Before we get started. Does anyone want to get out?
We're here in Georgia, USA. At the Atlanta Motorsports Park.
Hey guys, I'm The Hacksmith and today i'm learning how to fly like Iron Man.
Richard Browning from Gravity Industries invited me out his jet suit and actually learn to fly.
And I think, there he is right now.
Richard: Hey good to see you.
James: Can't wait to try.
Richard: That's what this is all for.
This is going to be a great step forward beyond Camarillo. Where you did a great job jumping around.
This is going to be a huge help. You can learn in complete comfort.
James: Alright.
Richard: Let's get to training.
Richard: Okay so what I want to do now is show you the suit you are going to be wearing.
And we've got it tucked away in here.
James: Ohh the grand reveal.
This is the new one?
Richard: This is the entirely 3D printed one.
Okay so here's the harness.You put your arms through that.
And then you actually clip the suit into the harness.
We've got a fight book log book.
Welcome to flight training.
This is a way for you to log all of your activities.
This is the comments where you actually fill out where you feel the most impact on your body.
Where you fell the most impact from the suit.
What's going right, what's going wrong.
Good luck.
James: Thank you.
Chris: See you out there.
Okay, so you've got the harness on. We're now going to clip you into the suit.
Get the shoulder ones in.
In the early days I used to do all this myself at some of the events.
It is quite nice to feel like to administer most of it yourself.
Right, we're pretty good to go.
What we're going to do is pre-set the power level on the suit.
So when you pull the trigger in it gives you the maximum power that we have pre-set.
The way we teach people is we give you a modest amount of power.
Just to start to feel the throttle response
You want to be able to feel that there is some thrust there.
To start to feel the action and reaction and the balance.
I fully anticipate you'll be quite bored at that stage, like I want more power.
Richard: seventy per cent power
James: Of my weight.
Richard: For what we think he needs to fly with.
Rather than seventy per cent power of the suit.
James: Alright, so i'm all suited up and i'm ready for my first test flight.
On the tether system.
I'm super excited, little bit nervous. My heart's pounding a little bit.
But i'm going to realize a dream today and that's to fly like Iron Man.
Richard: That was great.
James: At first it was just like ah power.
But then when I rolled and looked up it was just like, oh.
Richard: You just put your weight over it.
Riley: How you feeling?
James: Pretty awesome. We're going to turn up the power.
get some more gas in the pack.
I'm going to hover.
Richard: Yeah that was lovely to see your face. We could all kind of see you just clicked with that.
At the moment you are at an awesome trajectory.So let's keep that going.
He's on about eighty per cent.
Richard: Now I think, you've don a lot of back to back goes.
You can come out of and take a little break.
That's looking really good.
Just need a bit more power.
To let him jump around without a tether.
Which I've not really ever done hardly ever before with anybody.
It was on very low power but still it's enough to throw you on the floor and wreck our equipment.
And possibly hurt him a little bit.
But I had a belief in him that he knew what he was doing and he's showing that that was a good hunch.
So let's see how he keeps going.
It's tiring.
I've been with gravity for twenty-nine years and it's really hard to just let go.
Richard: You're forward back thing is sorted.
James: yeah it's getting better.
James: Alright, let review some of the footage.
Richard: Reviewing this really helps
Because you have't seen this yet, right.
Richard: Yeah your body position really good here.
You're not leaning too far back. You're not too upright.
You're starting to feel that stability as the power comes in.
Now you are drifting slightly back. That just simply because those arms need to move backwards a tiny bit.
James: See there is, I probably could have seen the ground beyond and been like, ahhh.
Richard: It's really good though. I think there is something about trusting that tether.
But that's still awesome progress.
There's so many things that usually at this stage people are doing like rotating.
Swinging all over the place.
James: yeah, yesterday I noticed people by like; okay full power.
Richard: You've just by passed all of that.
Write some comments to yourself because it actually means that you can look back
And see that you were struggling with at different stages and see how you've overcome that.
Alright so I feel like part of my mental block is i'm not,
Mentally trusting the tether system.
So i'm going to get Marshall to pull me up a bit and i'm actually going to practice hanging.
And realize, oh yeah i'm not going to fall.
After seeing the crash footage that Richard showed me yesterday of falling off platforms.
I'm just like, I don't want to do that.
It's there.
James: Alright so i'm getting so close to that hover
I don't know my feel just don't want to leave the ground.
Richard: It's probably better to show you rather than describe it.
James: It's like turning on no clip in video games.
I didn't really realize it but I've dreamed of being able to do this and now the technology exists.
I can't wait to fly.
James: I was feeling a lot more fatigued there.
Richard: I can see your arms getting tired.
James: When I fall down I always bend my arms.
Alex: I think you're doing what I used to do where you're letting go of the trigger and you think the thrust has basically dropped.
