Maybe we’re a bit slow at Frank & Earnest but the ‘wingsuit’ has taken us by surprise. So much so, that when we first saw this video, we thought it was either a clever computer-generated effect or perhaps a stunt using a weighted stunt dummy.
But no… this is real. It’s an extreme sport called ‘wingsuiting’.
It’s nothing short of breathtaking – in pretty much every sense of the word!
This 58 second video shows a guy called Graham Dickinson doing a ‘base jump’ off a high point over the Chamonix Valley in the French Alps wearing a ‘wingsuit’. His friend, Dario, jumps right behind him (not that you see that), carrying a ‘GoPro’ camera and manages to follow him, filming all the way.
It’s nothing short of breathtaking – in pretty much every sense of the word!
When he shared the video on his Facebook page, this is what he said:
“So I tried to shake off my friend Dario with some aggressive flying but the skill of this man is compared to none. He has no trouble keeping you in frame, dodging trees and burbles (Burble: A separation in the boundary layer of fluid about a moving streamlined body, such as the wing of an airplane, causing a breakdown in the smooth flow of fluid and resulting in turbulence. ) Thank you Dario for your magnifico filming skills. Filmed using the GoPro hero3 – Wingsuit is Squirrel Colugo 1 prototype.”
Incidentally, the jumping off point for this particular ‘flight’ is a spot called Le Brevent and Dickinson describes it as one of the best ‘exit points’ in the world. For most ordinary mortals leaping from this point, it would indeed be an ‘exit point’. One with no return!
What is wingsuit flying?
Good question, so we looked it up. Read all the details on Wikipedia’s page about it but here’s the short description:
Wingsuit flying (or wingsuiting) is the sport of flying through the air using a wingsuit, which adds surface area to the human body to enable a significant increase in lift. The modern wingsuit, first developed in the late 1990s, creates a surface area with fabric between the legs and under the arms. Wingsuits are sometimes referred to as “birdman suits” (after the makers of the first commercially available wingsuit), “flying squirrel suits” (due to their resemblance to the animal), and “bat suits” (due to their vague resemblance to the animal or perhaps the superhero).
A wingsuit flight normally ends by deploying a parachute, and so a wingsuit can be safely flown from any point that provides sufficient altitude for flight and parachute deployment—normally a skydiving drop aircraft, or BASE-jump exit point. The wingsuit flier wears parachute equipment specially designed for skydiving or BASE jumping.
OK, now watch and be amazed.
