So long as by “impressive,” you mean “stark, raving mad.”
I wonder if the guy in the yellow bat suit will let me take out a life insurance policy on him. Because I like the odds.
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Pretty impressive36 comments to Pretty impressive |
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You might as well take out a policy on me too, Lex. Cuz that’s cool.
After all, you won’t let me near your fighter jets. I gotta do something.
And these gents are wearing crash helmets for…………?
I have to say, that does look pretty cool.
I can see the day when SEALs and/or SF-types will be doing “extreme” HALO jumps using those things to glide to their objective.
100 mph? jeez….
And these gents are wearing crash helmets for…………?
Why for crashing, of course!
Whoa!!!! Those guys need to be in the pre-credit sequence for the next Bond movie!
Hey Lex, ya know, one of the more well-known BASE jumpers, Will Oxx, used to fly P-3s. If one Navy-type pilot can take up a new sport, maybe 2 can…?
/BeachBum
They wear helmets for the same reason as motorcyclists, so their heads will be somewhat intact and their remains can be identified.
Yeah,
helmets for the same reason aircrew do: So you can leave the casket open at the funeral
I never saw anyone laugh as hard as one of my skippers when he first saw my flight helmet. I had used reflective tape to make the words “Dig Here” and an arrow, on the back and top of it…
I swiped the idea from a helo driver’s hardhat. Heh.
Actually, I’d be up for one of those flying suits myself…..
Pretty wild! Won’t accumulate that many frequent flier miles, for sure.
There are some guys in bat suits that use (initially) ankle mounted and (now) wing mounted jet engines, to get speed related buzz.
A really good vid is here, Pilatus Porter and all: http://www.flixxy.com/jet-man
Does pretty good hand talk, too, in the de-brief.
Cool! HUMINT recon drones that you can hang from your F-18 !
How much of this is ground effect? They seem to maintain altitude OK when they’re right on the deck. When they’re up high (relatively) it looks like they’re in more of a controlled fall.
Evidently, there are still people in the world that love to fly….
Nuts
I have over 9000 jumps and over 200 wingsuit jumps and let me tell you guys IT’S THE COOLEST THING EVER! It’s just like the flying you do in your dreams. I haven’t done any base jumps yet but jumping out of planes and swooping the clouds is still a blast, and mistakes don’t hurt! There is no ground effect even as close to the ground a the guys in the video. It’s all lift produced by the suit and controled by changing your body/wing position. I’v got 6000 hrs flying and love doing aerobatics but it still doesn’t compare to skydiving or wingsuit jumps(I might change my mind if I got to fly FA-18’s but that’s not gonna happen). Lex if your looking for somthing to take the place of your old job check it out! Remember, if riding in a plane is flying then driving a boat is swimming!
And these gents are wearing crash helmets for…………?
They’re wearing crash helmets so that the first responders will have something handy to scoop up the remains with. Sorry, but there’s not an alcohol made that could get me drunk enough to do that.
Jim C
Never knew that flying squirrels came in neon yellow…
Pish-posh, folks. It’s a flying wing, something Grumman did about 60 years ago. Nothing new here.
Oh, personally-mounted is new? Wile E. Coyote did it nearly 50 years ago. Wonder if that toon is on YouTube? One of the best.
Alright, I admit it looks fun. Not fun enough to risk an uncontrolled stall over, but yeah, fun.
– Max
I’d like to mention that these kind of suits were featured in the 2003 Tomb Raider movie “Cradle Of Life” (http://imdb.com/title/tt0325703/), allowing the good guys to escape the bad guys from a Honk Kong skyscraper. It’s a pretty long, uncut sequence. No skimming over mountain ridges, though.
So. lemme get this straight…the guy who has made a living taking my tax dollars to fly in the clearly recognized aviation edge of the envelope environment for going well over 20 some years now gets religion? Come on, Lex, you’re just afraid of your peers saying things to you like “no pilot would jump out of a perfectly good (yeah, right – got a yellow and black handle in there?) – or – off a perfectly good cliff (make sure you pick the “perfectly good one well).”
Besides…I’m wondering why Lex found this video of extreme BASE jumping (ah, for the days when BASE, by itself was “extreme”).
Maybe Lex stays up late at night, after the family units have gone to sleep, surfing about the net, watching free skydiving video, then erasing his temporary files just before dawn…This may be serious, maybe we can chip in and get him counseling and also money to got out to Otay and make his “secret desire” official and public (we have to pay for the video dude’s work for the historical value)!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Surfing “that site,” I found this video ” of passengers in an mildly aerobatic palne ride.
Warning: It does include use of “barf bags.”
“It’s just like the flying you do in your dreams.”
Exactly what I was thinking
I want to know who the idiot was who was convinced to do the same thing…but he got to do it holding a camera.
Wonder what the AoA is?
AW1 Tim: My helmet said “Officer’s Head” on the back.
I’m with Michelle on this one. That looks entirely too cool.
AR;
The days of hand held Instamatics is long, long gone. Now the digital age allows for just about any jumper to strap a camera on their helmet or wrist, or in the case of this footage, their feet. So, besides the view from the dedicated camera jumpers, there are all sorts of “first person” views showing up, also.
Besides, it makes for proving ya done it.
The one eye don’t lie.
Whatever they are, I used to have a mess of them in my attic in Georgia. Chewed hell out of everything.
Bat–rhymes with Splat.
“…and mistakes don’t hurt.”
Cause you’re going to fast to notice I guess.
Still, a very kewl flight to watch from the comfort of one’s Barca-Lounger.
Bet not many make it to old age.
I only have half the jumps as Scary, and a handful of BASE jumps. I have been successful in aging, but I have no wish to join anyone in “old age”. I love flying, I just prefer not to do it surrounded by metal.
Hmmm… try the same URL but change the item ID to 4723… NSFW
Too much time on your hands, mah bruthah.
The “old vs bold” pilot adage. Don’t want to get old eh? You will when you get there. Just ask Pete Townsend.
Xformed
I understand the entire helmet mounted thingie…what I meant was that there was not just one idiot, but more than one!!
AR;
“Idiot” is a term used by those not getting the adrenaline high….
GEO6;
The sad fact is about 10 years ago, the stats pushed thru the point where >50% of the fatailites happened to those under fully opened and functioning parachutes. Cause: Too much testosterone and too many chicks (only about 10% of jumpers are female, so the ones to impress are the “whuffos” hanging about the DZ, as it were) to show off for with a “hook turn.”
Very, very cool if executed with the precision gained by experience and daring (with the luck of only being scared a few times) and a barometrically reckoned altimeter.
HOWEVER (forget all said before), just about a guaranteed ride in a helo, but not the military ones…if you misjudge the altitude from which you initial the hard, 180 deg turn, essentially tipping the high performance canopies to almost 90 deg of bank and losing all your lift for a few moments. At that point, you get a few seconds to contemplate either your whole life, or how fast you might get out of the hospital.
That’s the bad news. The good news, is deaths in the sport have stayed pretty low….
too true exformed, hook turns are by far the leading killer in the sport. But the sport as a whole is still safer than most other forms of avation, taking out base jumping of course, that is NOT skydiving! By the way where do you jump? I work and jump at http://www.skydivetwincities.com. Drop by!….get it?
Today’s frontpage on the Union-Trib (local San Diego paper) actually had an article with a picture about these guys:
http://eedition.uniontrib.com/ArticleImage.aspx?article=10_12_2007_001_023&mode=1
I think they were less crazy when you just had the video to go by– reading the article edges me closer to the Lex camp (ie that they are stark raving mad..).
/BeachBum