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Okay, Max, 4,500 feet. Spot is looking good. LUKE AIKINS:3500. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] LUKE:Nope. Are you good? MAN 1:Yeah, he missed, he's below you. LUKE:Okay, copy. I see one canopy. MAX MANOW:Okay, let's reset, I'll try again. If I didn't have to land and could be towed up by an airplane, this would open up a whole lot of new opportunities. When Max asked if I could tow him on a plane, I thought he might be a little crazy.
Max wanted to attach a hook to the bottom of the airplane. MAX:If I could physically endure the climb out of the canyon and back to a high enough altitude, I could unclip myself and skydive again. In theory, I could repeat this over and over, an endless skydive. The first time I did this, I was so nervous, I missed the handle twice. I was like, "Do I really want to do this?" Approaching the plane was so hard. There's so many things to look out for. The first time I was able to attach to the handle, it was so difficult.
The airflow was very different, it was throwing me around, I had to learn a lot of different ways of flying. What I can practice here is how I fly with a plane, underneath a plane, how I have the ability to move around without getting unstable. Working on my transitions, belly to back, they're going to be pretty important for the project. Asymmetric flying, so I free up my hands to grab the handle and connect myself. Overall, just building skill and feeling comfortable. There's a lot of things I cannot control, a lot of things that are difficult to predict.
It's a lot about the collaboration between the pilot, Luke, and myself. -How are you, man? -It's so funny. You were in Sweden just the other day, right? Yeah, two days ago. MAX:We're here in Page, Arizona. We're going to do some testing today, see if it all works out the way we want it. You'll be able to fly up and grab it or clip in, you know, however you want to do it. -I'm really interested to see. -Me too.
LUKE:This project has brought a bunch of unique challenges. There's a lot going on. We're flying into a canyon. There's a lot of risks that you don't have when you're normally flying. We're doing something that hasn't necessarily been done before. First time trying it, so let's see what happens. LUKE:Until we do one, we don't really know. MAX:There are multiple challenges for me, but the very first challenge is to get together with Luke, so to actually meet him in the sky.
It's all about trust. It's really important for me that Luke talks to me all the time. A little bit steeper. MAX:And then, I have to turn on my back without losing any altitude. Spot's looking great, you're 5000 above the ground. MAX:And then I have to fly close to the handle, position myself, and then grab it. LUKE: Oh, I guess, you're going to hang on. All right, I'm going to pull up a little bit and check it out.
LUKE: Oh, all right. See ya. MAX: The next step will be to go up again, and then I'm actually going to connect myself, so I have a hook. so I can hook up to him. Yeah, Luke. LUKE: I was like, "I guess, he's going to grab on." MAX: That handle is awesome. Cool, man, thank you. -The handle worked good? -Yeah, it was really nice. I'd be curious to see what it's like if I'm hooked up, because it'll sit much lower. -Lower, yep. -Jump two. MAX: I added the hook, so potentially I'm going to hook myself up to the plane with Luke.
MAX:The wingsuit performs more or less the same on the belly than it does on the back. But everything that I do with my body changes the way the wingsuit flies. And the closer I get, the more I have to anticipate grabbing the handle. Once I was hooked in, it was good. And then I was also happy that I could release it. -Nice, huh? -That was awesome, man. LUKE:I thought you could just test it one time, it worked. We need to be able to repeat this over and over again, and then we can start adjusting our altitudes and bringing it down and start focusing on our narrow flight path that we're going to do.
We just need to get smooth and consistent, so it becomes second nature for Max and me and muscle memory for all the parts. So then when we raise the risk level by going down closer to the ground, we are comfortable. I'll do this all night to train. LUKE:This is the brake that deploys down, and it allows us to go the same speed as the wingsuit in the vertical dive. When you hooked on, I felt it. MAX:It felt much faster to me. I did a bit of a rush attempt and couldn't hold on. LUKE:If Max hooks on, and his parachute starts to open and puts the plane into an uncontrollable position, I would need to be able to get out.
I would hit this button right here that would drop Max off, it would cut his handle away, and then I'd be out right behind him. We're about to do something that I don't know -that anybody's ever done before. -Yeah. I mean, we're going to fly below the Earth with a wingsuit and an airplane. MAX:We always thought about this idea, but we didn't really know what to do with it. And we saw this canyon. The idea was to fly together with a plane into the canyon.
I turn on my back, connect myself to the plane, and get pulled out of the canyon. LUKE:.Two miles, we're about 27. LUKE: With super narrow walls closing in on each side, Max only has about five seconds to hook in, or he won't be able to land safely.
It's extremely difficult to, kind of, get a feel for how much altitude we have, what is the distance across. If we didn't have a laser, we'd probably think like, "Oh, this is all too low." But we know the numbers. [BOTH LAUGHING] MAX: Woo-hoo-hoo! Sick! I think, from here, it looks like he's going to crash into the back wall, but I know that he's in the center.
LUKE:It'll be exciting, fellas. That was pretty exciting already, man. LUKE:I'm going to basically do that same thing again, you guys are just going to wingsuit with me, right? Exactly. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] [WHIRRING] MAX:This canyon is super narrow. Attaching myself to Luke's plane and flying back out will be incredibly difficult. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] MAN 2:Ten seconds. LUKE:Okay, now I'm going to hold this position. MAN 3:Five, four, three, two, one, break.
Max is away. Marco is away. Okay, Max, 4500 feet. Spot's looking good. 3,500. Go, Max. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] MAX:That was a pretty wild one. Let's go again. LUKE:So close, man. We almost got it. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] MAX:Hooking onto the plane is difficult enough, but being towed out of a canyon to a height where I can skydive again safely is an unknown.
I don't know how physically hard it will be. LUKE:20 seconds. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] LUKE: Okay, I am entering the canyon now. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] LUKE:Jumpers away. MAN 4:Copy that. LUKE:4000 feet, Max. We're looking good. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] All right, I'm looking good here. 3000. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING]
MAX: I'm on. On, on, on, on. LUKE:Hooked on. Break coming up. Pulling up. Pulling up now. MAX: Yes, boys. Have fun up there. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] LUKE:1000 feet. Pulling up. MAN 5:That's a crazy perspective from here. LUKE:Okay, it's 2,500 feet now before you have enough altitude to safely open your parachute. [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] LUKE:Good altitude. We're over the middle of the canyon. Oh-ho-ho-ho. We are climbing. We're on to altitude. You're 2000 feet above the bottom.
Making a right-hand turn. Your left. Climbing hard. So you are 2500 feet against the bottom. [ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING] Yeah! Whoo! LUKE:Back to help us. MAX:I don't really know what this will bring into the future of the sport, but the idea was to create an endless skydive. Who knows where that takes us? Yeah, man.
