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Stuntman Greg Gasson doesn’t wear a parachute when he jumps out of a plane. He doesn’t even wear shoes! Instead, he grabs a packed parachute with his hands. Don’t try this at home -or anywhere! -via Buzzfeed
In 1959, Marine Corps pilot William Rankin was cruising at nine miles above the earth in an F-8 Crusader combat jet when something went wrong and he had to eject. Between him and the ground was a big, black storm.
After falling through damp darkness for an interminable time, Rankin began to grow concerned that the automatic switch on his parachute had malfunctioned. He felt certain that he had been descending for several minutes, though he was aware that one’s sense of time is a fickle thing under such distracting circumstances. He fingered the rip cord anxiously, wondering whether to give it a yank. He’d lost all feeling in his left hand, and his other limbs weren’t faring much better. It was then that he felt a sharp and familiar upward tug on his harness–his parachute had deployed. It was too dark to see the chute’s canopy above him, but he tugged on the risers and concluded that it had indeed inflated properly. This was a welcome reprieve from the wet-and-windy free-fall.
Unfortunately for the impaired pilot, he was nowhere near the 10,000 foot altitude he expected. Strong updrafts in the cell had decreased his terminal velocity substantially, and the volatile storm had triggered his barometric parachute switch prematurely. Bill Rankin was still far from the earth, and he was now dangling helplessly in the belly of an oblivious monstrosity.
A cumulonimbus “anvil” cloud.“I’d see lightning,” Rankin would later muse, “Boy, do I remember that lightning. I never exactly heard the thunder; I felt it.” Amidst the electrical spectacle, the storm’s capricious winds pressed Rankin downward until he encountered the powerful updrafts—the same updrafts that keep hailstones aloft as they accumulate ice–which dragged him and his chute thousands of feet back up into the storm. This dangerous effect is familiar to paragliding enthusiasts, who unaffectionately refer to it as cloud suck. At the apex Rankin caught up with his parachute, causing it to drape over him like a wet blanket and stir worries that he would become entangled with it and drop from the sky at a truly terminal velocity. Again he fell, and again the updrafts yanked him skyward in the darkness. He lost count of how many times this up-and-down cycle repeated. “At one point I got seasick and heaved,” he once retold.
After that, it gets interesting. Damn Interesting, in fact, which is where you can read the whole story. Link
Yes, it’s fetching, and there’s a real story behind this dress, as well. The parachute saved the life of pilot Maj. Claude Hensinger when he bailed out of his disabled B-29 over Japan in 1944. It was his blanket and pillow as he waited for rescue. In 1947, he gave it to his girlfriend when he proposed to her, and she made it into the skirt portion of her wedding dress. The dress was also worn by their daughter and then by their son’s bride in later weddings. Now it belongs to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Link -via Boing Boing
This dog, a Belgian Shepherd, is a member of Austria’s special forces. He and other elite dogs join their human comrades during parachute drops:
Far from panicking at the experience of hurling themselves out of a plane at 10,000ft, the Austrians’ Belgian Shepherd dogs appear to be perfectly calm both before and during the jump.
One handler explained: “They don’t perceive height difference the same way humans do, so that doesn’t worry them. They’re more likely to be bothered by the roar of the engines, but once we’re on the way down, that doesn’t matter and they just enjoy the view.”
Larger image at the link.
Link | Photo: Daily Telegraph
Jeb Corliss has leaped from buildings and other places in a single bound. Now, he plans to do it without the aid of a parachute.
Corliss, who is a base jumper, has made jumps in 16 countries and five contents, more than 1,000 in all, from the likes of the Eiffel Tower and Golden Gate Bridge.
His latest venture is trying to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute.
Corliss says he’ll wear a wing suit, which makes him look like a flying squirrel. He plans to landing on a specially designed runway he designed. It will cost up to $2 million. Once he gets the funding for his project, he says it could take up to four months to actually pull off.
He added, “A wing suit, basically, is fabric that goes between your arms and between your legs and it changes the shape of your body. So you become, in essence, a flying squirrel.
He explains that he plans to land on his belly, suggesting, “Imagine an aircraft — aircraft don’t land on their tails, they land on their bellies. That’s exactly what I’m gonna become. I’m gonna become an aircraft’ I’m gonna be landing on my belly.
Why in the world would Corliss try this?
“I wouldn’t I’m doing this because I’m a thrill-seeker. I’m a person who has dreams and my life is based on making those dreams come true. And that’s what I focus on.”
Source: CBS News
Video: Breitbart
