whatever

I finally got around to posting the pics mentioned in this thread: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1779617#1779617 thought I'd put a pointer here, it's kinda wingsuit related too... disclaimer: probably not a good idea to try this with a canopy pilot who has under 10 000 jumps... soon to be gone

right here: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/gallery/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Personal_Galleries/whatever/Cobalt_40_Birdman_S3 soon to be gone

I recently managed my first backflip while flying my S3, so I'm looking for pointers on wingsuit acrobatics. here's what I've managed: frontflips -quite easy, took a while to consistently keep both booties on and staying on heading is work barrel rolls -fairly easy too, can go with wings all out, or totally collapsed, can do backfly-barrel roll-backfly pretty easy too half barrel rolls -not quite as simple as full barrel rolls, but not too hard 360s -fun as hell and not too hard, took a long time to get them to rotate fast and stop on heading backflips -these I find really hard to do. any pointers much appreciated!! on a related topic, I'm also getting into wingsuit hybrid jumps now (for lack of a better term), where a non-wingsuit jumper flies docked with the wingsuit jumper in a non-rodeo configuration and I am aware of the totem-pole configuration, have heard mention of a backfly-chest strap / MLW grip passenger underneath setup and I have one successful hybrid that is neither of those two.... I'm always looking to improve my wingsuit skills and learn new stuff, all you wingsuit pilots out there with pointers/feedback/ideas, please chime in! thanks sam soon to be gone

or you could just be really 'Hollywood' like some of those tall South Africans, who were flying various versions of these suits, and do a barrel roll before deployment, grabbing the PC handle while on your back and the relative winds is blowing the wing away from the handle (I think it would deflate the rigbox too), then just keep rotating until you are belly down and let that PC fly..... I'm not saying that this is what is needed, I'm just saying that this is what I understood these guys were doing, from talking to them. soon to be gone

just be glad they didn't take one of him humping your boc pouch.... and you thought your pilot chute got all stuck together because you left it stowed too long.... soon to be gone

yeah, that's me...

never mind the damn monkeys - vergeet die bleddie ape (vir al die afrikaners en kaaskoppe hier ), are all those planes going to be there for sure? ( Hercules, CASA, Puma, AN32 ) if so, you had better believe that I will take a couple of days break from my family Christmas visit in the Cape..... tailgates galore, you and T on the wingsuit program, I can see myself having a good time there! have you heard which of the SA wingsuit pilots are planning on attending? cya sam soon to be gone

As of Saturday, 23 July 2005: Type Jumps Number of From Objects B 3 3 A 65 7 S 66 3 E 5 3 O 3 2 total 142 18 slider off jumps: around 120 slider up jumps: around 22 longest delay taken: just over 5 seconds the really interesting thing is that my most recent 2 jumps have both been from underhung objects (350ft freestanding A and a 330ft freestanding Power Pylon) and both times I had 180s… other than some slider up 180s off the TBPB during my first 63 jumps, these are the first true 180s I’ve had and they had to happen on the most challenging objects that I jump… Don’t think I would’ve dealt with them all this well 100 jumps ago… just something to consider when you're out there rolling those dice... cya sam soon to be gone

Hey Nick what are the things circled in blue in the attached pic? at first I thought, slider tie-downs for slider down jumps, but aren't they supposed to be on the front risers? just curious thanks sam soon to be gone

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this, but I've heard from a few knowledgeable people that your brakelines takes most of the stress of deployment. This makes sense, as even in shallow brakes, you have pulled the tail down far enough to increase the tension on the brakelines significantly, and this increase in tension is balanced out by a decrease in tension in the nearer linesets (D and maybe C's too). Couple this with the fact that the brakelines sit right at the back of your canopy and therefore enjoy the maximum 'leverage' advantage and it makes sense that they will be most effective at driving the slider down. This means the slider should/might still come down even with the brakelines routed outside it, it just won't come down as effectively as when the brakelines are inside. anyone please feel free to correct me if I have this wrong cya sam soon to be gone

