lurch

"The reward for FAI endorsement would have been to take my kids to school and mow my lawn the next morning. I wasn't there at 6AM wet, dark 30, for any governing bodies, newspaper articles or 29 second TV clip. I was there to support the cool dude on my left, the bitchen chick on my right and the line of flockers behind me with serious focused smiles on their faces flying on my line. All seeing if we could do what we could do." At the risk of sounding repetitive... Fuck, YEAH!!!! Anyone else think this sucked? Anyone? (Crickets chirping.....) -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I've been waiting to hear about this. I figured at some point they're going to have to show us what they judged by when they told us "we got it." After all the effort that went into flying that thing, all I want to see is the best one out of hundreds of pics that shows both sides as complete as they ever got, as symmetrical as it ever got. I'm betting there was at least one split second somewhere in there where, even if everyone wasn't totally inside their box on the grid and had arms legs and heads sticking out, they were all at least occupying that box more or less, even if they have to rescale the grid to prove it... if the scaling of the grid they're using was too large or too small, its going to look incomplete no matter how perfect the actual formation was. Personally I'm going to offer neither input nor criticism about the technicalities of judging this. I had nothing to do with how it was run, and they've probably got way too many people already "offering" their input for and against various methods, not to mention I'd be surprised if some people didn't show up at some point crowing "you guys didn't get it" and spouting all kinds of technical jargon to back up that opinion. I really don't give a damn. We came. We saw. We flew our hearts out. Washy or not, that monster completed several times, all birds in. Good enough for me anyway. And lest anyone overlook the fact, this was run well enough that we all went home alive. Mission successful. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well. After a bit of confusion about which airport to hit and a fast taxi ride with this awesome Mexican guy who talked exactly like Tommy Chong, I made it home alive. I gotta say that was the most glorious, epic event I'm ever likely to be a part of. I ran into most of the best top gun pilots I've flown with over 4 years on the wingsuit boogie circuit plus a bunch of friends I didn't even know I had till they recognized me from somewhere and introduced themselves. About the only thing that sucked about it was that there are a number of others I wish could have been there and weren't, Perry, Chuck B, Scott Bland, Rick Hough and Dave Godin come to mind, but there were more. My gear took an unbelievable beating from being packed hard and fast and landed in rough ground. My main picked up dozens of small holes from the pricky things living where our group was landing plus a couple small tears, my suit is half-blackened from smoke and dust, torn in one or two new spots and missing a legwing cable that got torn out during a particularly tight exit leaving my suit unusually well ventilated for that flight. Thanks to Ed P for the loaner of a spare cable, I thought I was gonna have to hack it together with spectra or baling wire or carbonfuckingfiber or something. Like everyone else I had my screwups and triumphs, spooked a friend by being a dumbshit and overdoing my approach, and was in turn spooked by another when he did the same. Later, when given the job of exiting last and catching that formation, I had to do some of the most focused, intense, demanding flying I've ever done. Breakoffs were breathtakingly well executed, all of us turning as one and hauling ass away from the core. Now I think I truly know what a flock of birds feels like when they do that. I kept meeting up with friends during those breakoffs...Spot, Soby, Scott Gray, Jeff Donohue and more. Those brief "Hey, whatup bro?" moments in the instant before gunning away to clear sky were priceless. Its amazing how much you can communicate with a quick glance, a nod, and a grin in the one second's worth of your attention you can spare for stuff like that in flocks like these. The canopy and landing locations were particularly well thought out. Not once did I feel even remotely crowded in the pattern or while landing. Weird winds and an offset spot made my area somewhat difficult to reach once or twice, but nothing a little rear riser crabbing, brake work and altitude conservation couldn't handle. I never came close to being forced to land anywhere I hadn't planned to. Flight number 5 of the last day was the defining one for me. I was exiting last in the last plane. The exit got strung out a bit and when I got out and turned, the formation looked impossibly far away. I was expecting a sense of resignation, like thats it, its blown, theres just no way, even IF I can get there in time. Instead I just got that wonderful lit up sense of insane inspiration and just flew so hard I thought my camera was going to blow off my helmet. When I got there, there was a lot of vertical compensation going on