Felix jumping in SA again.

[Erroll 80]

I don't do base but I am extremely interested in the sport. I also drive through Johannesburg, SA, everyday on my way to work. I just saw Felix jumping there on our pay-station Tv channel Mnet. He sounded like a real down to earth (no pun intended) guy until just before he jumped. His last words before his 3-2-1 Cya were "Are the cameras rolling?"

[skreamer 1]

Edited to post following M-Net article :

Quote

For most people the first they see of Felix Baumgartner is a tiny speck in the sky. The speck slowly begins to take shape, grows arms and legs…becomes a human being, he’s going down fast, but where’s the parachute? And just when you feel something’s gone wrong, at 60m from the ground, Felix pulls the rip cord, the parachute opens. This is the man who falls for a living, the world champion in the elite and dangerous sport of BASE jumping.

While skydivers jump from aeroplanes BASE jumpers parachute off fixed objects like buildings, TV Towers, bridges and mountains. You have one parachute, one chance to get it right. It’s not exactly a sane sport.

Felix: “I’ve been doing this for many, many years and never had any bad accidents. It’s a very professional way how I do it, because in the beginning people always say this is crazy, you don’t care about life. But if I talk to you and tell you everything about my sport, the way that I prepare myself, you will find out that I’m a very clever guy, I’m not stupid and I’m not one of these adrenaline junkie. Sure, adrenaline is involved, but this is not the major goal. It’s not money, it’s not adrenaline, it’s the challenge itself.”

Felix became a world champion in 1997. Two years later he set two world records, the one for a jump from what was the highest building in the world: the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The second for the lowest BASE jump ever, the statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro.

He arrived in Johannesburg on Wednesday. We challenged him to jump off a South African icon, the Bxxxxn Tower, now known as the Sxxxxh Tower.

Derek: “So we are going to go up to check everything out.”

Felix: “Yes. Let’s check out everything from the top and make a decision.”

It wasn’t easy to get permission for Felix to jump off the Bxxxxn Tower, they’ve turned down many applications through the years and even the Fire Department weren’t allowed to abseil down it. So in B.A.S.E jumping terms the tower is still a virgin, at the ripe old age of 43.

Early Thursday morning around 5.30am, we ascend the tower. Now code named an NBJ, a ‘Never Been Jumped Building’- in the B.A.S.E jumping world this is a trophy. The Bxxxxxn Tower has a height of 247m from BASE to highest point.

Felix: “Uh oh…”

Derek: “It’s windy. It’s like a gale out here.”

Felix: “It’s too much”

Felix will jump from an exit point, at a height of 160m.

Felix: “Are you ready?”

Derek: “Yes.”

But this morning with a wind speed of around 8m a second, and going in the wrong direction it looked like we would have to delay the jump.

Felix: “It’s hard to say no but it saves your life. So it is very professional to say no.”

Derek: “You’ve got to ignore all the factors like cameras and crowds, you’ve just got to say if it’s on or not.”

Felix: “Yes. It doesn’t matter how many people are there, it doesn’t matter how many camera guys are there. If the wind is like this, it’s definitely a no go.”

For 34-year-old Felix, it’s the strictest discipline and control that make a world class jumper. These were not always characteristics of his personality. As a child growing up in Salzburg, Austria, no tree was too tall.

Derek: “You know we all climb trees as kids, but it seems like you were obsessed by them.”

Felix: “Yes. Almost 50 % of all my falls when I was a child, I was on top of something. I was on top of a lot of houses climbing on those metal things for lightning, how you call those in English?

Derek: “Lightning rods.”

Felix: “Climbing on top of those, on top of buildings. I was on top of a lot of trees. I really liked to be on top of something. But I had no pressure at this time, so I couldn’t jump.”

At 29, Felix made the world’s highest jump, from the Towers in Malaysia. It was a major coup to even enter the 491m high building. For a month he just loitered around the outside, watching. Then with a fake ID, disguised as a businessman, his parachute and a small camera in his briefcase, Felix made his move.

Felix: “As soon as you’re in you have to find the right way. There are so many elevators in the buildings so you have to look around and you have to go for the right elevator. You have to look like you are going in there every day, because if you just stop there and try to look around, someone is going to ask you what you want to do. This is the first part for making a mistake. And inside, it is such a huge building that you lose your orientation and you have to use a compass to find the right way for an exit point because the main goal is to reach the window washer tray out of the building. We knew before that this was he only way to jump off the building.”

It took one hour and 15 mins for Felix to find the roof door, but then there was a conflict between getting caught and recording the moment.

Felix: “Okay guys, here we go.”
Felix: “So you have to find a way to not waste too much time but getting the right footage, because you really need that shot. All the camera guys are down there doing a good job, but all the people, the audience wants to see your face, they want to see you sweating, they want to see the adrenaline in your eyes and all these things.”

Derek: “So do you have to film yourself?”

Felix: “You have to film yourself. You put the camera there, you put on your parachute, everything - your clothes, all your chest straps. Then you take the camera, you put it on the boom. You walk outside with the boom, and then you have to come back again, take the camera and all these things. So this is very hard for your mind because you know that you have to hurry up. If I take too many shots there, maybe I get bust and the whole thing is for nothing.”

At five [o’clock] on Thursday afternoon, we return to our own object of conquest. From the ground, conditions had looked hopeful but on the top the winds, still gusty.

