The Royal British Legion Extreme Human Flight Team, Jump4Heroes, had a little encounter – entirely amicable – with the German Police last weekend.

Team members were training at the Joint Service Parachute Centre in Bad Lippspringe, Germany, in preparation for the forthcoming Canopy Piloting National Championships and the subsequent World Championships. After a long day flying their Competition Velocities across the impressive swoop pond, they decided to break out their new Poppy-branded Vampire 3 wingsuits for a quick jump.

From 16,000 feet up, Major Alastair Macartney and Warrant Officer Class One Spencer Hogg, with Corporal Stuart Storey flying on camera, flew out over the ranges of Sennelager training area.  They were carving around the cloud formations, creating an amazing show for those watching below, really putting the new suits through their paces on their maiden voyage.

After swooping down to a safe landing on their Competition Velocities, they gathered up their gear and headed inside to pack up their kit. As they did so, two German police cars screeched on to the scene to apprehend the Jump4Heroes daredevils.

It turned out that the people in the local town had never before seen high speed wingsuit flying in this style. Unsure of what it was and how to react, they had reported the “UFOs” to the local police.

It all ended amicably with the team members showing the police their equipment and demonstrating the flight modes.

They invited the police to come up on a jump but their offer was politely declined, strangely…

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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.

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Sick wingsuit BASE video from JT. It may not be possible to get any closer to getting out and doing it yourself—which, of course, we highly encourage.

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60 Minutes had a great piece about wingsuiting this week—very decent looking boys doing very decent flying. If you’re into either of those sorts of things. Enjoy!

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It was my first wingsuit jump…I was underqualified and changing variables. I was a little uncurrent because of a lack of winter jumping, but managed to get out to a popular northeastern turbine DZ that jumps year-round. After a few freefly and tracking jumps to get back into the groove I donned the suit. Because it was so cold out (as winter-time jumping sometimes is :p) I changed my gloves from my regular tackified Newmann’s to a warmer cotton brand that I would find to be slipper later on.

I’m a pretty self-taught kind of guy and have been told I have a good head on my shoulders and approach things the right way. So I was confident, knew my EP’s, practiced, did all the appropriate training but was still underqualified (probably around 150 jumps at the time and no FFC or wingsuit coach at my local DZ). I got up in the plane and had a phenomenal exit, and really picked up the flying aspect pretty quickly.

This was in a Birdman GTi which is considered more or less a good suit to start in, not necessarily a “beginner” suit however. Regardless, I was having fun flying lines and carving and getting the feel of things and because of my slow fall rate decided it was OK to smoke it down to my regular pull altitude. By the time I decided to pull I was passing through 3k. I reached back and pulled but my non-tackified gloves slipped off my hackey handle! I went back to grab for my PC but found nothing was there, I must have half pulled it out and I had the impression that it sitting in my burble not inflated. Thoughts of pulling silver flashed through my mind as I went back one last time. I found some bit of fabric still in my BOC and chucked it with a rather hefty flick of the wrist. I looked over my shoulder and saw an inflated PC begin the deployment process.

I found myself in the saddle around 1800ft with 3 line twists. My conservative loading (1.0/1) on a quick opening Triathlon 160 gave me the leeway to get away with this- the canopy wasn’t diving or turning as I pulled myself out of my linetwists and unzipped my suit.

Lessons learned?

1) Formal training would have drilled me to open higher than normal.
2) Complacency kills! Because things were going great I decided to smoke it lower- this could have been fatal!
3) Changing too many variables at a time (new suit, new gloves) is not a good choice.

Hopefully some of the newer birds can learn something from this. I am all the more humbled and wiser because of the experience and as a result, always am more aware during the opening process- giving more effort into my pulls than I did before.

Thanks!
-AG

–
Andrew Garcia
http://www.whoisandrewgarcia.com
http://www.inseparablenomads.com

Do you have a similar story to Andrew’s? What would you tell someone who just got down from doing something like this? Add your two cents in the comments below.

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Today’s That Guy is the guy who buzzed the European ski lodge in a wingsuit, prompting the local mayor to attempt to ban BASE jumping, wingsuit BASE jumping, wingsuit BASE jumping within 3 meters of a recreational skiier and really, just anything that comes close to what that guy did. The video and resulting press coverage was all over the whuffo world, and we want to know: Who is that guy?

That guy is Dominik Loyen, German ex-engineer turned drop zone owner turned blue skies free spirit, whose penchant for all thing Spongebob leaves everything just a little uncomfortable. He currently splits his time between teaching first jump BASE courses at 3-2-1 BASE in Spain and AFF/camera/coaching in Norway.

Stay tuned for an in-depth, heart-wrenching, tell-all interview with Dom . . .

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