lurch

Speaking of trolls, Scotty, get a load of this one. She's Baaack. I know its silly to engage a troll but I feel like playing whack-a-mole. Almost nothing left in the forum but trolls anyway. Maam, with all possible respect, you opened yourself up to ridicule and well earned humiliation the last time, by making loud, authoritative assertions about an art of which you know nothing. You admit that you have never flown a wingsuit but then try to tell us, that you know far more than we do about the topic and that you, not us, know what and how we will be flying in the future. You're someone who doesn't even swim trying to tell a shipbuilder how to build his boat and you've never even BEEN in one. You then followed it up by taking a condescending "silly little boys" attitude toward every actual wingsuit pilot who tried to explain to you why your notions of how we fly, make no sense. Further, explaining to you that you do not, can not, and will not understand what you are talking about until and unless you become an actual wingsuit pilot did not work. You never understood that we don't take you seriously because you have no actual idea how a wingsuit is flown or how to fly one, let alone improve radically on their design. When you can make suits and make them fly better than we can, then, we will listen to you. The last time somebody tried to use my own words against me to discredit my report about a suit, I decided to stop wasting further time arguing with him and prove my assertions about the suit by mapping out the suit's performance with hard GPS data and winning an international competition with it, setting a new record for the event in the process. Now if that wasn't an elegant demonstration I don't know what is. But here you are, back for more. Now, do you really want to engage me in an argument? I mean you can try, but last time you came across like a senior citizen with alzheimers protesting pancakes. Please. Tell me more about how we talk silly nonsense, don't know what we're talking about and soon we'll be flapping up to altitude because of some cartoon pictures you drew that prove it. I'm sure Tony is falling all over himself waiting for you to tell him how he ought to be designing his suits. You've got about 200 skydives and about 1000 wingsuit flights to go before you actually can begin to know what you're talking about and are capable of discussing wingsuit technical issues with us in an intelligent and informed manner. Get started. Have fun. Come back and talk when you actually know how to fly one. Till then you have nothing further to say to us but noise. We tried being polite and nice last time but you just kept at it as if you thought you were going to win somehow. If we can't have a serious discussion without people like you popping in, then we'll have a good laugh at your expense instead. And here, we... go. *Chuck, where are ya buddy, we need ya, you used far fewer words to accomplish this same task and FAR more eloquently.

This is awesome... I see Martijn has managed to kick it up another notch in FF time, congratulations, man... 84.9? WHOA. I thought you'd pretty much topped out with that suit, guess I thought wrong. Respect.

Now that I take another look at it, maybe you're telling us the next big step in the sport will continue to be petty bickering instead of growth. I disagree, I think that's a pessimistic outlook. Relentless positivity has a way of breaking down barriers and getting things done. I think we're going to see increasingly spectacular performances from the Acro crowd in the next couple of seasons largely because it IS a working together sort of thing, and enthusiastic people egging each other on can inspire all kinds of impossibly skilled mayhem. Might even dust off my old S-6 and try to get in on it myself. I'm not much of an acro bird, but I can learn. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Go look again, buddy. Best with S bird was some 76 seconds, and max of about 3.4km. Best with Rebel, 85.7 seconds, max distance 3.88 km. Manners, fail. Reading comprehension, fail. Positive contribution to discussion, fail. You specialize in hassling us and you can't even get THAT right. How's your flying, anyway? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

But you didn't in fact answer the question. See, we have a problem. Guys like Chuck Blue seldom stop by here anymore because of guys like you doing their best to make the forum an unpleasant place. Which is a damn shame. I don't know if you know who Mr. Blue is, suffice to say he's somewhere beyond mere legend, one of the founding members of the community, among the oldest of us, and had been teaching wingsuit flying for years already when I got started myself. If he ever has much to say in here, you might wanna listen to him. You seem to sort of specialize in being snide and nasty in the forum, clearly its nothing personal since you just turned it on one of my respected associates in the sport as well, so you must have some sort of purpose. Are you trying to establish a reputation as a guy so badass he can get off personally trying to smack down the ranking members of the community? How's that workin' out for ya? Is it getting you much respect yet? In case you were unaware by the way, Matt Hoover is one of the most well-known professional wingsuit photographers in the industry. Got his start about the same time I did, and I've lost count of the number of times I've run into him at one major event or another. The guy you just tried to mock about "little bubble" gets around even more than I do, his "little bubble" includes many, maybe even most of the relevant wingsuit events for the last decade. As for me, my own small contributions to the state of the art in performance flying can be found here, http://www.paralog.net/ppc/showalltracks.php?sort=time here, http://wingsuitboogie.hu/en/news/105 ...and here. http://wingsuitboogie.hu/sites/wingsuitboogie.hu/files/hirfile/WS-12%20final%20result%20WS.pdf I'm the guy dressed in blue in the middle of the picture. My real name is Brian Caldwell. Any questions? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well Sparty, perhaps you didn't understand what I said, or perhaps I wasn't clear in my description. Now, maybe its just me, but I seem to sense a slightly snide, mocking tone in your responses, a certain strong hint of contempt that I don't know what I'm talking about. You do that a lot. What's it for? Is it actually good for something, does it make you a better pilot? