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johnmatrix

Lightning for WS?

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I have a friend with hardly any wingsuit experience but tons of CRW and I have seen him jump his lightning with a wingsuit. When I asked him about it he said "well you want a reliable opening with a wingsuit" and also that it wasn't so bad if you flare the suit.

I probably wouldn't jump one though but mostly for the landings

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I think there is a different answer for someone about to "start" wingsuiting versus someone with a decent amount of wingsuit experience.

An experienced wingsuiter can just go freepacked and open in full flight, no different than pulling out of the door of a king air or what base jumpers do every day.

A student wingsuiter certainly needs a canopy in a bag as initial deployment speeds\orientation are going to be closer to freefall speeds than a real wingsuit deployment.

I would ask your buddy to do a couple of slick skydives with the Lightning in a d-bag. If he isn't comfortable doing that then I don't think it is the right canopy for the first few wingsuit jumps.
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Thanks - but if he does follow through on his idea to use the same canopy for CRW and WS he'll probably need a Lightning as thats what the other CRWdogs are jumping.

I did tell him just to wait until he'd jumped a Lightning, and flown a wingsuit (with his Pilot), and then see how he feels.

But that's interesting - my initial thought was 'hell no' but then I couldn't think of a good reason why not, with a sail slider and D-bag, and toggles that don't stick out of the riser covers, it doesn't sound too bad.

And yes I know the landings are shit but they still land OK. :)

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WickedWingsuits

I think there is a different answer for someone about to "start" wingsuiting versus someone with a decent amount of wingsuit experience.

An experienced wingsuiter can just go freepacked and open in full flight, no different than pulling out of the door of a king air or what base jumpers do every day.

A student wingsuiter certainly needs a canopy in a bag as initial deployment speeds\orientation are going to be closer to freefall speeds than a real wingsuit deployment.

I would ask your buddy to do a couple of slick skydives with the Lightning in a d-bag. If he isn't comfortable doing that then I don't think it is the right canopy for the first few wingsuit jumps.




+1 I made the assumption this was an experienced pilot
Dont just talk about it, Do it!

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Will it work? Sure. I'd recommend not using the retractible bridle system though. It adds another failure mode. Generally speaking I don't really see the point. Doing CRW is hard on gear.

Definitely recommend the test jumps. I'd certainly recommend that shorter delays be taken at first, say 5 seconds. Then start taking longer ones. The bag will slow things down, and so will the slider. However it's still going to be a pretty snappy opening. That nose is wide open.

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The crew who jumps Lightnings and do CRW and wingsuit often mix and match diciplines as well, and cant say that its always going of without a hitch....I think they are the only people I know with lineburns on wingsuits...but if someone wants to combine swooping, wingsuit, crw etc....

For sure, its not recommendable, and a good canopy like a storm (designed for both) would be the better option..
JC
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If the intention is to have one canopy to switch back and forth, consider the difference between hooking up a canopy to a container (taking risers, slider, dbag, and pilot chute with it), and using the same canopy only changing out all of those things every time you want to switch between deploying from terminal or not.
What a pain!

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The lightning is a perfectly landable canopy. Newer jumpers just have to get used to how different it flares. Old school tech. Some older CRW jumpers choose to slide the landings because they are older and dont want to run them out.

I would recommend removing the retractable bridle and getting a longer standard wingsuit acceptable bridle..... but why ? there are tons of canopies with tons of bottom end for candy ass skydivers to keep their new matchy-matchy wingsuit clean so they can sell it with less than 50 jumps on it when next seasons version 2.5 comes out promising a huge leap in performance.

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I also agree the Lightning is perfectly capable of soft landings, just takes a bit of timing and coordination. If you cant land it soft and standing up, there is something wrong with your basic canopy skills.

With the right modifications it would even seem like a nice and safe canopy. Its got re-inforced everything, low aspect ratio, comfortable Dacron 600 lines, and just 7 cells, it seems pretty safe to me. For every wingsuit jump I would pack it for soft opening, put on a different bridle, use different attachment point for the bridle and a different pilot chute, probably also put it in a d-bag and remove one or two of my Bowie knifes from the cheststrap.

Then I would have to spend 20 to 30 minutes to run around the dropzone desperatly looking for my other bridle and pilot chute, then change it all back every single time I wanna do CRW again. It seems much smarterer to just get a second canopy and risers. Unlike CRW, wingsuiting is pretty much a sport for the rich and busy, we dont have time to stand around and wait for your friend to get his shit ready, so you better tell him to get a designated setup for WS.

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0584

I also agree the Lightning is perfectly capable of soft landings, just takes a bit of timing and coordination. If you cant land it soft and standing up, there is something wrong with your basic canopy skills.

.



In that case a whole bunch of CRW competitors at nationals have defective canopy skills.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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In that case a whole bunch of CRW competitors at nationals have defective canopy skills.

I didn't see a canopy landing problem at this years Nats. Like I said before we had some new pups with less than 100 lightning jumps. Out of the 36 CF competitors this year 60% were storms with wing loadings from 1.6 to 2. 10% were on CRW JFXs at loadings well into the 2+

I doubt there were more than 12 competitors on lightings this year, pups aside most have better than average canopy landing skills . Now I didn't see the end of competition state record bigway done on 100% lightnings land as I was one of the last down.

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first kallend

***I also agree the Lightning is perfectly capable of soft landings, just takes a bit of timing and coordination. If you cant land it soft and standing up, there is something wrong with your basic canopy skills.



In that case a whole bunch of CRW competitors at nationals have defective canopy skills.

Well, maybe beeing able to cough up the entry fee to compete isnt such a good indicator of canopy skills then.

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0584

******I also agree the Lightning is perfectly capable of soft landings, just takes a bit of timing and coordination. If you cant land it soft and standing up, there is something wrong with your basic canopy skills.



In that case a whole bunch of CRW competitors at nationals have defective canopy skills.

Well, maybe beeing able to cough up the entry fee to compete isnt such a good indicator of canopy skills then.

A lot of the Lightnings we use are old and ragged out as hell. At lower WL it's not that big a deal. On my 126 with three links in the rears, loaded at 1.8 it's a bit more of a challenge. 1.4 and below with a stock trim isn't that difficult to land. CRW disciplines keep getting threatened with our events being taken out of Nationals so we bring a lot of newbies (or try to).

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