Manic in Martinez: Some help with my new camera suit, please.

[Deuce 1]

My C wing Tony camera suit arrived yesterday. It fits fine, great quality, I really like the colors, etc.

I am freaked about flying that wing.

To put it bluntly, how does it work? I know I spread it out and it slows me down, and I bring my arms in to speed up.

Is it supposed to be tight and flat when I spread my arms? How tight should the wing cords be?

I don't have swoop cords in my RW suit. My mentor had me develop the ability to drop and float without them. Last Saturday with my 4 way team I was able to get good video in my FF suit, but I didn't get as steep and close as I'd like, because I didn't have the brakes of a camera suit wing. I've got the suit on yesterday, now I've got the brakes, but I don't know how to use them. Is this a quick thing to learn?

I'm intimidated by starting over at square 1, because I think this wing thing is going to be completely different. I'm going to throw myself on the mercy of my DZ's camera fliers, who've all been really helpful, but can you-all enlighten me a little bit, so I don't have to continually ask "what do you mean"?

Thanks in advance.

JP

[quade 4]

Unfortunately, I can't go into a lot of detail right now because I'm heading out the door for some field work, but if you can wait a few hours . . .

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Deuce 1]

Quade, you are the man. The govenment keeps me welded to this chair until 4:30 pacific time.

If you can keep me from striking the tail on exit, and get stable enough to pull on time I'd be grateful.

JP

[Gravitymaster 0]

I would suggest you do a few jumps without the camera. Just play around with the aerodynamics of the suit for a while. It would help if you can get someone to jump with you so you can judge you fall rate. Practice different exits. See if you can exit on your back or in a sit and then transision to your belly. Practice, practice, practice.

[Deuce 1]

Amen. I'm hoping to get one of our veteran camera fliers to jump with me for a free ride and play simon says.

[JGarcia 0]

Trying it out without the camera's is a very good idea. My first jump with my camera jacket (C-wing from Tony Suits...only one I've ever owned) was rather interesting. Had a Tandem that wanted video and everyone else was busy...so read the instructions, pretended like I knew what I was doing and went up to do the video. Of course, everything that could've gone wrong, did. One of the Swoop cords released from the jacket, so I spent the rest of the skydive comepensating for having one "wing" presurized and the other not...had a nice orbit going. Fun stuff! Somehow I managed to pull it off and got decent video (yeah, that was my first jump with a camera too...good thing they didn't want stills!). Replaced the lost swoop cord with a pull up cord and have been jumping it like that for 300+ camera jumps. Moral of the story is: be prepared because if it can, it will happen!! I'd give those swoop cords a couple of good tugs to make sure they won't come off in freefall...that sucked.
I don't know if anyone else has done this with their C-wing jacket, but since I do back to backs often, I sewed small rings onto my jumpsuits, so no matter what rig I'm jumping, I'll have the wings clipping on the same place on every jump. ...just a thought.
Good luck on your maiden flight.
Jairo

Low Profile, snag free helmet mount for your Sony X3000 action cam!

[Deuce 1]

Thanks, J.

I am hooking the wing under my leg pad and back to the articulating ring on my rig. I think it's perfect.

Thanks for that story.

[quade 4]

Well, it's 4:17 pm PDT and I JUST got back to my desk after a hellish nightmare of tracking down conduits that didn't seem to go ANYWHERE.

So, again, you're going to have to give me awhile to actually write something intelligent.

Maybe in another hour or so.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Deuce 1]

Tomorrow's fine, Q-dog.

I look forward to it.

[quade 4]

Well, it also occurs to me that some photos might be helpful! I'll try to snap off a few of those as well tonight then!

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[quade 4]

Adjusting your wings is a very personal issue.

I can give you my thoughts as a starting point, but ultimately you'll have to figure out for yourself what works best for you.

I believe your goal should be to have the maximum amount of speed range while on your belly. In my case that's from the mid-90s to about the mid-130s (ProTrack TAS). You should be comfortable and able to move forward, backward and to the side while maintaining heading in an almost normal box-man position at normal RW speeds of about 120 to 122. By the way, it might not be a bad idea to have a ProTrack just so that you can sort of get a feel for what speeds you're flying. I carry one on all my jumps as a reference check. After awhile, you can pretty much tell within 1 or 2 percent how fast you're going just by your body position. As a camera flyer, matching freefall speeds is going to have to become one of your talents.

In order to adjust your wings, you'll first have to put on your camera suit and rig. If you have booties on your camera suit, go ahead and put those on as well, preferably with the shoes you'll normally wear for jumping. Tighten up the leg straps the same way you would in preparation for a jump. This usually pulls the leg material up a few inches and on my suit also pulls up the leg attachment point of the wing. Tension at the lower wing attachment point is partially maintained on my suit between the leg straps and the booties. I've also had a stirrup installed at the bottom of the legs that helps keep everything in place. Some folks have their lower wing attachment points on their leg straps. In either case, you'll want that part of the wing exactly as it would be if you were leaving the plane.

