The111

In other words, for your imaginary version of a wingsuit. The aspect ratio of a wingsuit is what it is, until you bring your 30ft wingspin wingsuit to the market. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

What does airfoil design have to do with simple 2D geometry? If you're not sure about my cartoons, build your own and show us. Maybe you'll outsmart Da Vinci in the process. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

And if you consider that my 90 year old grandfather was once only 15, you may conclude he will live to be 250. Unfortunately, there are real physical limits to everything, such as how much surface area the human frame can support (let alone be LARGE enough to support) in freefall. How can a pilot claim that a glider with L/D 3:1 has better aerodynamics than a glider with L/D 10:1? www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Taking the average male height worldwide to be somewhere around 1.7m, the area of the Vitruvian man's circle is about 3.5sqm. See the attached image for an overlay of a modern large wingsuit on top of the Vitruvian man. I'd guess by eyeballing that only about 1/2 of the circle is being used (and I'm being generous here, I think). So maybe 1.75sqm for a modern large wingsuit. How exactly is 2sqm "not far" from 10sqm? Granted I'm no biologist... but to me that seems like a factor of 5. See the next attached image for this wingsuit scaled 2.4x linearly (5.75x by area). I'm not sure it looks any less ridiculous than the image you still have as your avatar, but either is impossible without a rigid airframe, at which point it may be really super cool... but it won't be a wingsuit anymore. Also, I'm not sure if biologists know about forces and moments, but having arms that are twice as short as they need to be does not mean that you have shoulders which are twice as weak as they need to be. It's a lot worse. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

This one is close, but he should be more arched. http://www.matthoover.com/gallery/skydiving-photos/2006-03/2006-03_p20.html#navbar It would be great if Trae's wish could come true and the guy's head and torso could be below the plane while his feet are still up in the door. But it's not realistic to get in this position unless you can teleport through the floor of the plane, or you exit from a handstand. We walk on our feet, and when you get out that door, your head will be the highest point on your body. Yes if you know what you are doing you can get into a headlow orientation very quickly, but it will not be "feet in the door and everything else below." Even the best pilots like Robi go up a little bit on an advanced move like that. http://www.matthoover.com/gallery/skydiving-photos/2007-10/2007-10_p32.html#navbar http://www.matthoover.com/gallery/skydiving-photos/2007-10/2007-10_p33.html#navbar www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Nice photos, but the guy is arched in BOTH pictures. He is only rotated 90 degrees in the second one. If you can get in that orientation after exit, great. Just maintain the arch. Although, if you do get in that orientation you will be doing flips since the wind is now hitting your back (as your nifty wind indicator shows). However, neither I nor anyone else here cares if you do flips or stay stable. Just maintain the arch. You are correct that in freefall a de-arched dive will make you go down faster than an arched dive. But it will also make you move forward faster. And on exit, everything is rotated 90 degrees. Freefall forward = exit up. So de-arching on exit will make you go up faster. Up is where the skull is. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

What's wrong with that, is that in a wingsuit you do not always go where you look. Sometimes it is quite the opposite. Why do we look backwards (tuck our chin to our chest) when doing a max performance solo flight. Is it because we want to move backwards? Why is it that newbie trackers can never catch the base in a tracking dive, while looking forward/up at him, and spilling air off their chest? It's not just limited to wingsuits. When a newbie RW flyer goes low, do we tell them to look straight up so they can go back up? No. You do not always go where you look. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Indeed. And here's a good one: correlation does not equal causation. You may have been arching and had wings closed (or thought you did) when you nearly had a tail strike, but that does not imply the former caused the latter. There is a reason that every single instructional method out there teaches arching. If you want to buck that trend and be the first to prove that the earth is round, go right ahead, but please present some compelling evidence. Until then, your advice is dangerous to newbies and needs to be loudly disagreed with. There are so many things wrong with your description from a kinematics standpoint. You suggest "projecting yourself forward and down." I can hardly be sure of the correct interpretation of that, but it SOUNDS like you are saying to drive yourself in a certain direction by pushing off of the plane with your feet. First, that is the number one thing we DON'T want newbies (or anybody) doing. We fall away from the door, we do not jump out. Jumping out leads to jumping up. Second, the only way you could push yourself downwards would be to have your feet still contacting the door but your entire body below it. Assuming such a maneuver was desirable and possible, the best way to get into that orientation would be to arch and look up. In many many cases in this sport and others, the body follows the head. However, the exception is with fallrate. Look up, you go down. Look down, you go up. Hence, we look up on exit. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

If you need Wes' instructions, PM me and I can get them to you. When he was alive they were sold on CD from TSO-D and I would not distribute them, but now there is no legitimate way to get them, so I pass them on to those who need them, if for no other reason than to keep them in circulation and keep Wes' legacy alive. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Very very cool stunt Medusa. Congrats. Now do it again with outside video. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Did anyone ever find a way to stop dark leather(ish) booties from bleeding onto white leg material? www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Wish I could have been there for that, Perry! Glad to hear you're back in the air.

