BBC · Ultimate Killers
Skydiving with a peregrine
Lady, a hot air balloon at 16,000 feet, and 180 miles an hour.
The film
Six months of training for something that has never been repeated.
For BBC Ultimate Killers, Lady chased the presenter Steve Leonard out of a hot air balloon at sixteen thousand feet. She reached a hundred and eighty miles an hour.
Everything about it was difficult. The altitude, the cold, the balloon itself, and then the thing we were actually asking her to do: follow a falling human being through open sky, and come back.
It has never been matched or repeated from a hot air balloon. I will never forget it.
Peregrine in flight.
Watch
Falcon versus skydiver
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Lady.
The training
Six months, one step at a time
You cannot ask a falcon to do this on the day. Every part of it had to be built slowly, and she had to be certain of each step before the next one was added.
A bird will follow something falling if it makes sense to her. Making it make sense — at altitude, in the cold, out of a basket, with a man dropping away beneath her — is the six months.
Get any stage wrong and you do not get a nervous bird. You get a bird that stops offering you the behaviour at all, and then you are finished.
The jump
Sixteen thousand feet
A balloon is not a helicopter. It goes where the air takes it, it is slow to position, and at sixteen thousand feet it is extremely cold and there is not much air to breathe.
Steve Leonard went out of the basket first. Lady went after him.
She caught him. A peregrine in a stoop is the fastest animal on earth, and on that day she was recorded at a hundred and eighty miles an hour — faster than a man falling.
The balloon at altitude.
From the shoot
These two survive only at 300 × 200 on the server, so they are shown small on purpose. The originals would be worth finding.
At a glance
Production
BBC · Ultimate Killers
Bird
Lady, peregrine falcon
Numbers
16,000ft · 180mph · six months
Behind it
Six months
Built one stage at a time. She had to be sure of each step before the next was added.
The presenter
Steve Leonard jumped from the basket. Lady went after him.
Never repeated
Nobody has matched this from a hot air balloon since.
“Something I will never forget, and it has never been repeated.”
Lloyd Buck
Contact
Lloyd Buck
lloyd@lloydbuck.co.uk
077603 90917
Jo Sarsby Personal Management
talks@josarsby.com
Talks and personal appearances
Where we are
North Somerset, United Kingdom.
We travel worldwide for filming.