As a child, you probably enjoyed sitting on a swing seat in your back garden or in a playground and trying to get as high up in the air as you could perhaps with the help of one of your parents pushing you. You may well have got to a height of 3 or 4 feet off the ground.
Well, you may be interested to read that four skydivers from the Red Bull Skydiving Team have recently completed the longest swing in the world with the help of a very long rope and a couple of hot air balloons. In fact, the rope was actually 125 metres in length – a little longer than the ones used with garden swings!
The rope was attached to one of the hot air balloons and the skydivers were in the other hot air balloon in which the swing seat was placed having been attached to the other end of the rope. Apparently, the two hot air balloons were taken to a height of 1,800 metres with both remaining at the same height and were also kept a certain distance apart that must have been difficult to achieve.
One of the skydivers then sat on the swing seat that was balanced on the edge of the hot air balloon’s basket before releasing themselves into the air no doubt making a rapid freefall descent before the rope went tight and the swinging motion then came into play. The skydiver had a red flare attached to their ankle and during the whole process he reached a speed of in excess of 100km per hour.
However, not content to make a gradual descent sitting on the swing attached to the hot air balloon, the skydiver then vacated the seat mid-air to skydive to safety on the ground doing a few flips on the way down. Congratulations to those skydivers for completing the world’s longest swing.
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