Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
WITH A motor at his back and a parasail above his head, Mike O’Shea has scored an amazing first.
The Kerryman flew almost 600km along the rugged Atlantic coast of Ireland to get from Mizen Head in Cork to Malin Head in Donegal.
O’Shea kept in touch with a support team using mobile technology to navigate treacherous conditions, and often sub-zero temperatures at heights of up to 10,000ft.
Even his heartbeat was monitored through a smartwatch which relayed his pulse and other vital signs to the ground. And no wonder he needed to keep his pulse in check – watch the video above as he looms over the edge of the Cliffs of Moher and skirts the rocky outcrop of Sligo’s Ben Bulben…
O’Shea is no slouch when it comes to adventurous feats – he has been climbing mountains since he was 13, has reached the North Pole twice, crossed Lake Baikal in Russia, Chile’s North Patagonian Icecap and Kilimanjaro’s Southern Icecap.
Setting himself the challenge to be the first person to paramotor from Ireland’s most southerly point to its most northerly tip was another story altogether. Changing weather conditions and galeforce gusts that threatened to throw him off course were all risk factors.
Even taking off wasn’t easy:
Wind is an issue for us, rain is an issue for us, there are a lot of inherent dangers. If anything is going to go wrong with paramotoring, it’s either taking off or landing. You’ve got to get the wind up, you’ve got to get the power on at the right time, you’ve got to control your brakes and then you’ve got to start running.
The challenge was supported by the Vodafone Firsts programme which has been running globally to help people use mobile technology to achieve their most adventurous dream. Mike O’Shea’s flight is the first such project for Vodafone Ireland.
They enabled ground-to-air tracking through GPS (especially handy when he was obscured by clouds!)
Are you wondering how some of the shots of Mike flying above the landscape were taken? That would be the helicopter that shadowed the entire flight using high-definition mobile signals which picked up even the faintest transmissions.
After his trip, O’Shea said:
I’ve achieved many things in my life but this certainly ranks up there with the best of the. And the great thing is that I can also share it with anyone who wants to watch.
You can see more and get involved by clicking here at firsts.com.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Call it what you like, it’ll still be the same old dinosaur with the same terrible attitude to competition and customers alike.
10yrs with sky. 1 phone call to customer care. 6mths with Eircom, over 25 calls and 10 different engineers have called to the house. Most are from companies where the work has been sub contracted to them. All are as useless as the last. Sorry I ever left sky.
The best those over paid Gob**ites can come up with is a rebrand !! Huw about not leaving your customers hanging on the line for 2hrs when they ring up to report a fault !!!
Messed about by so call customer care, Moved to UPC 1 year ago no issues.
It’s alright if your able to get upc , but not all of Ireland is covered.
just wait till you try to cancel. atrocious service. look at the Twitter
Eircom are a joke. Two complaints to Comreg regarding there shabby broadband. Moved to SKY and no problems with my broadband since. People are sick to the back teeth of companies like Eircom with their half price offers for their half baked services.
the ‘Only’ ‘Free’ ‘Just’ services. be sick of them. nothing is just, only, free. its all crap.
look rebranding wont change anything bar the name…in general “if it looks like sh!t smells like sh!t its usually sh!t”
The telecoms regulator seems pretty useless and overwhelmed by everything
They need to take firm action again Eircom when they mess their customers around
Only way to change the Eircom culture
left sky a few years ago to join eircom. what a mistake. rejoined sky again recently. Eircoms customer service was brutal. No manners, unprofessional and didn’t give a toss. sky might be more expensive but the quality is second to none. Never again using eircom
You can put a fairy on it and cover it in lights, but it’s still a tree.
I’m sure it will be a suitably shite branding effort by a bad marketing team that will waste money, pat themselves on the back and push the company further into the debt.
The creation of eMobile to differentiate it from Meteors downmarket image had to be the worse, least creative, no clear message, creation of a brand that just wasted masses of cash…
Sooo glad to be away from eircom. Ever since I’d been with them there’s been nothing but problems.
A turd in a tuxedo is still a turd.
One of the worst companies i ve ever dealth with.
The area where my parents live was supposed to get efiber in January, then June, then July, now September! They throttled the line into the exchange and did sod all about another exchange even though they knew there was a problem. Sky were more than helpful in trying to sort out speed issues but couldn’t do that much because Eircom ultimately run the lines. The biggest holdup to top rate broadband in this country is Eircom who have held us back by years. If you live in a big city or town you are sorted, the rest of the country doesn’t matter in Eircoms eyes.
I will be rebranding my anger and disdain in response.
Any telecoms company that offers a service that runs 24 hours a day, ie. Broadband, should have a 24hour customer care line, with people who can speak clear English.
All operators resell Eircom lines, so it all comes back in the end
Sky use BT Ireland to provide their service but in the end its Eircom who service the call.
No matter what you call it, it’s still the same shite, never have and never will use eircon
Eir is the new brand name.
Lennie – surely it couldn’t be that corny?? Eir?
has nobody told them that people read the small print now? how can people come out of a recession with their wages still cut in s*** and ye expect us to pay your overpriced ripoff service? i mean €80 for 2 months tv/broadband, thats insane. change your name, do what ye like, your marketing people are deluded if they think a name change can change peoples will to spend what they don’t have.
Their marketing departments have always been deluded, you see what passes for advertising or customer promotions with those guys? They think this stuff is dynamite.. Only a deluded person could ever think that.
Answer then better to improve there broadband services rather than pay millions on new logo .Ask some them engineers we can’t understand when we ring with problem to give it a new name then no one will know who to blame then because no can every make out there saying.
Are you sure it’s not the customer service people that can’t understand what YOU’RE saying?
The government needs to step in and separate Eircom the service provider from Eircom the engineering and line installers. They can’t be trusted to install lines and do service calls for other operators, they’ve been shown to give priority to their own customers first. There needs to be a completely independent engineer company that can handle service call outs and line installs for all the operators without giving priority or just being flat out sh!t
Changing the brand won’t make a fig of a difference. A brand change is not a magic wand. You’ve got to fix the problems first, then when you’re beginning to operate properly you can begin to think about a brand change.
Eircom have many issues to sort out. The company should be ashamed of itself that it allowed the company to sink so low. Very very bad management obviously.
have your say