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I think the whole legal system has been so thoroughly corrupted its become an absurd dark joke that eats people. "Heads we win, tails you lose." I do not fear criminals, street thugs, terrorism or natural disasters. I DO fear cops and anything that can drag you into a legal situation of any kind. Innocence or guilt has become completely irrelevant when even if you beat all the charges and "win" your pyrrhic victory, you'll be hopelessly financially crippled and enslaved by trying to pay off the quarter million dollar legal fees and income loss you took defending yourself. I know some guys busted for an attempted BASE jump. They did no damage, caused no harm. Whats the first thing the law does? Charge em with what they actually DID? Hell, no. They charge em with that, plus 2 or 3 made-up bullshit bonus charges as customary procedure to either coerce them into not fighting or guarantee a "win" for the prosecutor by creating a situation where they get threatened with max penalties on all counts or allowing them to "plead down" to only one or two. The purpose of the system is no longer justice, the purpose is to strip any victim inducted into the system of any and all possible resources, and, if possible, their freedom as well, then finish making a profit by selling their captured ass to a corporate prison. "One way or another you'll lose everything, become our property and make a profit for us." I've never committed a jailable crime in my life. I live clean, I cause no harm. And I live in fear of our so-called "justice system" because innocent or guilty, if it grabs me on ANY pretext, (give a cop a funny look? Dare to talk back or argue? I love youtube. Shows uncounted thousands of such "isolated incidents". Thats a beating, a tasing, a gassing, and then some made up charges to make sure I get a felony rap as a lesson not to show the slightest sign of defiance) it will methodically render me helpless, powerless, moneyless, and then it will eat me. Best case scenario, I'm released months later, completely impoverished, jobless, homeless, utterly enslaved by legal debts of a 5 to 6 figure scale I can never pay off in a decade or more, and stripped of all possible hope of getting back to normal. And thats if I'm found "innocent." Scared to death, waiting and hoping the system collapses under its own weight Soviet style. Hope it happens soon before these people finish turning this country into a jail. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I dunno, are you finished being a dink on the forum yet? *rolls eyes* I'm not saying one "is a faster suit" than the other, because I am so sick of hearing that lame-ass phrase and it makes no sense. How many times does it need to be said, it's not the suit it's the pilot? What Vicente did was crank up his forward speed enough to challenge the megasuit where it is weakest and a T is strongest. Drag. Its actually the closest you can get to putting the two suits on an even footing. Although I'm no longer practicing what I preach on this, I did for 8 previous seasons on smaller suits. Far more fun flying with birds in small suits who can use em to their limits. THATS fun! I had plenty of surplus wing and the ability to climb away from the T with ease, but at a forward speed that high, eventually the only really relevant factor in catching a suit ahead of you becomes profile drag. How thick the Apache's wing is starts to become very relevant and eventually even a dominant limitation. Vicente got his angle so perfect he hit the T-Bird's true "horizontal terminal velocity" where there is no way to go any faster without either diving or minimizing wing to do it. The dynamics were fascinating. At a forward speed that high the T-bird's relative lack of fabric starts to become an asset instead of a liability. I could keep up with him easily enough, but try to pull even with him took some doing. I'm 15-20 lb lighter than he is, and with a much bigger suit and far more drag to match. Do the math. Eventually, if we both just plain stood on our heads, he'd outrun me. I had to either get narrower to squirt a few more mph out of it, or dive maybe 10 feet below his level to get the added speed to pull even, alongside. Interestingly once I had done so, stationkeeping was easy. I drew up alongside a few feet down, and I then had enough surplus power to popup over him with loads of power to spare and without falling back or losing ground. At that speed the slightest twitch of the Apache will catapult you away from any other suit with a radical fallrate reduction or outright reversal. Anyway to answer directly, he was flying for time the most effective way, far more than slow cupping. He was at the Tbird's absolute forward speed limit. Horizontal terminal beyond which he can go no faster either, without diving or sacrificing fallrate, and he elected to keep his wings pinned out as maxed as they could get. Looks similar to typical FF time cupping but much steeper and twice the forward speed. It feels like a dive but it isn't. Starts out that way till the dynamic lift kicks in bigtime above around 70-90mph forward, after that, you can sustain mid-30's all day with half the usual amount of wing and the suit rather head-low in attitude. I was at my drag limit, and so was he. when most of the airflow is truly head-on and the wingload becomes a minor side effect, the ultimate forward terminal of both suits, and the drag they present to linear airflow aren't all that far apart. I had enough wing to spare to be able to use it to go a little faster than THAT, but I had to do one or another "ninja trick" to do so. Simply trying to stick my tail out further was not possible. Both tails were out all the way, pinned and flat, and a much steeper AOA than typical hangin' out cruising. Vicente looked like a textbook model of "How to get the most out of your suit." We were flying for time, by flying for speed. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I believe it. My own S-bird is still my default all-purpose suit, good for 3:30-4 minutes at the outer limits. The only thing I -can't- beat with it is an Apache, (or Martijn in his Venom now that I think of it) and against most of them, I can at least put up a decent fight and keep up. My former apprentice Vicente was here today. While waiting for his own megasuit all he's got is a T-Bird. I have NEVER seen a T-bird flown this effectively. We got a bit more altitude than usual today (not tellin') and in high uppers we were flying all-out. I was giving up a lot of fallrate due to the maximum possible suit size discrepancy, but he had the forward speed jacked up so high I had the friggin' Apache up against its drag limits. Who'da thunk it, you can flock Tony's biggest and smallest models together at the same time and actually have both of them seriously workin' hard. Flying extremely fast and super flat, he got 4:05-ish, at breakoff I popped for time and stretched it a hair more to 4:17. Flying with talented birds teaches me much. I learned that if I keep the forward speed jacked up THAT high and a fallrate in the 30s to 50s the damn thing climbs accidentally and with no effort at ALL. Totally different technique from the usual rock-back-and-punch it thing. All I did was flex a little to pop up over brother V and it showed on my alti as a solid -24mph climb. When he gets his own Rebel and we can both unleash the suits completely without ditching the other bird we expect an easy 4:30 from 13.5 and somewhere between 4:45-5:00 if we can get 14.5. Especially towards the bottom coasting and not caring about speed burnoff, its not unusual to be pushing around 30sec per thousand feet, even fatigued. Thats the miracle of the latest-gen stuff. I just logged 297 seconds flight in one jump and not only were my arms NOT burning, I wasn't even noticeably fatigued after. At all. My arms weren't even tired or sore. I could have flown like that indefinitely. Chuck if you ever want a single-purpose cloudsurfing monster, I still recommend these things to all wingsuit masters advanced enough to handle em. The deployment and flying technique required is demanding and radical, but the payoff is so awesome that when I went back to my S-Bird after a couple months in the Apache I felt like my wings had been clipped. My formerly formidable and fondly named Sledgehammer S-bird suddenly felt like a GTI in comparison. I still keep it constantly on hand for the same stuff you keep your P2 for, and I'll borrow a P2 for any serious acro cause all the serious acro pilots seem to favor em. Way nimbler. The S is ok for acro, but paired with a P2 its a mess, ranges too widely spaced. If I'm gonna do acro in an S, its gotta be paired with another S. Lately I've been learning to flock the megasuit just because I want to devlop skills to handle the thing well at all possible ranges. A couple years ago I had to borrow a P2 for a vertical challenge because the S was too squirrelly held on a tight leash in a precise formation at a much higher fallrate than the usual range. If I'd known then the stuff I know how to do now, I wouldn't have had to. Its like learning to fly all over again. Exhilarating. I can't WAIT to see the suits 4 generations from now. Hell, I hope to have a hand in their development. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well Chuck, the way the forums have been lately, wanna take bets on how long before somebody pops in to haughtily and self-righteously start trying to pick me apart? I think the usual knockdown tactic is to find specific phrases to twist or interpret literally against a rigid straw-man definition in order to inform me that I'm wrong, attempt to discredit my credibility, or smugly imply that I don't know what I'm doing, or I'm not in fact exploring anything new and so-and-so mastered it years ago, and I'm reading my gauges wrong, or theres too much noise in the data to know anything, or whatever. Its ok, though. Since I jump a lot more than I post, I'll probably be in the air at the time. Last time that happened, I spent the entire season doing exactly what the guy said my numbers clearly showed I was not in fact doing. I've now grown used to punching climbs with the suit, with and without setup dives, from normal flocking speeds, routinely. Starting to get a fairly decent handle on the actual range and what I can expect from any given speed, too. Often normal flocking speeds are too slow forward and its much easier if I translate to a forward runup before punching it... a straight punch wastes a lot of energy. I may not have to dive, but a certain minimum forward speed makes the use of any given fallrate a lot more effective and I can still keep some forward speed to GO somewhere off the peak of the climb instead of just nosing down into a coasting recovery. Still so much to learn... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You rang? Thoughts: Its all in what you can get used to. The test models I did awhile back proved we definitely can not handle a tailwing that goes much more than about 18 inches past the toes without a mechanism for relieving the skeleton and muscles of at least part of the loading. But this season I've been flying Tony's Rebel which has more armwing area than I'd have thought reasonably possible, and by now, I'm so used to it that it doesn't feel big, all other suits just now feel small. The pressurization is only part of the picture on that. 95% of the time I have the suit's airlocks all wide open because I need the reduction in drag, enhanced range width, flexibility and controllability. I love the way the suit flies with the locks closed, very self supporting and stable, but the price is, the usable range is horribly restricted. The suit tends to be unstable when driven hard or in a steep dive with the locks closed, develops a bit of a will of its own and its much trickier to fly it dirty/with others that way. It'll cruise all day easily, closed up, and for flights beyond 4 minutes its awesome, but for most other uses I downtune it. Yet I have no problem supporting and managing a wing that size, pressurized hard or not. Theres some other factors in play here I don't fully understand myself. Some of its just me, getting used to it, but I think most of it is a sum total effect of the way Tony's been evolving his suit line. I've already been talking to Tony about continuing development of this suit chassis to see how far it can go. Asking for about 3 more inches on tail and armwing trailing edges. Its the only place I can conveniently add even more surface area without wrecking the dynamics that make the suit work. No answer on that one yet. If he's not interested in working with me I'll either take my ideas to another suit builder who is, or strike out on my own again and get back in the lab, start fabricating add-ons. More subtle this time, though. I've learned a LOT since last time, and now with the size of today's suits theres a lot less room for sloppy growth. I can't get away with the kinds of heavy gear I used to. My last series of suits and suit mods were based on really crude designs... a Birdman S-6 tripled in size, and that leather jacket monstrosity which wasn't based on anything, but as an early prototype of its own class it was only about equal to an S-6 in performance. Stylewise its 400 years ahead of (or behind, depending on how you interpret the look) any suit ever built, performancewise its a dead end. But by way of add-on mods I was able to extend a puny S-6's performance envelope to the point where I could beat all Mach suits easily with it, and hold my own against a pair of x2's. The same approach applied to the Apache is likely to produce...? I'd like to find out, and maybe I will. I think with the self-supporting nature of the Apache suit chassis we can get away with another couple square feet of surface area, but beyond that, I'm not sure. I had another suit design on the lab bench this spring, something too radical to even describe here which included a radical revision of the deployment mechanism, but it was in its early stages of development when my Apache arrived. As soon as it did, I turned all my attention to it, working up a handle mod and then training with it for the Hungary comp. It was going to take me a good year, maybe longer just to physically assemble the design I have in mind, because I had to fabricate the entire thing almost down to the last stitch from scratch and I had no time to continue it so I boxed it up for later. I was still in the early stages of laying out and working up the exact proportions, shapes, mounting and attachment point locations. At the time the basic shape was going to be derived from the S-Bird I had as a foundation building block, but now that basic foundation has been rendered obsolete before it was even finished. It can, however, be transferred over to the Apache and continued from there. I was still laying out the basic mapping of the suit, rough pieces and wads of fabric held together with safety pins, and when I resume the project I can just lay it over an Apache and continue, expanded. Its why I dropped it the moment I got my own Apache. I knew that what I was gonna learn from it was awesome and I wanted that whole new encyclopedia of experience and technique already stored in my head before I went any further. There were dozens of separate mechanical elements involved, each one of which I had to design and make straight from raw materials which is incredibly time consuming, and I still have to hold down a fulltime factory job to fund my flying career. Now, what I've learned from a season flying Tony's latest monster has given me a LOT of new design data to integrate into the basic idea. Much of the new knowledge consists of subtle, hard-to-quantify technique about what and how much load I can take at the perimeter of the suit and how to manage it. But the suit itself has reopened several lines of research: I'm once again considering developing some semiautomated end-of-arm exoskeletals, controlled by gripper position to add another foot or so to the wingspan, and possibly a rather more subtle and elegant form of tail extension than I did last time. Not quite so exaggerated and intended for longer-term usability. My first few models were so very crude and clunky, but they did give me very valuable data to work from. So, don't expect big steps. Its taken us a decade to progress from the nearly-useless wings of a Classic 1 to the Apache sized suits, and anything beyond this will have to be done the same way... by creeping up on it, one little survivable change at a time. But rest assured, there are a few freaks out there like me, who, the minute we get used to what we DO have, start asking "How do we get even MORE?" It'll be quite some time before I can produce an answer to that question, but I'm working on it. I recently stumbled on a totally new technique (to me anyway) for flying the Apache which resulted in an accidental 9mph fallrate, short-term, with no muscle effort whatsoever. None. I was not bearing down on the wings at all. I was in fact flying limp, but in a very particular way which produced a slow wave oscillation that caused the suit to do a very slow planeout entirely on its own, (a whole series of them, in fact, only visible when I played back the Altitrack, repeatedly, at triple speed, and only because I was flying "that way" most of the way down) revealing an actual canopylike recovery arc that works without effort if you can see where on the wave you are and how to hook up to it. Its one of the most subtle effects I've found yet, and I think it has a lot of potential if I can map it. I'd been expecting a fallrate that stayed in the 30's to 50's range and what I got was a fallrate that slowly drifted down to the teens, back to the 40's, down to the single digits, back to the 40's, repeatedly, on its own. I'm pretty sure what I've isolated is just the wingsuit equivalent of a canopy swoop recovery arc. Its going to take me quite awhile to figure out how to produce this effect at will and what the parameters are, (window of entry, amount of range inside the effect before it is disrupted, where the edges are) but I think there is a whole new body of technique I can develop based on it, once I understand it. I came down from the dive thinking "Holy crap, all this time, I've been doing it wrong." Downside is, as a non-forced effect, its very altitude-consuming to set up deliberately, but at least I've already found that at certain speeds and angles I can sort of "click into it" if I happen to be going the right way at the right time. For now, I'd settle for finding a way to integrate it into my planeouts and breakoffs. As near as I can tell, the trick is setting up a field and letting dynamic lift do all the work, but as ninja tricks go, this one's very hard to see, mentally speaking and moving around, navigating, making major changes to body shape all disrupt it, blur the edges, make it fade out. As soon as you use force to do anything with the airflow, it goes away. Best I can do so far is find a window in which I can invoke it, (starting to get THAT part down) then sort of nudge and guide it and let it reveal itself a little at a time by experience. I've already begun finding excuses to fly "that way" in my day to day jumping just to see if I can turn it on and off, or invoke the effect at will for a second or two anyplace its convenient. Breakoff, for instance. I have not yet tried it with the winglocks closed, either, and I have a whole lot of experimenting to do before I can report any more than "interesting new airflow-hookup effect independent of bodily rigidity". Right now all I have are glimpses of the technique, momentary flashes where I can see and do it. When I've made it systematic and integrated it into daily flying in a way I can put numbers to and teach, I'll report it in enough detail for others to reproduce it, assuming it can be defined enough to repeat and actually proves useful. I suspect Robi already knows it, and when I figure out the words to describe it, I'll ask him. We're not yet out of new places to go with this. Not even close. Where we're at, isn't the limit, the pinnacle of development. Its the beginning of a new one, one so hard to find we had to advance this far just to even begin to see it. You'll see. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Treat someone like a stranger and they will remain one. Treat them like an enemy and you'll make one. Treat them like a brother and they'll become one. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Fantastic. I recommend either Szalon or Steffl. Or the stuff the Ukrainians were drinking. Samagon I think they called it. I could have driven my rental car from there back to Budapest just by exhaling into the gas tank. Great stuff! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh, for FSM's sake, could we PLEASE stop sniping at each other! I got into this shit because so help me god, I love to fly. After nine years riding the winds dedicated exclusively to mastering the art of Bird-Fu it still blows my mind that I even get to DO this, let alone with awesome people all over the planet. I have close friends on both sides of virtually every single major division and drama we've had since wingsuiting began, since long before there were enough of us to break up into opposing camps and start fighting. I just got back from Hungary where I engaged in all-out rampaging WAR in competition against the finest pilots who could make it to the event. In flight, my mental state was that of annihilating anything that takes me on. And in between jumps, I saw no trace of hostility, backbiting, no conflict whatsoever. Seems we all understood the spirit of the thing, and nobody was AGAINST anyone else, really, just all came to shine, show off what we got, take your best shot, try to do better. We all just milled around freely sharing technique, tips and tricks. There was some Italian guy, what a maniac, drove all the way from Italy on a friggin' Vespa! Now THATS hardcore! Think it was him, had been having trouble with his GPS and with controlling an Apache in a comp attack setup dive. To me, this guy was a MAJOR threat, I saw his performance potential, only thing holding him back was tuning trouble with the suit, if his GPS and suit instability hadn't given him issues he'd have fought me to a standstill on day 1. Soon as he came to me about it, I freely gave him all the stuff I spent the season training hard to learn, very expensive knowledge, I had a bucketload of technique developed around the suit, so I gave it away all my secret ninja weapons and tactics to anyone who asked, to help them compete. I fly Tony's gear because right now his suits deliver more brutality on demand than anything else I can buy, plain and simple, and since I'm all about performance, distance and time specs, thats my choice... OMG, so what was I DOING consulting Jarno and the Phoenix-fly team for advice? Hell, I was fraternizing and even drinking with the Enemy, oh, noes! They don't buy into the suit wars crap. Neither do I. I spent half the event comparing notes hanging out and talking technical flying with Martijn Maas, Robi's current reigning freefall time champion. I'd been itchin' to meet the guy that did THAT much damage to the scoreboards that fast. I don't get out as much as I'd like but I do have a habit of popping up at most or at least some of the best events and by now I know damn near every major player on the planet on a first name basis and I gotta say the one thing that hurts about being an active pilot on the scene is seeing how many of our greatest names refuse to talk to each other, have grudges against each other, and now, won't even attend each others' events. I know how hard it is. Anyone familiar with the wingsuit circles I run in is probably familiar with some of the stories about the wingsuit scene here, its inception, growth, collapse, restart, growth again... The people with whom I had disagreements? are still