By Ann Mort
SKYDIVER TRIBUTE TO US FLAG ON FLAG DAY – WORLD RECORD
Skydiver to Jump Ten US Flags in One Day - Largest Flag is 7,800 Square Feet
MIDDLETOWN, OH (June 14, 2012) Today Team Fastrax Skydiver, a US Army Veteran, Dan (Treeman) Aukstikalnis will set a world record skydiving with Ten US Flags in a single day. The largest flag is 7,800 Square Feet, the largest US Flag jumped in the World. Another flag Dan will jump is 3,500 and was handmade by Team Fastrax Skydiver, former US Army Ranger and Purple Heart recipient Gene Newsom. Gene cut out every star and stripe and sewed it together by hand, a sort of Betsy Ross of Skydiving. The flags are enormous and beautiful to see in flight.
Today Dan will skydive with one flag every hour on the hour until sunset. The public is encouraged to come to Start Skydiving at Hook Field Municipal Airport, Middletown, Ohio anytime today and watch this Flag Day tribute. The largest flag will be jumped at 8:00pm/sunset, and the team will attempt to fly 10 flags all at the same time.
On September 11th, 2011 10 skydivers, including Dan Aukstikalnis from Ohio-based Team Fastrax, jumped from an airplane over Hook Field Municipal Airport, Middletown, Ohio and deployed and flew 10 giant U.S. flags. The tribute was designed to honor the courage of the people who acted in the face of their own peril, the police and firefighters who lost their lives and participated in evacuations of the twin towers, and the courage of the people on flight 93 in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.
The skydivers are from Team Fastrax Professional Skydiving Team, based in Middletown, Ohio. Since the inception of Team Fastrax in 2001, they have performed nearly 1,000 exhibition skydives as far away as Moscow, Russia and Normandy, France. The team has also jumped over balloon festivals, air shows, NASCAR, Indy Car, symphony performances, golf courses, amusement parks, mall parking lots, tennis courts, Red Bull Air Races and Veteran support events.
