Cross Channel Freefall (DVR-Callais)

[Meatbomber]

i'd like to thank all the ATC Personell involved for your outstanding service making it possible that we got a Clearance up to FL310 (with a Skyvan) with a continiuous descend across the channel to follow Mr. Baumgartner.

As a Matter of fact, the Channel crossing went very well and he was under canopy at about 5000ft directly above the landing zone. An inofficial record has been set for longest Freefall (no drouge) and logest freefall distance.

Thanks again London ACC

Brgds

Phillip Artweger
"OE-FDE Formation"

[vintage ATCO]

Up to FL310??? In a Skyvan!!!?????? How long did it take? :confused: :D :D :D

Congratulations on the jump, looked really good on TV.


vintage ATCO
www.stevelevien.com

[flower]

I was wondering how it affected ATC.
Great to see that there are still new things yet to achieve in aviation
Well done :ok:

[5milesbaby]

Hardly affected us at all, we had all the relevant paperwork and plenty of notice and was a great sight to watch. Was definately the best time to do it though :ok: We are wondering how you managed to get a Skyvan up to FL306, want to tell the secret?
Congratulations to Felix, watching a squalk knowing it was a human being is certainly scary, especially that our kit gave us his ground speed and descent rate too (7000ft/min!!!!). Glad it all went well but I'll always think of him as a nutter (in a nice way of course). :}

[Captain Windsock]

What was the official tome posted for crossing the channel?

[Meatbomber]

especially when we had reported ready to drop and then had a 2--3 minutes delay i was thinking about you guys... i mean it's kindda hard to keep al that airspace cear of traffic ain't it...

The sectret of bringing a Skyvan up that high is:

7° Pitch up.... fly it and it will climb! At the end we had about 400fpm climb rate when all the folks in the a/c stayed all the way in the back... if they move the climbrate is gone.. that's all :)
took us 30 minutes to FL305... but that Skyvan has the Super -2 Conversion Engines.

Glad we had the help of Ian from Flying Pictures who did all the relevant preperationions with ATC. Still good to see it worked out.

Cheers
MB

[javelin]

Did the skydiver have a transponder on ?

[Meatbomber]

Yes he had a Transponder plus we had a PC9 with us who basically stayed within 1/2 a mile to Felix all the time to provide navigation and tracking... and we followed the PC9

[Smokie]

Brilliant ! Well done to everyone concerned.
It certainly looked impressive on TV, just wish I could have been there to see it .:ok: :ok:

[BN2A]

According to a newspaper, he opened his canopy at 1,000 ft!
AND had an 'emergency'!!!:oh:

Skyvan to FL300?? Thought an aircraft had to be aerodynamic to get that high???:p

Nice one to all concerned.
:) - :ok: - :ok: - :ok: - :ok: - :ok: - :)

[055166k]

Don't forget that ATC will have R/T and Radar recordings of the whole thing.........might make an interesting addition to the archive material.

[Lon More]

Meatbomber,
Not to detract from the jump, but it's good to see that the problems which occured last week N of EEL were not repeated.
The airspace around DVR is somewhat busier

[PPRuNe Radar]

Presumably the 'Meatbomber' was State exempted from RVSM and 8.33 equippage ??

What ?? It wasn't ?? ;)

[055166k]

Mandatory carriage of equipment applies to aircraft....not People???????

[Ray Ban]

Well done to all concerned!:ok:

055166k,

I believe PPRuNe Radar was actually referring to the aircraft not the poster!:p

[PPRuNe Radar]

I believe PPRuNe Radar was actually referring to the aircraft not the poster!

Indeed Ray Ban. Can't believe the low standard of grammar that our young ATCOs have these days ;)

The clue was the use of the word 'the' in front of 'Meatbomber' ... making it an object and not the person. :)

[Meatbomber]

Well we are 8,33 eqipped , but i guess it's pretty impossible to get a RVSM certification for a Skyvan :)

Regarding our abort north of EEL the week previously:

It was the first attempt up to FL280 with the wing and a PC6 Porter equipped with a steady cam as a chase plane. Now that Porter has significantly less climb performance than we do and so we basically had to abort before we ran out of oxygen... thus change of plan inflight and bad comms with Maastricht RDR which was really busy at the time too. Another reason we're been really thankfull for the descrete frequency we got from London.

Lesson learned..