SkymonkeyONE

Karl Stenger, a Danish army guy on a four month mission here at Z-hills to return back home with all of his ratings, did his first two wingsuit flights today. He was fucking stoked and did very well on both of his flights. He jumped Tony Suit Z-Wing Eagles on both of his flights. Even though he does not drink at all, we forced him into buying his case of beer at the bar. Lovely. Tomorrow, I am taking the Japanese freeflyer, Katsu on his first flight. He if very excited about it. Particuarly after Karl lived...... We are not sucking at Z-hills. PS: I just checked with manifest and I have made 120 wingsuit jumps since I got here at the end of July. chuck

who is this guy, how many wingsuit jumps does he have, and why did he hum it so low that he impacted the water without a full canopy? I don't care how many BASE jumps he had. Chuck

That was a Mach 1 prototype.

You are right. I totally forgot about that. I am actually not sure where I am going to be, but it's most likely that we will be in Palatka (without my golf cart)

Actually, I am pretty sure that was due to the slow pace of those flocks. The suit does not do that when it's stretched out. Chuck

Nope, if you flew the black suit without grippers, it was not a Nebula. All of the Tony-designed suits that were at that boogie had webbies. All the others were Jeff designs. If you flew Jeff's black suit with grippers and very long wings, it was a Mach 1 prototype.

The Mach 1 is entirely different than the Nebula. The Nebula has webbies and swept-forward wings. The Mach 1 does not; it has grippers and swept back wings. The legwing on the Mach1 is considerably wider than the V1 or V2. It's very wide and Jeff likes it that way. The legwing on the Nebula (and the eagle) are Vampire width. No, none of the Tony or Jeff designs currently has a BASE pouch, but I am sure you could order one. Yes, the wings on both the Nebula and the Mach 1 are very, very large and require some concentration to locate the BOC without grabbing a handfull at pull time. This doesn't seem to bother either Jeff (on his big black suit, the Mach 1) or Scotty Burns in his Nebula.

No shit! All of the usual suspects will be here, Mike.

Matt111 SkymonkeyONE Crutch JumpingBean (tammie) KatieBear21

Actually, there is a spot in your profile where you can put your favorite disciplines and how many jumps you have in each. Now, back to the regularly scheduled discussion about LQRS.

That's the suit Jeff was jumping when he was up there, John. The big black one. It's refined a bit more now, but that's it.

Cancer Chris was jumping webbies all the time back then. I don't recall anyone else jumping them there.

Nice one, dave.

I was just over at the wingsuit warehouse and found out that all of Tony's designs are now available without webbies. Instead, you may opt for a traditional wrist cuff and grippers. That applies to the Eagle, Nebula, and probably the Spitfire as well. The LadyFlyer and Aerobat already came "webbie free". This option came as a result of Scott Bland taking his Eagle back over to get the webbies removed. The result was very clean! the gripper angle is "outward" at an angle very similar to a Vampire. This fixes the only real thing I disliked about his three "standard" designs. There are people out there who really like the webbies, I was just not one of them. The beauty of this is that it's not unplausible that a person could try the suit with the webbies and, if they do not like it after a time, they could send it back for retrofit of a regular cuff and grippers. That's just me thinking outloud, but I know Tony had Scott's suit done very, very quickly. Anyway, I just thought I would post that since I was over there this morning shooting the breeze with Tony. Chuck

Trevor Hill had a camera mounted on his helmet for every single entry his team did on his last deployment. Shoot him a PM and ask what he used. He's "Trevor" on here unless I am mistaken. Chuck

I'll take crickets over love bugs anytime, bro.

There have been many, many people who have swooped through hangars. I would hope very-much that the show does not portray Joao as being the "first" to accomplish this (as is the style of that show). Ugh. Chuck

This is a blatant solicitation for your business. I am going to leave it for today only and then I am going to delete it. We have a place in the classifieds for such ads. Feel free to PM me if you want to know how to word such things so that I don't have to call foul. Chuck

It's only been a couple of years now that you have been able to use more than one canopy in competition! I was almost disqualified at the PPPB world meet in 2001 when I had to swap canopies because mine got destroyed in a round. Thankfully, I had a nearly-identical canopy in my other rig. You had to jump one canopy the whole meet back then. As I recall, that rule was to prevent people from downsizing between rounds if it got windy. Anyway, it's only been a couple of years since you have even been able to jump one canopy for each different event if you chose to. As to jumping "stock" versus "pro-modded" and experimental canopies, you have always been able to "jump what you brung." Jim Slaton has competed in plenty of meets under experimental canopies, y'all. You want a faster canopy? Find someone to mod one for you. I think it's positively great that guys like Joe Bennet and MEL are making custom linesets, fantastic RDS systems, and other mods for whomever wants them. There is nothing stopping people from trying anything they like. Concerning distance rounds: don't be at all surprised if some enterprising jumper decides to show up with a small paraglider in the next few years. Hey, if you can jump it out of a plane, then it's a parachute. The french company Nervures (sic?) has been making them for at least three years now. Perhaps in the future there will be different classes for canopies: stock, mod, unlimited, whatever. I kind of see it going that way if more and more people get involved in the discipline of competition canopy piloting. Chuck edited for spelling

Perry also managed to destroy at least two Vampires. Possibly pulling out too much on his wings caused much of that stress on the suit. Who knows. Whatever. At any rate, all of the three suits listed can be listed as "great" performance suits. There is no one "best suit" for everyone's flying style or body type. Chuck

Sounds to me like a guys was basically just giving the suit away. The seller might have been scared of it. The original Skyflyer is positively not the suit for an inexperienced wingsuit pilot who does not stay current. Chuck

That's not what Robi says or does. He told me to my face that he uses as little force as possible to just hold the wingtips "out", not "down". Forcing the grippers into position deforms the wing. That said, I have tried both ways in my Vampire. If I want to fly fast, I hold them loose. If I want max vertical range in a flock, I am pretty much gorrilla-gripping them. If I am doing the latter, my arms get smoked jumping the suit. It was the same in the V2, only more so in order to keep my fore/aft balance comfortable.

That is exactly what I feel when I fly the suit, Yuri.

I have never used my LQRS on any of the five suits that I have had that option on, but I am glad it's there. Personally, if it's a money issue, then I wouldn't have any problem deleting that option. Chuck

and so you have it.