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BrianSGermain

Large Wingsuit Flat Spin Recovery Techniques

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Has anyone had any success in stopping a high speed flat spin on a large wingsuit?

What techniques, beyond pulling and hoping, have people tried?

Thank you!
Instructional Videos:www.AdventureWisdom.com
Keynote Speaking:www.TranscendingFEAR.com
Canopies and Courses:www.BIGAIRSPORTZ.com

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BrianSGermain

Has anyone had any success in stopping a high speed flat spin on a large wingsuit?

What techniques, beyond pulling and hoping, have people tried?

Thank you!



Yo Brian! I enjoy your videos on youtube on canopy, safety, etc.
I want to personally hire you to give a full on advanced canopy course.

Regarding your question, I don't know anyone but I think Dan BC has recently made if not knows wingsuit flyers. Perhaps thats a good place to start.

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In my opinion this video shows the best technique. It is difficult to deflate a big suit, but it is possible. I have used this technique and it works. If you cannot get out of it, your hand is on the PC, so you can pull or the force will pull for you ;)

http://vimeo.com/29030812

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In my opinion this video shows the best technique. It is difficult to deflate a big suit, but it is possible. I have used this technique and it works. If you cannot get out of it, your hand is on the PC, so you can pull or the force will pull for you ;)



Glad you like it. :)We now have a much better training video which has replaced this one with at the school. I suppose I need to post it now that we're seeing more people advance into big suits.
I've also captured one where the wingsuiter gets into a genuine flatspin not once, but twice because he tried to recover too soon after the arch out with delta arms, as some coaches (incorrectly) teach people to do.

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Never on a big wingsuit.
But a few days ago someone else had one:
https://vimeo.com/71098942
From 14 min. 26 sec. until 15:15.

From what I heard it was more luck than skill.
But when he arced to reach the pilot, it seems like that solved the problem. But maybe I confuse causation with correlation. ;)

"The 'perfect' parachute jump was thought to be one where the opening shock and touchdown were simultaneous" -Lyle Cameron, ~1965
---
Falling-With-Style.com

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Mr. Germain, I'm answering your question but addressing the reply's tone to newer birds because I want to highlight that the best cure is prevention through experience. And we have way, way too many people trying to get into huge suits 400 jumps sooner than anything like a sane progression.

Gonna lead in by saying that to a properly trained bird a "flatspin" is something of a legendary creature like the unicorn. By the time anyone works their way up to the big suits they should have such snap-recovery habits that there -is- no such animal. See Jarno's reply for details.

That said,
I can't really say this "stopped" one because I never allowed it to get started beyond a single rotation, and this is something I'd never teach a student, (they need to have learned basic recovery before going to more "exotic" techniques like this one) but if they're flying a megasuit they damn well better not -be- a student, so...

Go head down.
With a monster suit this is the only way I know of to get instant solid control authority regardless of your orientation or rotation. Instead of flopping around fighting to dig in when you're right side up or laying on your back spinning around the center helplessly while trying to roll over, going full headdown deletes the entire axis the spin would be on.

Instantly.

The one time my big suit (Modified Apache XRW/Rebel) started to get away from me I was already carving into a steep dive with a hard 90 turn built in, (experienced birds will grin, seeing right where this is going, and boy did I set myself up for it...) discovered an arm/tailwing interaction that doesn't exist in an S-Bird (S-bird lets you get away with 2 mutually conflicting arm and tailwing inputs simultaneously... I took this for granted...bigger suit does not) which flipped me upside down by surprise faster than I could blink.

While hanging a hard left. My tail was cocked at an angle relative to my armwings so I knew what was coming next the moment the suit started to surprise me. I responded by briefly folding both wings and lunging facefirst straight down. Its really just an evolved version of the "track out of it" recovery technique but built around a different orientation.

Thing about a full-vertical dive is, instead of control authority being oriented to a flat plane, with vicious and reversed control inputs any other way but right-side-up, in a steep enough dive the plane of authority is funnel shaped and circular... "down" is to the outside of the funnel so instead of trying the roll-out-of-bed style recovery and waiting till you're right side up and struggling the rest of the maneuver, the moment you're flying facefirst down the funnel you've got a "down" available anywhere around that funnel. Control is only half a twist away no matter which way you're coming from.

