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Extreme Sports - Sky
Diving
Spanish Bird-Man Team crosses the Strait of Gibraltar
Posted Thu Jul 07 2005
By Jari Kuosma
Three Spanish parachutists crossed the strait of Gibraltar in freefall,
breaking two world records. Santi Corella, 33, Tonuses López, 31, and
Alvaro Bultó, 33, had prepared for the jump for three years with the help
of the Air Force. According to the international press, they jumped over
Marocco from the extreme altitude of 13,000 meters (43,000 feet), out of a
military aircraft.
With an average forward speed of 208 kilometers per hour they were
freefalling for roughly 6 minutes, and flew the approximately 20
kilometers between Morocco and the Spanish mainland.
Only after completely crossing the strait of Gibraltar did they open their
parachutes and land on a beach. "The worst was the cold", the men reported
after landing. At 12,000 meters and higher, icy -50 degrees celsius
temperatures prevail. They also noted that the six minutes in freefall
seemed like an eternity.
BIRD-MAN RedBull TEAMs testimony of the Skyflyer 3 - Special
"Talking for the three of us I can say that having the S3 Special for this
adventure, permitted us to take a serious decision about the jump. We
planned to make the shortest distance between Africa and Spain witch is
14.4 km, but the winds forced us to change the arrival point by about 10
km further east and that meant a 15.5 km distance for crossing the
Straight. After we tried a couple of times the with the S3- Special and
experienced the easy flight and speed of this wingsuit we didn’t doubt any
more, and we went for the largest distance.
Flying the S3 - Special is more strenuous especially when you pass three
minutes freefall, but we found that flies further even if we can’t
maintain a perfect shape during the entire free fall. The flight went much
better that expected and we got almost 20,5 km. What really surprised me
was the smooth and fast flying on the first 10,000’, where the density of
air is less. Stability was very important for maintaining heading and
energy, and with the S.3-Special it was easy even at the last part of the
jump where we were exhausted." - Santi Corella
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