WATCH: Falling Out Of The Sky Off An Airborne "Kite Tube"

If you’re gonna crash, fall, and hurt yourself, make it as spectacular as possible, right? At least in that case we, as an audience, can enjoy it later.

I would say this crash on a sort of “kite-tube-esque” vehicle falls into that category. Brutal, probably pretty painful, but pretty entertaining as well. I’m just glad it was all caught on camera.

So the full video here covers the flight of YouTuber Think Flight‘s homemade ekranoplan. I’m not going to be able to do the best job explaining what an ekranoplan, or ground-effect vehicle, is, but I’ll give it a shot. Essentially it’s a vehicle that more or less hovers over the ground with the help of air’s reaction to the surface of the ground or water.

Think Flight does a much better job explaining this vehicle throughout several videos on the creation of the project. I highly encourage checking all of those out and digging further into his channel if you’re interested. For now, I’ve attached two of the coolest videos in the ekranoplan series below.

While this is a very cool concept vehicle, it’s probably quite a good thing that it isn’t being made for the general public. I’d like to briefly remind readers of the “kite tube”. Like parasailing, kite tubes took you into the air behind a boat. Unlike parasailing, the rider was on top of the tube, and they had very little control over the device.

These toys were both released and recalled in 2006, making for quite a short life. In just four summer months, 84 injuries and three deaths were reported in relation to the kite tube, thus forcing the Consumer Product Safety Commission to take the tube off the shelves.

So yeah, flying device behind a boat isn’t quite the best idea. It does make for some cool videos, though.