VectorBoy

Keep in mind, the majority of the skydivers in Perris are not locals and are visiting from other dropzones. Even more so true during the nationals. You would be very hard pressed to find a Perris local "fun jumping" during the nationals. Most are no where near or working support during the nationals... then of coarse maybe competing. This year I was there with me mum both just spectating, nothing more.

Drew that looks like the biggest so far , or in the ball park. A french graphic artist ( and skydiver) created that one and maybe another in the 100 foot range. Watched it jumped in these forums and the 105 foot unit in person during the X-fest @ Perris. Two guys holding it in a stand and the rest of the X team carving around it wearing smoke. Nice! Maybe the Xteam will post / sell video of it?

You can see in Ed's pics that during regular flight the wings stay inflated and formed, less gripper tension is needed. In fact you don't have hold the grippers but they really help for maxing it out. The lack of Ram air for proper wing inflation during back flying requires more pull and the wing still isn't inflated.

Most of the time I only keep a slight pull on them to keep the wings trailing edge in tension, nothing heavy duty. I use a little more tension on the grippers when back flying. Some people play with them as actual control surfaces, but I don't do much of that .

There is a fantastic young lady from zuit-suit who added wing grippers to my pre production S-3 in twenty minutes while I waited. You can use anything , just about , for gripper internals ( we used a few inches of nylon rope from the bird-man tent @ rantoul) and wrap them in cordura. The GTI may not have the trailing edge span to do it but Ed has proposed an Idea. The question "is your fantastic seamster / rigger as fantastic as our fantastic zuit-suit seamstress?

Bird-mans classic 1 ( a bargain used but not in production) Classic2 and GTI are good beginer suits and so are the S-fly expert ( despite the name) manufactured by soloman or ?, check the fly your body web sources. The matter 2 is also a good beginer suit with more performance than the ( older, out of production )matter one & crossbow, the still in production S-fly, all of which are of very similar design. New on the horizon will be the new starter suit from Pheonix-fly. If Robert Pecknik says it will be a good starter suit then it will as he has designed most of the new wingsuits. Some people who have experience with sugar glider, reffered to sometimes on here simply as the SG can comment on its suit-ability or not for first timers.

The AOA is fundamental to all flying Vector!

I'm sure they do, They will have a song about it and drink copious amounts of vodka while they sing it. " cheers to the ving zuits instructorski"!

Well hold on there now, thats not entirely true we even give attention to some of the not so-good- looking women. All joking ASSide I know some instructors go to lengths in not overloading the student with every bit of information and instead focus on the essentials for the the next dive. Students can't be briefed on gear checking every possible variation in gear that may be on a load with them. Example: many jumpers don't know how to relate and get worried when they see a CReW dog get on a load with hemoraging toggles sticking out of the containers, riser flaps ( pre) open and exit with the PC already in their hand.

Sure. But the trailing edge is sewn to the side of the suit. And the angle between the two is determined by the manufacture of the suit as well. I'm not sure that the installed angle of incedence matters on a wingsuit. It isn't a rigid wing. They usually have a great deal of washout along the cord. In the case of arm grippers you get wash- out,wash- in or a bowed up trailing edge. The fatter the cord the greater this effect. I'm not sure this is what Robert is refering too when the term 3dee is used. I'm not sure of much though. By example I'm not sure where I left my kidneys.

the russian suit! Oh did I say RUSSIAN? Yes my friends, things are happening all over the world!!Lets not be closed minded and discount anything new..I remember round parachutes, do you? Do you think they'll sponsor a "comrade instructorski" program?

Here are some more grabs 34 is our very own Swedish exchange student ( I swear to god fellas it sounds like a cliche but I kid you not its true) She spent the better part of a school year with us before returning home. She discribed our flight, her first, as some kind of wonderfull. She is very talented freeflyer as well, the boys back in Sweden are very lucky indeed. 36 its hard to tell here but its a beautiful sunset first flight flock. What a way to end the day...... safely. Who could ask for anything more? Except more alttitude..... well you know how skydivers get. BTW folks we would like to take a small moment of your time to thank our sponsor Matter clothing. With its benefactor Cedric providing us with 5 suits in various sizes and colors to help you the wingsuit lover to be with a taste of winged human flight. Sadly one of the suits sized a little large was damaged in the demo area and was not available then.

Screen grabs of a few first flights in honor of those that have stepped up and joined the ranks of those that have tasted pure human body flight....... Safely! 31 is Brandi one of my very bestest all time students. With a phenominally uplifting attitude and a fantastic smile, Love that red Matter 2 hot off production status. 32 is the wonderful Kimm a previous graduate and a jovial dabbler in the occasional flock. 33 is Brandi just seconds before a very stable deployement at the end of another very safe and fullfilling first flight. Brandi went on to conquer the Matter2 and sucessive flights and really should use what it could do in the right hands.

Initially for the first few months after having a spare suit, I did approach certain people I thought would excell in a WS and asked if they wanted to try it. In the early days most of our local flockers were not organized in co-ordinating flock days. Now we are better at this. We get approached more as a group because lurkers don't see it as a specialty thing but wonder if they have stumbled on a skills camp or specialty boogie. Better yet if they see one of us giving a FFC, then they form a line. Or at least ask a bunch of questions and start planning on their FFC.

Are you getting enough reach to make a good riser turn? Or is it one of those "I can just get my fingers on them" kind of deals? In my case its a false sence of security kind of thing. That makes me think in the case of line twists I can just kinda Conan the risers apart again.

