SkymonkeyONE

The summer wingsuit jumps are simply amazing here. Yes, it's "Africa hot", but with towering cumulous clouds soaring over 15000 feet high, there is no end to the fighter-pilot-like cloud swoopage. I love it. Chuck

You know, I don't think I have 40 solo wingsuit jumps in over 1400 (to date). The only time I fly by myself is when there are simply no others to play with, but there is a tandem to swoop. I just don't get off on solos and GPS tracks, etc, like alot of people do. I AM very keen on Robi's "progression program" in that context. People will only get better by jumping with superior jumpers who can routinely smoke them and train them new tricks as well. Chuck

That's an interesting read, Boris. The way I read it, though, leads me to believe that you guys think that all we here in the states care about is vertical speed. That's simply not true. We train a ton of students here in Z-hills. I trained a ton of students before that in the years I was at Raeford after Jari and I first met. To be perfectly clear: what we teach is how to get out the door stable, "find the sweet spot", and fly a safe, pre-determined path back to the DZ without running into anyone. Lastly, how to pull with stability. After that first flight, we include novices on as challenging a skydive as they can handle. I don't know anywhere where they do not designate a person base and have everyone else form up on them. That base generally flys slow enough for people to catch up, then picks up the pace to keep people working at improving their performance. Unless you have jumped with any of us, you really can't say at all how we do things here. Some of us have been at it a very long time (comparatively, seeing as how the first USA BMI's weren't "made" till 2000). Robi is a fantastic wingsuit pilot, great designer, and I really like him, but he didn't want anything at all to do with "training" when he was with Jari and I know he still doesn't like flying with others all that much, or so he told me. You get over since he is your brother!

Uh, read the title of the Flock and Dock 3.0 thread, dummy! It's not this weekend, but next. People have already started showing up and practicing though. We have been doing four to seven-ways all week long. Chuck

There will positively have to be a Charlie Brown color pattern offered.

You mean next Wednesday? That's OK, Mike, you have only missed five wingsuit dives today so far.

Very racy looks!

Here's another just for shits and grins

I layed three of my own suits and one M1 that fits me on the ground today to show relative wing sizes of each. This, for those of you who simply don't have access to 40 suits hanging in your school like we do here at Z-hills. Anyway, draw what conclusions you will. The weather got crappy for a while and I was bored, so we took pictures. They were lined up side-by-side and taken from exactly the same distance and angle. Chuck

I simply don't let events traumatize me anymore. Not for a good 20 years now, actually. If you see enough death and destruction first-hand, eventually you are just numb to it. That may sound callous, but it's just a fact of life for some people. Chuck

That's what nearly every video guy I know does.

It was actually all over network television today. They made the reporters wear slippers so they would not scratch the see-thru floor.

Agreed, you can get a 39 mph average out of a Phantom. It's truly one of the most efficient wings I have ever flown and seen other people fly. I am constantly amazed at how fast and far Ryan Scarlet can go in his and he's fucking 320 out the door. Seriously. We have three on the rack in our school right now. To be sure, biggest does not mean best if you do not have mastery of the larger suit. Case in point: my wife. She had a Classic II first, then upgraded to an S3. She got the same performance out of her "small" suit as she did in the larger suit which took more concentration to fly. She will be flying her Classic II and a LadyFlyer (from Tony) at Flock and Dock. Chuck

Hey, brother, we understand. I am all about the saying "gimme a dollar and I will make you holler!"

Actually, the "sneak peek" was seeing and touching it at PIA! I really do think it's a good looking design, Dan. Take care, Chuck

I neglected to mention that I also do hand-cam on my own tandems so I keep ALL the money I charge, minus cost of lift tickets. We pay no "outside instuctor fee" crap here at Z-hills; it's great. I shoot inside video on every single AFF dive I do too. It's a fantastic debriefing tool and my .3 lens gets all the important stuff without me even thinking about it.