and a massive amount of bumpy air, I could see my lead guy Costyn was having to use some radical control inputs just to stay still in his slot. He was succeeding, but the kind of flying he was having to do to pull it off, maxed out one second, half folded the next, I thought this attempt was a washout, if its this bumpy here, no way did we hold it together on the big scale. Being way too busy flying the same way I had no idea what was going on in the rest of the formation, just flew my slot, landed, packed and got ready for the last try, feeling discouraged because I'd put out the most intense effort of my life and I figured it still hadn't been enough, not even close. When they called us all up to the deck unexpectedly and told us "Thats it, we got it" I'll admit I totally lost it for a minute there. I hadn't known I cared that much about the outcome till it happened and I found out that I'd cared very much about it, indeed. I'd put up a special thanks list but it'd be way too long. What a ride. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Advice for a newbie huh? Hmmm... Don't forget the sunscreen. Silly putty does NOT work in a toaster. If you're going to crash in the Andes and have to turn cannibal, don't eat clowns. They taste funny. Never sneeze in the toilet. Trifle not with the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup. It is physically impossible to have sex with an elephant. The best you can do is have sex AT an elephant. Keep your shoulders level, bend a bit at the knees, rear up a little and shut down your tailwing as much as possible to minimize linetwists. Any questions? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Tom, you bastard, I was supposed to be your FFC instructor, man! I been hoping to get you into some wings for years now. Give back a little. Too late now. Damn. Congrats brother bird, now you know what I been doing, last 5 years and change. Like it eh? Well, you saw how I reacted after my first one, not much has changed except my suits have gotten a lot weirder and so many others finally came to see what I'd been going on about all this time that I almost never fly alone anymore. When're you passing through up here again? I haven't jumped with you in, what, 4 years? 5? Ought to remedy that... Take care bro, -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Jarno was that last reply for me or Jdatc? If me, the problem wasn't my feet or calves. The bindings had ankle backstraps that dug into the backs of my shoes and acted like a small version of the extensions you just described. The result was fairly easy on my feet ankles and calves but the total load from the knees on down was atrocious, so all the strain winds up being in the thighs, like trying to stand up from a crouch with 200 lbs on your shoulders. If you want to get an idea how bad it really is when built and flown, try riding in a car at 60mph while holding a rectangular sheet of cardboard about 4 feet wide and 18 inches across out the window, flat against the wind, at arms length. If you want pix you gotta ask Steve or Justin, I'm sure a few were taken but I have no idea what happened to em. There IS a brief clip of the earlier scubafins version being flown in last season's Flock U season wrapup video. I called it... wait for it, wait for it... ...Skybadiving. Somebody MUST have seen that coming. It looks fairly stable in flight- it isn't. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"Yea..would be cool to modify a pair of freediving fins (strengthen them) so you could have tailwing thats roughly 2,5 meters long" I don't even know if anyone ever took pics of the final versions but yeah, its been done. I started with a set of basic fins cut down and reinforced, with ZP stretched between them and velcroed to my S-6's tail. The silicone they were made of was too springy and they tended to load up, then unload in flight, creating a springy pushing oscillation and a very bumpy ride. The second and last version of this I built out of a set of Justin's old snowboard bindings he donated to the cause, (Thanks Bro!!!) and large flat slabs of Lexan about 18 inches from toes to tips, then integrated it into that set of zipon armwings with toe cable connections that people took to calling "the godzilla mod" when I went to Florida and flew it in public. The combined assembly was a wingsuit over 7 feet long collarbone to tailtip and made a SuperMach1 XS look small in comparison. It was almost unflyable. The armwings worked great and I'm still flying a downtuned version of the zilla mod today, still the only true convertible suit in existence so far as I know. But the tail was a disaster. The effort it takes to straighten your legs with that much wing back there is ridiculous, like "muscles convulsing under the load desperate gasping effort" ridiculous. I am NOT exactly what you'd call "unfit" in terms of muscle tone and short burst strength, can hang by my toes or a couple fingers and lift almost twice my own weight if I have to and it was all I could do to keep that lexan monster under control. Justin flew chase for a number of test flights- it was a fast forward suit, but NOT fun to fly, VERY difficult to turn and steer and after