SOME people go fishing on their day off; Yves Rossy likes to jump out of a plane with a pair of jet-powered wings and perform figure-of-eights above the Swiss Alps.
Mr Rossy, 48, made his first public flight in his self-made flying contraption yesterday, after five years of training and many more of dreaming.
"This flight was absolutely excellent," the former fighter pilot and extreme sports enthusiast said
after touching down on an airfield near Lake Geneva.
Half an hour earlier, he had stepped out of an aircraft at 7,500ft, unfolded the rigid 8ft wings strapped to his back and dropped.
Passing from freefall to a gentle glide, he then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 180mph, as a crowd below cheered.
His mother, Paule, told journalists she felt no fear. "He knows what he's doing," she said of her son, a pilot for Swiss airlines.
Steering with his body, Mr Rossy dived, turned and soared again, flying effortless loops from one side of the Rhône valley to the other. At times he rose 2,600ft, before descending again with a trail of special-effects smoke in his wake.
"It's like a second skin," he told reporters. "If I turn to the left, I fly left. If I nudge to the right, I go right."
Mr Rossy even performed a stunt he had never tried before. After a wave to the crowd, he tipped his wings, flipped on to his back and levelled out again, executing a perfect 360-degree roll that a bird would find impossible. "That was to impress the girls," he said.
Yesterday's five-minute flight nearly didn't happen. He and his engineers worked until the last minute to fix one of the four kerosene-fuelled engines that power his flight. But he is now ready for a bigger challenge: crossing the English Channel, which will be shown live on television later this year.
One day he hopes to fly through the Grand Canyon, but he will have to fit his wings with more powerful jets to allow for greater manoeuvring. The German-built model aircraft engines he currently uses provide 200lb of thrust – enough to allow Mr Rossy and his 120lb flying suit to climb through the air.
"Physically, it's absolutely no stress," Mr Rossy said. "It's like being on a motorbike." But on this ride, even the slightest movement can cause problems. He has to focus hard on relaxing, because "if you put tension on your body, you start to swing around". Should things go wrong – and they do – there's a yellow handle to jettison the wings and unfold the parachute. "I've had many 'whoops' moments," he said.
Mr Rossy – whose sponsors have dubbed him "Fusion Man" – says his form of human flight will remain the preserve of very few for now. The price and effort involved are simply too enormous, he says. So far, Mr Rossy and sponsors have poured more than 123,000 (£98,000) and countless hours of labour into building the device.
But he believes jet-powered wings will one day be more widely available to parachutists ready for the ultimate flying experience. That is, if they don't mind missing out on the breathtaking panorama above the Swiss Alps. "I am so concentrated, I don't really enjoy the view," Mr Rossy said.
The full article contains 566 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