The maneuver's effect is like breaking someone's wrestling lock on you before they can finish establishing it by moving in a direction their lock technique doesn't account for. Recovered authority in less than half a rotation, result: 1 spin. The pilot saw it happen and thought it was a deliberate barrel roll, asked me why I did one that soon after exit... (maybe 5 seconds) Feeling sheepish I admitted I'd actually allowed the suit to slip the leash for a second, and that wasn't an intentional move, at least not when it began.

The bigger the suit the more authority it has at lower airspeeds meaning you don't have to go headdown for long, not even close to long enough to hit headdown terminal, just long enough to solidly establish linear airflow down the length of the body... recovery winds up being even -faster- than in a small suit. You don't need to "fight" a flat spin, just eject right out the bottom of it to where the airflow is.


Afterthought is, if you haven't already got a vast bag of tricks for catching and stopping spins before they start, you got no business in a big suit in the first place, and getting into a flatspin is proof that the spinnee isn't ready for that suit yet and should step back and work on this flipping and tumbling with smaller suits until spin-prevention is entirely instinctive. When the dreaded flatspin stops being an animal you fear and becomes a mythical animal you laugh at, an illusion, then you're ready for that big suit.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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primetime

Thank you for the detailed explanation, Lurch. You are very good at describing things. I can totally picture the "funnel." This post might save someone's life.



I agree, that was a fantastic explanation. I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried the head down dive-out-of-it recovery method?
Instructional Videos:www.AdventureWisdom.com
Keynote Speaking:www.TranscendingFEAR.com
Canopies and Courses:www.BIGAIRSPORTZ.com

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I recently had a flat spin while jumping a large suit. To see it in action you can have a look at the video.

I had experienced a similar spin on a small suit way back - I think that helped.

My recovery went something like this: once I realised what was happening, I closed my arm wings and leg-wing and balled up slightly; this resulted in a more stable spin mostly on my back and increased downward speed; to transition to a head-down dive I straightened my body and "leaned back" choosing the ground as my heading; this resulted in a steep dive; once the dive had begun I slowly opened the wings and transitioned from diving/falling to flying; the slow transition allowed me to use the wingsuit to stop the spin by "turning out of it". It took me about 8 seconds to complete this process.

Some comments about how I dealt with it:
- it was caused by a slight off-heading exit
- at first I tried what I would have done in a smaller suit: just transitioning to a barrel roll and continue flying - this did not work because there is just too much material to deal with
- it took me about 1/2 seconds to accept what was happening
- having previous experience with the same situation in a small suit helped me: I had a clear strategy to execute
- it was easy to close the wings since they were not properly inflated (the flipping and spinning actually helps to that extent)
- deflating the wings and balling up increased my stability by stopping the flipping
- after making the transition to the head-down dive I started to use the suit itself to regain full stability - in other words I ended the spin by flying out of it
- and last but not at all least: I was current

Hope you find the video, description and comments useful :)
things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise

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BrianSGermain

***Thank you for the detailed explanation, Lurch. You are very good at describing things. I can totally picture the "funnel." This post might save someone's life.



I agree, that was a fantastic explanation. I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried the head down dive-out-of-it recovery method?

While I am new to skydiving and very new to wingsuits I can comment at bit on my experience in a general way. I am not an aircraft pilot but I do know that spin recover is very often nose down, or starts that way. For whatever reason I have practice head down recovery in normal skydiving when I get flipped or spun around and don’t know which end is up. I am not a free flyer either. There is just something natural for putting your head down. Once you are vertical you can rotate around your normal roll axis very easily. This gives you a feeling of being in control of your flight and you can “pull out” or go back to belly when your get your orientation back. I mean you feel for your orientation. So you rotate to your heading and pull out.

Last week I flipped to my back in an R-bird and went into a head down dive. The flipping onto my back was not planned. I know I can’t yet fly on my back, so I just went head down into this notch on the side of this cloud (which I was looking at when I flipped over). As I did I flew without thinking and flew a rolling maneuver as I got to a spot where I wanted to pull out in a different direction. It was very natural and easy to do that roll. Yesterday flying in normal flight, I tried to “fly” the same type roll. It was not possible because I was fighting all of that air hitting my belly and tail. It showed me how much more authority you have over your flight when head down because the normal vertical travel element is not 90 degrees to your flying surfaces.

Yes, I spotted some months ago that Lurch has a great ability to explain things.
Instructor quote, “What's weird is that you're older than my dad!”

