raincoaster

The Yves Rossy version. Yes, it’s the Icarus of Switzerland on video!

Stole this from Dale, who stole it from Defence Tech, which is the kind of trash he reads at the hairdresser’s, just to give you an idea what his life is like. You’d think the boy would learn from me and raise his standards, but noooooooooo.

I’m tired of putting videos over the jump. Nobody EVER watches them that way. Dialup users, you’ve annoyed me one too many times; payback’s a bitch!

and here’s some text from his site explaining exactly what’s going on, as if you couldn’t tell by the above video of a small man with a jet-propelled, winged strap-on  jumping out of an airplane.

…the aerodynamic wings were improved and their span was increased to 3 meters. As of 2004 and because there was a loss of rigidity due to the inflatable side of the wings, Yves had to stop his collaboration with “Prospective Concepts” and work only with “ACT Composites” who then created foldable carbon wings, able to be used from a Pilatus Porter plane.
Finally, at 7:30pm on June 24th, 2004 and after the 3rd trial of the day (6th motorized trial), Yves finally dropped out of the Pilatus at an altitude of 4000m over the Yverdon airfield. Before pulling on the little lever that controls the opening of his wings, Yves lets himself glide for a couple seconds and at the altitude of 2500m, he starts the ignition of the engines and waits 30 seconds for them to stabilize. Once they are steady, he can finally speed up the engines and suddenly the dream comes true… He manages a horizontal flight at 1600m from the ground for more than 4 minutes, at a speed of 100 knots, in formation with the Pilatus!

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