Basejumper.com - archive

No worries here, Mr. Aiello.

I am a very, very long way from jumping anything but an aircraft. I just find BASE, and the specialized gear very interesting. There is a BASE video on the Skydivingmovies site called "The fastest motherfucker in the valley", in which a guy bails off a cliff in a wingsuit and takes what appears to be a damn near 30 sec. delay. It looks like he covers almost a mile of beautiful country before opening !!

How high is that guys launch point? (without naming the site, of course) What kind of groundspeed can you guys generate with those trick suits ? That video is exquisite !!

I've split this discussion off the McConkey thread, as it appears to be moving in an unrelated direction. - Tom Aiello

The Fastest Motherfucker in the Valley, Lukas "Cold Steel" Knutsson is, sadly, no longer with us. He was an amazing human being, and I think we all miss him more than we'd like to admit.

At the time, that was a groundbreaking flight. It's still probably one of the top flights ever made.

See this incident thread for more info on him.

For more info on the flight in the video, see this wingsuit thread (my posting partway down has a transcript of his email describing the flight).

The (very moving) memorial video is on headdown.net (search for the video simply entitled "Lukas Knutsson".

Blue Skies, Cold Steel.

Mr. Aiello is my father. I'm Tom.


Lukas was actually well known for getting short delays, and incredible distance. He flew very, very fast, and had a fantastic glide angle, but tended not to float as much as other fliers. I've heard that he once took under 45 seconds from an exit point that some other jumpers were making nearly 90 second flights from--but he still travelled farther forward.

There is also a movie on headdown.net called "Of the mountains in to the valley" where Lukas, PerF,and Mick do a three way. You can see how efficient was his tracking. It is unbelievable. It is at 4min14s of the movie.