Brilliant! With commercial flights it would simply be a matter of coordination..

I have experienced this firsthand while racing on hydrofoils! By riding behind another rider with our wingtips aligned I gain a small speed boost that can help facilitate a pass. There is a sweet spot around 15-30ft behind that gives the best gain.

To capture the possible savings, one can imagine operators of large aircraft auctioning off vortex-surfing slots in the wakes of their aircraft. Corporations love positive cash flow for no additional outlay!

It seems like for less time critical flights having flocks of planes makes a lot of sense. I wonder if planes could be designed to optimize their vortex generating and/or vortex riding abilities. An interesting possibility would be to design a wing that inverts the direction of the vortexes so the rising sides of the vortexes are in the center so a trailing plane could get double the lift.

Thank you for this great and elegant presentation of bionic concepts! When surfing on the Water with a Kayak then one can reach the speed of the ship (river cargo ship) by surfing towards the ship on the hull wake-wave.

Someone commented once about the possiblity of tuning the formation of vortices either by modifying the airplanes or using a special aircraft to cause them (which could be used only for this goal or not). Another possibility is exploiting existing air currents for faster speeds or less use of thrust (this already happens accidentally).

Incredibly interesting to see why geese and swans fly in V formations, and that NASA tested this idea and found that it worked! Nature is amazing.

Something relevant to average consumer - if there were a dedicated freeway lane for autonomously navigated cars, they could link with each other and maintain the most efficient distance for aerodynamic draft savings while increasing efficiency when slowing and accelerating in coordination with each other

"Vortex Surfer", is a great song by Motorpsycho. besides that, I love to compare vortices to magnetic fields.

In the early 80s we did this regularly for the phenomenon and the fun of it on paid part 135 flights that I can’t mention in detail. Suffice it to say that when you get ‘in the zone’ you feel it! You need to reduce power immediately to stay in it.

there used to be a rubber powered 'Hummingbird' or ornithopter as I remember advertisements for it, back then, as I understood it, birds oscillated through a figure 8 pattern, which is much like sculling a boat with a single oar on the transom. Probably worth saying that formated birds swap places as the lead bird drops back to get on the end of the formation, in that way they conserve the load. Ground Effect vehicles escape vortices because to remain IGE they have to be less than 1/2 wingspan off the surface. This means that there is not enough space for vortices to properly form, with corresponding effects on lift and drag. The drag vector is pulled back which makes the lift/drag diagram lessen the angle of attack and flatten the downwash angle. The difficulty as always is in balancing the machine where so far the most efficient answer is a large all lifting high aspect ratio tail out of ground effect

These "hummingbirds" might be used for reconnaissance, but they would make a serious weapon for crowd control or as a tool of assassination. Thousands could easily be delivered to a location for use and remote control or algorithmic programming could guide them to their targets. In the world as we have it, the darker explanation is almost always the right one!

Maybe the future will see formations of aircraft passing over the way that geese do.

No one can beat Godly engineering

Love this channel

I wonder if, during emergencies at airports this method could be used to sustain longer holding flight patterns. Alternating lead planes based on their fuel volume.

While treading water, I've often felt this vortex with my arms and hands, mostly hands. However it's not so helpful as the hand isn't large enough to let the vortex persist along the surface of the hand for very long.

This is fascinating. I know that land vehicles benefit from slipstreaming and of course drive behind trucks for this very purpose, but didn't know birds did it. Thought they flew in formation like they do so they could see each other and remain 'lined up'. Nature knows best!

I wonder if the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo in WWII would have been able to go further, using this slip stream method?

I feel that pollution and measures governments will push to control global warming will help with such considerations… Would be interesting to model that with more recent aircrafts and assess if one could mix aircraft models to some extent.

very interesting!!! thx. for the video.

Vortex surfing, great concept. Was just looking recently at how foilboards can ride boat wakes indefinitely…. No fuel at all. Wonder birds in the “V” behind the lead bird ever even flap wings.

Not sure the hummingbird vortex shed and reuse effect can be easily scaled up to crewed e-VTOL. It relies of the wing effectively stalling to shed the vortex from the leading edge to assist the following wing pass from the other direction. Bumblebees fly using a similar stall vortex shed method. In fact helicopters have long considered shed vortices to help with the retreating blade stall at high speed (eg Westland BERP tip). The benefit is typically limited by vibration inducing material fatigue constraints. That said, there would be significant benefit if e-VTOL rotor blades could operate with laminar flow. The problem is that in forward flight the air is presented to the blade at very skewed angles, so you get 3d aerodynamic effects tripping the flow from laminar to turbulent. It's the same problem that stops swept wing jets operating with laminar flow. If the flow could "magically" be kept laminar then that limited battery energy could be sipped in high speed rather than gulped.