maybe a dozen attempts I retired it as a developmental dead-end. Also... Try to imagine the post-deployment process for getting snowboard bindings and quickrelease shackles off your feet, getting arms and legs unzipped, legwing stowed, lexan slabs hung from your chest strap, slider and toggles popped and ready to fly. I once had to do all this while navigating to a safe out landing in a field about 4 miles away. That houdini shit got old inside half a dozen flights. I'm a technology developer, not a stuntman. I decided to kill the project before the project killed me. Still pretty happy about that decision. I never made the tail public because although I'm sure it'd have had its supporters like a number of my more outlandish projects, it was an awful lot of trouble to build a piece of gear that was, ultimately, almost lethally unusable. WTF, somebody had to try it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Cause every year this is about my only chance to have a whack at high altitude. So far I've just flown stock stuff and got relatively mediocre performance in the 4 minute range, 60mph average. Not exactly outstanding. Winter fatigue. This'll be the first time I had a suit hack I was willing to take out at 23k and I'd like to set a new personal best. A relatively trivial little ego trip, but its mine. Come on. Don't tell me you never wanted to get the latest super-xs mark 62 mach suit the size of an elephant cover and jump it from the highest alti you could get. This'll be the one time a year I actually get all the squirrels in my head scrambling more or less in the same direction. Its one of those zen ballistic rodent things. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Sweet! I got a finalized set of daily-driver flyable zipon S-6 wingmods I just finished dialing in, similar to what I showed up sporting last season minus the toe-cable wingtip suspension design- not quite the sub-30's fallrates the radical stuff delivered but far safer and more flyable and a little less brutal on the arms. I been itching to see if I can get 5 minutes out of it from 20-plus... it delivered 3:09 from 13.0-3.0, if my arms hold up 4:30 should be easily doable, 4:45 depending on endurance, 5 if I'm feeling badass. Just plain 4 minutes is Soooo last season. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Is there gonna be high altitude? I like high altitude... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Right. Saturday. Rain bath. Go to DZ. Coffee. Box of. Coffee rolls. Gotta have coffee rolls. Off to a gritty start this morning. I ditched my stupidly expensive cable modem yesterday and spent this morning setting up a home network. In typical backasswards Lurch fashion I wound up getting my broadband to the home PC by ethernetting it to my laptop and using the laptops's bluetooth to talk to a cellphone hanging in a basement window. The bandwidth sucked with the phone barely picking up 2 bars till I hung a tinfoil-lined plastic salad bowl over the phone in the window which proved to make for a stunningly effective makeshift relay dish! Good for an additional 20-30 kPS! Who needs cable when you can surf with a salad bowl? Fuck yeah! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

(stumbles into the thread, looking confused) What? When? Whose fault is this! Steve? Whats the call? Wheres my rig? I better at least get a text message 45 prior or I'll have no idea who to blame if I miss it. Coffee? You guys know I don't even wake up till we're halfway down anyway. I can make it if I skip the shower and go straight to dunkins and the highway... be all philosophical about it, proof that I exist... I stink, therefore, I am. What the fuck. Lets do it. You rock Steve. Just for this, I'll take someone else out next jump and not even blame it on you. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Gotta love it... last possible moment, my ass... Still, this is, what, 3 or 4 times now at least, our home DZ winds up in the globe and at least 2 or 3 of those were feature articles about the flock... I had my own feature article a couple years back from when I was the only one around, we got clips from articles on the whole flock once we had one on the walls from last year and the year before, and now this one with rock solid flocks. And not one use of the phrase "death defying" anywhere in it... journalism is improving. Not bad guys! Tweet! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Whats your wingspan? And whats HIS? This is why I mentioned body type, you could be 6'1" 200 with relatively short, muscular arms and max out at 52mph or the same weight and height but built all long-armed and ropey like a basketball player and max out at 45, sometimes 42 to 40. I think you're being a bit optimistic. If low-40's was what "most" 200 pounders could get in a 6, I'd be seeing a lot more big guys pulling well over 3 minute flights from normal altitude (13.5-14.5) flying 6's. I've never seen it done, not in the 200 lb weight class. Most 200 lb 6's I've seen flown averaged 60's and 70's and got low-50's high 40's as examples of extraordinary performance, not necessarily repeatable at will. I'm not saying there aren't a few who're that good, but expecting low-40's to be "normal" for that weight class in that suit is a bit of a stretch. I'd call it "normal" for the big-guy crowd around here flying mostly various Mach suits, with the slightly lighter ones (175-185+ lbs) occasionally breaking into the 30's, more often the lighter they are and the more they fly. I'm not trash talking the 6, I love my own, mods or no mods, but if I were selling them I wouldn't sell it to guys that size, with fallrates that low as a "you'll do it easily, most guys do" selling point. Just bein' honest. