Birdman flies across Channel
By Emmanuel Peuchot in Calais
31jul03
A 34-year-old Austrian mechanic today became the first person to fly across the English Channel without the benefit of an aircraft, gliding from England to France wearing only a specially designed suit.
"I felt like a bird," said skydiver Felix Baumgartner, after jumping from a plane high over the English port of Dover and then gliding on a wing attached to his body to a point above the French coast, where he activated a parachute.
"At this altitude it's perfect because you see the sunrise, you're totally alone," he said, after a flight which was held in the early morning to avoid air traffic control problems.
"I covered the whole distance with just a little wing, it was great," he enthused.
To launch him on his high-speed glide, Baumgartner was taken up from the French port of Calais in a Skyvan aircraft, from which he jumped from high above Dover.
He started his unusual journey from a point some 9000m over the English port of Dover at 6:09am (1409 AEST), and ended it 1000m above Cape Blanc-Nez, near Calais, where he landed at 6:23 am.
Baumgartner, who reached a speed of about 200kph an hour during his glide, was wearing an aerodynamic suit fitted with a 1.80m long carbon-fibre wing for the 35km glide.
He also had special breathing apparatus for the high-altitude start of the flight, and was protected from the extreme cold at such heights by his special suit.
Air traffic controllers had granted him a 30-minute window - from 5:45 to 6:15 am - to make his jump, scheduling the event for early morning to avoid problems with conventional air traffic.
"Louis Bleriot did it with a plane, now I did it with a little wing," he said, referring to the French aviator who in July 1909 became the first person to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine.
Baumgartner's mission was named Icarus 2 after the mythical figure who came to grief after flying too near the sun, which melted the wax holding together his wings.
The Austrian has a long track record of daredevil jumps. He has leapt from the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro, one of the two Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur - the tallest buildings in the world - and the top of a mountain in Baffin Island, in Canada.
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