Driving a Porsche 918 Spyder on the world’s best roads such as California’s Big Sur, Utah’s White Rim Trail, Australia’s Great Ocean Road, Italy’s Stelvio Pass or Romania’s Transfagarasan might look like nothing to this video. Imagine that out of the whole area of these gorgeous mountains, beautiful rivers and lakes, only 5.3% is settled. Now think of literally flying over this heavenly area of Walenstadt, Switzerland.
That’s precisely what Brandon Mikesell from Seattle, Washington did using a wingsuit. The video was recently posted on GoPro’s YouTube account and is that good we simply had to share it with you guys. Since there’s no day like Friday, we figured talking about a bit of fun-fun outside activity wouldn’t harm so here we are looking at this daredevil going all Superman on us.
Not that we haven’t seen similar footage taken by people using wingsuites to navigate over beautiful landscapes, but these images are as clear as they are graceful. Since we have no intention on ruining the whole video for you, we do want to say a thing or two about these batman-lookalike suites.
The principle is quite simple: the wingsuit adds surface area to the human body to enable a significant increase in lift. Most commonly, especially after the late 1990s, the surface area is created with fabric between the legs and under the arms. Aside from the fact you’ll hover longer similar to what a seagull does, as opposed to the parachute flight - which is normal - the canopy pilot typically unzips arm wings (after deployment) to be able to reach the steering parachute toggles and control the descent path.
In other words, you’re a human acting like a bird, almost flying like one. Or should we say falling like one? Whatever the case, it truly must be an unique feeling doing something like that over Switzerland’s best landscapes so we have to admit we do envy the guy a little.
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