His WingBoard, designed to place riders behind a plane so they can wakeboard through the sky, has just successfully completed its first manned, wind tunnel flight testing, edging the aeronautical engineer closer to recreating his childhood fantasy of being towed across the skies by an airplane like the cloud-surfing bear cub from Disney's Talespin.

What started as a 1/6th scale model and an audacious (and ultimately doomed) Kickstarter campaign less than two years ago, has progressed to something people can actually strap into and ride. Well, not just any people. For its first foray into wind tunnel testing of its full-scale WingBoard, Wyp Aviation turned to Brandon Mikesell, a wingsuit-wearing maniac who spends his days leaping off mountains and gliding through majestic valleys.