It already does. uhm, actually, no, it does not. it does on almost all cars now control the engine (fuelling, spark, etc.) and various other functions, but it does not drive your vehicle on the other hand, autopilots do fly and land passenger airplanes.... but then, you have to consider the development and testing that goes into a system like that and all the built in redundancy - good luck finding any of that in an alti used for skydiving.... soon to be gone

updating my CSPA membership info and my logbook and it seems I qualified for the 10 hrs freefall award that the CSPA observes, this past weekend on jump no. 559 I did my first wingsuit jump for skydive no. 308, with 156 wingsuit jumps out of the 251 jumps it took me to get up to skydive no. 559 and 10 hrs 1 min 41 sec cumulative freefall time. the other 95 jumps in that time have been mostly tracking dives, some RW, some freefly and some hop'n'pops it just occured to me that if you logged 60 sec freefall for every jump (small - medium RW from turbines) it would take 600 jumps to get 10 hrs... my wingsuit has really upped my freefall time like crazy. I use a Protrack, a Suunto X6 and my Camcorder to track freefall time. cya sam soon to be gone

OMG - the funniest post in here in months! nice one, Ted soon to be gone

if it will take you a year to do 100 jumps, then you're not very current at all.... especially if you've already decided on a GTi for your first wingsuit... seriously guy, do the other 110 skydives you need for the 200 jump minimum, do a course with a good instructor and you'll be way ahead of where you'd be if you jumped your GTi now 90 jumps + 100 jumps per year + GTi = BAD IDEA cya sam soon to be gone

Saskia you have gotten some pretty harsh replies here and I think I understand why: most any BASE jump looks simple and easy when everything goes well and wingsuit BASE jumps even more so.... but a look at the BASE fatality list kept by Nick Di Giovanni reveals just how dangerous wingsuit BASE jumps are the list is here: http://hometown.aol.com/base194/myhomepage/base_fatality_list I have reformatted the wingsuit BASE fatalities in the attached spreadsheet. Nick, I know you read these forums regularly and I'm sure you do not mind this use of the information, please say if you do and I will request a moderator to remove it. I have included Dwain Weston too, as his fatality involved more aspects of a wingsuit BASE jump than of a wingsuit skydive. it shows 8 wingsuit BASE fatalities out of 20 overall BASE fatalities since the 1st wingsuit BASE fatality, which seems around the time that wingsuit BASE started picking up speed 3, maybe 4, of those fatalities were by very experienced wingsuit BASE jumpers, who at the time of their deaths were very close to the top of the game in BASE or wingsuit BASE or both..... despite these statistics the call of wingsuit BASE is still heard by many and the draw is very strong I, myself, am drawn to wingsuit BASE and when I just started BASE and wingsuit skydiving, I thought when I have 100 BASE jumps and 100 wingsuit skydives, I should be/feel ready to take up wingsuit BASE. I have 141 wingsuit skydives and 136 BASE jumps now and even though I've become pretty competent at wingsuit skydives, I still see myself doing a lot more preparation before taking a wingsuit off a cliff (or other fixed object). My plan is to stay really current on my S3 and go to the Herc boogie in Sweden next year, to do many wingsuit skydives and be highly familiar with my wingsuit. ( I might opt to use a lower performance wingsuit than the S3 for my first few wingsuit BASE jumps and if I go that way, I'll be using that suit mostly during the Herc boogie) Then it's off to Norway and the big walls right after the Herc Boogie and I'll work my way from terminal BASE jumps ( I have none yet ), to BASE jumps with a tracking suit ( I really like the PF suits ), to my first wingsuit BASE jumps. It might seem overly conservative to some and several experienced BASE wingsuit pilots have said with my wingsuit skydives and BASE jumps I could be doing wingsuit BASE already, but I like the conservative approach to BASE - even though my time in the sport vs. my jump numbers might suggest that I'm more of the going hard school of thought - I'm just a really active jumper. If you feel unbelievably drawn to wingsuit BASE, read all the guidelines available on here on how to start, but also read the guidelines on how to start BASE. wingsuit BASE is an entire order of magnitude more dangerous than BASE itself so, if you cannot accept the risks of BASE, you should never even consider wingsuit BASE so, the short answer is that it is a stupid and dangerous idea to do a wingsuit jump for your first BASE jump, but then, looking at the statistics, it seems stupid and dangerous to wingsuit BASE at all, but then, looking at the statistics, it seems stupid and dangerous to BASE jump at all, but then, looking at the statistics, it seems stupid and dangerous to skydive with a small canopy and swoop.... DAMN!!! I might have to stop just about all the fun stuff I do.... seriously, though, they are all steps in risk level, take your time through them to minimize your chance of injury/death or maximize the number of jumps before injury and/or death cya sam soon to be gone

