Kildare brothers gearing up for incredible skydiving world record attempt next weekend

A couple of brothers from Rathcoffey are currently preparing to take on a number of terrifying world record attempts as they plan on jumping from a plane at 35,000 feet and essentially flying over 25km across the west coast of America next weekend.

Stephen and David Duffy will be joined by Armagh man Mark Daly as they take on the daring skydiving feet where they will use wingsuits after exiting a plane and they plan on flying for about 26km at speeds of up to 300kmh. That would break the world record for wingsuit travel, but there are plenty of dangers involved with such a daring jump.

The brothers will need to wear oxygen masks to ensure they can breath in the thin atmosphere, where they will be planning to stay as high as they can for as long as they can to travel as far as possible.

“Your breathing is restricted because you’ve pressured oxygen all the way to your lungs,” Stephen Duffy told thejournal.ie.

“So I’m told it’s a very off-putting experience, or if not off-putting then it feels strange, it doesn’t feel normal. So it can put you in a bad head space if you don’t have the right mindset.”

"It’ll be in excess of -57 degrees and we’ll be travelling at an average speed of 200-220 km/h which will give us a wind chill factor of about -97 degrees."

The three men will undertake 10 jumps over the next five days in California to prepare for the task at hand, using the oxygen masks from 18,000 to get use to them.

The team have a specific reason for wanting to fly the 26km distance next Sunday, as they plan to use wingsuits to get across the Irish Sea from Ireland to Scotland next September, a distance of around 22km at the closest point between the two countries.

"On September 2018 we plan on flying from the north of Ireland across the Irish Sea to Scotland and the closest point is 22km and that’s why we have set out goal as we must get about 26km to make sure we get all the water."

Leaving on Sunday, Stephen said he has had a couple of nightmares, but they have the technology and have taken precautions to make sure things run smoothly stateside.

“The temperature is what gets to me, I’d be afraid that even if you have no issues during the jump if you can’t open your parachute at the end because you can’t move your hands you have an issue. ”

"Now we do have computers in our parachutes that, if we don’t open before 1,000 feet, it throws itself out itself. So we have a back-up but unfortunately only activates at a certain speed," he said.