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Episode 22: WING SUIT BASE JUMP
In this never-before-attempted stunt, Luigi Cani will BASE jump off a cliff with a speed bike; however, instead of going down with the bike, with the help of a specially designed wing suit, he will fly up and away from the bike. Luigi is the only athlete known to date that has worked with the specially designed wing suit, which enables him to fly up and away from an object rather than down. Another twist? Luigi has never BASE jumped before! So, he'll need to start with a basic BASE jump course to prepare for the stunt. From there he will do several high-speed skydives wearing the special wing suit in order to train his body for flight position with great horizontal projection. Then, he will do test rides with the motorcycle wearing the special suit and the BASE harness to make sure that he will not be lifted up and off the motorcycle while riding at high speeds.
Premiere: Feb. 19, 2007

 

oh man.... get the popcorn ready... this should be entertaining (not dissing LC at all)

I agree, entertainment is in the offing..
Luigi, tho not as tall as some, is definitely HOT!
Bound to be a great stunt...but won't top JP in my book...
that reverse bungi/BASE stunt at the RG was way cool, and there's no cooler couple than ME/JP...
Peace and love,
K

Wasnt their former host (jeb) kinda into wingsuits as well...?
Maybe there's two athletes on this planet flying wingsuits!?

but Luigi's suit is special, he can fly up with it

Fly Up ?
as in, 'the cameraman falls away' ?
.

from the original text :

Maybe as in creating lift, so he can land it, without the chute..?

as in discovery channel was going to pay for jeb to try his wingsuit landing thing... but he went awol, and they didn't want to waste the money they spent on developing the suit?

Luigi has been flying wingsuits for some time (at least since 2001), but not with any regularity. I lent him my S3 (and Sabre2!) wingsuit rig in 2003 when he wanted to try a bigger suit. He and J.C. flew together.

On that note, J.C. Colclasure is a fantastic wingsuit pilot. He's tall and strong and just kills it.

Without taking ten seconds to contemplate what the headline was, I can tell you that if Luigi is riding a bike off a cliff, then he must be jumping a small suit. One with a legwing small enough to permit him to straddle the backbone of the bike. Either that or, perhaps, he is going to ride a "girl" bike off which will less-hamper his wingsuit.

Who knows.

Chuck

The details of the stunt along with pictures can be seen HERE

why does the rider/pilot have to ride the bike straddled? im no biker, and i have ridden sport bikes side saddle, or he could lay on the bike, its not like he needs to shift that fast. he could accelerat in exit gear from very low speeds.

I'm watching it right now and some toughts come to mind:

1) Was that a base rig he took out of the heli? (update: looks like it was.. isn't that a no-no?)

2) How in the world did you get approval to jump into the grand canyon?

3) Once you cut the leg out of the wingsuit, what's the point? It is almost like putting a wingsuit in a wind tunnel.. what's the point?

It'd be awesome if they ran a wire from the shift lever to a switch on the left hand that he could shift with his thumb. You don't need the rear brake to drive off a cliff right? Than he could just lay down on the seat and do all the driving with his hands.

What about the wings for his arms though? I haven't had a chance to look at that site yet.

well the stunt was cool, i'd love to have done it.. i don't think the wingsuit added much other than the oh neat and advertising aspects of it considering the leg wing didn't exist.
i think he could have some how layed down on the bike with the leg wing still attached. that would have been cooler. Start the bike off with some type of training wheel setup or even have people holding the bike to get it started and having handlebar shifter.. he could have had a full wingsuit on. THAT would have been slick.

dirty high puller

hey do you know what camera suit that was? i need one like that to film tandems.
enjoy.

2)... it was on an indian reservation...

Added

So does the base rig from a helicopter not a no no over indian land too?

Well, I would think its a (cough cough) no no, but I am not sure of how FAA rules apply over Indian Nations. I would hope they would not, if so that jump might have been hunky dory.

Anyone of the soverign Indian Nation care to anwer this?

The stunt was lame ...

The show is lame ...

Fixed it for ya.

Is the show viewable online somewhere?

It looks like they covered the tail numbers of the heli, if you cant tell who was flyin or what heli was used then it really never happened.

thats always a nice way of keepin the faa off you ass.

I was thinking he should have worn a full suit and knelt on the seat of the bike. That way he could push up and off the seat before he reached the end of the ramp and tried to gain a little altitude from the relative wind; like a high speed tailgate exit. If you do that a couple of times I'm sure you could get good enough and fast enough to get some significant flight above the ramp before the edge of the cliff.

Isn't that something we've always wanted to do? Fly a wingsuit off a bike or out of a pickup truck? I'm sure those were the first drunken thoughts that led to this stunt.

But with no leg wing a tracking suit would have been just as good.

As corny as the show is and how some of the stunts aren't technically that difficult, you have to admit it does give some good publicity to the sport.

I just hope they realize they need to make sure to do everything "right" (legal) as anything on TV is going to be scrutinized

Other than being lame, the show also sucks.




(ps stratostar, did you know Byron Black?)

>>but I am not sure of how FAA rules apply over Indian Nations. I would hope they would not<<

We used to jump over, and land on, a reservation in Ramona, California. In addition to regular skydiving and training FJC students we also tested, from airplanes, early Velcro BASE rigs for their fitness at terminal. This became an issue as BASE jumpers were starting to go higher and faster. And it was years before the first pin-closed BASE rig appeared.

As to the question, the FAA has jurisdiction over the airspace above a reservation, just like everywhere else, but no right to come onto the reservation to enforce that jurisdiction. So in essence they would somehow need to nab you air-handed or someone would have to rat you out. Also, this was during the pre-Indian gaming days, and the tribe we dealt with, had no qualms about telling anyone from the U.S. government to go straight to hell . . .

