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Has anyone out there posted an article or done an in-depth study on the aerodynamics of tracking and the things that you should to in your track to get the best possible glide ratio and most lift from your track? I have been watching videos of tracking jumps and I have also been watching videos of ski jumpers and have seen a variety of styles, but the most effective people do seem to have a lot of similarities in their body position.

I know some of you folks out there have a lot of smarts and have probably done some in depth study on the topic. I wonder if you could point me in the right direction as far as some technical articles written on the subject.

Lately I've been really getting some good results out of my track, but I'd be interested to learn about the science behind it.

Thanks guys.

i'm part way through a study into it as part of my uni course but there is no easy answer your question as there are so many variables involved and what works for one person wont work so well for another. there also isnt a great deal of research that has been published by people as its generaly of no real use (except of course to us) but skydivers follow roughly the same basic principle as aircraft so your best bet is looking at as much information on those as you can and adapting it yourself to suit what your after

Right... I know that everyone has their quirks that work for them but I do believe that there may be some common body positions that we can all use in order to maximize our lift. One thing that I am particularly interested in is the angle between the legs and the torso as well as arm placement. One thing that I have noticed is that during a track if I bend forward at the waist slightly and markedly de-arch by cupping my shoulders it seems to cause my body to form more of an airfoil shape and I notice better tracks as a result. It seems to be that aerodynamically speaking I am changing my "chord" thereby creating more lift via the bernoulii principal... effectively "putting the flaps down" for any pilots out there. I figure there are some aeronautical engineers out there that have studied it maybe.

http://www.basejumper.com/...lyrockclimb;#2906518

its far from perfect