I know what you're saying, t , and when I started wingsuiting I was all obsessed with longest delays possible too. Flocking with some faster wingsuit flyers soon cured me of that !! Now I don't fly for slowest vertical possible or fastest forward, I try to fly what feels like the most efficient way. I cover more ground than I used to compared to when going for distance, yet my descent rate is slower than when I concentrated purely on that.... Maybe the tracking race I took part in on Saturday helped, as this past Sunday I did two solos in the morning, tried to follow the Otter for as long as possible and just haul ass after that - see the attached pic for the Pro-Track graph on the 2nd one. My 2 Pro-Tracks both show the same spikes and numbers, as they are both in my helmet being audibles primarily and dataloggers secondarily. My Suunto X6 is my primary datalogger, as it does not time out at 119 sec, like the Pro-Tracks and it's not fooled like a Pro-Track when you get above the plane on exit. It showed: 13858 ft at exit, 10417 ft at 60 sec, 6857 ft at 120 sec, 3310 ft at 180 sec 2520 ft at 188 sec - which is the point where my canopy opening started slowing me down 2395 ft at 192 sec - which is the point where my canopy is fully flying that jump was such a trip! I hop out of the Otter, facing forward, keep collapsed just long enough for the horizontal stab to enter my peripheral vision, then I pop and inflate and get on with chasing the plane until it's too far away, at which point I start flying my pattern, flat turns only, really subtle weight shifts with the hips to turn, at 60 sec my pre-wingsuit-skydiver-mindset-mental-dytter kicks in and a quick alti check puts the feeling that I should pull soon to rest. It's also pretty trippy to see 10 500 ft on your alti at that point! So I reset the mental dytter and get on with trying to max out my S3, I try to feel and control the tension in every point I can in the wings, by rolling my shoulders, pushing my elbows forward, pushing down and pulling out on the grippers, pushing out with my knees, pushing out and down with my feet, rolling my ankles outward, pointing my toes, keeping the right amount of arch/flatness/de-arch and keeping my head down and still. It's such a weird feeling, when I get it right I can try to angle down as hard as I can, yet my trajectory won't get any steeper, my forward speed just picks up and I feel the resistance of the airstream keeping my descent rate low. The only other things I need to do then is stay aware of my speed, altitude, heading, the plane and canopies in the air from the other jumpers on the load and fly with those subtle weight shifts - but what the hey, wingsuit solos are simple, right? Oh yeah, my arms are already feeling the strain, but it's a good kind of hurt and I figure I can push through it for the rest of the jump. Then my mental dytter sounds again somewhere around 2 mins and I wonder if I've flown out over the lake too far? Never mind, I've been out further than this, but I'm still well West of the DZ too, so I use the motivation to haul ass toward the DZ, planning my flight path around the canopies still in the air. I'm hitting around 6000ft now, my first audible beeps sound, and I can start to really see my movement relative to the ground, I line up with a road that heads where I'm going and tweak my position for max forward drive. I'm pretty sure I'll make it back now and my mental dytter is screaming in disbelief, but my alti looks good, neither of my audibles have sounded the second alarms and the ground still looks a safe distance away, so I go with it until my audibles sound the second beeps at 4000ft, now I'm in countdown mode, I line up for where I want to deploy and start looking at the alti, waiting to see 2700 ft. 2700 ft rolls around and I grab the PC handle and pitch hard with my right arm while correcting for the assymetry with my legwing, this time I even get the right wing gripper again after pitching and keep flying for all I'm worth. I could feel the container open and the bag leave and I know what's coming, so I try to relax... What feels like an eternity after I pitch, my Nitro 120 is out of the bag and catching enoug air to swing me a bit further than horizontal, I collapsed my wings as the swing started and now I'm kind-of on my back and looking slightly up, but mostly behind me to see the canopy expand slowly through it's snivel. The deployment starts out looking good, but it soon turns into a 180 and it's all I can do to be ready to harness steer my way around with the canopy once the ride starts.... The canopy spins around hard but I keep up pretty good and even though it has shut my camcorder off, I have managed to avoid linetwists and gotten the canopy level and straight pretty quick after doing about one and a half rotations. I find the canopies still in the air - two tandems, but I'm above both of them. I check my alti - 2400 ft - good, plenty of altitude to set up a nice landing. I do some front riser turns to get below the tandems and then it's swoop time... I'm buzzing for the longest time, this was my 140th wingsuit jump and my 58th solo wingsuit jump and it's more awesome than when I did my first wingsuit jumps a year ago. In that time I've only done 40 skydives without my wingsuit, so I guess I can understand why some people don't recognize me in the plane if I'm not in my wingsuit.. damn, that got long! other than a desire to share that jump, my point is that now that I've shifted focus to flying to cover as much gound as I can, I've also happened to do my first 3 minute jump from our standard turbine altitude I'll still do the solos whenever there's no flockers around, but the flocking is what it's all about. My newest favourite flocking thing is to switch to flying on my back at 6000ft, ahead of and below my regular flocking buddy, who pulls at 5000ft, at which point I have the visuals of him collapsing his wings and sinking closer to me while pitching, then his deployment, which I get to see from the same level if I match the fallrates just right, while I'm flying away, finally his slider has come down all the way and only now is his canopy slowing him below my descent rate, so I do a half barrel roll onto my belly, fly the rest of the way to 4000ft and pull. I love this wingsuit stuff. soon to be gone