Neither Jeff nor I are GPS geeks, but I am sure it wouldn't be too much trouble for him to take a photo of his Neptune log for that jump. It was just recently. The only real GPS geek on this dropzone is Grey Mike. Anyone wanting "hard data" on Jeff's ability to stay aloft need only show up at Flock and Dock or any of the dropzones he has chosen for his gypsy tour this summer. Chuck

.........because he wanted some right seat time. That or Julie the pilot won't let anyone she does not know sit next to her. Chuck

I am talking about both actually, Jarno, as both apply in the kind of skydives I routinely do. You might have to simply pop straight up a meter to do an over-under, or you might have to pop up and speed up at the same time because the flock leader (or your student) changed the pace suddenly. Your "upfloating" episode in the flylikebrick series shows version 1. By the way, those are fantastic visual training tools and I show them alot to people we coach here at Z-hills. Chuck

Maybe it was she who wrote the code for the site, Jack!

Just like we have in wingsuit instruction, I believe there definitely ought to be a common-sense rule for big-way stuff in relation to canopy selection. "Yes, you can be on the record attempt if you meet the following criteria: freefall qualifications, currency, appropriately sized canopy." Chuck

I have a hard time understanding why an experienced skydiver has not ever heard the term "pop", but that's besides the point. When a four-way FS team does a vertical move, one group pops up and over and the other group sinks a bit then levels out. CRW guys pop up and over the back of the formation and fly down to the bottom when they are doing rotations. We, as wingsuiters, are FAR from "unpowered aircraft". At best we are "super trackers" with aerodynamic aids. We are far more akin to parachutes and ought to be defining our gliding terms more in common parachute terms than out-of-some-book aerodynamic terms. Only in the best of maxed-out performance jumps are we anywhere near creating lift as James and some others are trying to categorize it. MOST wingsuit dives are not flown maxed out. MOST wingsuit jumps are leisurely flocks. Some pretty fast and clean, some pretty dirty. I simply refuse to refer to flocking as "stall flying" which has become vogue in some circles. Saying that only flat-out wingsuiting is flying and subordinating all other flight modes is simply not going to cut it. At least not here. Stalling is a condition where something stops flying and is not controllable. Are we creating lift? No? But we sure as hell can exhibit control, so therefore we are not "stalled." We are definitely flying so long as we are in control. Still, if you must use aviation analogies, I will just ask you what you call a Harrier when it is in transition mode? Is it stalled? Nope, it's flying just fine. We as skydivers in wingsuits simply have a tremendously large transition mode. It goes all the way from falling straight down to maxed out flight. It's semantics. As the GREAT MAJORITY of wingsuit flyers cruise along in that middle ground, we need to be more open minded when it comes to defining "flying". That is all. I need to go outside and make my fourth wingsuit flight of the day. Chuck

A couple from Finland got here yesterday already for the event. We have already put two loads up today. First one was a six-way. It's tuesday. Chuck

I am doing nothing of the sort, James. What I am talking about when I describe "pop" is the ability to go up vertically, very-quickly, no matter what your forward velocity might be. Inefficient students are not usually flying in a "stall"; they are flying in a "sinking" body position. "Stalling" a suit to me is when you are flying too ridgidly, you lose forward speed, then it starts wobbling back and forth and you lose both your speed and lift. You BASE-specific guys always want to call flying dirty(to any degree) "stalled", but that's not what it is. It's just "dirty", and yes, it's more of a sink than a glide. You are really confusing things when you decide among yourselves that there can only be two terms, "flying" and "stalled" with nothing in between. There is a full range of flight available to wingsuiters. It can be as dirty as falling nearly straight down on your belly, to easy gliding, to sinking or popping, to maximum performance horizontal flight. That's even leaving out the dynamic backflying, vertical diving and recovery, etc, that we throw in the mix. A parachute being flown in at half brakes is not "stalled", it's in a sinking configuration. Same with an airplane with the power off: VsO is a very different glide angle than VsI, but neither would be considered "stalled flight". One just has a longer glide and a higher airspeed than the other. Chuck

You two brothers might be Gay , but you sure do have a neat embroidery icon! I really like it. Which one of you thought of it? Chuck