Aw, man ... I wanna fly
Remember watching "Superman" and thinking how cool Christopher Reeve was because dude could fly? Heck, I was even jealous of the cast of the recent local production of "Peter Pan."
Well, if this is to be believed, then ... I. Am. So. There.
Here's the current video I'm geeking out on:
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
[Thanks, Bill]
Comments:
Parts of it sure look fake to me, but what do I know? I thought ALF was real...he might be...you don't know.
Posted by: Ernie at January 14, 2009 6:37 PM
ernie,
this is totally real. i watched a special on espn recently (e60) about guys doing this, and one who is trying to figure out a way to actually land after one of these flights without a parachute.
they also talked about the dangers, and showed some footage of a jump where a guy was killed in canon city, colorado because he clipped a bridge that he was trying to fly over or under, i forget which.
Posted by: ed at January 14, 2009 8:22 PM
Thankyou =). Best Beehive post evAr.
Posted by: mamatt at January 14, 2009 10:28 PM
Will:
just for fun look up the history of 'batmen' in airshows.
-Flying with a webbed suit (like a flying squirrell) is far from new,
-though these suits in the video are a lot more taut and aerodynamically close to turning a person into a human glider.
-A Huge problem (which no doubt contributed to the guy dying on the bridge,) can and remains the angle of descent.
-Though these guys are 'flying,' they're more exactly 'falling at a pretty shallow angle'
--and when you misjudge that angle? (splat)
--which is one of the reasons why the pucker factor goes way up whenever I see them getting close to walls and such, one strange draft or pocket, and it's all over (and hills, cliff-faces, and valleys are notoriously unstable with their aircurrents.)
The 'batmen' from the barnstormer days all had this one peculiar thing about them:
Nearly all of them died trying to do the same thing:
land
(though their descents were spectacular, more vertical drops and spiraled down to the crowds at airshows,)
-they all had to pop a chute at the end,
--and nearly all of them, one day, simply 'flew' too long and plummeted to their deaths.
(They've been doing this since just after the first world war.)
It was one of those 'acts,' that everybody was afraid of, and knew was one day, suicide, because the romance of 'flying' and wanting to go a little further, always sucked them in, and they wound up jellying the sidewalk.
Posted by: Rocky J Flying Towel at January 14, 2009 10:40 PM
Flying Towel: "pucker factor" best adjective EVER on The Beehive!!!
Will: This is the most awesome thing I've seen in a LONG time!!! I wish I was brave like those guys!! I wanna fly!!!
Posted by: MsJoey at January 15, 2009 8:52 AM
Oh yeah! I saw this guy on the Discovery Channel!!! CRAZY! But hella cool! Or maybe it was on the History Channel... oh well I was geeking out anyway! :P
Posted by: Renee N at January 15, 2009 11:04 AM
Post a comment
(read the comment policy before posting)