hi I posted this video: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2369 and at 03:28 there's a Twin Otter exit that you can see the plane go below the wingsuit flyer I was last out though and the plane does start it's descent soon after, but they do not dive hard or bank as in the picture in the first post for all the wingsuit flyers out there: probably NOT a good idea to see if you can get above a Twin Otter after exiting it, though..... rather just wait to see you have cleared the horizontal stabilizer and then wing it up cya sam soon to be gone

I jump to keep up with my psycho friend B-Rad - whenever we've climbed up an object, it's 3-2-1-C-Ya and he's gone! As soon as I get over my fear of the dark, I might be comfortable alone up there at night.... Better send him a shirt too, sometimes I just don't seem to pay enought attention and I fall off the exit point first - good thing I always have that baserig near objects and then he has to follow... soon to be gone

hey buddy, easy on the old guys.. one of my all time favourite basejumpers and people is a 60 year old fart! and if it takes the committed person more than a year to three to do all that: good luck with fitting in the awareness, assessment and action you will need, when one of your basejumps develops complications, in the few seconds you will have to avoid death, minimize injury or maybe avoid injury altogether... cya sam soon to be gone

I think because it's hard to see the value in that kind of preparation before you've jumped a little bit. indeed, but as almost always the law of diminishing returns applies here and I'd say at 500 skydives and 50 demos most everyone would likely have learned as much they need to make the 'right' choices in how to start base no doubt... therefore the PRO rating and demos some things I realized I should have included: - learn to rock climb (even just indoor would help, but trad would be of more value) - learn to do rope rescue - learn to paraglide (this should teach some meteorology) - get paramedic training (first aid is good, but paramedic is better) - get in shape - write your will - make sure you have a plan for WHEN you get hurt anyways, ' no-one makes it of here alive ' - applies to life no matter how well prepared you are, being prepared in base won't keep you uninjured forever, but it might let you survive a higher number of jumps PS - call me sam doei soon to be gone

