Being a flying squirrel - the latest danger sport

After clambering up the 1,500-metre-high mountain, JT Homes stands perched at the top, looking down. It's a vertiginous view which would have most people scuttling back to safety. Not JT. He opens his arms, lets the wind catch his wingsuit and throws himself off - knowing that the flaps of material between his arms and legs will make him soar like a bird.

Welcome to the testosterone-fuelled world of wingsuit flying - an extreme skydiving sport.

"Wingsuit flying is fun, it's rewarding and it's a little bit scary," says American ace JT. "It feels almost superhuman. Like you're the master of the mountain."

Hailed as the closest thing there is to flying like a bird, wingsuit flying is taking off here in Dubai, which has been named as one of the most breathtaking drop zones in the world.

But if you're reading this and thinking, "That's for me!", first take a deep breath and look at the small print. You're going to needto do around 200 to 300 successful skydivejumps first.

The other thing you'll need to do is abandon all sense of sartorial pride, as your wingsuit is basically going to make you look like a flying squirrel. True, the design has been made easier on the eye over the years, but with all those webs of material between your extremities and also linking your wrists to your waist, this is not a look you'll be wearing out to dinner or a party any time soon. It's a small price to pay, however, for what has been described as the most exhilarating adrenaline sport ever invented.

Steadily gaining popularity over the past decade, wingsuit flying is arguably the greatest gift to thrill-seekers there has ever been.

"When I first saw a wingsuit - a home-made one, which a guy had made from a wetsuit -I knew I wanted one," says Californian Jeb Corliss, the biggest name in wingsuit flying. "It was 1998, I was base-jumping with some Russians, and the second he jumped off, instead of falling straight down he flew away. You could instantly see the advantages over traditional free-falling and that it would change the face of jumping forever."

In the 14 years since, wingsuit design has become an art form. More complex than they appear at first glance, they use air to inflate the suit and make it semi-rigid. The whole thing becomes a brilliantly aerodynamic wing, with the flyer right in the middle.

"Wingsuits today are phenomenal," Jeb enthuses. "We're getting sustained glide ratios of 3:1, which means you can go forward three metres for every metre you fall. To put it another way, if you jump off a mountain a mile high, you're going to be landing three whole miles away."

Up and away

The basic idea of wingsuit flying is to jump from the top of something tall or out of an aircraft and have as much fun as you can before having to pull the cord on your parachute.

"The problem with a lot of the world's big cliffs is that they aren't vertical," explains Jeb, "and that's where wingsuit flying really comes into its own. Let's take Table Mountain in South Africa which is only vertical for the first, say, 150 to 180 metres and then it has another600 metres of sloping talus [more gently sloping rock]." Without a wingsuit, he says, you have a three-second freefall and then you have to open your parachute. But with one, he says, you can fly the whole darn mountain.

As the sport has developed, the goalposts have shifted. Today, it's not so much about how far you can fly, but how exhilarating you can make the journey. Which means flying close to things. Hard stuff, like trees and rocks. And that has taken the dangers associated with wingsuit flying to a whole new level.

"When you're in close proximity to the ground, that's what gives you a real sense of speed," says Jeb. "That's the closest thing there is to living that dream of human flight."

Jeb has made this close-proximity flying his forte, and videos of his more spectacular adventures have turned him into a YouTube sensation. In one of his greatest ever flights, the 36-year-old jumps from a plane at around 1,800 metres and soars right through a cave in a Chinese mountain. It's a big hole, admittedly, but you wouldn't want to copy him. A couple of metres out in any direction and he'd have hit solid rock.

The perils of wingsuit flying have been evident since day one. Frenchman Patrick de Gayardon, who is often credited with inventing the first-ever wingsuit, died testing a new design in 1998. Jeb himself came perilously close to an early grave when he ploughed into the aforementioned Table Mountain this January. He was still recovering at home in California when we spoke to him.

"I feel like I was lucky to survive something I shouldn't have," he says. "You sometimes get too comfortable and overconfident and that's what happened to me. I thought I could skim things by inches when it should have been feet and it was a massive mistake. Table Mountain gave me a spanking."

The spanking, as you can graphically see online, involves Jeb striking the solid rock edge of the mountain with his legs before spiralling off, deploying his chute in a daze and then landing heavily in some bushes.

It's not nice seeing man hit rock at close to 200 kilometres per hour - and more unpleasant still if you stumble across footage of his battered legs, which were both broken in the accident. Undeterred, Jeb says he's learned his lesson, will be more cautious next time, and is looking forward to his comeback flight. Which should be any time soon.

No use for a chute

To the untrained eye, it may all seem like madness. Why fly so close to the edge, so to speak, when there's a great big sky out there? Naturally, there is a point. And it's even more incredible than everything you've just read. The logical conclusion of wingsuit flying, say adherents like Jeb and assorted rivals, is to be able to land without a parachute.

Just last month in England, the first-ever wingsuit landing without a parachute took place, securing a Brit called Gary Connery his spot in the record books.

It was certainly spectacular, but it was also a one-off, as Gary's landing zone was a 100-metre stretch of stacked cardboard boxes. Jeb is hoping to do something even more amazing: his plan is to perfect a landing on a very long ramp constructed at exactly the right angle. He would fly in smoothly and touch down on his belly, and he calls it his Wingsuit Landing Project. Jeb wants it to be something he can do "again and again", and everything he's done so far - including precision flying over Table Mountain - has been homework.

"It's a very expensive project with an enormous amount of engineering and technology involved," Jeb says, "and it will be spectacular. That's why I have been practising so hard. In this world we have very few opportunities to do things that have never been done before and here we have something that man has wanted to do since the time of Icarus. Finally, we have the technology and the price tag is really not that much. We just need an investor with guts."

Which is where, perhaps, Dubai comes in. World-famous for its deep pockets and construction expertise, Dubai is also fast becoming a must-do destination for enthusiasts.

"I flew over The Palm Jumeirah last year and it was, without doubt, the most beautiful drop-zone I've ever seen in my life," says Jeb. "And from the air, there's no better way to see it."

A driving force behind the city's popularity as a skydive and wingsuit destination is a rapidly up-and-coming company called Skydive Dubai, whose new 730-metre private runway which juts out over the sea is set to be finished in June.

"The number-one reason people who flylove to come here is The Palm Jumeirah," says Firas Al Jabi at Skydive Dubai. "Jumping out of an aircraft that is so close to the city and yet with incredible views of the Palm and the sea is a big draw."

Firas says that Jeb's Landing Project sounds "amazing", and that Skydive Dubai would love to get involved if the city turned out to be part of it.

American Jeff Nebelkopf, Jeb's cameraman who was flying right beside him when he had his accident, is in agreement. Currently based in Dubai - and with nothing but praise for the local skydiving scene - Jeff says he can't think of a better backdrop for Jeb's daring dream than right here. But could Jeb actually pull it off? Jeff reckons so. "Most of the people talking about doing this are just crazy," he says, "but Jeb's utterly focused and has been training for years."