SuperGirl

niiiice!!! I am soooo coming to this one!!!

very cool stuff!! nice work, guys!

Justin, I would like to break the POPS wingsuit record at Summerfest. We need a 10-way to do this. If Paul and Elana will admit their age we should easily have enough. can I pretend and join?? I'll wear a fake mustache or something :)

gives a whole new definition to a CRW wrap when you throw some wingsuits in the mix! just remembered that canopy sucked into burble video from the other day. I wonder how easy it might be to get some collapse of the canopy when surfing the back of a wingsuiter, if not careful with it... kids, don't try this at home anyway... back to looking forward to pictures and video!

this sounds like some seriously cool stuff! definitely looking forward to seeing pictures and video. sounds like a great way to push the discipline forward and show the amazing skills we are capable of that we hadn't even imagined. the possibilities that emerge are endless... rodeo passenger transfer from back of wingsuit to front of canopy pilot (mr bill-style), anyone?

I would have thought you would come up with some "creative" dirt diving to keep everybody busy Mike..... hahahaha, boogie ad should read "in case of bad weather, orgy at Mike's house"

Wish you guys lots of good weather. Aviation forecast seems to say Sat should already get good around noon... staying that way all the way through Sunday. clicky aviation weather for houston Now obviously Ashley knows weather better than I ever could... but let's just hope the "thunderstorms" end up just being some cool "puffies" instead, so you guys get to play all weekend!

wait, so the 6 mins 35 seconds also include canopy time? I realize this was about setting a distance record and not a time record, but I'd still be curious to know what the exact flight time was in just the wingsuit, if it wasn't 6'35" I guess it again comes down to we as a community figuring out what kind of measurements we would like to see of future record attempts. Ben's jump remains a very cool one! But from a "what did we learn from this?" perspective... what do folks think would be sufficient evidence to avoid these types of discussions in the future? At least one GPS device on the wingsuit flyer? Or perhaps 2 GPS devices showing minimal error between their results, to avoid further doubts about noisy data? What else? Worth thinking about.

alternatively, Mike would have no issue with the girls being completely naked. have fun, all! wish I could attend...

well said, Skwrl

Watch this! Tiny canopy, tiny lines, very big wingsuit... for some, it may sound like the recipe for how to look cool on the dropzone... until your canopy gets sucked into your burble! Surprisingly, the jumper's main eventually gets out of the burble quite okay... though what are the chances of that, after a mess of canopy and lines dances around in a big burble for a while? And if that main had been a chop, would the reserve (probably smallish as well, since it's in the same rig) have had an equally adventurous deployment? Even before thinking of the reserve... what if the chopped main sticks around in the burble for some additional fun? Watch, think and discuss. And be safe out there, by making smart canopy choices for your wingsuit jumps!

So after 180 views nobody has anything to say. That leaves 2 options: a. People like to beleive they are "experts" after 75 jumps. b. I'm a pussy. I dont have a problem with neither. That makes me a "3X expert pussy"! yay!!! ....and here I thought I still had stuff to learn! thanks for the reminder... yes yes yes I had stuff to say but I was tired last night. and then I forgot. I think you're totally right in doubting those numbers. If I look back at where I was at 75 wingsuit jumps, I sure as hell wouldn't have been ready to handle an X-Bird. Hell, I remember having 100ish jumps last year in Puerto Rico when I went to Jeff for coaching on my spinny crappy bakflying (or lack thereof)... It's all on video... had I tried that stuff in an X-Bird I would've been dead. Yes, understood, those are bare minimums... but what does the average skydiver do? They take the bare minimums as the ultimate guideline. What happens with the bare minimum 200 jumps to try on a wingsuit? It gets interpreted as "100 jumps and mad skills should be fine", until people have to die and a BSR emerges... There isn't even a rule imposing those numbers... they are manufacturer recommendations... which means Joe Shmoe who thinks he's too cool out of this world will think he's ready for the X at 25 wingsuit jumps. Maybe we should have something like two numbers... the recommended number... and the absolute do not go below this number... like Brian Germain's canopy downsizing chart... if nothing else. But beyond numbers, we need to understand the skills that make one good enough to upsize. We need to educate our peers in understanding what the big suits can do in the hands of a pilot less prepared to handle all types of situations. Are 25 jumps enough to master the required skillset in one suit and already be ready for the next one in size? If I only think of counting the things I'd want to try in a wingsuit in order to completely dial it in, I think I'll easily go beyond 25 jumps worth of stuff... I guess I'm a really slow learner. I think a lot of these numbers came up a long time ago when suits were smaller... and the definitions carried on. We might want to step aside for a second, and start revising our definitions. Oh and btw... Yeyo, you are not a pussy. I am!! I think we can all agree on that one Edited to add: P.S. Very cool website, Tony & co!!! Very nice to see you getting stuff more organized! Nice job, James!

that looks very cool and definitely could be useful here! YES!!! I do recall initial conversations about something like this eventually becoming a nice (yet rather distant) goal... and thinking about how beneficial it could be... saving us the time of sorting through frames and frames of the same formation... Regardless of what judging method is used, being able to detect and track the actual coordinates of the flyers in the formation would enable us to do so many cool things! I think you and Tom need to talk

very cool stuff!!

