Red Bull Skydive Team pulled off a spectacular stunt, using two hot-air balloons and 125m of rope to swing in the Austrian sky.
In a tribute to their favourite childhood game, Dominic Roithmair, Georg Lettner, Marco Waltenspiel and Marco Fürst have achieved what could be the longest swing in the world (approval process is currently ongoing).
“Everyone knows what it’s like on the swing at the playground,” said Waltenspiel. “You swing as hard as you can and jump off. We wanted to do the same, but on a much bigger scale.”
“It’s all about the right timing and jumping. When the rope is perfectly tout to swing nicely forward, it’s just perfect.”
Hot-air balloons were the ideal aircrafts for this trick. Piloting them required a huge amount of experience though, hence why the skydivers turned to Austrian experts from the Pink Klatovy center. After an intensive planning and preparation phase, the whole crew did a test run in superb weather conditions.
“The great thing was that you don’t have any off-putting noise,” added Roithmair. “Unlike in a plane, it’s silent in a balloon, you swing out and it starts to swoosh. After the swing it’s quiet until the noise starts again. We’ve fulfilled our childhood dreams of going on a giant swing!
“You accelerate in a completely different direction to what you get in normal base or parachute jumping. You jump down, fall and wait for the moment when the pressure kicks in. Then after a few seconds you go forward with a non-motorized acceleration, which gives you an unbelievable feeling. I can’t recall any free-fall that has such different patterns of movement.”
