Re: [juanitos] Tracking chart
There's no chart that would be applicable to everyone. But what you can do is to gather information about
yourself and then use it for your jump planning. Wingsuit Studio (link posted above) is a tool just for that. But more important than anything, this is rather a tool to say "NO" to a jump than to say "yes". This is a tool to say to yourself, "holy shit... and I was seriously thinking about making this jump?! hahaha... I can't believe I'm so stupid!" It's a sanity check.
Here's the idea behind it. With more and more experience, your jumps from the same or similar object start to become very repeatable - you pass over certain ledge or trees or other mountain features at pretty much the same height, you open above LZ pretty consistently at the same altitude... You can then talk about your
average trajectory - your average, predictable performance. Using L/D Calculator tool, you can extract
your very own flight characteristics in particular tracking suit or wingsuit. What L/D Calculator does, it tries to match your trajectory to theoretical trajectory in the assumption of constant flight mode (i.e. constant angle of attack and body position). In other words, it answers the question, "if an imaginary jumper that can maintain constant flight mode throughout the flight, were to arrive at the same point (X, Y) at the same time as you, what his flight characteristics would be?" Essentially, it approximates your real trajectory with calculated one. Since your jumps are very consistent, the results from L/D calculator will be converging to some average flight mode. Flight mode is a combination of horizontal and vertical sustained speeds normalized to sea level and standard temperature (15C) - simply put, it's a point on your polar curve.
Once you know your average flight mode in particular suit, you can (very cautiously, of course) use it to project your trajectory to other situations using Wingsuit Equations module. You can check, "if I had this much altitude and flew just like I usually fly, where would I be after 20 seconds? how does it look like in relation to mountain topo?" This can help you with your planning. Sometimes it makes sense to do a little analysis on the computer without even seeing the mountain with your eyes to realize that it makes no sense to go there as it would be a do-it-or-die jump than to actually go there and waste time and money and possible health and even life just to prove that equations were correct.
Personally, I used this tool to say "NO" to a couple of jumps already and don't regret it (although that tempting voice, "don't be a PusSiE, just jump!" that you hear when researching the exit and throwing rocks, was very convincing and hard to resist). A questionable jump not made will definitely not kill you. There are so many beautiful mountains out there where you can have much higher margins for error that a little measurebation at the comfort of your toilet seat is totally worth it.
Yuri