I voted 'other - please explain' - here's why: 1 - research BASE to determine how to start 2 - learn to skydive (part of plan form step 1) 3 - do 260 skydives 4 - locate local BASE jumpers (including mentor) and decide on which FJC 5 - buy gear 6 - do 2 jumps at bridge-day 7 - do FJC at the Perrine 8 - stay at the Perrine for another 8 days and do a load more jumps if I had it all over to do again, I would change it this way: - do 500 skydives - get PRO rating - do 50 Demo jumps - get rigger's ticket - do lots of CRW and accuracy skydives on intended BASE canopy - learn to platform dive as additional steps before the FJC... soon to be gone

I don't know about the S3S and I only have about 120 S3 jumps, but 8 mins in a S3 sounds like a recipe for an impossi-pull if I've ever seen one..... over 3 minutes on my S3 from 19000ft produced a rather significant 'twilight zone' when I got my hand on my PC handle and wondered if I even have enough arm strength left to pull it out the BOC.. but then again, maybe the S3S is significantly easier on the arms, maybe the guys trying this have a lot more arms-strength and endurance than I do, but all the same, if I were them I'd have a switched on CYPRES and make sure my wings are collapsed enough that I would have far in excess of a 78 mph descent rate all the way down from 2000ft but then, I found the air at 21000 ft ASL already thin enough to have a marked increase in descent rate, so I'd have to say that it would be really difficult to achieve 8 minutes 'freefall' (maybe freeflight is a better term) in a S3 from 40 000ft.... (for someone who regularly does 2min35sec from 14000ft, if you get significantly better numbers than this, you should be laughing all the way) on the flipside, they shouldn't need to hit 8 minutes to cover the distance required it would be neat, though.... I'll be watching this one with interest. soon to be gone

if you're going to bother adding the jump, add the freefall time too, so you are totally up to date I don't add jumps often, but as I fly my wingsuit a lot at a turbine DZ, I often correct my freefall times, because the protrack 'times out' at 119 seconds and I'm generally doing around 150 seconds on solos from 14000ft. cheers sam soon to be gone

theoretical explanation for that is easy: same reason some people leave their bridle and PC attached for D-Bag jumps - they are not comfortable with the concept of the D-Bag and that you will get a canopy at linestretch before it leaves the bag... I'd love to hear from people with loads of D-Bag experience on this topic. also: do you use your tailgate when using a D-Bag? the pros are obvious the possible cons are a slower deployment ( maybe ) and the risk of tailgate hang-up since you will likely be landing whatever sort of lineover or other malfunction you have when doing a D-Bag (if you use it for the altitudes D-Bags are intended for), is it really worth it to risk a tailgate hangup to try and prevent something you would not have time to fix if it happened anyway? soon to be gone

I've never done any D-Bag jumps, but from our FJC and what I could learn about D-Bags: - D-Bags are made like skydiving D-Bags, i.e. they have a flap with grommets for some mouthlock elastics and then tape loops for more elastics for linestows - D-Bags are proportioned like the correct size base container for that canopy and the canopy is folded the standard way - the canopies lines are not stowed in the tailpocket, but rather using the elastic stows on the D-Bag - the D-bag should always be anchored to the object, in case the holder drops it - the reason D-Bag deployments can be quicker than PCA or static line is that they achieve line-stretch before the canopy leaves the exit point - some people remove bridle and PC for D-bag, some leave attached and some attach the canopy or PC to the inside of the D-Bag with a piece of break-cord so you wouldn't want to make it like a container, as you gain most of the advantage by using elastic linestows on the outside of the bag and therefore getting linestretch before the canopy leaves the bag cya sam edited for clarity and to replace 'static line' with break-cord soon to be gone