If you wear gloves, then you also have to decide if you want to wear the swoop cord inside or outside of the gloves. If you decide to wear the swoop cords inside of the gloves you have the potential of restricting your reach in an emergency situation. You may not be able to get the gloves and swoop cords off in time to correct the problem before impact with the planet. If you decide to wear the swoop cords outside your gloves, then you have the potential to have them catch on some part of the airplane, most likely the camera handle.

Decide how you want to have the swoop cords attached to your hand. Sometimes, as in the case from Tony Suit, the swoop cords form a little tourniquet of sorts that you can either put around your entire palm or if you decide, just your thumb. I personally like to just have it around my thumb on the outside of the gloves so as to minimize the potential for either scenarios listed above.

I do not like the idea or feeling of the tourniquet swoop cord, so I had my thumb measured and had the swoop cord sewn into a permanently thumb-sized loop. I believe this also reduces the chances of the thumb loop catching on a piece of the aircraft since there is little room left between it and my thumb.

On a suit made by Tony Suit, length adjustments are made by trial and error by tying the swoop cord to the inside attachment point of the leading edge of the wing. There's a little loop there. For my suit, I started out by adjusting the wing so that the trailing edge of the wing was tight at -almost- full arm extension. The wing may be "cupped" slightly and the material between the body and the trailing edge may bag out a bit even while the trailing edge is tight. I would consider this normal. If, on the other hand, the trailing edge doesn't get tight even at full arm extension, then you need to tighten the swoop cord until it does. When the trailing edge of the wing isn't tight, it's spilling air. Air spilling past the wing will not help slow you down very much!

In tying the swoop cords, try to get the lengths the same and don't over tighten the knots too much -- you'll probably want to make one or two more adjustments.

At this point, you have the wings adjusted well enough for you to go out and make a test jump. The last time I made a test jump just to check out a new suit I didn't even take the camera helmet up with me -- I just wore an old ProTec I have laying around for just such occasions. It's probably not a bad idea to -not- take the camera helmet anyway. Best to only have to deal with one issue at a time.

Before getting on the plane, make absolutely certain that you understand where your pilot chute is in relationship to the trailing edge of your wings. It's entirely possible that as you reach back to grab your BOC that your wing -could- either cover it up or you could catch a part of it in your hand making for a somewhat awkward toss (or seriously worse). BOC throw-out or pull-out are the ONLY recommended methods of deployments. ROL has a real possiblity of being misrouted through the camera suit giving you a pilotchute in tow or horseshoe malfunction.

The first jump only needs to be a quick check to see if everything is attached, sort of in the right place and isn't going to cause any problems with deployment or emergency procedures. If you have access to somebody that falls pretty slow, you might want go up and see if you can out-float them. Otherwise, you might do this as a solo and use a ProTrack to see how slow you can go. If you reach full arm extention during freefall, you might want to think about tightening up the swoop cord just a little bit so that you get a little more tension on them.

Because your arms might not reach full extention, you may not be able to get your hands up to your slider after deployment. You certainly -should- be able to get your hands on the rear risers at some time before complete canopy inflation. You should try to -always- get your hands on the rear risers as quickly as practical after your toss.

Once your canopy has inflated and you've cleared the area near you so that you have a few seconds to play with, take your thumbs out of the loops, disconnect your lower wing attachment points, stow your slider, release your brakes and head back to the landing area and make any swoop cord adjustments you think you might require.

Flying a camera suit is basically just like flying any other suit, only much more responsive to speed changes and it can be much more responsive to side-slides, back-slides and forward movement. You will, however, need to relearn how to do these things using the suit.

To side-slide, try extending one wing and leg out to the side you want to go away from and pulling the opposite wing a leg in just a bit.

To back-slide, put your feet on you butt and extend your arms forward.

To go forward, extend the legs like you normally would, but pull you arms forward and below you a bit. This creates a little wind scoop out of the wings and can be really effective for climbing up the hill on exit.

Be patient, it'll come to you.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Deuce 1]

I can't say thanks enough.

I've got a ProTrack. My RW drop speed is about 118. so far my max RW speed not in a funnel is about 128. I think the spandex arms on the Camera suit should give me more speed when I want it. My flat track vertical speed is 88, I will find out what my slowest vertical vertical speed is tomorrow.

The swoop cords were one of my bigger concerns, and you addressed that really well, thanks so much for the pictures.

Did you have those fastex buckles custom done?

I'm really grateful for the coaching.

Thanks and thanks again.

JP

[quade 4]

Yeah, I kinda of explain that entire custom thing in my review of the Tony Suit camera suit.

You can read it HERE.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver