Finnish News Article: Dressed to...fly? The Finnish Birdman

[cpoxon 0]

From http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/1101981016233

Mostly stuff we've seen before,a nd some inaccuracies, but Jari also expressing an interest in landing a wingsuit and playing with small attached rockets.

Quote

Jari Kuosma swapped his grey pin-stripe for a smart gliding suit and took to the skies for the ultimate extreme sports experience


By Ron Laytner

It happened six years ago, 4,000 feet up over Central Florida: a Cessna 150 light plane was flying south towards Miami when the pilot felt an odd sensation that someone was watching him from outside the cockpit.
He looked sideways, gasped, and cried out. A creature in a bright red and white suit was flying, arms extended, beside his plane.
It was a man. He smiled and surged ahead, diving down, passing the plane and leaving its pilot with something to talk about for the rest of his life…
He had just seen The Birdman.

Jari Kuosma is a 36-year-old daredevil who hails originally from Helsinki, and who has developed a workable "wingsuit" and in so doing broken the curse that killed almost all of the eighty-nine men who previously tried to fly through the air on wings.
Kuosma is President and owner of BirdMan International, the world's first manufacturer of wingsuits, the next breathless level of skydiving.

The wingsuit slows the downward velocity of a free-falling skydiver from as much as 220km/hour to 80km/hour or even as little as 45km/hour and lets him (or her, there are a select few "birdbabes" around, too) fly horizontally for up to 12 miles - tripling their time in the sky - before pulling the rip-cord and landing normally by parachute.
The record flight so far was across the Straits of Gibraltar from south to north, a distance of 20.5 kilometres. It had to succeed; landing on water is not recommended.
Some 5,000 to 6,000 people have experienced the wingsuit. At last report, twelve have fallen to their deaths in the US, Switzerland, Italy, and China.

For decades, men have tried to fly by jumping out with wings from balloons or aeroplanes, and have died horribly because the muscles in their shoulders ripped from the pressure of trying to keep the wings extended. Kuosma has solved the problem.
Jari Kuosma grew up in Finland and wore a suit and tie and worked for telecoms provider Sonera. His only real interest was risk-taking, so he became a professional sky-diver and left home to see the world. He says he's never worn a tie since.
"I was an instructor at the Stockholm Parachuting Club. In Venezuela I taught their special military forces near the border with Brazil."
He taught at jump schools in almost every country in the world.
On one trip across the US, his life changed when he first heard of the dead ‘birdmen' who wanted to fly on wings.

Before he could actually think of trying to fly Jari learned to base-jump. It is the most dangerous form of parachuting, in which daredevils - though some might call them lunatics - jump off high cliffs or buildings with just split seconds in which to open their parachutes.
More jumpers perish base-jumping than any other way and there is a long list of the dead.
Jari couldn't wait to try it.

He became friends with a Croatian parachute manufacturer, Robert Peschent (sic), as they base-jumped from the 800 metre (2,700 ft) cliff at Monte Brento, north of Milan.
"I'd been hearing about the legendary French sky-diver Patrick De Gayardon. He'd been jumping off this cliff just two months earlier and I wanted to meet him, but he died before we had a chance."
de Gayardon fell to his death while testing out a wingsuit he had designed. "I decided to try to make one, and I persuaded Peschent and Stane Kranjc, another parachute maker, to come aboard."

The first men who hoped to fly designed their wings to look like those of birds, and the attachments were usually too large and cumbersome. The wings have been made of light balsa wood and cloth, and metal has been used in the leading edges and support frameworks. When the would-be birdmen leapt out, some flew for a short time but they were out of control as soon as they pulled the ripcord, turning and somersaulting entangled with the wings, falling to their deaths tied up in the lines.
Jari explains that you cannot hope to hold the wings open - they rip your shoulders off. That's what killed nearly everyone trying to fly. Only one man survived, and then by pure luck. He is 71-year-old Carl Laurin of Florida, Jari's American mentor and sky-diving ‘father'.
Carl flew a few times using wings made of canvas which he held together using a leather strap and brute strength before he gave it up. He is the only earlier flier to survive. "I'm lucky to be alive", he says now.

"It was time to think differently from all those who perished. We had to turn those first wingsuits from soft nylon into something hard with the rigid body of a glider. So we made inlet vents that filled with air while we were first falling and turned ourselves into little fighter planes", enthuses Kuosma.
"For days on end we stood and tested our theory with weights. Anyone can hold a book straight out for a time without having to put it down, but you can hold the book much longer if your arms are only partly extended in a swept back or swept wing position."
"We designed airflow and small enough wings to reduce the angle. I called our very first design the "Jesus Christ" suit because it looked like we were being crucified. By #2 and #3 we looked more like a bird and we had delta-shaped backswept wings."
"We didn't want to die tangled up in the wing, so we designed a rip cord in the suit which would immediately deflate the wing."
A parachute is absolutely necessary - actually landing in the wingsuit is currently not on the agenda, at least not if one wishes to live to boast of the achievement.

