In what looks to be a clip from the 80’s or so, this guy pours iced tea using a corkscrew and does other crazy things in a civilian plane with the engine off!

Apparently Bob Hoover is quite an aviation legend. Not only did he spend quite a bit of time in the armed forces, once even becoming a POW for 16 months, but he truly enjoys performing stunts in aircraft. The catch is that he doesn’t (didn’t?) fly a fancy aerobatic plane but rather a civilian commuter plane, a Rockwell Aero Commander twin engine propeller plane!

This video is pretty long at nearly 3 minutes, but I think you’ll find it worth watching. In it, you see him gliding the Commander withing a few feet of the ground and can appreciate the eery silence of such a large object whooshing by with practically no sound. He even pours a glass of iced tea while flying one-handed, engines-off, of course, in the same not-very-sporty plane while splitting his concentration between not crashing, the iced tea and a crowd of military generals in the rear hazing him to do something exciting.

All I can say is that Bob Hoover is hardcore – that kind of skill and guts are simply amazing even in today’s “XTREME!” sports society. However, I doubt that anyone who truly appreciates what it takes to fly a plane would even put Bob in the same category as a bungee-jumper or some other modern extreme athlete.