Lukas "Cold Steel" Knutsson

[PerFlare]

Lukas Knutsson died the 11 October 2002

My name is Per “PerFlare” Eriksson and I was jumping with Lukas when he died. Lukas and I jumped a mountain in Engelberg, Switzerland. The cliff is named Fürenalp and the exit was called “Teddyland” (The name of the exit has been changed now to “Cold Steel”). It is just me and Lukas jumping and I did exit first. We both had Wingsuits, Skyflyers.

I was on the landing area and was looking at Lukas jump from below. I was very close so I’m sure about what I saw.

Lukas had a good exit and a good flight and pulled high over the landing area. Despite a powerful pull the PC ended up in the turbulence behind him. The PC spun around very fast in the turbulence. Lukas notices that the deployment was hesitating and collapsed his wings and rolled to one side to clear the PC through alter the airflow over his back. At this point the PC got bridle stretch but the bridle had entangled with the PC so bad that it was almost totally collapsed. Lukas did rollover to the other side and struggled hard to get the canopy out of the container. The container stayed closed to impact.

Lukas was jumping a PerigeePro (2-pin) with a Mojo 260. He was using a 36” ZP PC (on this I’m not 100% sure, it may be a 38” ZP PC) with a hackysack. The bridle was standard length but a mini shrivel flap was attached to it because he have the “new” leg pocket on his wingsuit.

PerFlare

I’d like to say a little about Lukas.

Lukas was the most safely minded jumper in the world. He was an example for us all. Lukas was the first to step up and help newbie’s with there questions and was always promoting more padding, body armour and bigger canopies. He gave good advice to everybody regardless if it was basejumping, skydiving or just living.

He believed that the biggest thing you could do was to share your experience and knowable with others and Lukas had a lot of both!

While Valhalla gained another warrior that day, this world lost one of it’s most beautiful persons.

I do miss him very, very much …

Dark times it is …

[imported_mknutson]

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[bps]

PerFlare --

It is with great sadness that I write this. Although I never had the pleasure to meet Lukas in person, I have known him through the years via email. It didn't take long to realize his greatness.

My thoughts are with you, his friends, and even more so, his family.

Bryan