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i dont mean to sound like a dick, but how the fuck does someone get into one of these?

i mean seriously, WTF?

i have a V1 and a GTI, never been in any un-controlable situation whatsoever after about ~70+ WS jumps, and i have had flocking midairs, botched exits, exit midairs, etc.

my friend has had two 7+ rotation uncontrolable spins in about 30 jumps. these were caused by a burble and a exit collision.
and he is telling me that i need to watch out because it can happen to anyone. not buying it.

im no good at flying wingsuits, but seriously, what is up?

does anyone who has a fuckton of WS jumps know what they are talking about. ?

Yeah, I do. I had about 200 W/S jumps before I ever heard of the term. When I did, I too thought WTF? So I tried to get into one, it took 3 jumps for me to get it. The problem is rigidity, not flying with the air, but fighting it instead. Much like TM's who have ended up in the "side spin".

I think it's mainly an issue of low experience trying to "hit the numbers".

  Right on.

I thought of that, when flying a suit i guess i never thought of it as something i have to be rigid in, its not an airplane, its a tracking suit. i guess some people dont understand that. they think you have to be wings open and looking like a bat the whole time. pretty much all the normal free-fall stability still applies. fly the suit, not the other way around.


i will tell him that. thank you!



i just realised this does kinda seem like the whole 'yeah so i have this freind, and he is having all these really embarassing problems, can you help me tell him what I, i mean he, should do? ok thanks, ill tell him.

but i assure you, its not me. i swear.

I had a 'flat spin' on my very first WS jump. (about 575 jumps total). As for a reason I cannot remember (5+ yrs ago ) I found myself in a flat spin. I "fought it" for a good 10-15 seconds. then my pilot instincts kicked in and I shut all the wings down, controlled the spin with my shoulder "arch". regained control, and flew away to pull 15 seconds later. never happened since. my belieif is that if you have no wings to stall out then you cant stall spin. if you cannot control your body in freefall with your arms at your side and your legs up and together, you shouldnt be in a wing suit.

There was a vicious one a few years back involving a rodeo and and one of the leg wings being kicked off. The spin was so fast he popped blood vessels in his eyes. His entire eyes were red.

i kinda want to jump a GTI (skydive) with different mis-riggings on it. to see what happens. try one leg unzipped, arm unzipped, etc.

I have done this exact thing you are speaking of with my MTR3 it was a fun experience and produced some messed up flying characteristics, one thing that did suck was on one of the jumps with the arm wing un-done the flapping wing wacked me really good and left a pretty nice blood blister on my arm.

you didn't go into a horrible un-controlable death-spin for thousands of feet?

weird. i thought that the slightest bump or burble flying a wingsuit could take out any pilot.

When I was visiting a friend in Cali - (RJMoney) - I exited the caravan farther back than I am used to trying to stuff the door with a few people. Ripped off my legwing/bootie on my right leg on my Phantom on the back of the door. My legwing caught the door, causing my legs to spread and inflate/fly before even leaving the plane.

The guys on the plane said I was millimeters away from hitting the tail, and they thought the subsequent spin was caused by being knocked out. It took me about 3 seconds to figure out how to fly with one leg attached, and a bare foot on the otherside - mainly because I was confused why it did not "feel right" and I had to identify what was wrong.

I flew very dirty, but it flew. I extended the leg without the bootie all the way out, and bent the other leg at my knee, almost as if I was belly flying. Once I dialed it in, I was flying "straight" with the most weird leg position.

It would be just like having the leg wing 50% unzipped, because - well - that is what happened.

The hard part was landing barefoot in a cactus filled landing area, not the wingsuit.

I wouldn't get too cocky dude. Sometimes weird shit just happens.

I've done a few hundred ws jumps and I found myself in one this weekend at fnd. I was flying a prototype SM1 with the new legwing design. It was my second jump on the suit. The first one went fine. The plan was to take a right out the door. I came out stable and started to turn right and the fucker just took off on me. Unfortunately, since I was last out there's no video so I'll never know what caused it.
If you've never been in a flatspin you should try it up high sometime. That way it won't be a big deal when you get surprised with one. They're easy to get into and out of and it's fun to practice.

I was having a heated conversation with a wingsuit instructor and friend about this very idea. The recent fatality in Moab, which *might*/*could*/*speculation* have been do to the user fighting instability and losing altitude awareness, inspired the conversation.

