Gizmodo
So, this is what 200 miles per hour looks like on a small scale. And what this RC-controlled car sounds like is a gazillion very angry bees all chasing after Michael Caine. Powered by nitromethane, the car is attached via cable to a pole situated in the middle of a circular track. Round and round the car goes, getting faster and faster, until it reaches 200mph—and the buzz reaches such a pitch that you think the bees are after you. Awesome. [Jalopnik]
200MPH Nitro-Powered RC Car Opens Time-Space Portal
So, this is what 200 miles per hour looks like on a small scale. And what this RC-controlled car sounds like is a gazillion very angry bees all chasing after Michael Caine. Powered by nitromethane, the car is attached via cable to a pole situated in the middle of a circular track. Round and round the car goes, getting faster and faster, until it reaches 200mph—and the buzz reaches such a pitch that you think the bees are after you. Awesome. [
8:00 AM on Wed Apr 16 2008
By Addy Dugdale
27,621 views
73 comments
Comments
What are you going to do? Release the hounds? Or the bees? Or the hounds with bees in their mouths so that when they bark, they shoot bees at you?!
Freshies!
Damn!
Yay they got it up to 200 mph!! Now lets see what a crash looks like at that speed.
i was hoping that there would be something tragic involved somewhere in the video. (car breaking of tether, hitting someone. or tether slicing off fingers of the guy in the center. or a fiery crash of sorts)
but nothing.
Amazing, somehow it made the birds in the background fly around faster too:/
no fair, it got help from the guy at the start. i want to see this without it being attached to anything.
not RC!
These cars ain't radio controlled.... that's basically just an engine connected to a rope, going round and round....
@TommyImages: yeah man, I call BULLSHIT! The birds are flying soooooo fast it's ridiculous, and the flag also starts flapping faster as the car "speeds up"....
WEAK
@TommyImages: LOL I just saw that... this is fake lol.
@TommyImages: good eye.
I want to see a a failure at speed.
Sorry, it's a thing with me.
THIS is Me and my RC:
+ Watch video
No, not really.
Nitro-powered birds.
Yep good eye. Also once you see that you can see that the car is at the same position on screen each time, meaning that the first frame of one run is the same as the first frame of the next etc... And then there's the sound, which sounds a bit off to me...
#1 This is old as the internet #2 Fake, as it's been said before :)
I disagree on the fakeness. What you say are birds is really an insect flying close to the camera and the flag doesn't seem (to me) to be jumping around but more acting upon a pick up in wind, maybe coming from the damn RC car wizzing by.
@TommyImages: If you think that bug/butterfly is a bird, I'm not going to trust your judgment as to whether the flag's moving naturally in the wind.
I dunno guys. The flag actually looks like its waving naturally to me. Plus the birds just look like they're diving for bugs, Swallows used to do the same thing when I was mowing 2 acres of land and they did move like that.
Hell even Snopes doesn't have somethin on it. Just sayin.
Nothing like a group of Giz readers debunking footage based artifacts in a YouTube video.
Wow. This, AND the post about the German maths wannabe back to back? I'm actually disappointed in the Giz! Why would you post obviously false "news"? I'm guessing that there's not time to check into all of them properly, which makes sense.
This is a tether car from the early 80's....
@TheCyberBob: I agree
How the heck does it slow down?
Not fake. These are called tether/track racers and they are basically a tiny two-stroke engine that runs off of a mixture of Nitromethane and Alcohol that is ignited by a glow plug similar to those used in Diesel engines.
With no weight, they gain speed rapidly and the streamlined bodies let them go very, very fast. Quite a treat to watch, actually. You woulden't think that watching a little car zip around a 20' circle would be that entertaining--but it is amazing to see something move so fast that is that small. Plus, they sometimes blow up--always entertaining.
They use similar fuel in the Nitro RC cars that I am currently trying to make my hobby. A much lower content of Nitromethane in my cars though--but I can easily get up to 45MPH in my buggy. Following a little car in a big car down the highway was a riot, let me tell you. :P
I haven't seen the video (Work filters them) but I have seen these things in person. They are fast. They are nothing more than wheels, a body, and the engine. Less than a pound most of the time.
i wana see the version when the dude in the middle falls onto the cheese wiregoing around him at 200mph. AHHAAH
Just like NASCAR.
"These cars just keep going round and round and round, it's so f*n boring."
Wait a fucking minute.....Michael Caine?!
What is the line made of that holds this thing to the post? Gotta be pretty strong, even if the car is lightweight.
The simple answer to the question of "is this fake" is to find additional videos. These cars aren't custom jobs built from scratch -- if one person did it, so did someone else.
How did they make the Flux Capacitor so small?
I love how cop shows and cynicism has made everyone a video "expert". There are no birds in the video. There are some bugs. The flags move according to...wind. The wind is never constant, but varies. Geeze, its like Ebaums over here with all the "Fake!" talk.
everybody is a fucking critic! IT WAS REAL DAMMIT!
pfft...super collider, schmuper collider....we've got nitro powered RC cars now.
