Video: Mach 5 wingsuit team share their South Australian skydiving experience
HAVE you ever looked through a passenger jet window and wondered what it would be like to be out there on the other side of the glass, flying like a bird over South Australia? WATCH THE VIDEO
HAVE you ever looked through a passenger jet window, taken in the beauty of the sunlight, the clouds and the land below, and wondered what it would be like to be out there on the other side of the glass, flying like a bird?
For a group of local daredevils, such an experience is a daydream come true.
Look up into the SA skies on a weekend and you just might see some little specs called the Mach 5 wingsuit team, skydivers who use hi-tech webbed suits to glide forward as gravity tries to bring them down.
The team, who put on a display at the Barossa Air Show last weekend, have sent us some video showing what it’s like to fly over SA, and it is just stunning.
Team member Travis Naughton says the sport is “as close as you’re ever going to get” to unpowered, unassisted flight.
He and fellow team members Gary Scheepens, Darren McInerney, Liam Savage and James McKew are all experienced skydivers who “met up at various dropzones” and decided to get together.
Now with matching suits especially made in Croatia and costing $2700 each, they fly in formation and perform aerodynamic stunts at speeds exceeding 100km/h.
“We turn our downward speed into forward speed,” said Travis, who shot the video featured on this story after he and his colleagues stepped out of an aircraft at 14,000ft.
James McKew was absent due to a defence force posting interstate.
Wingsuit flyers can achieve extraordinary velocities this way and the world record stands at over 300km/h, comparable to the pace of a Formula One racing car.
Of course, there is danger in that speed and the very fact that one is plunging towards the earth, but Travis says that “it is as dangerous as you make it”. He says deaths in the sport are usually caused by inexperience and “too much YouTube”.
That reference is to the tremendous popularity of the sport on the video-sharing website, so we’ll also make the point here that if you like what you see in the video on this story, you too can fly like a bird, but only with the proper training and equipment.
Travis says you should aproach your local skydiving club and take things from there. Once you get started, not even the sky’s a limit.
The Mach 5 team is available for professional displays. Go to their Facebook page to make inquiries.