Kuosma recalls his first wingsuit flight, in 1999: "We were going to jump and try to fly for the very first time over Florida. I was 29 and I certainly expected to die. I gave myself a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. But I wanted to fly for all those who had tried. I kept going over in my mind all the ways to survive if the suit failed. There were actually three of us - myself, Robert Peschent and my then girlfriend Irene."
"The pilot said goodbye, quite reasonably wondering if he'd ever see us alive again. We jumped out, and by God it went fantastically well. The three of us were flying for the first time up there in total silence."
"We went a long distance - more than a couple of kilometres - and we were gliding side-by-side. A normal jump is 60 seconds long, and we went for three minutes, then opened our parachutes and came down near each other. We were excited as hell and screaming with joy. To us it was the same as walking on the Moon."

Jari took what little money he had and went to Slovenia, where he had wingsuits made up using a company that made hiking clothing.
"I kept testing by jumping out and flying them so people wouldn't get killed. I made up 85 suits, packed them in a car I had borrowed, and drove across Europe to all the major drop zones."
When he began demonstrating flying suits, the French Parachute Federation wanted Jari to stop, thinking he would be killing off a lot of its members.
"I showed them our training manual, gave a demonstration, and paid for the jumps of as many people as I could using my credit card until I maxed it out. In one day I sold 20 suits at $600 each and I suddenly could pay my own way."

In England, too, the sky-divers were enthusiastic, although the safety officer of one jump school solemly warned Jari: "If you even mention these devilish contraptions I will throw you out of here".
He was duly evicted.
"But I went to another British jump site and sold more than 25 wingsuits. I was selling something more addictive than the strongest drugs. Anyone who tried it was immediately hooked."
Jari said users soon found they could control their flight and pass cars going the same direction on highways far below. "There are no speed limits up in the air," he said, using his favorite expression. "One English guy said while we were flying: ‘This is better than sex, better than drugs - I want one!'."

Birdmen have crashed into each other in the air and lived to tell the tale. Once the plane that had carried him up hit a birdman, but he survived and the plane landed and had to be repaired. Jari gave the guy a new wingsuit for free.
"He was lucky. There is no room for error", says the Birdman. "People sometimes try to fly low in their wingsuit over the ridge of a mountain and crash into it."
Jari and his flying friends have fun all over the world. "We can play in the air and fly in formation like fighter planes. One day in Spain three of us flew eight miles from one village to a second village, where we had a nice dinner."
He believes media coverage of sky-diver deaths does not hurt his business. "The very danger is what makes people want to try it. The wingsuit is extremely attractive to daredevils."
"The truth is, people go to car races to see drivers risk their lives at high speed and die in crashes. It's why people all over the world go to thriller movies."

Even the Birdman himself is looking for more excitement.
"My dream is to jump out of a plane with only my wingsuit. I want to fly and then land without a parachute. The danger is slowing down to stop my forward speed and landing alive on my feet."
"We can't carry anything with us, not even landing gear. The wingsuit will never be used by airborne commandos. There is no room for a gun. As for landing, I don't think a skateboard is good enough. It may kill me, but I will figure out a way to do it."

"We have 2,000 suits in the world now and I don't expect to ever get more than 10,000 in use," Kuosma says. "That's why I am now going into the next project - wingsuits powered by small jet engines."
"I have already picked out two 1.5-kilo jet engines which I will strap on my back. They're pretty dangerous. Once they are running it's hard to shut them off."
"The plan is to do a first jump in 2007 at about 3,000 metres from a high altitude balloon, because we will need at least 20 seconds of freefall for the jet engines to fire up. We will inflate the suit and then turn on the engines at about 1,500 metres [4,500 ft]. Of course we are nervous of the jet engines sucking up the parachute."
The project is being led by Kuosma's "crazy-dude-friend" Visa Parviainen, another Finn.
"Visa bought these small jet motors, of the sort used in radio-controlled models. He fitted them onto an old pair of skates and jumped with me, with the motors fired up. The idea was to see if we could get the engines to start at that sort of altitude. Well, we did, but they were not powerful enough. Next thing we have to do is find something a bit beefier."

Kuosma says he has made at least 2,000 jumps with the wingsuit, and around 3,000 parachute jumps in all. He stresses it is not something for the beginner-with-attitude: at least 200 conventional jumps are necessary before the skills are adequate to the task.
"I think I will live to be an old man. If anything happens to me, I will not regret it because I have had so many thrills. Wing flying is the most exciting sport above the earth. Most people are stuck on the ground, but I fly among the clouds."

Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published in print 18.9.2005

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[beergood 0]

He became friends with a Croatian parachute manufacturer, Robert Peschent (sic), as they base-jumped from the 800 metre (2,700 ft) cliff at Monte Brento, north of Milan.
"I'd been hearing about the legendary French sky-diver Patrick De Gayardon. He'd been jumping off this cliff just two months earlier and I wanted to meet him, but he died before we had a chance."
de Gayardon fell to his death while testing out a wingsuit he had designed. "I decided to try to make one, and I persuaded Peschent and Stane Kranjc, another parachute maker, to come aboard."

Who is this Robert Peschent guy? I have heard of this other guy Robert Pecnik that might have been involved with building that first suit and a few after that. Great research and editing. Too funny spelling Robi's name wrong. However very entertaining pictures and article.

[KrisFlyZ 0]

I don't think the article was researched. It is a case of the author writing what he was told. It certainly has some of Jari's trademark embellishment.

Kris.