re talking about the 747 Advanced) and considerably slimmer fuselage. It’s more elegant, and the day when the 747 will make its last landing will surely be a somber one for everyone with even the slightest interest in aeronautics.

It makes sense, then, to go for the most iconic airliner when choosing to build a 1:13 fully functional scale model. While we’re sure the A380 has a similar scale model somewhere in the world (or will shortly get one), we’re here to admire Adi Pitz’s work. He’s the man who built this very exact 5.43-meter-long (nearly 18-feet) replica of the famous trans-oceanic airliner.

To get an idea of how expensive this “hobby” is, you should know that the model Boeing 747 uses minuscule jet engines that cost around $2,000 each, and it uses four of them. With a total weight of 68 kg (that’s roughly 150 pounds) despite its size, you can imagine that Adi Pitz made good use of a lot of expensive light-weight material, so there’s no limit to how much something like this could cost.

There are other impressive planes there as well, but perhaps due to the sheer size of the original model as well - but also the 1:13 scale - the 747 with a Virgin Airlines livery easily dominates the field. Click play below to watch it take off, do a couple of fly-bys and then safely land back on the grassy area.

And, just as a side note, given Adi’s high-quality work, you can’t help the eerie feeling that it’s not the plane that’s smaller, it’s the humans who have gotten larger.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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