Incredible Remote-Control Plane Video

Does it count as an airplane when it can hover nose up in midair? It functions more like a helicopter that somehow doesn't have a stabilizing propeller.

It's still awfully cool, though.

If it's not stable in roll with the nose straight up (at which point I guess this becomes "yaw"), then it's not a practical helicopter, it's just an airplane that can barely hover like a helicopter. Aerobats can and do hover, briefly, at airshows. And airplanes that can point straight up, hover, and land on their tails are called "tail sitters". It used to be a popular VTOL concept, but technologies like thrust vectoring and lift fans meant tail sitters were more trouble than they were worth.

With manned aircraft, the orientation of the seat relative to the prop tells you if it's an airplane or a helicopter - if the plane of the prop is above the pilot's head, it's a helicopter, but if it's in front of the pilot's knees, it's an airplane. (Tilt-rotors are sometimes one, sometimes the other). But with unmanned aircraft, it's a blurrier line. Tail-sitter airplanes were found to be impractical at VTOL because it's dang hard for a pilot to land backwards while laying down on the seat and looking over their shoulder. But with all this new UAV technology, tail-sitters are practical again, and some are being proposed as spy-UAVs.

If you liked that video, these are good too:

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