What about the last 7 days of 2011? www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Wingsuit pilots wear shirts that say I LOVE YOSEMITE and hang out in packing tents barefoot. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Yes, I saw that and had to laugh. I learn something new every day. Works better in conjunction with the 5th entry in the list... www.WingsuitPhotos.com

In many ways this is a repost from 2 years ago. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=3620079 For whatever reason, MSNBC decided they wanted to air that same footage on their "Caught on Camera" show. I've never watched the show of course... I can only hope it's slightly less sensational than the previous Moments of Impact show... but I won't hold my breath either. So, if you want to watch Scott Bland get the shit beat out of him again... tune into MSNBC this Sunday evening. Show info here: http://www.locatetv.com/tv/caught-on-camera/season-1/7384160 www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Trust me, on the plywood volcano riding forum... it looks the same. They are having a huge argument right now about yahoos renting out full sheets of high quality wood to newbies who should still be practicing with half-size sheets in hot sandboxes. It's just human nature. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I do indeed have a very early P2Z. And I don't believe I've looked very closely at a newer P2Z. Does the cutaway go back to the old style of wing-body attachment on the newer ones? www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Depending on the wingsuit, Simon may be right that failing to strip the last two inches will not allow the wing to release. I own one of each style. On my S3 (cutaway attaches wing to suit, threads from bottom), every tab must be cleared before the wing releases. On my P2 (cutaway allows arm to leave wing, threads from bottom), for every tab that is cleared, your arm is allowed a bit more motion. So leaving 2-3 tabs engaged is not a problem. There are also multiple other ways to design a cable cutaway and many of them have been done. However, even on my S3... it is very easy to clear every tab if you pull at the correct angle. I'll re-neg on my previous statement about safety improvements though, and say that a cutaway system which doesn't require a special angle of pull (like on my P2 vs the S3) is probably a significant improvement. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

When done in addition to cutaway system, a large convenience and arguably a minor safety improvement for certain situations. When done in replacement of cutaway system, I do not agree. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Rigging improvements? Definitely (although zipper designs have been around for a long time). Performance improvements? Yeah, but maybe not "dramatic" differences every generation. Safety? Not at all. Show me a modern wingsuit that is significantly more safe than the first Classics sold by Birdman 10+ years ago. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Good question. I've seen people blow out wings in flight, and I've seen one person fly an old style tony suit (with the rsl shackles) with the wings disconnected. In each case, the person didn't just manage to stay stable... they actually flew their slot in the formation. I will caveat by saying I've never flown an x-bird, but I have flown enough big suits with deflated wings to know they still present plenty of drag which is the main function of a wing for us meatbombs... the inflation is just icing on the cake. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

Please, coach me on how to look super cool in videos. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

The "slow" will never come with a normal human body weight and the amount of wing we can support with our frame and muscles (the defining characteristic of a wingSUIT). Watch the fixed POV videos of a wingsuit flying by an object... it is not even remotely in the same ballpark as a bird or paraglider soaring slowly. If some crazy new technology allows us to support a much larger wingspan, then yes it will be possible, but at that point I wouldn't call it a wingsuit, myself. It is about like telling an elephant that with the right shoes, he can run along the top of a power line like a mouse. www.WingsuitPhotos.com

I actually have to agree with Trae on this one. Normal container... fine. Normal PC... great. Normal bridle? Possible very not ok. It depends what is meant by normal. I don't think there is really a standard for "normal" bridle length which is part of the problem. The most common seems to be 7' for "regular" containers, and I have used those successfully with many wingsuits. However, when I got a new Icon years ago, it came with a 6' bridle, and with the Super Mach 1 that I was flying at the time, there were VERY noticeable hesitations because of the 6' bridle. I flew it like that for many months and never had anything really bad happen other than being seated 500-700 feet lower than I intended... but it really wasn't smart. When I got it replaced with a 9' bridle, those problems disappeared immediately. I had hundreds of wingsuit jumps already at that time... I know how to throw a PC.