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'd say, not enough to matter. I've flown the same S-6 in summer with a comfortably loose fit and in subzero temperatures stuffed tight with warm clothing without noticeable changes to available fallrate range. The handling feels different and the exact body position to produce a given result changes a bit when it fits tighter but the fallrates are the same. Are you sure all movements you made in your comparisons were the same? I.E. might have been arching a bit, or looking up or not as flat? I haven't flown a Firebird, just a Classic, Classic2, GTI, S3 and S6 plus a few homemade hacks and Tony suits but one common characteristic to all 3 suits in what used to be the medium/large range is that rotating your elbows forward IS one of the ninja tricks. Theres a bunch of ways to describe movements that get the same effect... If you thought of it as "pushing the front of the wing down" the result of holding your arms out like that and pressing down is.... your chest comes in your head drops you roll your shoulders and you sort of rotate your elbows forward. If I told you to suck in your chest and roll your shoulders, You'd wind up doing that same thing with your elbows. If I told you to get as wide as you can and then cup air like mad, without bringing your hands below your waist it'd kinda force your skeleton into a particular shape, and once again you arrive at that hunchy-arched back position, with your elbows kinda forward. The S-6 isn't radically different or THAT much bigger than a Firebird, not proportionally. In an old GTI my best sustained cruise was 44. Most of the same techniques on a 6 got 38 repeatably, 35 sometimes. I've done wingmods on a 6 that go as far down as the ankles with the lower wingtips attached to the toes like little sails and got sustained repeatable 33 cruise, then when I learned to use it, it went off the bottom of the scale and my Neptune didn't record anymore. I stopped flying the extreme version after 50-60 jumps, the fallrate wasn't worth the insane added risk factor but it proved the available fallrates are pretty scalable and predictable based on overall wing area range. This stuff is repeatable. I'd say hitting 50 is gonna be just barely doable for you in something the size of a 6. If you're already getting anywhere near 50 you're flying it quite well already. A Mach/Blade/Vamp sized suit would get you into the 40's and it IS possible for you to get into the high 30's with something big enough. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

To even guess if its possible for you, I'd at least have to know your weight, height and build type. The suit flies best if its pulled tight but you're not. Everything else said about legs locked and toes pointed is spot on accurate... the tail on a 6 isn't all that big, but if you get your body flat as a plank and wide as you can, then relax, while keeping it as wide as possible, you can get a lot of "drivey float." Also suggest pulling up and out a bit with your elbows. If you're flying flat and deliberately hunch your shoulders and lift up and out with your elbows, you'll probably go a bit head-high and get a burst of VERY low fallrate. That will stall if you overdo it, but if you then stick your legs out and get super flat, drop your head and tilt over slightly headfirst, you'll still be flying floaty but begin to seriously haul ASS. Stay that way the entire jump, keep your turns very flat, wide and shallow- I suggest digging in slightly with a wingtip, hand or toe doesn't matter, whatever best suits your sense of balance, rather than turning by banking your whole body. Digging in with a wingtip adds drag which costs you, but the spillage sacrifice from all but the most gentle of banked turns is far far worse. If I'm trying for airtime I keep all control inputs very very subtle. Anyway if you're under 180 lb out the door and not of short squat body type you should be able to manage high 40's with practice. If you're in the 140-160 lb range (I'm about 140 without gear, 160 exit weight give or take 5 lbs) mid-40's is doable, low 40's would be an "everyday flying" limit and high-mid 30's can be had if you learn all the ninja tricks and use all of them all at once on a good day. I'd also suggest asking Taya Weiss, might have a few pointers for you, shes been flying an old S3s for some time now and will claim 40, but I've seen her do high 30's long-duration burst cruise more than once. For all I know she could have kept that up for half the jump if she'da felt like it. When we ran out of altitude she didn't look like she was gonna stall it anytime soon. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Define "low". My old S2 170, almost diving-spinproof but got linetwists a lot, mostly my own fault, and had a hell of a snivel. 3200 was low with that thing but it was the ultimate wingsuit security blanket for a beginner. I loved it and it kept me out of trouble. Old green Sabre1 135, near as I can tell, most perfectly designed WS canopy ever made, for my purposes anyway. Opens clean firm, fast and on-heading even at sub-30 fallrates and largely ignores harness input so when I totally fuck it up, It lets me get away with it. Handles like a truck, swoops like a mattress with a stuck E-brake and the rear riser floatabilitys nowhere near as good as the Sabre2, but I've found the openings reliable as hell or I wouldn't push the low-2's. I ain't competin' with Avery, though, below 2 is my "I'm being stupid" threshold. Question for ya Chuck while we're talking smack about canopies and choices: Last I knew you flew a Sabre2 97. How long are the openings on the small sabre2's and how is it for long distances on rears? I picked the old sabre mostly for its openings, but man do I miss a Sabre2's flight range... my old 170 at .9 WL I could thermal-skip over roads and hot pavement for miles from low altitude on rear risers. An S1 135, I have to plan ahead much further in flight and make my "dump high?" decision much earlier cause once its open, rears don't help much, whereever I am I'm goin' down, ninjatricks won't prolong the flight much. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Damn, homey you're gettin' scorched... Guys, quit pluckin' his feathers... WTF... I usually pull lower than HE does, but then last couple years I been running an old Sabre at 1.3 set up for instawhump which has kept me mostly out of trouble except that business last year. Even so, I got as gently scolded as its possible to be recently by a friend who busted me for being....low. Ain't sayin' how low but for a bit I was mistaken for a no-pull. I felt like a bit of a dink. So I moved it up a bit to about 2.5. I hate worrying my friends, which, with the weird shit I fly happens a lot. J, you let this keep happening to ya I'm gonna start pulling for you at 5K, just watchin' yer back, you understand. Wanna borrow my old Sabre2 170? In 4 years of nothin' but wingsuit I never even came close to chopping that thing, and while I flew it I almost never landed out... Almost.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

So you ever gonna put up the youtube and vimeo links or what? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

psst...rick.... you're cramping my style, man. He was trying to tax my gig and I was setting him up for the smackdown, make him a suit out of one of those inflatable stand-up boxing balloon things with sand in the base. Then he can spend the whole skydive punching his clown and not even void the warranty. Now my timing is all off. Lurch: dividing by zero whenever I damn well feel like it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hell yeah, that flick was inspiration for the leather jacket wingsuit I built earlier this season. Favorite movie moment of the last 5 years was in the "run before you can walk" trailer when he launched out of his garage going "Oooooooooooooooooo, yyyyyEAH!" I can definitely relate to that. Given the historical 90+% fatality rate among the earlier experimental wingsuit designers my first flight on my own suit was one of the gutrippingly scariest moments I'll ever have, and I felt very "oooh yeah!" when it worked well enough to surf a cloud with, first flight. All in all that flick is just a riproaring good time... your basic awesome action flick. Loved it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

So, what, you're talking basically an 80's, 70's style balloon RW suit with wingsuit wings on it? That'd actually be pretty doable, but all the floppiness and parasitic drag is going to trash your forward speed. It'd never be a "smooth" flying experience. Like I said, I had in mind building another modular bolt-on tailwing for the Case that'd resemble half a balloon suit with a tailwing, but the "balloon" effect would be confined to a little slack in the legsleeves that'd be gently tensioned in flight. If it flaps, its slowing you down. Unless you mean something with actually sealed balloons in it for rigidity? Joke? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Believe it or not my next appalling aerial hackjob was going to be a tailwing for the Hardcase made of soft floppy freefly pants... A balloon wingsuit. Sorta. I put another testflight on another revision of the now somewhat-dated zipon godzilla wings today... singleskin from trailing edge of stock S-6 wing to ankle-ish or thereabouts. Very touchy getting the tension right, but it delivered about 3:15 from 13.2-2.8... nothing revolutionary but its a bit closer to a flockable megasuit. Is that balloon enough for ya? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

That. Was cool. Exultant music bro, brings to mind all the glorious shit we did this season... Well done man. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Loud pipes attract paintballs. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.