I suggested a wingsuit progression should mirror the AFF program:

Jump 1. Fly dirty. Do practice touches. Have a flight plan that is as straight as safely possible.

User knows how to handle emergencies - but no intentional emergencies.

Jump 2. Fly a little less dirty. Less practice touches. Do some turns.

Jump 3....

Jump 4....

Jump 5, 6 and 7. Flips, intentional instability, learning how to fly an entire jump with wings collapsed arching like hell. Maybe doing an intentional cutaway of arm wings using cutaway system... WHATEVER - but try various "failure modes"

Why? I have also been in a spin, but when it came it was on a poor exit on a flock. I spent too much time fighting it, because the muscle memory to ball up and fly out of it was not built. Too much time = more seconds than I wanted. Now that the memory is built properly, instability is no longer something I fear, but something I have done for fun on solos.

But - never having in the learning progression instability, to me, is like letting an AFF student pass without ever being on their back.

The other party argued - "why put someone in an intentional dangerous situation, like a spin." My answer: "Because when it is intentional, you will also have the intentional skills drilled to get out of it - so when it happens unintentionally, you don't have to think about it."


Thoughts?

You're not cleared AFF until you can show you can recover from a disorienting maneuver.

It's generally told on the first WS jump how to recover from a spin but then everyone want to go flock.

I'd like to see more beginners after they have some basic control do barrel rolls and flips.

thats exactly it.

I have tried, more than a few times, to get into an un-controlable situation in a wingsuit. every single time it just simply means to either tuck and do a front, or close up for a second.

what i learned from this is the absolute LAST thing you want to do when you feel the hint of a possibly un-controlable maneuver, is keep flying the suit.

thats my reaction too. my plan, everyone better do a barrel roll on their first wingsuit jump that way the unstable situations are the norm. heck it worked for some dude i know.

It's basically impossible to get myself into one in my V2 or Prodigy. It's pretty easy once you know how in something like a Skyflyer 1 though (narrow legwing). I used to do them a lot in the SF1 for fun, after I had a fun unintentional one on exit on a CASA tracking jump. It's way harder to get them to do it in any other suit I've jumped (classic, gti, sf 3, v1, v2, gs1)

Easy with a V1. Just exit the plane with legs open, not exactly symetrical. Just jump from an helicopter skid, base style, forgetting about the rotor wash and believing its a no airspeed jump.

And it can get scary, when it spins so fast that you need your hands to pull your knees to your chest.

And it gets even more scary when you realize that balling up actually increase the spinning speed, by reducing the momentum...

Vampire is really easy to put into a spin.

imagine a flat spin sooo violent that it makes your eyes pop out of your head. or go to dz.com and ask heffro1 for the story.

still not buying it.

it takes time to build up enough rotational inertia to not be able to tuck.

how do people not notice this in the first tenth of a second?

like i said, i tried in the V1, very hard. as in assymetric leg wing out the door, etc.

just, stop it. that is all it takes. catching the problem before it happens.

i agree that a spin is possible, but i think it is pilot-induced.

a wingsuit is just a suit. it makes jumping more dangerous for a lot of reasons.but its still just a suit.

35 knot tailwind... but you were there, you know all about it...

hahaha.. i was waiting for you to drop in on that one. speaking of that object, just did my first WS base from her! it was AWESOME!

and that was not a flat spin man, it was just an un-stable exit. with some twisty things. really close to the tower.

Had my first one 2 days ago...
28 WS flight, solo jump, first try to barell roll.
I left 1 arm opened during transition, that kept me on my back (duh!) and started to spin. First reaction was to arch (instinct?), that didnt work and I balled up. Opened wings when I was facing earth. I was high and I recovered quick, Im guesing about 4-5 rotations, so it wasnt THAT scary. Actually it was kinda fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVHB4W2JaE

Try flying an original skyflyer.

You get into the flat spin by stalling out in a turn; so if you fly a suit very slowly and stuff up a barrell roll, that'll do it.

The V-1 flies too fast; the arm wings on a GTi are too small... The (unbalanced) suits, like an S1, with (relatively) large arm wings and (relatively) small leg wing can go into one much more easily.

More modern suits aren't really that prone to them at all.