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Now you have to believe a man can fly
Charles Bremner in Paris
Icarus of the Alps has jet-engine wings
Just in case... he wears crash helmet
For those who are bored with hang-gliding or find skydiving just too dull, a Swiss airline captain has devised the ultimate aerial thrill: flying like a bird.
Thanks to high technology and nerve, Yves Rossy has come closer than anyone to realising the ancient dream of soaring free, flitting through the sky, guided only by the body. As well as a crash helmet he wears a small pair of wings and four tiny jet engines.
As he skims the Alps at up to 187mph (300km/h), the only thing that the former fighter pilot has come up against so far is the Swiss law.
“They were totally confused,” said the birdman, whose flying suit gives him a passing resemblance to Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. “The authorities said that I was an unregistered aircraft and to fly, you need a licence. I told them, ‘No. To fly, you need wings’.”
The 47-year-old pioneer does not live up to the image of the stolid Swiss captain. Boyish and brimming with enthusiasm, he is a hero in the world of those extreme sportsmen — or borderline nutters — who are devoted to the quest of human flight.
After millennia of fatal experiments, the skills of Icarus and Superman remained a fantasy until the recent advent of powered flight, hang-gliding and skydiving. In the past two decades, free-fall enthusiasts have developed webbed “wing-suits” that allow them to glide and even perform aerial ballet. But the direction is always downwards, followed by a parachute landing.
Mr Rossy, whose day job is flying passengers around Europe for Swiss, the national airline, still jumps from an aircraft in his Jet Man guise and later uses a parachute to land. His achievement is staying aloft with a minimum of equipment. So far, fuel limits have kept his jaunts to six minutes, but he is making progress and hopes soon to sell his kit to would-be birdmen.
“I don’t want anything rigid. I fly with my body,” he said. “The wing is just a device that allows me to remain free in the air. I move my head a little and I turn. Or I put out my leg a few inches and I bank and descend . . . I play with all the elements of flight that I know so well.”
The only mechanical input is a motorcycle grip that controls thrust.
In his first attempt to fly, in 2004, Mr Rossy flew level. This autumn, over Spain, he achieved the first powered climb. In his latest outing, last month, he swooped and soared low through the ridges of the Alps near Montreux.
“I can go up at 1,000 feet per minute, but it’s really just the beginning,” Mr Rossy told The Times. “The next step is more powerful engines and a lighter, more efficient wing for aero-batics. I’ll be able to climb vertically like a fighter.” He also aims to take off from the ground.
Mr Rossy is no death-wish daredevil. “I take great care with safety and there is always a plan B,” he said. This means staying high enough to jettison the wings and open a parachute in an emergency. There have been close shaves, including an upside-down spin when an engine failed.
“When I am the captain of an Airbus, it’s zero risk,” said Mr Rossy, who flew British Hawker Hunters and French supersonic Mirage IIIs in the Swiss Air Force. “I don’t have anything to prove in an Airbus. With passengers, I don’t play the fool. But when I’m alone there’s a big difference.
“It’s a compliment if someone says I’m a bit mad. In our society no one wants to take risks any more. No one wants responsibility. I take calculated risks that could finish in the grave. But I like what I do and there is a certain grandeur in doing it.”
Mr Rossy, who is in the middle of a divorce, has spent his savings on the six-year project. He is sponsored by the German company that makes his engines, which are adapted from jets for model aircraft and unmanned military drones. He is also funded by the company that makes his Kevlar wings.
His ultimate aim is to market the Jet Man as a pure fun machine, like a jet ski for the air. The cost would be about the same as a medium-size car or a microlight aircraft. There may also be a military use — although his device has nothing in common with the crude rocket pack worn by James Bond in the 1965 film Thunderball.
Mr Rossy has solved his trouble with the authorities and flies with a special permit. He is fully insured and avoids air-space where he is likely to meet aircraft. “Of course, it’s not the kind of contraption that you should strap on anyone’s shoulders,” he said. “It’s a prototype, and if you look at the first hang-gliders, they were not exactly the finished product either.”
Upward bound
Ancient Greece Daedalus and Icarus, his son, escape from Crete with feather wings. Icarus falls and dies
1485 Leonardo da Vinci designs Ornithopter, a bird-like flying machine, and a parachute. Neither tested
1783 Sebastien Lenormand of France invents first successful parachute
1896 Otto Lilienthal of Germany killed after making successful hops with bird-like glider
1903 Wright brothers achieve first powered flight
1951 Francis Rogallo of Nasa invents flexible wing later used for hang-gliding
1980s power added to create microlight aircraft
July 2003 Felix Baumgartner of Austria parachutes to land at Calais after flying across English Channel in a wing suit
November 2006 Yves Rossy flies for six minutes over the Swiss Alps
Source: Times research
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