Congratulations, Luke Aikins! You are a 1-of-a-kind badass!
Thank OG.
I also thought there was a team or two that was working on transitioning from skydiving to going down a slope snow skiing…guess they haven’t got that working yet.
Speed flying (aka speedriding) is a thing, but it’s less of a “skydive then ski” thing than it is “jump out of a helicopter and try not to die while skimming down the side of a mountain at high velocity with boards on your feet and a sail over your head” thing.
Okay.
I see one minor bit of stupidity here. And I thought this the other night when I heard about this upcoming stunt.
He had been ordered to jump with a chute EVEN if he wasn’t going to use it.
Fair enough. Then, at the last last minute, he gets the go ahead to not wear the chute, so he takes it off.
IMO all his training jumps should be EXACTLY like the final real thing.
If he practiced a thousand times with a chute on the back (because he used it at the last minute) his last jump IMO damn well should have included one (or at least one that for all practical purposes gave him the same aerodynamics/physics if not actually workable as a chute).
There is a story, probably apocryphal, about an instructor or guide who was always the last one out on group jumps or whatever they call them. He had a helmet cam. They made numerous jumps that day, broke for lunch, and then resumed. He forgot his chute, the film showing normal activity and then some frantic movements, etc.
Okay apparently not apocryphal. Ivan Mcguire was his name. Yeesh.
Are you thinking of this?
Yes, that’s the guy. I can’t fathom that, but it happened.
A co-worker was a jumper for awhile. He had a bad landing which he recounted something like this:
Bad news: My chute failed to open.
Good news: Cut it away and I’m on my reserve!
Bad news: Cheap damn thing is really oscillating.
Good news: Whew, missed the power lines, I’m headed for a nice parking area.
Bad news: Fuck, there’s a minivan.
He swung wildly through the open side door of a camper van, swinging so much he came out through the roof which was canvas.
His recovery (from my standpoint) went like this:
Week 1: “I’m thinking of having the doctor switch my half body cast to a sport cast so I can get back in the air.”
Week 4: “It’s important to get a good bone knit so I’m reluctantly staying on the ground in my walking cast.”
Week 10: “I hate using this cane but it’s the best way to get full mobility.”
Week 12: Posts “Sport chute for sale” on bulletin board.
Dennis
I got an adrenaline surge just watching that. The craziest, most terrifying thing I’ve ever done was jump 800 feet off a the Stratosphere tower in Vegas while attached to a tether at sub-freefall speed (video of that here) and that’s peanuts compared to what this guy did. I can’t imagine the planning and rehearsal that went into this or how hard it must be to jump from that height and hit such a small target - if he’d been off by even the slightest bit, his wife and kids and millions of people would have watched him die before their very eyes.
A side question - why do the other guys in his team have vapor trails coming off their feet? Are they wearing some kind of rocket boots?
That video – wow. There’s a moment, as that little square gets closer fast, when my body had a physical reaction from simply watching it (leg muscles twitching and twisting, for some reason).
You do realize how small a human [del]doesn’t[/del] appears when they’re over three miles away.
Smoke canisters make them easier to spot.
Didn’t Russian paratroopers used to jump out of planes at low altitudes without parachutes?
This guy isn’t the first to jump without a parachute, just the first to do it from a higher altitude and into a net.
I jumped three times: two static lines; one tandem. I can’t imagine.
Those are standard ‘smoke packs’ - no physical reason other than to emit visible track(s) of where the jumper is/was. Similar to how the Navy’s Blue Angels/Air Force T-Birds or lots of private-flown aerobatic-style planes use 'em during competitions/show-off events. Adding acceleration from a rocket-like pack on only one extremity/side of a human body would make it hard, if not impossible, to control the jumper’s body posture in relation to the high-speed wind (s)he is plummeting through. Any jumper who cannot maintain and/or regain equal aerodynamic forces/drag from arms/legs is likely to be spinning all around and be up a certain creek with proverbial paddle really quick.
Just making a few assumptions here, but smoke would likely benefit the videographers from ground (easier to spot/follow w/ cameras) the smoke trails than the ‘dots’ (from that far away)) that the jumpers appear as, if visible at all initially. Another thought is that it would benefit the assistant-jumpers he had in them being able to see where each other is (in relation to whatever formation/spots they needed to acheive during descent) a bit faster. In a nutshell, the smoke probably helps as a visual/positional aid to separate one from another.
It also gives a more dramatic (right word?) look to the whole ensemble and what is happening - like when one asst-jumper started pulling off Mr Akins’ O2-mask at ~18k feet (per narrative of video). IIRC, it was totally off at ~12K feet - pretty tight window for scheduling of something important.Well done to his co-jumper team, for sure.
Like I said, kinda WAG’s on my part, but I have heard of smoke-packs being used for approx similar reasons during multi-person jumps, especially when complex formations are attempted. Probably much easier for jumpers to see/locate a long visible smokey trail from jumper(s) than to see (in peripheral-vision perspective) a jumper without smoke trail. But no personal experience with such type things.
Absolutely great feat by Mr Akins! I liked how he did a few practice face-down to face-up then back over again ‘spins’ to fine tune his timing of ending the freefall face-up into catch-net.
ETA - see **Spiderman **got in answer re: visuality from a distance quicker than me…gotta quit walking away and forgetting I did not hit submit…:smack:
I am curious if the smoke aids the actual jumpers in a real way as far as relative-to-each-other postioning in multi-person jumps. Anyone here been in such a situation/jump??
Any specs on the net they used? How high was it suspended above the ground? How many anchor points? How much surface area did it cover?
No, skydivers don’t use smoke canisters to keep track of each other when making formations (I used to skydive a lot, including plenty of formation jumps). We try to minimize separation on exit so we don’t waste too much time just getting close to each other.
We do that by having four, five or more jumpers climb out and hang on the outside of the plane (jump planes like the Cessna Caravan Aikins jumped from have hand rails on the outside) and everyone else bunches up in the door just before exit.
We also practice over and over on the ground (called dirt diving) so everyone knows exactly where they are supposed to go. This includes paying attention to the color of the jumpsuit and gear of the person we are docking on so we don’t go to the wrong spot. Official record attempts don’t count if two people switch places, the formation has to be exactly as planned.
The Caravan has a nice big cargo door so everyone can get out pretty fast. Back when DC-3s were more common, strung out exits were normal through the small door and the last people out sometimes had to dive a long way to get to the formation, so knowing which side of the formation to go to was important.
I can see this being like a prototype for a new sport. Look for many others to do it in the future.
Things like this make me wonder if special exceptions should be made for the Darwin Awards. If there were, Luke Aikens would be at the top of the list of nominees.