The Drop

We’ve had a pretty big YouTube channel for a pretty long time, but there are certain videos that never stop finding new eyeballs.

This is one of ’em. If your own eyeballs haven’t found it yet, we hope you like it.

Right?!

Here’s the the full backstory.

The Setup

It’s 2011. Prince William marries Kate Middleton. The final Harry Potter film gets released. Game of Thrones premiers. Steve Jobs dies. And this jump happened. (Whoa.)

We were at Skydive Moab, taking part as organizers at the M.O.A.B. To be fair, it was Mike Bohn who originally floated the idea: what if we took a bowling ball into freefall?

Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.

Figuring Out the Fall Rate

Nobody knew exactly how a bowling ball would behave in freefall. We added streamers — partly for visibility, partly for drag — and went in with our best guesses. The result surprised everyone, actually: it fell at roughly a fast belly speed, but a slow freefly speed. That sweet spot meant the jumpers could fly around it in multiple body orientations, kicking it back and forth on the way down. You can see that playfulness in the footage — nobody’s fighting the object, they’re flowing with it.

The Rules of Dropping Stuff Outta Planes

We would be remiss if we didn’t cover the legal bits, right?

§ 91.15 Dropping objects. Title 14 (Aeronautics and Space) — Part 91 — Section 91.15

No pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.

For anyone wondering whether you can legally toss a bowling ball out of an aircraft: technically, yes — with caveats. FAA regulations do permit dropping objects from aircraft, provided you can ensure the object won’t damage property or injure anyone. That’s why we spotted the aircraft over open BLM land deep in the Utah desert, well clear of people, structures, and roads. We factored in wind drift (which can be as strong in the desert as anywhere) to make sure the ball’s impact point stayed in the clear, and we had a ground crew ready to locate and retrieve the ball afterward.

Critically, the pilot was looped in on the plan, too. That particular communication matters, because the pilot shares regulatory responsibility for anything released from the aircraft.

As Brianne put it: “use good planning, and good consideration, follow the rules, and clean up your trash.”

Building Freefall Objects Is Trial and Error

The bowling ball was the simplest version of this kind of project: a heavy, symmetrical object with streamers attached. But the AXIS crew had also been doing “sky ball” jumps around the same boogie, building custom tennis balls filled with lead shot and experimenting with how much weight produced the right fall rate for different body positions. That kind of R&D is more art than science: you build it, drop it, observe, and adjust.

The Bigger Picture: Moab

The boogie itself was memorable beyond the stunts. The boogie heavily involves “Inn-hopps” (jumping offsite areas, which is to say scenic flights to remote landing zones not usually landed-in by parachutes). Oh–and packing in the dining room of a ranch house that, as Nik recalls, “had a slide going from the bedroom down into the living room.” (We also took a trip to nearby Arches National Park at night, where Nik did some night photography among the sandstone formations. PSA: skydiving trips are about more than just the jumps.)

Why It Still Resonates

We get why people still watch this ancient video. There’s something irresistible about the premise, right? A bowling ball in freefall is absurd enough for even a whuffo to click on, and the daydream for many sport skydivers is strong enough to watch it twice. Fourteen years later, the video is still one of the most-watched on the AXIS Flight School channel.

Want to see what else our AXIS crew has gotten up to? Check out the full Stunts playlist on our channel:
And if you’re serious about levelling up your own skydiving, reach out to us at https://www.axisflightschool.com.