Dutch mechanical engineer Jarno Smeets manages to fly around 100 meters into the sky with his self-built bird wings.
Jarno “human bird wings” Smeets
In the Dutch TV show DWDD Jarno “human birdwings” Smeets revealed his secret. His name is not Jarno, but Floris, and his video is a hoax. Floris had been planning his viral video project to investigate the online media months ago and hyped it with some interesting video clips and tweets.
A lot of international media like Wired, TechCrunch, the Discovery Channel, the Financial Times FoxNews paid attention to his amazing story. “The custom-made wings were built using — get this — two Wii controllers, the accelerometers from a HTC Wildfire S smartphone and Turnigy motors. The actual wing structure consists of lightweight fabric taken from a kite and carbon windsurf masts (as flightpins), which Smeets stiched together himself. Altogether the material weighed a mere 37 ounces”.
A nicely orchestrated hoax Floris!