my friends. I DO. NOT. PLAY. THESE. GAMES! Am I the only one left in the thick of it who still understands what we came for? I'm now making a very deliberate effort to maintain my friendships on both sides of every divide we've got because goddammit, you people were my heroes! Still are! I am privileged to walk and fly in your company! Shit, if someday I screw up and make a famous crater, if it ever came to that, I couldn't think of better people to DIE with! Stop responding to each other with anger! Just... fucking... STOP IT! For fucks sake guys, we're birds! We, are the freest human beings who have EVER LIVED! The first 4 or 5 years were GREAT! Seemed like we ALL had each others' backs, there was incredible mutual respect from all to all because we were ALL new at it and just doing it at all was superhuman, pioneer deep-blue-hero shit! What the hell happened? Now, I worry about offending one friend by attending an event held by another. Given the quality of such friends I seriously doubt they will take offense, really. Because my friends know me, know what I'm about, and know they don't have to watch their backs when I'm around because I'm watching THEIRS. But come on, guys! Imagine what we could do if all the bickering camps just dropped their grudges and actively and deliberately united and worked together instead? Bring each other up instead of knocking each other? Maybe I'm just what happens when you cross Sam Kinison with the Care Bears, but call me naive or call me cynical, I never thought wingsuit pilots of all people, would wind up so divided. I'm with Chuck. Fuck all this. Lets go surf clouds. Together. Whoevers with me, just get on a load. I still remember why we're doing this. "Through the stormfront we will ever surely pass, to stand as neverending light" -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok, well while we're waiting, I'll construct what may be one of the strangest sentences you've read lately. "That may be the only sentence fetus I ever met that needed a GPS an odometer and a passport." And you can quote me on that. Preferably in a public place. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Don't be so sure Monkey, check my backtrail, I'm pretty sure I constructed a couple of run-on sentences in my past ramblings that lasted longer than your typical tank of gas. Besides, its too soon in the game to tell for sure. Technically speaking, that sentence never ended. Not once in the whole piece did he use a . So whenever he posts again, that sentence will pick up where it left off and continue. The first multipost sentence I am aware of. Thats like making a wingsuit out of 100% pure Internet. I didn't even know sentences could DO that. I'm in awe. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Thank you, Csaber, Dr. K. I've been a bit busy since I got back and I needed time to get my head around all this before deciding what to say about this adventure. Suddenly have TV and newspapers looking me up. The reaction from my skydiving (and nonskydiving) family back here at home and around the world has been intense and totally unexpected. My crew managed to catch me completely offguard with a surprise ambush making a huge scene at Boston's Logan Airport in wingsuits with signs and a stretch limo plus a bunch of friends present by video. The look on my face must have been priceless. The level of respect love and support I've been given has left me totally floored, groping for words to describe how I feel about it and failing. But I'll give it a try anyway. Csaber: What a completely world-class event at a world class dropzone. We have a lot to learn here in the States about how to make a major event run well and organize a DZ. Jumper tracking, gear checks as customary procedure, loads that actually go on-time, 15- and 10- minute calls accurate to the second, (I know, I was tracking it myself by stopwatch to make sure I wasn't late for a load). The mag card system with tickets and touchscreens actually worked, and worked well. You people run an amazingly tight ship while simultaneously being one of the most relaxed, fun places to be, that I've ever been to. The countryside, location, scenery, nearby lake, scale and nature of the landscape make for the most incredible fantasy skydiving location imaginable. Virtually unlimited flying space, at last. Nearly infinite landing area. All the space made for easy pattern safety, I just gave everyone else a lot of room and saw no canopy conflict problems. Turbulence-free 20 mph winds once, and enough range to use them safely. It was long-range wingsuit heaven. The facility was first rate in every way. The MI-8 was the most awesome jumpship I've encountered in a decade of jumping. The food was pretty good, and occasionally excellent, readily available at most hours, and everyone involved was very helpful. Thanks to Istvan and Szolti for keeping the food hangar cookin'. The bathrooms and showers were clean. The little bunkhouse-style rooms available on-site were neat as a pin, very well secured with good locks, no fear of gear theft, (nobody there that I thought would steal, either, but the security of solid rooms was appreciated) and so convenient I'd prefer them over rooms with more amenities at the main airport office. The DZ compound itself is where all the action is, and being able to party with everyone going hangar to hangar and then walk 100 feet to a nice bed in my own private room right around the corner behind a hangar made it so complete that after day 1 till the competition ended I never needed to leave the DZ at all. I have little experience in Europe besides one trip to Germany last year, and I did not know what to expect from the place or people. The people in Hungary turned out to be warm welcoming and helpful throughout, and patient with my initial unfamiliarity with how things work there. The system makes sense and was easy to get used to. The competitors were top notch, great sportsmen and fantastic pilots. Ideas and techniques shared and exchanged freely. I got to meet, fly with, hang out with and spend time talking technique with the likes of Martijn Maas and the Redbull team, The Fly Like Brick team, Team Suren, my friends of Elsinore Badwings, the UK, German, Russian and Ukrainian crews and Hungarian locals and many, many more. Elana: When I really needed a coach and didn't know I needed one, I had you. Friends unafraid to tell you when you're doing it wrong and who care enough to take the risk are so rare. Maam, I am in your debt. Redy Redfern, thanks for fogging help. Richter, thanks for the water and showing me where the good food is in town. You were totally right about the salad. Jim Scott... I'll take that motorcycle safety course. Really glad I got to hang out with you. The whiskey was particularly excellent sir, thank you. Jarno. As always, a blast, bro. Thanks for a lot of things from basic guidance in European ettiquette to helping make me feel at home in a strange place. When in doubt, consult the flying Dutch clown who speaks eighteen languages. By the way, during the awards ceremony? The hop act? I was laughing -extra- hard, because you got the wrong leg. Both times. Daniel, thanks for keeping the DJ booth kickin'. Learned a lot of new to me good music, you hooked me up bigtime, I owe you one. I don't know whose idea it was to play "Wasted Years" during the peak of the award ceremony, but that song in particular has a lot of significance to me and made the moment unbelievably personally powerful for me. Martijn: I just wish I'd had a chance to fly with you more, man. One of us is gonna crack Helmut's record if we keep this up.

