Lots of news covering this jump by Omar Al Hegelan and Nasser Al Neyadi, but this one is my favorite: Man Falls from Burj Dubai – Worlds Tallest Building. Like, whoops, I fell!

Enjoy the video—and particularly MSNBC’s spectacular journalistic reporting of the building’s height as 27,017′ (the smarties at MSNBC changed out the video on us and they’re correct now! – it’s 2,717′):

Some more links to fill up what remains of your Friday workday:
BBC
CBC
Daily Mail

Because we know 1) he’s still alive, 2) he’s a member of the Flying Elvi, which is the perfect disguise, really and 3) it’s the King, for crying out loud!

It would be a shame to go all the way out to South Africa and not experience the place. So, with the World Cup nonsense out of the way, Jump4Heroes teamed up with some of the PD Factory Team to venture around the country and jump from anything survivable that was in sight.

Starting out at Cape Town, the weather was against us, so we put our foot down and headed for a jump in the rain at the 200′ Gouritz Bridge. Touring the Garden Route we spent the next few days having a boogie at Bloukrans Bridge, home of the highest commercial bungie jump operation. For anyone planning to go BASE jumping in South Africa, be warned—the landing areas can be pretty tight; landing at Bloukrans was either in the water or on a small patch of rocks, the trek out either involved swimming or rock climbing with no equipment- definitely scarier than the actual BASE jump!

Moving on, and having taken a 14-hour drive, we all jumped from the pool deck of a prominent hotel in Durban. The crack of the slider-down canopy openings may have slightly disturbed the guest out for an early morning swim and those breakfasting in their rooms admiring the view of the the sun rising over the sea.

The PD Team members called it a day at this point. They kept citing work as the reason they had to leave the trip but the rest of us firmly believed that they were just too scared; maybe they’d just had too much fun for 2009 though. It was then time to head north to the Drakensburg mountains, the largest mountains in South Africa, for a few jumps. The weather then turned and the remaining jumps didn’t happen.

In all it was a great trip. The Jump4Heroes crew got to raise some great awareness for The Royal British Legion, a charity that supports our troops- members of the Armed Forces, past and present. There’s a short clip of video, including BASE jumping from the roof of a moving car at Bloukrans Bridge, here:

Thanks to all those that made it possible, particularly our guide and photographer Dawie du Plessis.

Dedicated readers might remember Eugenio “Keno” Dominguez from our August issue. His NSTIW story of a June 2009 freefall collision was harrowing, to say the least. Our friends from Airtec recently let us know that Keno is back in the air, and he agreed to let us share his e-mail to them. We’ll hopefully have a follow-up interview with Keno in the next issue of Blue Skies Mag, but first, check out the video of the jump…

From: “Eugenio Dominguez G.”
To: Helmut Cloth, “Rob ‘Dutch’ Kendall”
Date: 12/21/2009 01:11 AM
Subject: Back in the air!!!!!!!!!!!!

Helmut and Rob:

Hope you remember me! , im Just writing you guys to say Hi, and tell that im in the last part of my healing. Everything is OK, just my eye is not closing perfectly, but is a very small detail.

Yesterday I came back to the air!!!!!!!!! Yes, was my first jump since my accident!!, I had a tandem first, and then fly with my friend, doing some good grips in belly.

Im completely happy !! im been waiting this since june 10th!!!

Thanks again for everything and for working every day to improve details to save more and more people.

During the surgery I had my nice suit all broken, so im desingning a new one, and Its completely important for me to have CYPRES written on it. I hope there´s no problem to do that.

I really never gonna forget my accident, and the answer of how i didn´t explode on the floor, is CYPRES.

Cypress is gonna live with me for ever.

OK, hoping you guys are doing Ok, having some nice jumps, Best Regards

Keno

Brett from Australia sent us a link to a very cool video indeed:

Off-Track to the 5th dimension

For some reason, fifth dimension makes me think of multivariable calculus, which I took from an odd Russian professor, with an econ major friend who took the class for the fun of it. Thankfully this video is a lot more enjoyable than that was.

Yeah, yeah, we’re late with this. Last Big Splash was September 26-27 at Fantasy of Flight in Florida, but these videos are just as good now as they were then. We asked a random sampling of swoopers canopy pilots dudes people the same four questions. Check it out…

Kolla had a job judging the Last Big Splash a few weeks ago, and I thought I’d go along to see some swoop carnage, test out our new FlipCam! and get some sun. It was a great weekend, apart from the sweltering heat and feeling slightly awkward at first—I used to judge Florida swoop meets as well, but having been out of the state for the last three years, I let myself out of the swoop-loop a bit. But, it turns out today’s swoopers are just as friendly, crass and awesome as they’ve always been

So, for your viewing entertainment, we bring you the first day of Last Big Splash. Let us know what you think (but be kind, it’s our first foray into video-land!) and enjoy!

We’ll also have several sweet photos from photographer Justin Carmody in the November issue of Blue Skies Mag, so keep your eye out for that—and stay tuned for Day Two of Last Big Splash…