Greybeard wrote> At the the risk of getting flamed again,(which caused a chuckle, but nothing constuctive), Now, now. Thats no way to treat the local clientele. Its comments like that that foster opinions from people at the smaller dropzone about the big dropzone treating people like numbers or cattle and not really caring. Oh and BTW Chuck, myself and Asof were all on multiple, as in numerous loads were we violated an SDA aircrafts jump run , just not at SDA proper but at WFFC '03. Lou Diamond was innocent of said incursions only because he was mostly stuck at the BM booth. Do we need to get S&TA waivers and rebriefs on our next visit to SDA or can we just bring some malt liquor to share with the DZM?

Excellent Phree, sounds like you guys have a nice little thing going. Regardless how newbies are getting help its nice to know they are. I remember when it was just you and a spare classic. Its nice to know the flock grows.

Yes I can grab quite away up my risers without fully unzipping. I'm referring to good number of people that have more than plenty of jumps and experience to enjoy wingsuiting that can't overcome the "mental confinement " of the arm wings. In one case I know a guy who has several thousand jumps, is a monster tracker and even owns a slightly used classic but doesn't feel at home without the ability to use all of his " flight surfaces" freely. He only has a handfull of jumps on his classic but when his confort level reach his skill level equalibrium he will be a "flock rocket".

- lets just say after deploying I could immediately reach up to get on the toggles (without doing anything)

I don't have a stake in the professional/non-pro arguement anymore since I found it was a whole lot better to just have fun flying and not worry about teaching at all. Do you mean by this that there is another tutorship resource in your area to take up trainees, or do you just turn wanna flockers away when they request your help?

So long as the certifications aren't mandatory, and you can still fly without them, you're going to have trouble convincing me there's anything wrong with them. If the USPA starts telling people they can't share the fun with others unless they have a certification, then I'll be concerned. Oh and thats were some readers completely miss my perspective on this issue. I have been labeled anti , and this is just not the case. I would never try to convince anyone any where that there is anything wrong with it. In fact it is my position that this must exist ( or co-exist , with field mentor programs). Its in the manufactures best interest to have a rep in the field that can organize and distribute product, some event coordination and manage the information flow at larger events. In most cases they have huge investments of personal time and resources just to be there. Until the manufactures can cover this expense it should be recouped somehow. Its only fair and I wouldn't expect anyone to perform these services for free. We all, from the manufacturer, the potential student and the wingsuit culture, benifit from these efforts. The sad fact is that some from inside this program like to cast doubt on any kind of mentorship system. Stress that they are unsafe. Say that mentors don't care about pupils or the future of wingsuiting. They say that the governing bodies will be all over us "if" we don't all homogenize and march to one drummer. You don't have to look too closely to see some marketing going on in these efforts. There is a lot of scare but no data. I sence some friction to coexists from some on their end. Its the failure of this mentality to recognize that the field mentors are providing the exact same thing out in remote areas, that the program does. That ,again, the manufacturers, potential students and the flock culture benefits from just as much as the structured program. Instead there is a rift and the myth that they should feel like renegades.

The general level of expertise in the field in general must be considered. If there are only 10 guys on earth with 2 hours of experience? Then I'd say you might have a case to be considered an expert. Yes but in most cases the "rated" proffessional is no more a regional expert than the non-rated mentors who probably do a higher ratio of "strictly wingsuit" jumps. In my case I don't do tandems and I don't do AFF last year I did enough strictly wingsuit jumps to almost be uncurrent in the other types of jumps I do. Its very interesting when someone from manifest comes out and says "the experts say this or that".

The USPA is not going ape over all of this. We have a fantastic safety record in the skydiving environment Fatalities/ Accidents /inccedents Vs total suits jumped. Some DZ are tabulating this. There shouldn't be any complaints unless there are a bunch of you zoomin tandems too close. When I try something ( radically )new I am proactive and go not to just the one S&TA but all of them. Explain what I'm doing and how I tested it. I also run it by the eyes of some riggers that I respect just in case they alert on something that all of us missed. I chose to do this very thing last summer when I decided to jump a "one-off contraption" at night. But as far as the Vampire, it is a new wingsuit. Its a refinement and improovement of an existing design. Its not radically different...... Carbon fiber wings, thats radically different.

(it seems to be only a limited handful of people that are just online to create "drama").....hopfully those individuals will try and contribute at a higher level in the future. I should know by the "name" whether a posting is even worth replying to or even reading by now.... If this tread wasn't worth your effort why did you respond? Does this mean you are adding to the drama, or is it still just one side stirring that up? BTW I don't think its drama its just your opinion and it is on a high enough level for this forum. Unless you are here strictly for some more cross dressing cartoon posts. Bonfire's got that all day long. there are some people that have posted about new products and upcomming events only to be greeted with what you could consider true drama.

their are some people that have the ability to fly a suit to the record/skill camp/skygod/money stage..I have seen some of them fly and most are have sevral thousands of jumps in different disciplines and know how to fly well. I have put professional jumpers with over 10,000( other discipline ) jumps in wingsuits for their first time. They are good, I know they are safe and everybody is happy. Can they now go and organize more complex wingsuit jumps without a little more wingsuit exposure, lets say a couple hundred to a thousand jumps specifically in wingsuits? We will never know.... you know why? Mainly because when a jumper gets to that level of experience they have gained a level of humility, maturity and the patience that helped them arrive at 10,000 jumps alive. These people have the tools and methodology to gain the wingsuit specific experience to be record getting / skill camp teaching / professional ( in wingsuits). They are working on it put there is just damn too few of them. I wouldn't call any of them a wingsuit skygod. BTW do you have a lot of "wingsuit skygod(s)" up there in the NorCal?