Basejumper.com - archive

Hey freaks gotta question for ya. I am about to by a new wingsuit that will eventually be used for BASE. I have been comparing the Prodigy, Phantom, and Apache which is the BASE version of the Aerobat from Tony. What info can I get about these suits in comparison to each other between ease of flight, pull time, construction, flight time, forward speed, and getting in and out of the suit? Thanx!!!

What is your base / wingsuit experience?

You said your buying a new suit that will eventually be used for base so i take it you haven't Base jumped one yet?

Where are you planning on doing most of your wingsuit jumps?

My vote is with Phoenix-Fly!

Certain locations are better for the prodigy simply because you can open lower and instantly grab your toggles. You dont have to worry about unzipping.

Chad was kicking ass in his phantom in the swiss valley a while back but I heard he switched to the prodigy because of this? I bet if he were to go some where else he probably put his phantom back on just to have a bigger suit.

The Phantom is an all round kick ass suit. My vote would be to borrow a prodigy and order a phantom. If you have the $$$ buy both.

for the money, with our dollar being strong compared to the Euro right now, i would not overlook the S-Fly expert. it is an extremely popular suit for base jumping. you get to fly hands free where as the prodigy and phantom both you have to hold on to wing, and that can, but doesn't tend to, get in the way of your PC. the S fly is easy to fly and you can run in it and walk in it and the cutaway system is in my opinion superior to the PF suits, as is the fact that you can just zipper it on and off your rig, or one rig to the next.

granted, its probably more what your used to, people who cut aaway their wings on PF suits every jump can assemble them onto a rig lickety split and they also can cutaway super fast.

you cant go wrong with the suits these days, but in my opinion the prodigy, while perfect for some jumps, is kind of like trainig wheels for wingsuiting and you should skip it and go to a suit with more power right away.

Yeah, what JT said. The S-Fly Expert suit is a very easy suit to fly. The arm cutaway system is lightning fast and also very easy and fast to rerig. Way faster than the other suits. Thats why on base jumps most people cut the arm wings away every time while with the other companies suits everyone unzips instead. Too much of a hassle to rerig. Unzipping takes exactly twice as long as cutting away with an S-Fly.
S-Fly suits are much less expensive too and you will receive it usually right away as they have them already in stock.

Whatever company you go with, I think BM has just about excluded itself from the conversation. I went with the Phantom2, the s-fly is a good suit, but not what I am used to, so I didnt choose that. Tony suits seem great in a skydiving environment, but im not sure how I would like them for base, especially since they seen to be gigantic. Id be interested to see how the prodigy and the beginner tony suit do against each other since they seem to both have similar advantages.

I am leaning towards the prodigy due to the care free nature of them. I Contacted to people in the classifieds selling them, but have not gotten anything back, and I am kind of a phoenix fan, tracking suit kicks ass. As far as Tony goes I am interested in the Apache I think it is, BASE version of the aerobat, but I can't find anyone with any first hand info.

Demoing the suits at the dropzone will be a good start, so you can see what you are getting for your $$

Your choice will also depend on the type of objects and flying you want to do. (Distance, time, proxy etc)

We only have birdman suits to try at our DZ......

Shot down.......

I don't agree with that. If you know how to fly the prodigy good you can outfly many Wingsuits. I know two small and not to slim jumpers (Yuri and Mehdi) who I would say outfly of 50% of the worldwide WS BASE jumpers with a Prodigy. But maybe this is because 50% of the worldwide WS BASE Jumpers suck... (me inluded)



???
Is this an American thing? Really, in Europe so far, I have never seen someone cut away the wings without beeing in an emergency situation or to low to unzip the wings (which has to be ultra low because to open the zippers takes maybe a second or two longer then to cut away...)

its norwegian friends that i see sutting away their wings on PF suits everytime.

personally, i cutaway on most all my WS jumps because i want it to be habit, 2nd nature. that way the one time when i do deploy low or close to something or whatever and i need to cutaway fast, it is not the first time i have ever done it and i wont miss or mess it up.

with S fly it is easy to re rig. with PF it is a little more work but like i said the guys that are used to it do it quite fast.

i agree that wingsuiting is mostly the pilot over the suit, and the right pilot in prodigy can outfly some good flyers, but in my experience, you get into an s fly and you are gonna be able to use 80-85 percent of the suits power right away. its east to fly. you just jump out on your belly and go, with the prodigy i think you have to be a much more skilled flyer to get the suit to fly to most of its potential.

I could be wrong, i have less than 10 prodigy jumps, but it is a VERY VERY rare occasion when i am wrong. incredibly rare.

I have a bachelors of general studies from the universitry of nevada, reno. that means that in general, i know everything.

my fault... but for my excuse, I very rarly see Norwegians in Switzerland because they don't come here to often. They have the nice spots in front of there doors. And the same goes for us Swiss. We don't need to travel to Norway because we have the 1800 meter cliffs in front of our door steps
And also you can not take Nowegians as a standard, everybody knows that in crazyness they come right after the Russians...

You should go for the Phantom2 rather than the Prodigy, dude. Its easy to fly and you will be satisfied with it for a longer time.

Loic fly longer, faster and more radical with his S-Fly than any other basejumper. But that`s not because S-Fly is the best suit in the world, its because Loic is the best wingsuiter in the world. Its the same reason why Yuri`s performance with his Prodigy shouldn`t count. His a skinny freakin bird!;)

By the way: Jt is very very smart. He has studied a lot at universities and truly knows everything he is talking about.

