SkymonkeyONE

Very nice!

All of the above! If you are unable to land your main canopy, it does not deploy at all (Total), have cutaway (or not in the case of a total), and your reserve does not open properly then it's a double. Whether or not you are successful in clearing the problem is besides the point. One thing I can tell you FOR SURE, though, is that you don't want it to happen to you. Chuck

Glad to oblige, brother!

The little girls making chicken noises was first-rate footage!

***68 seconds per jump average. I didn't know jumping from 14K was typical 20 to 30 years ago. Quote A pointless contribution to the thread, but hey, I'll bite. 20 to 30 years ago people wore big, baggy jumpsuits and fell considerably slower. Also, people generally pulled at two grand because their mains didn't take 1000 feet to open.

I agree

Do you mean Purple Mike's 1000th? That's who got the egging/feathering.

She really does make good chicken. I was glad you guys shared.

Word

Agreed

The one I saw being jumped with very-poor success, had the same wobble whether or not the image stabilizer was on or not, no matter what attitude he was flying. It sucked worst at freeflying, but really wasn't any better at wingsuiting. Too bad; it's the perfect size replacement for my PC 109.

There is a big mix of HC1's, HC3's, and HC5's here at Z-hills. Nobody I know has any problems at all with any of those three models.

Positively not true. At least not in the "save my life" sense of having to do the job after snapping a brakeline. It's very, very easy to land big student/demo canopies on rears. Hell, I teach it in the first jump course and it's a mandatory "check" (at altitude) on the four-page ISP progression card. Want to try to land on rears on a larger canopy? Yes, please do it on a day with a bit of wind if you want to make it easier. With wind, you can more easilly stop the forward flight of your canopy prior to stalling the wing. If you are going to do it for training, keep your hands in the toggles unless you have truly broken a brake line. Do some practice flares at altitude prior to committing to the actual landing. Why? To find your stall point; it's quite deep on large canopies. The smaller the canopy, the closer you have to watch out for approach stalls. It takes a bit more finesse and you definitely don't want to "yank your risers down" on ANY canopy. It's best when you are doing practice flares to do them at the same speed you would normally pull down your toggles. Start your flare about the same altitude you would with your toggles, but be prepared to slide it out or PLF on that first try. Definetely don't flare too high/too hard and stall at an altitude you can't step away from. Again: I am talking about saving your life, not swooping. Chuck

That's a really good analogy, Mike! To further clarify though: It feels similar to transitioning from rears to toggles when you are using trips. There is a bigger "bump" caused by the slack having longer to be taken up. Odd, but I am already used to it. It just meant having to get ready for a deeper flare during transition from rears to toggles. Chuck

The difference, James, is that you have a TON of wingsuit experience compared to these two. You ROUTINELY take such calculated risks in a wingsuit, which, by the way, you are intimately familiar with. I would have much rather seen pics of you, Robi, or any of the other ultra-current BASE wingsuit guys doing this. Chuck

I positively agree.

You are definitely not alone in that thinking, bro.

Any idea how idiotic and stupid this sounds considering the topic of this thread??? I am sure he would greatly appreciate you showing him how it's done. You are going to have to try alot harder than that to get under MY skin. Bro, you feel free to have your own feelings on how this stunt worked out because I definitely have mine, and they are very different. In my opinion, this is not unlike the Royal Gorge stunt-gone-wrong. In that instance, two supposed wingsuit "experts" zooed their proposed poised exits out of a Caravan and the one taking the "higher" path scrubbed off too much usable lift in his efforts to come closer to the bridge. He failed and it was a horrific spectacle. In THIS stunt, another relatively inexperienced wingsuit pilot tried basically the same thing with almost the exact same result! If you don't think scrubbing trees with your fucking belly is as close to death as you can possibly get then you are out of your mind. Particularly when the person who took the lower path (by a long shot) carried eough speed that he had no such clearance issue. I can promise you Luis Cani does not have a death wish and I am sure that scared the hell out of him. I get along with the guy; I'm glad he lived through it! Jeb and Luigi are bragging about this??? This is something these "stuntmen" ought to spend a little more time thinking about. Unless you have swooped objects over and over and over what makes you think you have the skillset to just go out and do something like this? By his own admition on Stunt Junkies, Luigi is a novice BASE jumper. By everything I have seen and what I have heard from locals, he is also still a novice wingsuit pilot. How many tandems did he swoop prior to this stunt? How flat did he pass them if he even DID practice like that? Did he do the same "sink it down to the object" route or did he practice diving from way above and behind and flaring out at full power so that he would have the maximum lift available as he approached the object? If he didn't practice that at some secret skydiving location, how many practice BASE jumps did he do where he swooped an object? Where exactly was that? I seriously want to know. Again, my problem with all this is wingsuit proficiency. When Jeb was attempting to dock on Luigi a while back he had a very, very hard time closing the gap. The other wingsuit pilot on those loads, Loic Jean Albert, had no problem whatsoever flying himself right under Luigi's feet like a surfboard. Unfortunately, this was a GoFast! stunt, though, and you only got to see those two GF-sponsored atheletes on the cover of Parachutist. That was a stunt which had been accomplished in Deland, FL four years prior by Jari and Vladi Pesa. I just wonder how this new stunt is going to play out on TV...... Luigi is a national celebrity in his country already. Chuck Z-Flock Wingsuit School

Luigi is not that proficient a wingsuit pilot. I like the guy, but I will bet you a hundred dollars he doesn't have more than fourty wingsuit jumps

Oddly, yesterday I found out that both Sally Hathaway and Dave Ruffell (both from the UK, but living/working at Z-hills) have the mod on their rigs and have had it for some time. I never noticed and I definitely never heard of it before this thread.

I haven't even thought about when I ought to get there. My guess is the day before the official start of the event.

www.digitallyimported.com is positively my favorite site for streaming trance/house in a multitude of different varieties.

I top-ringed by new canopy today and thought I would post my first impressions. -I liked the absence of fumbling around the guide rings during the front riser to rear riser transition. -I did not like the extra slack and associated "bump" when I transitioned from rears back to toggles at the end of the swoop. I am going to give it a few more jumps before I switch back, just to give it a fair shake. I could see it being a real benefit for guys with long arms, but I simply don't have that problem. Chuck

Damn! My boy Beek put the caddywompus on some motherfuckers! Not bad for an airforce guy!

I did three jumps with Dan (Arai) today. We had a ton of fun! I had him pooping on the second load! He's a tall, lanky guy with a bunch of range. Chuck