If you had the typical childhood, the first time most of us get the feeling of flying through the air is on a swing.
With this in mind, the members of the Red Bull Skydive Team wanted to get back to their roots and make an attempt for the world’s longest swing. "We just wanted to go bigger," says Austrian, Marco Waltenspiel, who with fellow skydivers Georg Lettner, Marco Fürst and Dominic Roithmair made this project happen.
The skydive team got two hot air balloons, a 125m long rope with a seat on the end, and climbed to 1,800m and this is what you get – the Mega Swing. Between a height of 1,500 and 2,000 meters, one balloon served as an anchor for the swing, while the skydivers jumped from a second balloon.
As you could imagine, the team required not just perfect weather, but expert hot air balloon pilots. The two balloons had to be exactly at the right distance apart to have the perfect tension in the swing before making the jump.
You can see the Mega Swing in action in the video below.