Swiss adventurer flies across English Channel in a homemade jet

Yves RossyDover , Sept 26 (ANI): A Swiss adventurer, Yves Rossy, successfully made a 22-mile trip across the English Channel with a homemade jet on Friday.

Rossy was schedule to attempt this stunt on Thursday but due to bad weather, visibility deteriorated and he postponed it till today.

He made the trip at more than 8,800 feet from Calais in France to Dover in England in about 12 minutes.

Rossy told CBS News today that this experience was like flying an airplane without the airplane.

Rossy traced the route of French aviator Louis Bleriot, the first person to cross in an airplane 99 years ago, by making this trip over the English Channel.

He touched down in a field near the White Cliffs of Dover.

“It''s not so safe to fly across water if you can''t see,” Rossy told National Geographic Channel in a live television interview on Thursday.

“I don''t have any instruments, and I need to be able to see the landing site,” he added.

He demonstrated his jet wing to the public first time in May this year, where he turned figure eights high above the Alps, performing fluid loops from one side of the Rhone valley to the other.

His jet wing’s carbon composite-wing weighs about 121 pounds with fuel in it, and it can carry four kerosene-burning jet turbines to keep him aloft. Rossy moves his body to control its movements, as it has no steering devices.

To protect himself from the heat of the turbines he wears a heat-resistant suit.

Briton Ken Messenger is recognized as the first to cross the channel in a hang glider, in 1977.

Englishman David Cook was the first to do it in a powered microlight aircraft in 1978, also retracing Bleriot''s route. (ANI)

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