Wingsuit related: When you find youself staring, rapt, at, what, to other people look like perfectly ordinary clouds, and you're visualizing the line...the exact line, you'd use to surf down the face of it and still be able to tag the next cloud over, figuring out if you could reach it from here, and how high is it, anyway? People at work think I'm strange because I spend so much time staring at the sky. I think they're all strange because they don't. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Best general-purpose medium/large suit out there weighted more towards power than most medium suits. Need to build experience with lesser suits before stepping up to this puppy but once you do, it'll keep you happy for years. Properly used it can catch almost anything in the sky. I've spent the last 2 years or so flying one and I still consider it a "perfect suit." It will dust anything in the sky short of an X, Venom or Apache, and it can at least keep up with, if not beat even those. Good to fly with everything from megasuits to T-Birds. Best matched with XBirds through R-Birds or Phoenix-fly equivalent. Strengths: Maneuverability, versatility, flexibility, useful range, durability. The variable airlocks are a MAJOR boost to usability and being able to set the suit for anything from rodeo chases to 4 minute hangtime flights was one of the best things about it. Open em up, and its ok for acro, better for rodeo chases, chasing students, good for most high fallrate stuff. Close em up for cloud surfing, competition, long hangtime cruising flights. You do have to push the suit to tell it to fast, but go fast it will, and I used it to good effect in Speed rounds at Elsinore last year getting a bronze. Weaknesses: Acro, Backflying- It does both adequately, but it tends to be a little head-low backflying, not that I backfly much, a better backflyer may feel different, and although its acceptable for acro, its a bit graceless and clumsy for that just because its wings are big enough and its a floaty enough suit that its transitions and recoveries tend to be a little on the punchy side when flown with lesser suits. If you want to do acro with it, pair it with another S-Bird. You can scary roll and rapidfire-dock with suits as small as Phantoms, but you'll spend a lot of effort keeping the suit on a leash at those fallrates, it flies better when let loose. In pure distance and time competition its a bit outgunned by the Xbird-Venom-Apache range but its still a credible entry-level Open class competition suit and I was able to break into the top 5 Distance stats with it. I showed up at the comp in Gransee last year thinking "Uh oh... I think I might have just brought a knife to a gunfight." I'd first seen the Apache a year earlier as some weird prototype Justin got ahold of, and by the time I got to comp seemed like half the serious competitors were already flying them. When I saw all the Apaches and X's and assorted heavy suits in play I figured maybe I shouldn't have bothered stepping up if all I've got is an S against a bunch of megasuits, then did a lot better than I expected and pulled out a 76 second run that held 3'rd place in the global Time challenge for awhile. Right now I'm learning to fly an Apache of my own and when I have a real handle on it, I'm tempted to go back to my Sbird and see how much of a performance I can pull out of it with a little more practice. My Apache is the new dreadnought/dragster/air superiority toy of my personal fleet but my S-Bird will remain the default suit I use for everything where an Apache is just too much. A good suit. I recommend em. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ah. While back I asked you what your problem is buddy. You finally answered the question. "I'll persist in correcting you" There it is. The uptight angry schoolmarm thing. Your actual motivation and the reason for your manner. The impulse that drives some teachers, hearing a kid say "ain't" to grab the kid by the arm, get in their face and angrily demand that the kid say "isn't" out loud. The purpose isn't to get things straight or find who is right or wrong, the purpose is to force submission and force the submittee to specifically acknowledge having been humbled corrected and forced to submit. Being possessed of what could jocularly be described as a "Fuck You Complex", you're not going to get the satisfaction from me and I'm going to enjoy causing you the same frustration you made it your mission to try to cause me. Your purpose here hasn't been to discuss the performance. Over and over you grab what I said, and try to play that semantics game to cast it as a lie. You found a way to try to cast yourself as my superior, and use it to try to "correct" me. Even after I stated the numbers, produced by the flight from which I wrote the original post, you persist. You decided to make it your little mission to "correct Lurch" and you were gonna keep at it till Lurch acknowledges being corrected. Even stuff I said that was obviously subjective as all hell, and was meant to be, was fair game because you weren't interested in the facts... just trying to make me be "corrected." And my defiance, as you already pointed out yourself, not just defending my words but expanding on them, drove you totally up a wall. "He won't say Isn't? I'll MAKE him say it!" Incidentally, you haven't even SEEN the GPS track you claim "shows the dive". You've seen the ones I did AFTER, that HAD dives, deliberately, to show the climb phenomenon. The original flawed track produced on the 1G setting that provoked this whole thing, I haven't even put up yet. Not that it matters, visually you can't see much difference except the acceleration curves are a lot slower. Funny part is, you're having to resort to a sort of "play dumb and pretend you don't know what I was talking about" to do it by now. When I say something like "I didn't even need to dive to do it", every single performance pilot I have discussed this with in private understood exactly what I was saying without needing explanation or making some sort of a crusade out of trying to force me to backpedal or change my description or force an argument about what a dive is or isn't. They just heard what I said and got it immediately. I got nasty earlier because brother, you asked for it. You've come off with an antagonistic attitude since you started. As another friend said to me in an aside, "He's got some good points but he doesn't have to be such a douche." You don't want to debate performance, your specific goal has been to discredit me and try to force me to admit and acknowledge it. And you can stuff it. Just because you get off on it, I'm going to deny it to you, so I can enjoy causing you the same frustration you've tried again and again to cause me. You wouldn't believe how many people have messaged me either here or by facebook to say "don't sweat the d**kwads on DZ.com we think what you're doing is awesome, keep going!" Defending and expanding on my earlier statements about certain speeds really seemed to outrage you so I'm going to do it again. So you want to play the semantics game about diving. Lets play. First, lets define our terms. Can't have a discussion when we don't agree on whats meant when we say things now can we? There are two distinct states of flight relevant to the discussion, or specifically the latest nit you're trying to pick in your mission to "correct" me. State 1: Basic flight... flying flat, call it wingsuit bellyfly, by analogy to wingless skydives. Its anything that, done without wings, would be considered basic plain old bellyflying. Its what everybody spends 90% of their time doing while flying with each other. And it covers fallrates of anywhere from cruising in the 20s and 30s or even lower in bursts, to holding a slot in a vertical stack with your wings all scrunched cookin' along at 85 or more. It can be also defined by absence, as in specifically what you're doing when you're NOT diving. It typically maxes out at a fallrate somewhere around 100 depending on how scrunchy the pilot knows how to fly. State 2: a Dive. I'm gonna capitalize it for ya just to set it apart from any other reference or use of the word. Now you can try to chase me around and dispute the definition of dive but for the purposes of this discussion I'm going to lay it out