Yeah, I was totally waiting on the crash factor -- need to do this is super slow mo... who wants to call the mythbusters?
CALL IN QUINCY!!!
+ Watch video
The film wasn't sped up it was the wind. Haven't you ever see the wind blow the birds around? You guys are so skeptical.
@mumin: Why/How is this not RC? While it may not be RADIO controlled, it is REMOTE controlled.
When I was a kid I had one of those Ghostbuster plastic wagons. After awhile I got old enough that it just started sitting around. So me and my Dad hooked up a R/C airplane engine to the back of it and we attached a steel wire cable. We then took a 5" long bolt and put it in the concrete floor of the garage, we used to just sit there watching it spin round and round, then one day the cable snapped, no more Ghostbuster car.
We hit maybe 40-50mph, 200 is just ridiculous.
1. I don't care if its fake because, 2. I watched this clip 6 years ago in college and when I read the blog title was hoping to see an even faster one that this.
I guess there has been no progress in these tether cars in the last decade.
Silly Michael Caine. I TOLD you to stop taunting the beez. But did you listen? No. And this is what you get. A dubious "R/C" vehicle tied to a pole. And beez. Don't you give me that pout!
And they couldn't attach a mini camera to the car? Too bad.
- Flag moving at normal speed
- Definitely a butterfly.
;-)
...uumm, this is real.
And extremely cool... and do want to see the thing explode or crash or something at that speed...
LOL!!
I don't get you guys.
Everyone here is in a stupid debate on if this video is fake or not and I'll bet not one of you dingbats have done the math to see if it is even feasible. You call yourselves geeks....more like a bunch of head lazy skeptics.
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That thing looks to have a 4" wheel (give or take some). That would give it approx. a 12" distance before it made a full revolution.
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200 Miles per hour = 3.33 miles per minute
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3.33 miles per minute = 17,582 feet per minute.
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If that thing had a 4 inch wheel and was direct drive...the engine would have to be turning somewhere around 17,000 rpm to go 200 miles per hour. It makes sense that it is direct drive because those engines have little torque and he had to get it moving at a good clip before it could pull its own weight.
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Looking at the Cox Engine website the standard .49cc engine turns from 14,000 - to 17,000 rpm.
If the thing is designed just right and the engine can generate enough power to overcome the aerodynamic drag (can't calculate unless I have a reasonable drag coefficient and weight) this is a by no means unreasonable.
@aelver:
Only they are making a right turn.
Yeah, I'd have to concur that this is real. The shadows and clouds don't move either. And the UFO looks more like a butterfly to me. Nothing obviously fake - although maybe extremely well done. I believe.
@I_Like_Pie:
Oh snap!
Oh man. I just sent that fake video to all my friends. I'm an idiot. I didn't see the birds till the 2nd viewing.
@DCGaymer: Uhhh... we've HAD nitro-powered RC cars for a very long time. These aren't new. I had one over 16 years ago!
"With this great weapon of genetically-engineered apiary warfare, we will defeat the [redacted] and bring this [redacted] to a [redacted]. I thank you."
Dude nitro is so last century...and so is tethered anything.
Todays RC (note this is not RC its just a motor on a wire..dumb) with brushless motors can break 65MPH right out of the box. The present Record is 134 MPH but that will be broken easily this summer. And this is a real RC steering and everything on an open road. Some of todays super brushless motors can output over 8 HP from a motor smaller than a can of pop. Go to youtube and search for speed-t to see Losi's screaming fast RC truck do 65 MPH with a lowend motor and 3 cell (11v) lipo pack and no aerodynamics.
sounds like bad robot porn
"American "'MUGEN Particle Accelerator' one step closer to discovering the big bang'yall"
Nothing new here, old school stuff. A fun hobby, but not sure why you're featuring it here.
@OMG! Ponies!: YES!
lets have these guys run this on an open track, none of this teathered pussy crap.
Wow, I literally saw this video 3 years ago.
hahaha this has turned out to be quite entertaining. Apparently the sarcasm was lost.... sigh.
I bet you I'm the only one here drinking a beer while sitting at their desk at work, in a "real" office too! God I love advertising... hahaha
@desimal: would that be a prostitute on a leash?
Did anyone else think it sounded like something that Beck may have sampled before? I swear, it sounds like something in one of his songs.
this is definitely a fake. i'm usually against everyone calling a supposed-real video false, but i did see the birds, and they're going berserk! they just sped the video up 20%...
LOL@The conspiracy theorists. I can only imagine the sorrow you felt once it was discovered Godzilla was not involved in the cable cut fiasco.
Not RC. Control line.
If your car is on a set track, 3 feet wide, at 200 mph, with a cable attached to guide it around the track, is there REALLY any controlling to do? No.