Tricks and Tips for Flying Large suits

[tozer 0]

Hi all,
Firstly apologies if this has been asked before.
I am working work a small group of mates in Australia on some XRW at the moment and everything is coming along swimmingly but I am finding that I would really like to know the best ways to get the most lift with the least amount of forward speed from my suit and everyone has a different opinion.
I have a new X3 to which I have put around 25 jumps on now and have played with a few flying styles to gain this but I thought asking you lot might give me some tricks I hadn’t thought of yet?
I’ve done a little over 600 Wingsuit jumps to date but most have been with a Ghost 3 and obviously there is a massive difference with the X3. Bear in mind that there are probably only 3 or 4 Apaches or X3 suits in Australia at this stage and around the same number of Venoms (that I know of) so there isn’t that much of an experience base to learn from down here.
My aim is to gain Max Lift and reduce my forward speed at the same time and I’m looking for tricks with shoulder rolls, position of legs or even the way the grips are held that might help with this?
Any advice would be great 
Also, I’m getting very tired very easily…. Don’t get me wrong, I train at the gym 5-6 days a week and have done for years. I would consider myself quite strong for my weight (I’m 75 kilos and short) but most of my gym training over the years has been quite heavy weights and low reps. I have also been doing Russian Kettle Bell training for several years now but even that has leaned more towards heavy weight, low reps.
My question is, does everyone else get absolutely buggered after a 3+ mins flight? My shoulders are burning and I don’t think that they should be. I either need to change the way I hold the grips and fly my suit or do some specific weights or resistance training or both. Like I said, I am quite strong but generally only for short bursts.
Anyone have any tips or conserving Shoulder energy throughout flights with big suits (and I am flying with the pressure zips done up already), yet still maintaining lift? And or has anyone discovered a really good Wingsuit flying specific workout?

A lot of questions I know. Thanks in advance if anyone can help.
Cheers
Paul

[lurch 0]

First off, good to see somebody actually put in the time on the smaller suits instead of going to the big suit by 50 jumps. 600 jumps is a good progression.

Thoughts:
1: Think you're trying too hard. It's possible to get flights well over 4 minutes in that suit without major effort, heavier guys would be more in the 3:15-3:45 range, light guys 3:45-4:15ish.

2: Next time, relax a bit. Sprawl out. Don't concentrate on bearing down on your arms concentrate on being as wide and flat and sprawled out as you can. Relax into the suit. Like you're lying facedown on a mattress and just snoozing. Let your head droop, just kind of hang your head from your neck and look around, look down and behind, just get used to keeping your head down.

3: Grippers: Barely need to touch them. I hold them with fingertips and just use them for steadying the suit and as fine adjustment controls when I've got the suit loaded hard. This changes... any time I'm not maxed out I take a much more forceful grip on the grippers and use them for muscling the suit around, pulling in a wing or pushing on it for major moves, large rough airflow control.

which brings me to 4:
Flying stall braking.
In a smaller suit, the S-Bird, the grippers make great full-on airbrakes. You can grab em and twist em down into the airflow to add drag that slows your forward speed while keeping your surface area maxed. Great for hovering over a fast flock where you don't want to bend your legs, or cutting your speed a bit so friends can catch you without folding your tail. Works good as a combo with rearing up, too. Whole-body S-shape like a snake for a second.

The Apache class suits, you can't really do this. Not with grippers a foot long. The scaling doesn't work, and even if the gripper doesn't just bend, making a radical twist at the end of a wing that huge just distorts the hell out of it and redirects an entire sheet of air along the side of the suit rather than just biting in like a little set of flaps as it does on the S-Bird.

But you can do a pretty good approximation of the same move with your whole body and armwing based around that whole body S-shape and some really weird armwing work. The scale of the wing permits a huge range of moves that just don't even exist in smaller suits.

You can change the axis you're using your arms. 99% of suit flying, your hands are out, your arms are some variant on "by your sides", right?

You totally do -not- have to obey the shape of the suit, you can break the wing for a partial rearing-up effect. In a smaller suit I used to have to rear up and present my entire wing surface to get this kind of braking but now its possible to get that just getting weird with the armwing surfaces while simultaneously keeping the suit flying with pinpoint control. I love these things!

Let go of the grippers and turn your hands palms-up. Like you're holding a couple of watermelons.
This basically turns your arms "upside down", totally not the wingshape you're used to, (if you fly a Birdman GTI this way it'll mostly fall like a brick) but then, move your hands forward, rotate your arms at the shoulder and take a shape like you're doing very wide push-ups.

Now you've got 2 new control axes and your airflow management orientation has been rotated any angle you like between 45 and 90 degrees. Now you've got a whole new world of sprawled-out armshape combos to choose from. The wing is mostly hanging off your elbows and forearms, you can use the wings like 2 huge scoops, and by twisting your arms you can decide how much of this action you want to dial in, and control the overall size of the wing by bringing your hands closer or further from your shoulders.

With techniques like this applied to suits this big some bizarre un-wingsuity-looking body positions suddenly start to make a lot of sense. Digging down into the airflow, "holding your hands out in front of you" basically. So extending and retracting your arms has massive effects on huge sheets of wing all down the sides of you, you're flying most of the suit indirectly, elbows, toes, knees.

You already know how to fly a suit, the skill you're looking for is how to kite one. The distinction between the two ways of flying a suit is very smooth once you get the idea how to blend moves.
When you get a feel for this you'll find you're only putting in effort where it gets a useful return in airflow, speed, fallrate, whatever... and your muscles will only start to burn out if you're deliberately holding a super-scoop shaped max-out for most of the flight.

Hope this is useful.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.