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Throw Papa from the Plane

Dr. Harry Hart is given a surprise by his children on Christmas Eve, 1998.  They arrive in convoy from Corona, CA to Lake Elsinore, CA and pull up to a large assemblage of trailers and covered areas.  Two signs greet visitors on the approach.  One read "Self-Storage" and the other "Skydive".  Duly noting that we had brought nothing to enter into storage, Dr. Hart concluded that his children did indeed intend to see him leap out of a perfectly good airplane.  Though at this point he could be none too sure, as his grandchildren had been enlisted to help divert his attention from the real surprise at hand, dropping hints as wide ranging as bungee jumping and having him launched out of a cannon.  You see, Papa has long dreamed of flight, but that's another story.

So Dr. Hart is suited up in a wonderfully fluorescent outfit and loaded into one of the two Otter aircraft, and taken to 13,000 feet, where he and his instructor leap in tandem from the plane and descend to roughly 8,000 feet in freefall before deploying the main chute.   To top it all off, there was a videographer jumping with them, and hartbrothers.com has clips from that video at the bottom of this page.  The photos below were taken by the videographer as well, who had a 35mm camera attached to his helmet with a blow tube to activate the shutter. 

Click on any image to download a full size version.(approx. 70kb each)

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"I might have guessed my kids would have gotten me a new woodworking tool for Christmas, but this...Gee you guys really shouldn't have."

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They never said not to look down.  You mean jump NOW?

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Freefall.  The lead chute was deployed almost immediately.

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Terminal velocity might not be as comfortable as you expect.

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"The view would be great, except that my goggles pushed my glasses up on my face to the point that I was watching the ground come at me through plus two bifocals."

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See the video of Dr. Hart leaping from the plane:  (467KB) Download video 1 AVI format

See the video of Dr. Hart's main parachute opening: (911KB) Download video 2 AVI format

See the video of Dr. Hart's landing:   (594KB) Download video 3 AVI format

See screenshots from this video!

If you have problems viewing these videos, it might help to know they are encoded with Intel Indeo Video 4.5.  

Special Thanks goes out to the folks at Skydive Elsinore for making this possible.  Stop by their website, or if you're ever in Southern California, drop by their drop zone to try skydiving yourself.

another Brady Web

bradyhart@hartbrothers.com

 

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