Do you know of a luckier person?

I would choose some lottery numbers now,unless of course he has used up all his luck.

wow! lucky boy !
if god had wanted us to fly he would have given us.............springs to mind.

This guy is about as lucky as the skydiver:

Short 10 sec video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWxoqZOgLTc&mode=related&search=

Ooh, now that is lucky!

Surely there is only one type of person luckier than somebody whose parachute does not open when diving from a plane and that is someone whose parachute does open when diving from a plane.

This must come close.

Mark

Now I know why I decline offers to go skydiving.

quote:

Originally posted by Chillkram:
This must come close.

FYI In case anyone thinks that skydiving and paragliding are the same thing, they are not. Whilst I don't do either (I fly gliders/sailplanes) I suspect that the paragliding world champs in Oz at the mo when the pilot was lifted to 32,000' is very much to do with flying long distance rather than jumping out of a plane and enjoying the ride till the 'chute opens.

To do this (cover distance) you need to win height by flying in rising currents of air (Same as with a 'normal' glider. Neither have motors and fly 'downhill' all the time.) Australia is well known in gliding circles for having very (Very) good weather conditions for this, but most nice summer days in most any country you will get small cumulus clouds which are an indicator of rising air. However, these can also grow into thunder clouds given the right atmospheric conditions.

The pilot(s) in Mark's link (paragliding) knew full well what was happening, it didn't 'just happen.' Gliders also fly under/near cumulus clouds and the rising air under a well developed cumulus cloud can reach speads of 7-10m/s, probably a bit more under a thunder cloud. This is not good if you are in that rising air and don't want to be there. With a glider you have what are known as air brakes, which spoil the performance of the glider meaning it sinks at, say, 5m/s. This still gives a nett 'up' of a few m/s. The other trick we have is that a glider can fly at somewhere over 200km/tim in a dive, so we just fly out of the way (Hopefully before getting too far up in the cloud and loosing control... But that's another story). A paraglider does not have these advantages, so if you choose the wrong cloud to fly under, you become a passenger. I think that the luckiest thing about her flight in the cloud was that her paraglider did not collapse as its shape is maintained by the flow of air through/over it.

32,000' is only a bit over the height of Everest (29,000'), which has been climbed (ie hard work, over a long period of time) without suplementary oxygen so 32,000 not necessarily an issue for a passive individual for a short period of time.

/dl