real clear for you. The distinction between Dive and not-Dive as I have used it is, Dive is a state of flight defined as having made a transition from bellyflying the suit, to a typically angled form of what would be called head-down or Atmonauti if we were doing it without wingsuits. The key distinction here is that there is a transition involved. Wings or no wings it is the exact same transition a wingless jumper experiences switching from belly to a head-down or belly to atmo. It involves putting one's head down, punching it into the airflow, and changing one's orientation to the relative wind so that instead of the majority of the air striking one's underside, the pilot begins cutting through the air and most of the airflow is coming from the top of the head on down. It is frequently accompanied by a feel and awareness of radically increased airflow over the top of the wings. Engaging a Dive is a very specific maneuver used carefully because it involves a sudden acceleration combined with losing the drag limitations of flying flat, and it typically maxes out at fallrates far, far beyond anything a bird can do on their belly. The purpose of the move is to achieve speeds that can't be hit any other way. It is used to go after things you can't catch by flying on your belly. I often see newbs who do not know how to Dive yet, stuck floating helplessly above a flock they do not know how to reach. Scrunch is the only method of going down that they really know at that stage and they often don't really think to try even that, and they can't get to the flock. They could reach it, but they'd have to Dive, and they're typically either afraid to try it or mostly unaware of it as an available maneuver at all. Now. The point of a debate or argument isn't to "beat" the other guy. The purpose of a well-made argument is to make your opponent understand you, and to make an effort to understand them. Since you persist in playing your little game, I'm going to tell you a little story. When its done, it will make my point about "dive dive" quite clear, and then I'm going to finish up with one of those turns of phrase you've tried so hard to use against me just to drive the point in real good and no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to make it look like a falsehood in need of "correcting". The Skydive: I get out, scrunched. Skwrl follows. I stay scrunched as Skwrl settles into flight. I stayed as "down" as I could relative to him for a bit so he could get some pics, then moved in to see if I could fly with him. Bit by bit I let out a little wing till I found how much wing I could have out without starting to float on him. It wasn't much. Skwrl began to tire. The fallrate went up. Skwrl began to fall away. I scrunched harder and followed. The whole purpose of the exercise was to see if and how long I could stay with Skwrl without resorting to a Dive. Now, the things I got wrong or missed, mistaken impressions, I'll freely admit. I already stated that the fallrates I hit before the first major climb were a lot higher than I thought at the time. Another thing I completely missed while concentrating on Skwrl was how fast our horizontal speed got cranked up while this was happening. When I first looked at the resulting GPS track I was confused. It didn't look anything like what I'd have expected given the way I'd been flying and showed a top horizontal speed of 148.3 mph which at first, just didn't make any sense to me at ALL. Looking at it I was thinking "this must be wrong...how the fuck..." But after awhile, it all came clear, and revealed a few startling things about the suit in the process. Here's what happened. Skwrl continued to drop, faster... I scrunched more, and more, and yet more till I couldn't get any smaller. I continued to fall behind. Staying above and keeping up horizontally, but by the time I gave up and broke off, the reason WHY I gave up and broke off is because resorting to an actual Dive, transitioning into a classic "missile mode" angled headdown was the only way left I could have caught him and I did not want to do that. Focused exclusively on Skwrl and the speed picture relative to HIM, I was almost totally oblivious to how fast I was actually going horizontally and awareness of it only kicked in the moment I gave up on him, turned my attention away, briefly noted the landscape's scrolling rate, and spread my wings. Having remained on my belly the entire time and having specifically rejected the option of tilting over, punching my head into the airflow and escalating my pursuit to a Dive because that wasn't part of the dive plan, I then turned away, opened my wings, and punched it. The amount of power on tap startled the bejesus out of me, and as I realized it, I grinned, bore down on the wings, rocked back on my heels and LEANED on it... producing the maneuver my alti logged as a 21mph climb. And I didn't even need to dive to do it. I, Repeat: An actual dive, was not even necessary. Now, do you understand? Yes, or, No? The next experiments I tried DID involve Dive transitions, because my purpose then was to explore what happens when I DO dive and to show deliberately produced climbs, which shows clearly on the tracks I put up and which continue to be used as an argument against me by people missing the fact that they're using the wrong track to support their argument. The goal of the two dives I HAVE put up tracks for was to deliberately produce climbs on the GPS and show the parameters for doing so and that was simply the fastest way to get the desired energy. What I learned from studying the results of that first one is, that the suit will hit horizontal speeds I'd have thought unthinkable while flying scrunched. And that with this thing, an actual dive is not even necessary to produce effects that show on the alti as climbs. It can be done just by flying scrunched on your belly. If you persist, I will put up that track, flawed or not, just to show the acceleration curve. It is much more gradual than the ones I put up already. Why? Because when I produced that climb, I wasn't diving. Am, I, Clear? Yes? Or, No? -B I'm starting to enjoy the responses in here...you people wanted a real genuine argument and debate about performance and technique plus a little decorative fighting? You got one. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok THIS is why I just have to step back in. I just can't walk away from a damn good argument. Its a shame Skymonkey doesn't stop by here much anymore. He'd have finished the opponent with a single sentence so foul and entertaining that it simply nukes the argument itself out of existence. I've seen him do it. There were a few awestruck straggler posts staggering around the smoking wreckage looking for meaning afterwards, but no further relevant thread activity. Kinda like the brain activity of a cow after you drop a safe on it. Anything left sticking out twitches, but the game is over. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Scott, I doubt that wingsuit climbs like the ones I'm producing will ever get anywhere near the scale you describe. I'd say your description is fairly exact, thats exactly what this is, is just a popup. The mechanic I'm taking advantage of here is the same that happens every time we do a high speed exit. Bottom line is that I'd guess the limits for a popup wingsuit climb at a couple hundred feet of gain, max, and that'd be if it were executed from a full-on headdown dive of 150mph or better. The most I'm getting here looks like about 36 feet which makes sense... I've just barely got enough wing to actually show the effect. I'm not claiming to be able to do it productively, as in done for any real purpose, there is no real use for the move, and I see no potential for this to be any more than a trivial amusement. As competition goes, its a pure waste of energy. But it does produce some fascinating, and extremely entertaining, visuals, (entire field of view moving in the wrong direction) and inner ear zero-g rollercoaster sensations of an intensity directly corresponding to the climbrates shown on the GPS later. Its only a few seconds, but god, is it so much fun. Half the reason this amuses me as much as it does is specifically because so many regard the whole thing as impossible with such conviction that they will hold to that