Derek: “Direction?”

Felix: “Direction is still the same.”

Derek: “So you want it to drop quite a lot still?”

It was predicted that the wind would die down at around 6pm, so we waited.

In this extreme sport, where a split second can save your life, there is another side of the coin, the patience of Job. For Felix’s most dangerous jump from the statue in Rio, he had to wait five weeks. He attempted to jump five times before the magic moment.

Felix: “On Coca Verde mountain they close at 8pm. So that means that if you want to go on top you have to be there before. You have to hide the whole camera team in the forest and wait the whole night long until 4am because this is when we want to start the whole thing. And every day or every time we make a decision to go there and stay there, at midnight it starts raining or getting windy. On a jump that is so low there should be no wind.”

Derek: “And essentially there is only 29m between you and the ground so everything is literally down to the split second.”

Felix: “It all comes down to one second and this really scares you. When you stand on top of Jesus and you know that there is just one second between living and dying - this is a bad thing for your mind.”

Derek: “Do you ever say a prayer before you leap off?”

Felix: “The only thing I did at the Jesus jump was talking to Jesus or God and saying please let me do this and please let me survive. And I really had this feeling like I needed to talk and say, ‘Jesus or God don’t let me down’. If you do the whole thing on Jesus, you have to survive. If you are standing on the right arm of Jesus, he won’t let you down.”

And praying was what we were doing on Friday morning at 5am for our third attempt at the tower. While Felix might have all the time in the world, we have a deadline.

Felix: “So what do you want to ask?”

Derek: “I think the blows on our microphone say it all. It’s not going to happen today. Well at least not this morning unless something radical happens during the day.”

Felix: “We’re not going down the next couple of hours, it’s a definite no go. That’s going to kill you.”

Derek: “That’s the name of the sport, it’s a combination of adrenaline and patience.”

And the weather reports for the weekend aren’t too good.

Derek: “The wind is only getting stronger up here and I think there is a danger of being blown off, never mind jumping off. We’re going to have to wait for Felix’s next visit. It’s not going to happen today, or even this week.”

The mood is bleak as the sky darkens. Felix knows he has an anxious crew but he’s used to that. With his most phenomenal feat he had the whole world watching. This was when he crossed the English Channel as the first flying man in July last year.

Felix: “The oldest dream of the human being is to fly like a bird. It is also my dream so I started working on a never ending free fall.”

In 2000, Felix was asked to test a special carbon fibre wing by two German engineers. It took three years to plan, to construct and test before the day became a reality.

Felix: “We start the whole thing when we met each other at 2.30am. I think I was going at 4.30 am because the jump had to be done at 5.30 in the morning. Later on the whole air traffic starts, and then we don’t have any permission anymore.”

Derek: “Because you were going to become a human missile.”

Felix: “The English and the French government did treat me like an aeroplane.”

Derek: “Well you were.”

Felix: “Yes I was. So I needed a transponder and they want to see me on radar and I had to cross all these corridors. I had to do this early in the morning before the real traffic starts.”

To cross the 35km wide channel, Felix needed to jump out of a plane at 10 000m altitude, and travel 600m horizontally for every 100m he dropped.

Felix: “There’s no mercy at these altitudes. You need oxygen with every breath.”

Derek: “Big danger of just passing out.”

Felix: “Oxygen was the major thing with this project. The coldness, I mean we had about 52 degrees minus, but this was not really a problem because the whole flight took 6 minutes and 22 seconds so you can handle the coldness, but you can’t handle no oxygen.”

As Felix exited the plane, a wind of 360 kilometres per hour hits his body.

Felix: “It was pretty cold out there, but I could see the sun out there and it was totally orange. The sky was dark blue because it was 5:30am. The whole area down there at 1500m was covered by clouds. So I was flying there and I really thought the whole world should see the whole thing from my eyes. Usually you shouldn’t be there at 10 000m. You are not allowed to be there just inside a plane, and there I am wings strapped to my back, a little oxygen pipe in my mouth and a little skydiving suit. And I was flying through history. This was a great moment for me.”

Back at Bxxxxn tower we were hoping for our own little miracle. There was a sudden calm before the storm, but was there enough time?

Derek: “What’s going through your mind now?”

Felix: “I still feel cool. I just think that the wind is picking up. I think that it will go down again because there is this little hole here. But the wind is coming back again as you can feel.”

Derek: “Well talk about the winds of change. It’s just three hours later, and the wind has dropped again to an acceptable limit. So we should see a flying Felix within seconds.”

Felix: “Okay guys, I’m out of here.”

Cameraman: “Okay, we need cameras rolling.”

Felix: “Cameras are rolling guys. Like your work buddy, love your wife!”

Felix: “Three…two…one…See ya!”

Felix: “That was cool!”

Derek: “Magic! Well, mission accomplished.”

Felix: “So this is not a virgin anymore.”

Derek: “Okay, but the cameras weren’t rolling. You’ll have to do it again!”

Felix: “That’s not a problem.”

I wonder if he will be making another visit to Cape Town.

Will

[Dd0g 0]

That was funny.

D-d0g

+~+~+~+~
But this, surely, was the glory that no spirits, canine or human, had ever clearly seen, the light that never was on land or sea, and yet is glimpsed by the quickened mind everywhere.