Angelo d'Arrigo

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Angelo d'Arrigo (born April 3, 1961 in Catania , † March 26, 2006 in Comiso ) was an Italian paraglider and hang-glider pilot and a bird watcher . He became known for his spectacular flight projects in which he accompanied flocks of birds with his microlight aircraft , conquered the Himalayas with a hang-glider , flew over the highest mountain in the Andes ( Aconcagua ) and crossed the Sahara and the Mediterranean together with an eagle .

Angelo d'Arrigo with cranes

Life

Angelo d'Arrigo was the son of a French mother and a Sicilian father. When he observed a hang-glider at the age of six, it was clear to him that he would also learn to fly a hang-glider. However, he kept his intentions and flight training hidden from his worried parents until he came of age. He completed a sports degree at the Université du Sport de Paris . He then worked in Catania, Sicily, as a ski instructor, mountain guide and instructor for hang gliding and paragliding. With the hang glider he flew higher, further and longer than any other person before. He was twice world champion in extreme flying, he was the winner of many flying competitions. Posthumously, he received the Laureus World Sports Award as Alternative Sportsman of the Year 2006.

"Metamorphosis"

After crashing into a 20,000 volt high-voltage power line, he fractured a vertebra from the hard landing. He was paralyzed from the pressure on his spinal cord below the hip for six months and didn't know if he could ever walk again. This accident changed his attitude towards flying: after his medical rehabilitation he tried to imitate the flight of birds as best as possible. That meant the skillful and instinctive use of the thermals and the air currents - without any technical aids. Since 2000, he has called this new beginning programmatically Metamorphosis , the transformation of humans into bird-men. D'Arrigo watched the eagles picking up the air currents. To practice this instinctive flight behavior, he used the extreme wind conditions over Mount Etna . In 2001 he made a spectacular flight over the Sahara and the Mediterranean to Sicily together with the eagle Nike .

D'Arrigo also changed his life goal, he now devoted his flying skills to the conservation of threatened bird species . In the summer of 2003 he flew in an microlight in front of a flock of wild cranes from the Arctic Circle to the Caspian Sea . He wanted to show this endangered migratory bird species a new hiking trail. In order to stamp it on himself , he pulled a bird mask over his arm.

His attempt to replicate a model aircraft that Leonardo da Vinci had designed in 1510 was more technically motivated . In collaboration with an architect and several engineers, he used various materials that were not yet available in da Vinci's time and that were supposed to reduce weight and thus improve flight ability: aluminum tubes instead of wood for the frame and synthetic fibers instead of linen for the covering. A flight test in the wind tunnel confirmed the flightability of the model.

For two years he trained on Mount Etna with the two Nepalese steppe eagles Chumi and Gaijy from the zoos in London and Moscow in order to prepare for the overflight of the Himalayan mountains. Extreme cold temperatures down to −50 ° C, a lack of oxygen, updrafts on Mount Everest and the " jet stream ", a wind at almost 9,000 m altitude with up to 200 km / h, was successfully conquered by D'Arrigo in 2004 thanks to meticulous preparation.

At the beginning of 2006 it flew over the Aconcagua , which is the highest mountain in America, at a maximum height of 7,400 m . Angelo prepared meticulously for the challenge. For example, he completed running training in his home on Mount Etna , with a mask filtering some of the oxygen from the air he breathed in order to simulate the altitude. In addition, he trained himself a special breathing technique in which the pressure in the lungs is increased. This enabled him to cross the Aconcagua without additional oxygen.

Before his death, Angelo d'Arrigo could no longer fulfill his dream of flying over the Andes with the Andean condors . His two condors, Inca and Maya, which he raised for this purpose, were released by his widow in South America in the summer of 2006.

crash

Angelo d'Arrigo died on March 26, 2006 at 11:30 am at an air show in Comiso in Sicily on a disused air force base.

Together with the former F-104 pilot of the Italian Air Force and demo pilot of the company Sky Arrow (Trieste), General Giulio De Marchis, he fell in the two-seater ultra -light aircraft Sky Arrow 650 TNT from a height of 200 m into an olive grove. The two pilots, who were among the most experienced light flight pilots in Italy, died on the spot. The Ragusa public prosecutor's office investigated the cause of the accident. D'Arrigo left behind his wife Laura Mancuso, two sons and a daughter.

Flight projects

  • 2001: Following the Hawks : with peregrine falcons from the Sahara to Northern Europe
  • 2002: Siberian Migration : from the Arctic Circle to the Caspian Sea with a school of Siberian cranes
  • 2004: Over Everest : on the hiking route of Nepalese steppe eagles over Mount Everest
  • 2005: El vuelo del Condor : on the trail of the condor over the Andes
  • In 2007 he planned the flight over Antarctica and over the 5,500 m high Mount Wilson

Filmography

literature

  • Angelo d'Arrigo: The Secret of the Eagles. How I learned to rule the skies. Munich: Malik 2005, 368 pages, 60 color photos ISBN 3-89029-296-8
  • John Daniszewski: "Hang Glider to Pilot Cranes" , Reflections Monthly Magazine, Vol. 25, December 25, 2002 (about the crane project)

See also

Web links

Wikiquote: Angelo d'Arrigo  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E 'morto Angelo d'Arrigo il deltaplanista dei record. la Repubblica.it, March 26, 2006, accessed December 8, 2010 (Italian).
  2. ↑ Reflections..Volume 25 No 25 Nov-Dec 2002 ...... Miscellaneous ........ Hang Glider to Pilot Cranes ( Memento from April 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Arrigo, Angelo d '
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian paraglider pilot, hang-glider pilot, ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Catania
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 2006
Place of death Comiso , Sicily