One for the dragons

[tugrik]

For those of you who dream about flight (and no, I don't mean via airplane), here's a nice little video for you.

It's a cut from a longer sequence in one of those Warren Miller action films. This guy puts on an airfoil suit and uses forwards acceleration to mountain-skim before landing. Being a frequent-experiencer of flying dreams can I so uttelry relate to this video. If I ever lose enough weight to do such crazy things I think I seriously will. Yow.

Comments

Neat.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

That's a nifty video }:>.

On the flying front, you might be able to get access to a less extreme variant of this stunt by hunting down one of those vertical wind-tunnel places. These more more or less do skydiving without the sky; a wind tunnel blows air upwards fast enough that people in skydiving suits can hover in the updraft.

[fallenpegasus]

There is a similar stunt that can be done that is not so insanely dangerous, but still gives the "wow, I am really flying" stuff-hurtling-by-really-fast feeling.

Bodyflying or wingsuit flying around and through clouds.

The US FAA forbids civilian jumpers from doing it, for not very good reasons.

[zrath.livejournal.com]

Holy crap!!
I saw the suits in "Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle Of Life", but they were simply jumping off a very tall building in Hong Kong.
Notice that the guy in the video is French!!
Frenchies are at the leading edge of extreme sports. And heck, they even invented some of them! Like bungee-jumping and sky-surfing.

[nekomavin.livejournal.com]

Wow! Nifty find, thanks for pointing that out. <grin>

I've never been much of one for extreme sports, but that looks sufficiently cool that I'd consider it... I wonder what the stall speed is in a rig like that. I think I prefer fallenpegasus' idea of skimming clouds rather than snow, though - a bit more room for screwing up, which would make the safety-first part of my psyche more happy.

Hmm. Did a bit of searching on bodyflying, to see what the regulations are like in Canada... Turns out that one of the vertical wind tunnel companies has its HQ about 5 blocks from where I work! Pity they'll never actually build one in this city, it's too small to support it. But Vancouver isn't *that* far off. Hmmm.