Daredevil French base jumper Fred Fugen has fulfilled a childhood dream by going on a magic carpet ride, though in the Italian Dolomites, rather than the deserts of the Middle East.
It’s a project he’s called Alladin (sic) Skylab, and he’s been prepping for it for over a year, though he has 20 years of experience with paragliding wings, ultralights, hang gliders and wingsuits.
He describes Alladin Skylab as, “a one-year process of testing, base jumping with many different minimal suits and clothes.”
His mission was to create a low-tech minimal base jumping rig that relied solely on the rigidity of his tensed body to maintain its form with no inflatable components.
Having created a rig that he thought was up to the task, he’s spent the last few months testing it out, and finally managed “to domesticate and ride this fury carpet.” Great turn of phrase!
Fugen made 40 training jumps before being ready for what he calls his “masterpiece with this rug,” and teases that there’s “More to come soon!”
The TikTok video below shows the “flight” from a different angle showing the other wingsuiters who helped the film the stunt.
“Magical three-way flying carpet and wingsuit ride in the Italian Dolomites mountains,” writes Fugen. “Now that the real magic carpet got out of its secret Ali Baba cave somewhere in France, we can let us taste and feel the magic of the pinnacle meeting between the very low-tech ancestral minimalist carpet science, and the very high-tech, high-end wingsuit technology…
“Aladdin's point of view was like sparkling stars turning around,” he says, adding, “Wingsuiters view was a dreamy unbelievable surrealistic UFO flying carpet.”
@alladin_skylab ♬ Disney-style fanfare-style BGM - harryfaoki
And just in case you have an old rug and a mountain in the back yard, don’t try this at home, kids!
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