So you let your arms relax a little bit and they just fight you.
Alex: So at the moment it looks like your fighting it a little bit.
It's just a lot easier , you can hold this position for a lot longer than you can hold this.
Alright that was way better.
We dropped it back down to like sixty-five seventy per cent power.
So I can get the feel for it again
Because the very first time I tried back in California
Without a tether system.
I was able to hop no problem. I wasn't scared of going forwards and back
But now with the tether system at full power i'm like, oh no I might do that.
So we dropped it back to the sixty-five per cent. Tried it. Felt good
Eighty-seven per cent. Take two.
James: I really think that tether was messing me up.
Ian: The tether was definitely.
James: The entire freaking time.
James: So what we just did there was, we had the tether super loose but we back the power of the suit.
Back down to sixty or seventy per cent.
And it worked pretty good.
We started at I think seventy per cent and then I did a few hops. It wasn't to bad.
And then we cranked to like eighty per cent.
And then they got it all the way up to eighty-seven per cent.
And at that point it was this close to lifting me off the ground but it was still kind of messing me up.
Because it wasn't enough power I had to try and jump.
The problem is when you try and jump, your instinct is you're falling.
This next time. We're going to crank it up to I think straight to ninety-seven, a hundred per cent.
And we're going to try it again but try basically just raising and lowering my arms.
And hopefully just having my feet lift off.Come back down.
And stay up.
So hopefully that works.
Dropped power.
Seventy per cent.
Eighty-seven per cent.
Hops.
Full power.
James: Alright so i'm so close. I feel like I just need a little bit more power.
Ian: No man, you're taking forever. It's my turn. Give me a hundred per cent throttle let's go.
James: Might be fun to watch I guess.
Ian: Hundred per cent let's go.
Richard: We'll go up there. I'll hold the arms, just to give you a bit of a break.
Over the top. Hold them about here. And then just play with that trigger.
If you feel massively out of shape, let go of the trigger immediately.
Richard: This is a cool process you can feel them all firing up.
You've got a nice slow motion horizontal spin.
How was that?
Ian: It was good.
James: I thought you were going to fly?
I gotta say you did better than I thought you would.
Ian: the ankles felt a bit warm.
James: It's kind of weird how i'm wearing your pants, you're wearing Evan's pants and Evan is wearing your pants.
He ended up flying like a t-rex.
Ian: To do it properly. You want to start out and then get the full throttle
And then bring it down.
But they're pretty heavy. So getting it up there is hard.
I'm a rock climber. So I train pulling I don't train pushing.
I never do this motion.
By the end of it i couldn't lift them.
Riley: This is it your big moment. This is a hundred per cent power. You are going to fly.
Riley: You can do it.
Richard: So that last flight was awesome.
You made such consistent progress throughout the day.
James: I was so close.
Richard: I think there's a few things.
One is with this belay system. I do think there's probably more sponge in the rope.
It's not a complete climbing rope but it's go a bit of that flexibility.
So I think that that means my guys have got to keep you quite tight.
And yet that's pulling you slightly off balance.
I think that makes the learning more difficult than it would otherwise be.
But otherwise. I mean, your stability and control. You weren't rotating significantly.
You were drifting back a little bit.
James: I'm not even sure if I spun out once.
Richard: I think there is one other things as well around.
Everybody that does this brings something new to the table.
You've seen loads of people try buts of this now. Even after one or two goes you can see how they all bring a different style to it.
There's something about your tip toes wanting to stay firmly rooted to that stage.
And you can see there's a few occasions where you are just about to come off and they obviously were giving you some purchase.
Because when that come away you then change orientation and your legs swing back.
James: And then that messes up your whole body position.
Richard: It might be because of the tether.
But we might need to work on a way for you to feel comfortable leaning into it.
And where you legs. like with my little demo. Where you legs just drift off effortlessly.
What other flying device can you think of that you can learn to fly within.
James: A few days.
Richard: There was a noise limitation and I have to say we've now consumed our way through that.
And yeah we're kind of at the end of the tether in that sense.
James: So no more flights.
Richard: Not today unfortunately.
Wherever we got to, you're always going to want more. That's for sure.
James: So close.
Richard: Camarillo was part one. This is part two.
There's going to have to be a part 3.
James: Part three in London maybe.
Richard: I would love have you back. Somewhere in London, at our training place or somewhere else where we are flying.
James: A secret location in London.
Richard: Yeah exactly
Richard: It's been a pleasure. You've done awesome and I look forward to the next time.
Basically it's a challenge medal
James: That's awesome.
Richard: We had them done in 2017 and there's only a limited run at these things.
We're never going to get them done again.
Tome Cruise has got on. A whole bunch of crazy people around the world have got those things.
James: The human propulsion company.
Yeah I can almost fly.
The truth is. I am Iron Man.