Video: First-ever wingsuit foil pushes human flight to record levels

Austrian aerial stuntman and all-around maniac Peter Salzmann has already pushed wingsuiting to a whole 'nother level in strapping on an electric propulsion system to turn himself into what might be the closest thing we've ever seen to a human aircraft. Now he's back breaking boundaries once again, this time swapping out propulsion in favor of a dramatic new foil system designed to increase lift and overall flight time, pushing man that much closer to the gravity-flaunting freedom of bird-kind.

If the average person hit 186 mph (300 km/h) by turning themselves into an electric missile, they'd be well within the bounds of reason and sanity to hang up their wingsuit and retire to an armchair, never to again try anything more physically daring than lifting an elbow to pour another scotch. But we never heard Peter Salzmann described as average, and we certainly don't intend to be the first to squeeze him in that box. Depending on your viewpoint, he probably isn't even within the usual boundaries of reason and sanity, either.

So after working with BMW Designworks to successfully develop an electric man-drive to add new directionality to the world of wingsuiting, Salzmann went back to the lab for another first-of-its-kind project. For the past three years, he's been working with fellow wingsuit expert Andreas Podlipnik and the multidiscipline innovators at Red Bull Advanced Technologies to develop a new wingsuit appendage with the goal of increasing (non-powered) flight time, pushing the bar higher for the sport of wingsuiting at large, yet again.

It took the team a full three years and six prototypes to get the formula just right ... or at least right enough to risk life and limb testing it in real world conditions on one of the great mountains of the world. During the process, they used a wind tunnel in Stockholm to test each prototype and small but impactful tweaks thereof.

Salzmann and Podlipnik started by gradually adapting the concept of a hydrofoil to this very different use case. They ultimately created a wearable foil that attaches to the torso, then spent loads of time getting the wing angle and dimensions precisely dialed in. They pulled the Red Bull team in and leaned into their expertise in F1 aerodynamics toward optimizing the foil shape, size, geometry and other parameters.

In the end, the team built out a finalized vacuum-pressed foam-core sandwich wing coupled with 3D-printed hardware. Weighing in at 12 lb (5.45 kg), the complete foil assembly was designed to break down into components so that Salzmann could carry it up mountains. In the air, the 6.9-foot-wide (2.1-m) wing increases lift and improves glide with the intent of lengthening the overall flight distance and time in the air.

Judgement Day: On October 24, Salzmann hiked the foil up Switzerland's famed Jungfrau, one of the big three peaks that tower over the Interlaken region in the Bernese Alps. He stopped at a ledge at 13,330 feet (4,063 m) above sea level, about 300 feet below the mountain's peak. There, he assembled the foil system, secured it in place, made sure his action cam was zeroed in, strapped his helmet on and took a historic leap right off the mountain, free-falling the face of the mountain before straightening out and gliding forward.

Given the one-of-a-kind nature of the aerofoil design, the flight was historic from the word go, but it scrawled its way deeper into the annals of history by breaking three world records. Directly to the point of the mission, Salzmann was able to surge forward for a staggering 7.7 miles (12.5 km) of horizontal distance during the jump, blowing away the previous "farthest distance for a BASE jump" mark of 4.7 miles (7.5 km), set in 2011 on the neighboring Eiger by American Dean Potter. Potter died in a wingsuiting accident in 2015.

All that distance equated to a full 5 minutes and 56 seconds in the air before parachute deployment, setting a world record for the longest BASE jump flight time.

With those two records, Salzmann achieved exactly what he yearned for in extending the breadth of flight time and distance. For comparison, Potter spent 3 minutes 20 seconds in the air on his 4.7-mile wingsuit BASE jump in 2011.

But the record books still weren't closed on Salzmann's jump. He also achieved a third and final record: biggest BASE jump, with an 11,161-foot (3,402-m) altitude drop from initial plunge off the steep, snow-bombed shoulder of the Jungfrau to landing in the lush green village of Lauterbrunnen far below.

It's worth noting that there's a distinction between wingsuit records set from a plane or helicopter and those from earth. Salzmann's BASE jump records relate to the latter, as BASE stands for Building, Antenna, Span (bridge), Earth, and cannot be done from an aircraft by definition.

So while Jhonathan Florez achieved both a longer 16-mile (26-km) wingsuit flight distance and 9-minute air time back in 2012, he did so from an aircraft and started at over 37,000 feet (11,000 m), not a BASE jump. Florez also died in a wingsuit accident in 2015.

Back to Salzmann's jump, dividing the 12.5-km distance by the 3.4-km altitude loss gets you a 3.67 glide ratio, and the value of the foil becomes clear, as it provides more forward glide and more of the sensation of flying.

"With a normal wingsuit, we achieve a good glide ratio of 2.6 to 2.8, maximum 3 – meaning 1 kilometer down, 3 kilometers forward," explained Podlipnik. "With the foil, we can almost double in efficiency, gliding flatter and even further, covering more distance from the same starting point."

And with a near-3.7 glide ratio, you can also wrap your shaking, white knuckles around three freshly inked world records.

It's not yet clear if Salzmann, Podlipnik and the envelope-pushing, energy-canning folks at Red Bull have opened the door to a new discipline of foil-assisted wingsuiting or simply performed an epic one-off feat not to be repeated. But couple extreme athletes' undying drive to push sport further with the somewhat universal, primitive desire to experience something close to the freedom of unassisted human flight, and we suspect someone else will be gunning down those records in the near future, whether it be atop an aerofoil of their own or a different contraption entirely.

Video or it didn't happen: Click play below to watch Salzmann plunge and soar at speeds up to 124 mph (200 km/h) through the jaw-dropping Swiss scenery, not to mention snow flurries, temperatures ranging between 23 and 48 °F (–5 and 9 °C) and winds up to 23 mph (37 km/h).

Source: Red Bull