Aerobatic Flying
This Skydive, BASE Jump And Wingsuit Film Is Crazy
The Red Bull Air Force heads to Moab to perform eight aerial disciplines in one continuous sequence.
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Kirby Chambliss buzzes the Audi RS 7
© Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool
Skydiving is pretty awesome, right? Imagine being able to jump out of an airplane, pull your parachute and drift back down to Earth, anytime you wanted. Then, once your skydiving skills got polished, you could jump with a wingsuit and fly like a bird or even start BASE jumping! That’s a whole lot of awesome right there. Which happens to be a great description for the Red Bull Air Force (RBAF), an elite team assembled from the most accomplished and experienced aviation experts on the planet.
So what happens when this highly-skilled, precision-flying crew is tasked with creating their dream project? You get a family of athletes who do more than just step up to the challenge. “What we wanted to do was show every air sports discipline we do on the Red Bull Air Force team and put it into one massive sequence,” says RBAF captain Jon DeVore.
Six months in the making
So, we trust you’re on board with the “whole lot of awesome” description for the RBAF after watching that clip. The sequence shown in the video was the result of over six months of careful research, planning, coordination and rehearsal, which you can learn more about in the behind-the-scenes edit.
Watch Miles Daisher's BASE jump POV video, filmed with a Garmin VIRB:
1 min
Red Bull Air Force Chain Reaction Miles Daisher
See Miles Daisher's POV of the BASE jump off Moab's Fisher Towers.
The players
The video featured skydivers/high-speed parachute flyers Jeff Provenzano and Luke Aikins; wingsuit pilots Jon DeVore, Mike Swanson and Andy Farrington; BASE jumpers Miles Daisher and Charles Bryan; and aerobatic plane pilot Kirby Chambliss, with Sean MacCormac handling coordination from the ground thanks to some precision driving from Rhys Millen in an Audi RS 7.
Approaching part of the Fisher Towers in Moab
© Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool
The setting
The team chose Moab, Utah, as the setting for the undertaking (which is also where Daisher recently completed his 4,000th BASE jump). “Finding the right location for this project was challenging,” says DeVore. “After a lot of research we came to the conclusion that Moab was going to be the perfect location to accomplish our goals. It gave us everything we needed to go from A to Z in this whole sequence.”
Kirby Chambliss: smoke on
© Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool
Safety first
Of course, the project was planned with safety as the number one priority, as is the case with everything the Red Bull Air Force does. “When we first started developing the idea, knowing that so many firsts were going to happen in combining all these disciplines to work together, my biggest concern was how to do it safely,” says DeVore.
“We took a lot of measures to make sure we went into it as safely as possible. Obviously our sport is a bit high-risk, but if you check all the things off your list, you can mitigate that risk and actually make it quite safe.”
Follow the Red Bull Air Force on Instagram and be sure to watch the behind-the-scenes video, too!
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