Great points, Lurch! definitely some food for thought there. If we're talking about rigid structures... How about Yves Rossy's rigid wing? Is that a wingsuit? That might've been one of the things that sparked those additions to the definition...

what if in a few years you see a bunch of guys starting to land these suits? I know, hard to believe... I'm not the first one to go try that, either... but who knows? With Lurch flying an S-Bird we might just see that happen one of these days. Besides, James has already proven that you don't die from it :D I know this is a bit far fetched, but bear with me here... Picture this: Wingsuit World Record 2020 (the year JSho becomes president ) Jeb rolls in, trailing behind his truck a now-complete big ass ramp... which is collapsible so he carries it around to boogies. We have the assigned landing areas for the various plane groups... but he's special he lands separately... on his big ass ramp. Should he then be disqualified cause his wingsuit-to-canopy relationship no longer fits the definition? Just more food for thought...

looks like it's been approved already but it's at the bottom of the thread... so I guess if you reply to the whole thread by clicking "comment" it shows up at the top, newest first, but if you click "reply" on someone's post, it shows under that post (also newest first). just sayin, in case anyone gets confused.

not sure that the "that which doesn't kill you" should be part of the definition. this is subject to the pilot's skill. you see good flyers do aerobatics in a suit like the XS/X-Bird... that's no toy... in the wrong hands that can be very bad... but flown with enough skill, you can roll it without collapsing it but flying through the transitions. after all, you can do aerobatics in a plane without collapsing it. who knows how far wingsuit technology will advance in another few years? we might not want to impose requirements related to how you get out of flatspins with it. after all, records should be made with people who fly really well... who will not flatspin out the door on a bigway exit and hit half their team on their way down... Sorry, I don't recognise this abbreviation. What is BSR? Basic Safety Requirement

I asked myself the same question, but then again... we are not yet discussing the definition of a "flock", just the definition of a "wingsuit". the way I understand from Taya and Jarno's posts, we are first defining a wingsuit... then we are going to define a wingsuit formation... then a wingsuit formation record... everything in incremental steps like that. for the purpose of the "wingsuit" definition, a wingsuit is still a wingsuit even if you're flying it headdown with your freefly buddies... that head down jump shouldn't really be a flock... but the wingsuit that is worn still remains a wingsuit.

Based on this definition, the rigid wingtip grippers on some models might be used as a basis for exclusion as a WS. great point! how about the mylar ribs in some suits? could those be used for exclusion as well under this type of definition?

awesome! thank you very much.

I was going to post this in the thread about the IPC forum but it looks like it's locked... oh well... I guess we can continue the thread hijacking here then... Is there a way to somehow more directly connect threads in the IPC forum to discussions here on dz.com? I know you guys want a more moderated bullshit-free discussion on there, but with it being a relatively new forum, you can't expect everyone to check that with the same frequency they end up showing up here on dz.com. Valuable input could never make it there simply because of not enough participation. Let me explain a little further. When the IPC forum first got set up, first thing I did was look for subscribing to notifications about new stuff there. From what I see (correct me if I'm wrong), there is no way to "watch" threads like on dropzone.com. There is an RSS feed for the forum. I kept going back to that page from time to time but after a few days of complete silence kinda forgot about it. Besides, I assumed that the RSS feed would deliver any new content to me instantly... but it turns out it will only pick up on new topics/threads. Any posts that are replies to an existing topic aren't really full posts, but "comments", whatever that means, what it means to me is they DON'T show in the feed. So now here I am looking at the IPC forum and realizing there have been a bunch of posts in the wingsuit definition discussion, and I had no idea :( Also, while I'm on the topic of critiquing the IPC forum... it looks like comments are shown "newest first". This is a bit annoying cause reading a new thread that already has a bunch of posts has to be done bottom-up. Any way to enable the user to change that sort order? thanks!

omg it works it works it works!!! I am waaaaay too excited!!! anyway.... after installing Mono, open up a Terminal, go into the folder where the flock briefing tool is, and type: mono .exe and... voila! done!

Thanks for your kind and friendly reminder. While this is great for your attempt of constructing a wingsuit definition and later on judging standards for non-linked formations, there are so many areas of our discipline that would benefit from improved and organized research and development, areas that are way outside the scope of your IPC workgroup. Many of these areas are not yet refined enough. Even the thought of involving the IPC in those issues is silly. That might be the case for years to come. Maybe I wanna work on something like docked wingsuit 4-way. Hell, we haven't even completed that diamond yet. But as we start doing one thing after another, having a way to immediately promote ideas, encourage discussions and facilitate progress would be beneficial for us all, without any overlap with the current IPC workgroup's duties. Many of these things need discussion and research because we barely even know what we as a community want to do. True. Every group needs a focus. There is also nothing wrong with different groups focusing on all sorts of different things. We are talking about setting up something that promotes multiple discussions... something that gets a lot more than 2 wingsuiters and 3 non-wingsuiters involved in a defining a few standards, but way beyond that. You feel free to continue to do your thing, but, please, also let everyone else do theirs.

hehe. someone even voted for the Mach 1 being fine... gotta love this forum. if you put XS or XBird or Stealth2 in that list I'm sure someone will vote for that, too... hell, we could even have an option that says "FFC student should be encouraged to land his wingsuit" and it'll get a couple votes.