opinion disregarding any amount of redundant evidence I can produce. By now I'm convinced I could get it on video regaining my pitiful 36 feet flying past a blimp or a balloon, seen by the spectators at eye level, with laser trackers aimed at me, 5 types of GPS, an inertial tracking system, an accelerometer, several altimeters and a tape measure hanging from the side of the blimp and people will still insist "Its an instrumentation error combined with an optical illusion, it can't happen, its impossible, you were not going up." Therefore I'm done here. I've said my piece. I'm going to do a series of experiments exploring the boundaries to determine what happens at all speeds I can reach with this suit, but I will not publish them, here, or most likely anywhere. I seldom come to this site anymore because the forum has long degenerated into repetitive crap and I had all but abandoned the site before getting the suit. I think now I have abandoned it. If I don't bother coming back and this turns out to be my last post, I guess that will mean I have. I came back here because I felt I had something interesting to contribute to the community for the first time in years. Brief flare climbs like these have been repeatedly reported many places for years, but as I said before, to my knowledge nobody has systematically explored the conditions necessary to do it, or worked out how to do so at will, and I think most of the reason for that was that up till now suits making it relatively easy to do did not exist. If anyone wishes to follow the progress of this little niche exploration, feel free to message me or find me on facebook. Messages sent to me here send an alert to my real email so I'm going to leave it active for anyone I know who may not know any other way to find or reach me. Its been surreal guys, learned a lot on here. Peace. I'm out. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Vert, I know planeouts have been going on for years, I can do a pretty decent one in an S-Bird, too. I didn't say I may be the first to do it. I said I may be the first to document and perform it repeatably. And, look again at the graphs, man. I got well over 3 minutes on both of em, nearly 4 minutes on one. Why would I care about burning a little altitude when the suit lets me get almost 4 minutes of flight time even in a skydive where part of the jump was spent deliberately diving? If you can call it that? And, as I said before, it does not require an actual "dive" dive to do this. Just let the nose drop a little and pile on some speed. A dive makes it better, yes, and will allow me to accelerate quicker if I want, but how much of a "dive" could I have been doing to produce only 78 mph? Some people are doing 78 mph with their wings wide open flying flat. The graphs show exactly how much, or rather how little, altitude I had to burn to get a climb. If you think its "pointless", well, thats your call, but to me its like my very own personal rollercoaster and having a suit that can level off or climb that easily for that much of its range is pure sex airtime. But thats just me. Regardless of how insistent Luke is that punching a climb from a typical flock is not and can not be happening, I'm sort of looking forward to seeing if I CAN fly this thing dirty enough to stay with our typical flocks around here because if I can, I will happily punch out to climbs at breakoff from those flocks all day long, and put em up on the internet just to grind its reality relentlessly into Professor Dick's face with a cheese grater. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Luke I am amazed at your persistence. I really am. What satisfaction exactly you get out of repeatedly picking at what I say looking for things to jump up and down crowing "liar, liar!" about, I dunno, but that speaks a lot more about your qualities as a person than any first-impression blown-mind enthusiastic exaggeration produced by an elated emotional state I have spoken speaks about -my- credibility. My credibility is fairly well established in this community and a little dramatic license taken while trying to describe a mindblowing, singular flight experience will not change that one bit. Hows yours? I created this thread specifically FOR the reasons you're now having to resort to copy and pasting stuff from my LAST thread to attack: So I can put some real repeatable numbers to the euphoria that produced that thread. Thats why this is the reality check edition. The first was about impressions and emotion, this ones about facts. I couldn't give a damn if you don't -like- what I had to SAY, I put my FACTS up, right here. So STFU. If you acquired the ability to climb at will you'd be a bit euphoric yourself, and I doubt you'd care much what some nitpicking keyboard pilot with an allergic reaction to enthusiasm on the internet thinks. I'd have thought after putting my facts up here that you'd be satisfied, STFU and go find somebody else to harass for speaking inaccurately on the internet. There are so MANY others, what are you waiting for, go get em, Tigger! I just demonstrated the ability to repeatedly climb, at will, and put up the exact conditions I did it with for all the world to see. If I am dumb enough to try to fly in a flock with this suit, I can and will be able to climb, literally climb, away from that flock. If necessary, I will produce even more graphs specifically demonstrating exactly that move if thats what it takes to beat you into silence on this one. The graphs I just put up, conservatively, show that with 78 getting me +6, I should still get usable climb down to 70 or a little below. In other words, normal flocking speeds. Just to really beat it into your head with a lead pipe I might have half the flock video it while I'm at it plus a camera on a nearby canopy and you can spend the next week going over the video and GPS track looking for illusions inaccuracies and trickery bitterly muttering to yourself all about how this is all bullshit and you'll get me in the end if its the last thing you do. What exactly is your problem buddy? You can go right ahead keep jumping up and down throwing peanuts and shouting Liar Liar from the stands all you like... I'm in the ring. You're in the stands taking shots from the cheap seats and throwing things. If you think I'm that full of shit, then lets see you do better. The pedantic Professor Heckler act buys you no friends in here. Hows that for a reality check for ya? Now, are you done yet? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

This is fun I've got a few. Knuckle, right hand: laid open clean to bone at age 12, looked like cut chicken, bled surprisingly little actually. How? Homemade power tool I'd created from toy parts. With no blade guard. Blade being a 3 inch razor spun at 25,000 rpm. I just HAD to try cutting foam rubber with it...blade bounced off. Into hand. Tailbone: Age 15. Rollerskating. Taken out by tiny 4 year old redhead child apparently born on skates travelling at 956 mph in a confined area. The child never touched me...far too skilled for that... but the zigzag pattern a highly energetic human being only 3 feet tall can create took me out anyway. Crawled off the rink. Had to ride a bicycle home. No parents available at the time. Not fun. Finger, right hand, impaled on sword, age 18: Not much to tell. Rapier fight with 6 lb iron swords with only slightly blunted tips. Yanked my hand off the blade, examining the entry hole it took me a minute to flip the hand over and realize the blade had skidded around the bone and punched right out the other side. Oops. Strangely, not only did it not get infected, it barely affected the hand at all. Finger got a little stiff for a couple of days and swelled slightly. No real pain. Didn't even lose significant use of the hand at the time, left a dimple scar entry and a tiny slit exit. Heart: Age 30 Butched a landing of a reserve in bad wind conditions. Was flared to below the waist by impact with no significant slow of ground rush. Hit feet-hands-ass driving my knees into my chest hard enough to produce what turned out to be cardiac lacerations I.E. bruised heart when I folded up later that evening. Stop breathing for a few minutes and everybody freaks out. Spent the night in the ICU, beeping. Made out ok. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.