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I'm going to chime in with Jarno and Lurch here:

I'm utterly flabbergasted at the amount of former freeflyers who used to blatantly scoff at us wingsuiters eight/ten years ago who now, magically, think they are experienced enough to jump straight into a HUGE wingsuit and do XRW and stuff. Never mind a sound progression in mid-range, super-agile suits where they learn to fly comfortably around others, fly on their backs as much as they do on their bellys and do acro moves. Nope; it's five jumps in a phantom (or five jumps in a GTi a decade ago at the WFFC) and straight to an Apache! Unbelievable. I've been jumping wingsuits since the very first boogie Jari showed up at 13 years ago in Louisburg, NC and I STILL jump a mid-size suit for 99% of my jumps. Ultimately, if you are not comfortable on any axis in a mid-range suit you are an idiot for thinking you are going to be able to effectively fly a tarp.

My .02 cents.

Chuck

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I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried the head down dive-out-of-it recovery method?



Yes. They have. With varying results. Until a different method is shown that demonstrates consistency, I'll keep teaching the method that works for P1's to Apache's (and have video of both extremes).

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i never had much luck with the collapsed wings deep arch by itself i prefer to kill the wings by balling up, stop the spin, then arch to get back to belly to earth...


done it a bunch of times with my rbird but thats not a huge suit, trying to not flat spin the venom

video showing my friend a flat spin and recovery

www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKOwHBSVwM

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video showing my friend a flat spin



Im just seeing someone 'unstable' due to an open legwing and arched body position during a rotation. People love putting (incorrect) horror names on instability.

This isnt a flatspin. Its simple basics in flying/body position that people should just practice more. Especially before upgrading to bigger suits.
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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Some friends wanted to see one and the best way I knew to get into one is repeat the mistakes I made while learning barrel rolls, which was to keep the leg wing open as I twisted for the roll .... I'll change the name to "intentionally putting myself into a non controllable orbit and recovering" ...

Or maybe "recover from an unwanted position" ... But that sounds dirty

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Its not 'not controllable' nor 'flatspin'

With practice (in flying/acrobatics) you can do all these moves with open or closed wings. Without 'amazing flatspin recovery dives'. People need to learn to fly their body, and learn to understand the aerodynamics behind each input, on small suits. And stop labeling every 'Im not flying my body properly' as a (in my view non existent) 'flatspin' horrorstory.
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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DSE

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I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried the head down dive-out-of-it recovery method?



Yes. They have. With varying results. Until a different method is shown that demonstrates consistency, I'll keep teaching the method that works for P1's to Apache's (and have video of both extremes).



What a tease! What is it?
Skwrl Productions - Wingsuit Photography

Northeast Bird School - Chief Logistics Guy and Video Dork

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Skwrl

***

Quote

I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried the head down dive-out-of-it recovery method?



Yes. They have. With varying results. Until a different method is shown that demonstrates consistency, I'll keep teaching the method that works for P1's to Apache's (and have video of both extremes).


What a tease! What is it?

you have to pay for that informationB| lol!
Flock University FWC / ZFlock
B.A.S.E. 1580
Aussie BASE 121

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roostnureye

******

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I am wondering if anyone else out there has tried the head down dive-out-of-it recovery method?



Yes. They have. With varying results. Until a different method is shown that demonstrates consistency, I'll keep teaching the method that works for P1's to Apache's (and have video of both extremes).


What a tease! What is it?

you have to pay for that informationB| lol!

Well, y'know...given the huge medical expenses and forced retirement related to a stoned, brain-fried yokel slamming into my head, I gotta do whatever I can to make ends meet, right?:P:|

That being said, the videos have been online for nearly 3 years, were featured as a dz.com article, and are overall pretty easy to find (and are free).
And best of all, one of the vids was linked earlier in this thread.
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4516216#4516216 Reading is fundamental.;)
There are two others we're using locally at the school that I haven't taken time to upload.

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roostnureye


you have to pay for that informationB| lol!

From what I've seen Spot has always been great about sharing practices and information. He has frequently posted a link to the wingsuit manual he uses at Elsinore and to videos of all his dive flows ... I just don't remember the link at the moment.
Brian

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The reference guide can be found:
http://tinyurl.com/pdowhl4

The videos (old series) can be found:
http://skyvideo.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/skydive-elsinore-wingsuit-school-video-guides/ It appears some of my image/video links have become broken, apologies, they're old links.

Both are old references, and will be updated in the next few weeks.

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