By the way2: It is a smart thing to cut away every time.

By the way3: Norwegians are not crazy. Were just not as smart as Swiss people.

always enjoy your posts jt, they just make sense.

holy crap! how did i miss those huge cliffs when i was last there!??

I used to watch this show when I was a kid. It's called greatest american hero. This guy finds a superhero suit but the life of him, he can't figure out how to use it very well or fly it very well. he's constantly flying into shit. It reminds me of a flight I did that went wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzEb5IzdcrU

I cutaway my wings on every jump as well, and it doesn't bother me. Granted, my zipper tabs are broken off and I have to use a keychain ring with slight twisting pressure to get my zippers to unzip.. but I do like the consistency and speed of cutting them away every time, and don't consider it that great an inconvenience to hook it back up for the next jump.

Well after hearing from you guys, with all respect and to stay on the safe side I will go with the prodigy. I am a 5'10" and 130 pounds, so even in a intro tony suit pulling at 5,500ft I still hit 128 seconds on my first jump and I have only had 3 wingsuit jumps after that so I have decided that I can do what I want to do in a prodigy while maintaining safety for a person that doesn't know shit about wingsuits, much less wingsuit BASE. I will contact back in the future (50-100 wingsuit jumps from now) to see if someone can guide me into the wingsuit BASE family. Thanx for all the great info guys, see you in the sky!

Hey is anyone out there using a Ghost for BASE (boyd excluded :) )? Any issues or advice for that suit? I've a couple hundred skydives in it and figured it would be the first suit I used for basejumping, but am wondering if there is any experience out there about it.

No rush to jump off something in it, just figured if everyone hates it for BASE now might be the time to start accumulating jumps in a different suit.

 
The Ghost was conceived as a skydiving wingsuit but as long as you are very comfortable with the deployment it will work

you'll be wasting your cash man...
Get a phantom 2, or 1 if you find one. S-fly expert, the intro from tony suits. All these would be a better option than the prodigy.
Theses are not dangerous suits by any means, are easier to fly than the prodigy, and the performance will be enough to last your jumping career. You'll get over the prodgy in 10 jumps...

If you get over the prodigy after ten jumps then you definitely don't know how to fly it. The prodigy is a great and safe suit and as Mikki_ZH said: good pilots can fly a prodigy better than most people in bigger suits. It's mostly about the pilot, not the suit.

I don't have any problems with TonySuits, but I still haven't seen anyone use them for base (I'm sure there are some though). Flying in a base environment introduce a lot of new things and personally I prefer that my suit is tested in that kind of environment thoroughly first. Robbie is one of the best wingsuit base flyers in the world and I trust what he make a lot more. When Tony starts collaborating more with base jumpers and get it more tested in the big mountains I'll reconsider.

Tony is welcome to Worldbaserace 2009

Paul, I already invited Justin, one of Tony's suit designers. He flies Tonysuits off of cliffs.

I had a Ghost and sold it because I was not 100% comfortable taking it into the base environment, especially in the US where the margins seem to be tighter

The Prodigy is a great suit

Another guy who used to post here jumps his Mach1 in norcal. Not sure what his experience has been like with it though. I flew a super mach1 against a V2 the other day, and felt like I had the same forward speed with more float, but that is skydiving, and there is no way in hell I would base that suit. My phantom2 is somewhere between croatia and the US, and I am greatly looking forward to flying it off some stuff in the near future.

I agree w/ you, thats why I say don't get a prodigy. Really good pilots can fly the shit out of any suit. For most people to be able to fly and flock w/ other people in a prodigy will be a challenge,a good way to get the necessary skills for BASE. I haven't jumped the prodigy 2, so not sure about it.The prodigy 1 took way more strength to fly, wasn't that stable, and didn't have a large range(for a lot of people). The benefits of not having to unzip and easy hook up were overshadowed by the rest in my opinion.
The Phantom on the other hand is easy to fly,has a great range,and like the prodigy the arm wings are small enough to not get in the way at pull time. So you have to unzip? Thats why you jump it out of a plane for awhile, zips are only slightly slower, and for a jumper w/ experience shouldn't cause any issue.

how big is the difference between the Prodigy 1 and 2?

i just asked that question to the ugly sister about a month ago...

http://www.dropzone.com/...01%20vs%202;#3344403

seems like the arm wings are inflated on the 2 where they dont on the 1.. also the leg wing is bigger on the 2. if u suck, i guess it doesnt matter much if it is a 1 or a 2, you just waited longer to get it..

jury is out , brento is calling me..

gary, i am going to out fly your ass, btw

i don't have too many jumps on prodigy, but the ones i had were very nice.
it flies solid, stable and far.
easy to fly too. just relax and straighten out and it takes off.
after over a year on a v2 it felt performance wise almost like the phantom 1 i started on.
i haven't jumped the prodigy1 though and the 2 not from the plane.
if i had the money i would get a prodigy2 too.

After looking at the prodigy two and the new arm and leg wing, with my body type I just feel like I will get the performance I want in comparison to the safety of a new wingsuit Baser. I would rather lose a little performance and maintain quick and hassle free pull procedures. Has anyone jumped the BASE version of the aerobat? Apache I think its called?

I've skydived an early Apache, and hated it. The ergonomics were all wrong and it was just uncomfortable to fly (position of the grippers were especially horrible). That's just my personal view of it though. No idea what kind of performance it was giving.

Thanx, if its weird in skydiving, its probably scary for BASE.