Miscellaneous Forum

Something serious but funny happening down here since Christmas. One of the popular items sold for Xmas was inflatable radiocontrolled sharks! But now I'm reading stories of now many lost their sharks even before the recipients got them.
One story told : "He inflated it in secret during the morning - but it floated through the kitchen and lounge, up a flight of stairs and across a bedroom before leaving through the bedroom's external door. "
Another : One lady said her inflatable fish did not even make it to gift-giving.
"I went to get it filled, got it to the car, made it home - but as I got it out of the car, it was very windy. I tried holding on but it was gone".

The serious part of the story is that one jet airliner pilot reported one of these sharks being in his flightpath coming in to a city airport.

I'm not sure what the appeal of a radiocontrolled flying shark is, maybe we just have a fixation with the beasts :-)

is it april fool's day kiwi?

Hahaha, it's true !! On my honour :-)

are they meant to go in the water - give your mates a jaws scare in the pool or at the beach?

they seem to fly really well! which sharks don't usually do

I know, I wonder who thought this up. They are radio controlled so I bet if they got near water they'd go phuttttt :-)

Pam, they could be filled with helium, like those popular balloons you see for children at fairs.

I don't doubt your story one iota. It's just that a party of rugby players did the same thing over here in the UK with inflatable dolls. The cheap version, without the real hair.

If you ever read Porterhouse Blue, a book about a young man going up to Cambridge and the story about him inflating one gross (144) of protectives and sending them up the chimney of his room, you will probably howl with laughter. The story is one of an innocent purchase then the horror of what he had actually bought, followed by the discovery of the purchase and a desperate attempt to get rid of the evidence. One key point was that he was trying to deceive the Bedder.

The sad fact is that this was all too believable and de facto if you had ever had any experience of Cambridge and the jolly japes dreamt up by the Young Hopefuls.

Apart from Bedder, Cambridge, search on Google, look up the Mathematical Bridge in Cambridge. It's a world that is worth exploring. Once I've finished this VT book on Poodles and Travels, I will write all the strange but true stories of what happened while we were in Cambridge. Like the time I tried to do a handstand on the saddle of my bike while coming home from the pub.

They are most definitely filled with helium :-)
Will check those out thanks .

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaa thanks for the big belly laugh Pam...if I see one of them flying across the ditch I will make sure I have the longest hat pin I can find (yes,I still have a few stored in a box somewhere)The airline pilot must have thought he was in a sub rather than a jet haha.

Haha, they would be hard pressed to go that way over the ditch, but at least you have warning :-)
Yeah the pilot must have been pretty close to be able to identify it!! When I saw these things in the shops before Xmas I thought "what a waste of money", now I'm convinced.
I'm not sure how you controlled how high they went, even in the house they must have moved around at ceiling level?? I'm sure they didn't but ....
Outside would be fatal for sure.

I'm very intrigued, but I don't see how they could work. I know a lot more about aerostats than any sane person, & the lift is a cubic function and the envelope area (& consequently weight) a square function, so the bigger they are the more load carrying capacity they have, & even with modern microelectronics and battery technolgy I realy don't see how you could build anything with enough power to cope with any kind of wind that wasa sensible size. Alough whether the words 'sensible' and 'flyinghark' can be used in the same sentan is moot. I want one......

Just to keep it sane...did you read about the woman in sweden who pulled acarrot in her garden and found it was wearing the wedding ring she had lost aeons ago?

No!! for real!! amazing. I have found jewellry in the garden that I have lost :-) But never being worn by a carrot!!
I'll find a picture of the shark :-)

See if this works. The shark is sold out but the Nemo fish is still available :-)
http://search.thewarehouse.co.nz/search?p=Q&w=radio+control+shark&x=11&y=1

Aha it's not only down here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3W4aPlijPc&feature=related

Here's the carrot....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16374283

Cripes! 99 bucks is a lot to pay for about half an hours entertinment.

Those are kiwi dollars :-)

Cut that to two minutes entertainment. The youtube video proves my point entirely. Flyable indoors only, and you would ned a big room like a sports hall or something. I'm all for general silliness, but this is simply dumb....

however horrible the exchange rate, it's a lot of green. Now what I've always wanted (exaggeration) is a radio controlled (floating) model duck....

Incidentally I don't see the as being any hazard to big butch things like Airbuses, they'r built to take birdstrikes, these are just scrap of Mylar and the solid bits probably less substantial than a sparrow's bones.

Flying shark:

http://youtu.be/3BIyz5nxNtM

who says sharks can't fly? watch here:

http://youtu.be/zZVbSYRC9P0

and a beautiful video on flying devil rays. this is a must see.

http://youtu.be/nHrrS_hOnZw

Yes good ones Faizah :-)

yes, beautiful....but the pelican flies the best!

We need some of those sharks out here for light relief. Our village's tourism has taken a knock due to a spate of shark attacks. When you guys watch those Hational Geographic movies of sharks breaching (the real flying sharks), too often our village is in the background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihxNrU04xuQ&feature=fvsr

I guess you don't swim in the sea then, bit like crocs in Oz! now there's an idea, flying crocs!!

What will be the next. Swimming pigs?

Pam, a friend of ours reckons he saw a 'flying croc' while he was fishing up Cape York "This dirty 'big bugger of a croc' flew out of the water and attacked my out board motor"...we all reckon he had a few to many-- but fact is stranger than fiction so 'they say'hahaha.

hahaha i bet pigs can swim :-)

I believe it Dorrise, truly :-)

You see that flying pig outside passing my window? We have a phrase here:

*yes and pigs might fly...* when something is highly unlikely. Mind you with all the winds around here, any flying pigs have probably ended up somewhere around Inverness....

You see that flying pig outside passing my window? We have a phrase here:

*yes and pigs might fly...* when something is highly unlikely. Mind you with all the winds around here, any flying pigs have probably ended up somewhere around Inverness....

Sharks were the reason I chose the Air Force instead of the Navy... and now they are in the air, that's terrible!

The other day I saw one of these inflatable clown fish while on an approach to Oakland International Airport. I reported it to the air traffic controller (who replied with a laughter and promised to send the Air Coast Guard with fish net right away).

"The serious part of the story is that one jet airliner pilot reported one of these sharks being in his flightpath coming in to a city airport."

To be able to fly, these sharks have be of an ultra-lightweight flimsy construction, and will probably have less effect on an airliner than hail or wind-blown litter. I reckon the jet engines will easily digest the sharks, though the fabric may obstruct instruments like the pitot tubes, but no worse than any other old party balloon that may be floating up there.