When a group of fighter aircraft are deploying long-distance, they typically travel with an airborne tanker. It is not uncommon for the tanker aircraft to also carry cargo and / or ground personnel for the fighter planes, such that ALL of them are heading to the same destination. So you end up with a large, heavy aircraft (such as a KC-10, based on the DC-10 airframe) and a bunch of lighter aircraft flying in some kind of formation, with the smaller planes occasionally pulling up directly behind to take on fuel. Yes, surfing the wingtip vortices of the heavier plane DOES reduce fuel consumption in the fighters. Fly-By-Wire (FB) aircraft, such as the F-16, FA-18, F-22 and F-35 have an easier time doing this; aircraft with mechanical flight controls ... that was rather fatiguing for the pilots. Part of NASA's research is working toward making the FBW flight computer able to facilitate this, such that the pilots are even less-fatigued while doing this. It's not something you can do with a traditional autopilot, but a more advanced one in a FBW aircraft tends to be much "smarter."

I learned something :)

Good vid!

more planes + vortex surfing = more fuel efficient = more capacity

If military aircraft uses this technique, then I would imagine the radar cross section and size would be way higher, so less stealthy. I guess for a huge distance it could be used, then deploy them individually closer to the target to reduce their radar cross section?

hi do you have the the reference or the paper of the analysis of the flight of the hummingbird. thanks

I learned vortex surfing from bumblebees while bicycle touring, they're slow flyers, tankers ... yet kept up 18kmh no problem along wire fence tops, I had just eaten dried fruit, too cool 🍺

Military sure, civilian commercial acft, never, liability issues. Look into dynamic soaring by Albatross birds for your next research video.

Is the vortex much stronger behind the engine or edge of wings? Is the vortex effect less if winglets at the end?

Can you please do an episode on joined wings aircraft ?

I would imagine freight airplanes are first to do this regularly obviously!?🧐

It seems like the vortecies trailing birds could be neither significant since they are extremely aerodynamic, moving at relatively low speeds and most have wing tip splane feathers specifically to stop wingtip vorticies, nor very consistent, since they beat their wings- they're only aerofoiling for a protion of each wing beat cycle. It makes sense for planes, but birds seems more likely that they're using high pressure from the bird behind.

Can you cover the eMagic One? It is the longest range eVTOL concept yet.

Is there a concern of potential accidents for commercial flights?

What if we had dedicated vortex producing electric drones that could offer wake services over a number of areas? they couldn't cover the range of conventional jets but they could be used to cut the fuel burn and emissions - as if the drones running on local electricity were an overhead line that the jet connects to.

But aren't vortices and turbulent airflows low pressure?? So how can airfact surf them? Shouldn't these be kept on the top portion of the wing to increase lift?

proximity induced risks and path syncronisation difficulty cancel out the benefit ?

I wonder if a fixed wing aircraft can Have Its Wings set up in a Way that a series of following wings Catch the vortexes at cruse speed . . .

Somehow, you would have to get competing airlines to agree on who goes first!

Does vortex surfing mean that a smaller manned combat jet could mother goose heavier armed drones longer? Say instead of every aircraft needing to be refueled only the lead aircraft get a drink?

I'm doubtful. Might not be worth the extra chances of collisions with the proximity.

Concorde used a vortex over the wing

train of wings, or convoy of wings

As a kid at my primary school I invented 15 paper airplanes, a few were just modifications of known ones, but I loved engines, one, two, three, some very good for acrobatics (the one with two mock up engines), others were useless, very slow, only flying if there was wind. But one thing I knew in my 8 years old, and it was that I had to fold the wings to keep the paper wings strong and make the plane flying faster and under control. It was 1958, vortex intuition.

Long range drone swarms incoming.

Flying lake, eh?

Not worth the increase of risk

#BirdsArentReal confirmed

It is good to see how nowadays saving energy by imitating principles of nature is used. The principle of Wing-in-Ground-Effect Crafts is exploiting such effects for a long time. See under Airfoil-Flairboat.