Early Birdmen and women

[Trae 1]

Is there such a thing as a reliable record of early birdman activity? as in the 1920's and 1930's.?

The DZ buzz that 72 out of 75 of the early birdman died while flying their wings seems like BS.
3 walked away before getting dead.???

Is there any decent historical record untainted by DZ goss? If so where? Can't find it and been lookin.

Some pictures of the first guy to survive a landing would be nice ...even if he did die a short while after as reported.
If this is true we already have our hero ...a guy who attempted a landing all that time ago... in wooden wings. We can still feel the shockwave from his landing.

It would be good to have access to some of the different designs these guys used.

Then they could receive the credit they deserve as the true pioneers of Bird-like flight

[kevin922 0]

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Some pictures of the first guy to survive a landing would be nice ...even if he did die a short while after as reported.
If this is true we already have our hero ...a guy who attempted a landing all that time ago... in wooden wings. We can still feel the shockwave from his landing.

I've seen the video of a guy back in the 19xx's jumping off a bridge with some wing contraption on thinking he could fly. I would call it a jump of ignorance.. I think he actually thought he'd be able to fly with these wings. So I wouldn't call him a hero, unless you give him credit for trying something no one else had ever tried.

I guess it was educational because we found out that design wasn't very good :)

[Trae 1]

The particular guy I'm thinking of(a European) apparently did a series of experimental 'flights' from aircraft .
He gradually developed his wing ideas and had some positive results with improving glide angles .

I've seen one photo of him in his last lethal suit. It looks a bit like a full-on aircraft with swept wooden and sunken channels for his arms.
He landed after exiting an aircraft but died a few hours later..
..anyone know anything else about these guys???

[LouDiamond 1]

Michael Abrams has a book that should be coming out sometime later this year that deals with the historical aspects of Birdmen. Perhaps he will share some of his research with us. Michael?

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[TomAiello 25]

Have you checked out the Birdman book that Airtec reprinted? It's got some good info in it.

You can see a picture of it here. I'm not sure where to get a copy, though.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[LouDiamond 1]

That book only covers Leo Valentin's life as a soldier up through his jumping the various wings he tried. It is 120 pages long but has an English, French and German version in the same book. It reads like a memoir and is pretty much a 1st person narrative. It is no longer in print and the only way to get a new copy is if you know someone at Air tec. You might get lucky and find it at an old book store but I doubt it.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[VectorBoy 0]

Didn't the first wingsuits have ...like ...steam engines or something?

[jakee 1,259]

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I've seen the video of a guy back in the 19xx's jumping off a bridge with some wing contraption on thinking he could fly.

If we're thinking of the same thing it's British Pathe newsreel footage of a guy jumping off the first tier of the Eiffel Tower with what amounts to a cape braced with wood at the shoulders. A particularly morbid detail is the gendarmes measuring his crater after the jump.

Theres a whole bunch of newsreel footage on skydiving movies, a lot of it very cool, all of it incredibly scary.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[KrisFlyZ 0]

I got a copy from the people in the Airtec tent at Eloy. The only condition he made was that I share it with my friends. So I read it and passed it on.

It was good reading and had some cool pictures.

Kris.

[Trae 1]

Good one.... the wings in the cover picture look like they've got rockets on the tips.

Leo is my hero.

[Trae 1]

Yippee..tracked down a copy ......a friends raffle prize.
These 'old' guys seem to be way out ahead of the current wingsuiters in terms of design creativity and pure guts.
The main continuations of their solid wing designs appear to be from the SkyRay people. ..but Leo's wings are HUGE.(I estimated 20sq.ft.)

Why are people still getting excited about stuff (like wing ribs ) as if its new when these guys did it so long ago?

Leo even invented freefall control methods when there was no-one there to tell him....then he turns into Birdman.

If we could all find out more about these iconic ancestors we might avoid some of the puke worthy worshipping of some old ideas rehashed as new.

Leo's spirit lives on . ..now I'd really like to find out more about that Swiss guy ..articulated solid wings.

another REAL hero

[MichaelAbrams 0]

Just saw your post . . . after some months. Sorry I didn't see it before.

The book will have all the answers, but I should probably say you'll have to wait till May. It's true that the 72 out of 75 statistic is way off the mark. That seems to have come from an off the cuff remark from Red Grant. I guess he thought he was one of the three that lived but I've found a good handful of others.

[mccordia 73]

I'm going to be making a bad comment on piracy now..don't spank me...:)

But the book "The Yorkshire Birdman" is not in print anymore, and getting ahold of one is quite hard.
It would be great if by accident, someone managed to PDF the book, and accidently PM-ed the url to a few interested people...

Just a joke ofcource...yes?

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[bert_man 0]

If someone even thought of doing such a dastardly deed, they had better think to PM me a copy...

-Ghetto
"The reason death cannot frighten me, is because life has cured me of fear."
Web Design
Cleveland Skydiving

[tr027 0]

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Just a joke ofcource...yes?

Jarno, perhaps check here, looks like I found 2 for $10 AUD.

http://www.booksandcollectibles.com.au/bsearch.php3?bsearch_submit=Search&auth=Ward%2C+Harry%3B+Hearn%2C+Peter&title=The+Yorkshire+Birdman+%3A+Memoirs+of+a+Pioneer+Parachutist

regards,
T

"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. " -John Galt from Atlas Shrugged, 1957

[skypuppy 1]

Some pictures of the first guy to survive a landing would be nice ...even if he did die a short while after as reported.
If this is true we already have our hero ...a guy who attempted a landing all that time ago... in wooden wings. We can still feel the shockwave from his landing.
_________________________________________________

He didn't plan to land the wings, on exit one of them smashed into the side of the dc-3 and broke, leaving him in an uncontrollable spin. He dumped his parachute, but it entangled with the wings....

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone