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Super Cessna 195 at the Mullins Fleet
West Tennessee Skydiving has added a Super Cessna 195 to their fleet. This is a great skydiving aircraft and will carry five jumpers to 12,500 feet in 14 minutes. It is equipped with a sliding lexan door (like the King Air), a large step, and floater handles.
This Cessna was originally equipped with a 275 HP Jacobs engine, but has been retrofitted with a supercharged Pratt and Whitney 450 h.p. radial engine with a 3-bladed propeller. This Cessna 195 was previously on station at Air Adventures of Clewiston and Skydive Monterey Bay, FL. It is one of only two such aircraft currently flying. The other is flying jumpers in Clewiston.
The aircraft is owned and operated by their associate, David Paschal. Dave is a commercial pilot, A&P, Senior Rigger, and Skydiver. He will be maintaining the C-195 under F.A.R. Part 91. The Super Cessna is available on weekends that the King Air is out of town.
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Icarus EXTreme VX '46' flown by Luis Cani
by Simon Mundell, Icarus Canopies
The smallest canopy ever successfully flown and landed was jumped five times yesterday (24 July) at Skydive Elsinore by Luis (Luigi) Cani. As far as we are aware, the previous world record for the smallest canopy was an EXTreme FX 58 flown by Charlie Mullins and Christopher Irwin.
Yesterday's jumps were in preparation for a canopy speed world record that Luigi is intending to achieve later this week. Luigi intends to vertically 'out-fly' freefall speed and set a new horizontal speed record.
The canopy is being flown at a wing loading of 3.5, and Luigi says he is comfortable with the canopy's flight and landing characteristics and is particularly impressed with the amount of lift that the canopy is able to generate.
Please note: The VX46 project has undergone testing both in-house and by Luigi to ensure that this was able to be achieved as safely as possible. Luigi is a highly experienced canopy pilot and an Icarus test pilot. Jumping a canopy of this size should not be attempted by anyone who does not have approval directly from the manufacturer. 46 square feet! Who would have thought? Parachute technology has come a long way!
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Parachutists Claim World Record for Unaided Flight
On Friday, July 20, in Den Helder, Netherlands, seven skydivers set a new world record in unaided human flight. After being dropped from a jump plane at a height of 15,000 feet, the group of parachutists soared laterally approximately 2,5 miles from an island in the North Sea to the mainland.
Reportedly, this was the first time that humans had traveled such a distance in unaided flight. The seven skydivers, ranging in age from 30 to 50 years old, wore special experimental Birdman suits with webbed arms and legs which assisted them in gliding forward at speeds up to 90 mph.
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US Government Bans BASE Jumping in Parks
On July 24, a federal appeals court ruled that the government can legally outlaw BASE jumping in national parks. The 1997 convictions of 12 BASE enthusiasts who had jumped near Lake Powell in Arizona's Glen Canyon Recreation Area, were upheld. The ruling also upheld disorderly conduct charges for each of the 12 jumpers, and each received a fine of nearly $1,000 for their illegal 1995 jumps.
The court ruling also affirmed that federal statutes outlawing BASE jumping were not "vague" as had been alleged by the twelve convicted jumpers. This ruling came only months after BASE jumper Jan Davis plunged to her death at Yosemite National Park while protesting the government's ban on BASE jumping.