Heart-stopping moment daredevil sets fire to parachute 7000ft in the air

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By VT

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A daredevil has shared heartstopping footage of the moment he used a flare gun to set fire to his parachute while 7,000 feet above the Earth.

Kyle Marquart - a 31-year-old general contractor from Dallas, Texas - has performed over 1,000 jumps, and it seems like he needs to "heat" things up a bit in order to get the adrenaline pumping.

Check out the jaw-dropping footage in the video below:

The video shows Kyle jumping from a plane at an altitude of 7,500ft, before deploying his main parachute.

However, rather than simply falling safely to the ground, Kyle can be seen pulling out a flare gun, before shooting his own parachute - which quickly because of ball of flames and is destroyed in seconds.

After watching the flames burn out, Kyle then deploys his first reserve parachute and swoops down to make the textbook landing.

Credit: 1251

Speaking of the stunt, Kyle said: "This is referred to as a 'Canopy Burn'. I hooked up an old reserve in a configuration known as a 'tertiary setup', basically meaning I had three parachutes in total.

"This type of setup is used in situations where you want to perform an intentional cutaway, and still want two parachutes for redundancy.

"The parachute to be burned was deployed upon exiting the aircraft. I have a main and reserve parachute still inside my container.

"After the canopy is fully inflated and flying, I pull the flare gun out of my pocket, pull back the hammer, secure the cutaway cable with my right hand, and BOOM the rest is history."

Credit: 2140

Kyle recorded the eye-popping stunt in the skies above Austin. And despite the brief moment that he is plummeting toward the Earth, Kyle revealed that he is usually pretty calm during the jump. He said:

"After the canopy burns and I am back in free fall. I wait for the flames to snuff out before cutting away and deploying my main parachute.

"To be completely honest during most of these stunts I’m relatively calm during the actual jump.

"I’ve jumped out of a plane over 1000 times, so everything besides the burn itself is pretty automatic."

But the daredevil admitted that the nerves come in the build-up to the jump - explaining: "During this type of stunt there is a step by step procedure that we rehearse many times before the actual attempt.

"Safety procedures are built into every step, and my mentor, Konstantin, makes sure everything goes smoothly."

Credit: 3250

Oddly enough, Kyle admits that one of his biggest worries isn't falling to Earth as a fireball, but rather "missing the parachute with the flare". To counter this, he always makes sure he's got an extra flare tucked away.

"In hindsight that was not a worry at all. It was like hitting the broad side of a barn. The parachute was nearly 200 sq ft, so pretty hard to miss from under 20 feet away," he said.

"I’ve watched this video hundreds of times. I get excited every time I see it. I get a bit of an adrenaline bump every time I watch it."

Being honest, I got such a rush from this video I can safely say that I'll never be trying it ever in my life.

If you want to see more of Kyle's stunts, check out his Instagram page HERE.