There was also a popular ultralight strip there that operated unimpeded.

We were both a source of welcome revenue for the tribe but, of course, right where we landed our parachutes is now a sea of slot machines . . .

On the Velcro for terminal, we probably didn't do enough jumps to be definitive, but we did come to the conclusion that if you didn't feel comfortable doing back and front loops at terminal with Velcro then, in general, they weren't suitable for terminal BASE jumps. The advice at the time was, if you do use Velcro at terminal (and we all did) do it very carefully or use a pin closed skydiving rig . . .

NickD
BASE 194

He would have to be doing at least 250 km an hour to be able to gain some altitude..

In terms of sitting/kneeling down and having the tailwing still on, a quad would probably have been easyer.

But at that speed, jumping up a few degrees off (aot), could also easely result in a rapid deceleration (with the wingsuit acting as a giant airbrake)

That's where practice would come into play, to work up to higher speeds and finding the right angle of attack.

They'd go through a lot of sport bikes.

Isn't there a divided opinion out there as to whether that's a good thing?

IMHO, BASE should have only been publicized well enough for me to discover it. And now that I have, it should be a secret again.

In case you're serious, I think that stunt was sponsored by Go Fast
http://www.gofastsports.com/zone/wingsuit.html

If you search Jeb's posts you can probably find more info about it.

Hi, this stunt was attemted a WHILE back, check it out!

http://one.revver.com/.../flv/affiliate/45524

I was just about to put that video link up also. I found it on basejumper.org a few days ago.

You can have multiple sponsors for something, and many events do...

I second that. Bob Burnquist's stunt is way cooler.

But... luigi was going faster... you can't beat fast? right?

Yep and Tess, and all the boys too quite well.

Cool.
They lived down the street from me in Lanikai.
I did my fjc out of their Beech 18.

Legal??

Moveis / TV Shows / Stunts / Insurance....

That fixed it. Now you can do almot anything you want, LEGALLY.

That is if you don't mind doing all the paperwork.

Regarding the stunt . . . . .

We tow parachutes behind vehicles of various sorts and fly them.

When is someone going to tow a wingsuit behind something and fly it??????

I see possibilities here.

Go forth youthful ones, the first one to bring back a living video gets the prize.

There should be a partialy wrecked B24 (if I remember correctly) bomber out there somewhere, as a leftover from one such experiment by a Felix B.

I heard that last year at the WFFC wingsuit pilots jumping out of the DC-9 were able to gain alttitude and fly above the tail after exiting.

Does anyone know how fast the DC-9 jump runs were?

>>When is someone going to tow a wingsuit behind something and fly it??????<<

Lockout.

But, I suppose it would be Junk Stunky fodder (take old stunts, dress 'em up, and pretend they are new.)

Rob Harris, or someone, did it already back in the mid-90s. I remember some artful flying while he was in tow, and while I can't recall if he was wearing a wing suit isn't it more impressive without one . . .

NickD
BASE 194

What good does it do? The hosts are making it appear as a stunt (not a normal activity) and constantly stating how dangerous it is.

There is info in the wingsuit forum on this, but it was about 150-160kts. Depending on if you stuck it outside the door you can get at or near the tail edge. I dont think anyone flew over above it. WS routinely get above CASAs and skyvans on highspeed exits.

although the stunt was flawed in some of the explainations and such, it was meant for the masses, who know nothing. love how the 'classic II' was "experiemental".

People have gotten as high as 20 to 30 meters above the plane, as long as the speed is high enough (and the flyers have mad skills)

Check this video from the 2004 hercules boogie (short version - long version)

In the long version (about halfway) there are some great exits by Andy Ford and Vesa 'climbing' on the airstream..160 kts (182 mph/293 km/h) is the speed the Hercules was doing there.


I think it was Joe Jennigs who was towed behind a C182 in a camerasuit at some point.

yay! publicity!!

The high speed exits I've done, and I've done quite a few, the Casa or Skyvan was taken to 16k and then put into shallow dive to gain the necessary airspeed prior to the jumpers exiting. The WS weren't actually gaining altitude, they just weren't falling as fast as the plane.

The first high speed pass at the WFFC, two years ago, there were like 9 ws and I was the first non-ws jumper out. They were trying to exit together and tripped over each other and went rolling out the door. There were two premies, one blown up canopy that resulted in a reserve ride, two or three blown ws's a few stiches. I don't think there was another ws on any other high speed passes that year.

BTW, I was wearing a camera and it was a real mess. People were yelling GO! and I was standing in the door pointing and yelling F@#K!!!

ha, yeah that was good ole fun. Was that you who came over and offered the vid to us afterwards? This is the vid -.
http://www.skydivingmovies.com/...estpass&id=fxh0n

Yes, that is my video...what a mess, eh?

I have flown my V1 out of a Casa and gained easily 20 meters, I asked pilot for 150, he said in level flight, he can only give me 130. it worked.

Looks like that dude in the orange and black wingsuit caused that.

 
I am thinking cars, not aircraft!!!!! Has anyone tried that?




Isn't he always first???

luigi should stick to flying small canopies. that stunt sucked. i felt like i wasted my time watching that.

it is better to just be able to watch the stunt on the web so you dont have to go through the agony watching some idiot explain the jump. blah. take that show off the air already.

That's what DVR is for. I generally watch the last 3 minutes of the show, when the stunt happens. How many times can you here "This is the most dangerous stunt ever".

Although I generally watch the skydiving/base jumping episodes in full.

That's what I usually do. I still felt like I wasted my time watching the 3 minute stunt video. Nothing against Luigi at all, because if they gave me the opportunity to do it, i'd do it too. It just didn't seem like something that was TV worthy to me.