Demian 0 #1 June 13, 2003 Greetings, As I near the end of my AFF training, I'm looking to get my own jumpsuit. While browsing various sites, I've seen the various makes and designs for specific discpilines. My question is this. How do these different designs in suits actually affect your flight, say for instance if I have a suit made for Freeflying, or Relative Work, but I just intend to jump, arch, and fall? Also, I've considered having a friend just make a suit, or flight pants (or both) for me to save me a couple hundred $$. Where would I look for patterns to give her, and what fabrics are best to use? Any help would be great Thanks a million.... Remember when sex was safe, and skydiving was dangerous? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jerry81 10 #2 June 13, 2003 Hey! Jumping, arching and falling is fun, but you'll probably soon decide you want to fly with others and do something more. What you probably noticed is that rw suits are tighter and have grips on them, while ff suits are baggier and cooler looking (j/k, I just had to say it). The first are designed for falling on your belly and building formations with other people, from one to 300, while the second are meant for falling in any way you can imagine and hold stable. Basically, if you arch and fall, you'll go a little faster wearing an rw suit, because ff suits are made to slow you down a bit in positions much faster than your standard belly-flying. Also, rw suits can have booties on the lower legs (imagine bell-bottomed pants with the cuffs attached to the soles of your feet) which help you maneuver your body with your legs better and are also useful for tracking (usually away from a formation when it's time to break and deploy) As for suit-making, I've only made ff suits- they're usually made from cotton or some cotton-synthetic mix. Patterns are a bitch to find online, so I just drew my own and made some minor adjustments later. A ff suit is basically just a jumpsuit, so making a pattern should be easy for your friend if she has any experiences sewing clothes. Rw suits, on the other hand, have to be a tighter fit, plus the grippers must be sewn on correctly or they'll get torn off the first time you funnel an exit (you'll learn what that is soon enough). If I may suggest- get your friend to make you a simple jumpsuit that's not too baggy and fly it for a while. It won't be too slow so you can still try some simple relative work and if you decide you'd rather freefly, you can always insert some more material at the ankles and wrists or have your friend make you another suit. Most of all, enjoy the learning and welcome to the sport! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Asta 0 #3 June 13, 2003 A lot of people who aren't highly specialized in one discipline or another carry both an RW suit and an FF one. That way they are open for all kinds of fun skydiving! Especially if you're a slow faller you'll soon find that you'll need a tight RW suit to keep up with your friends when doing belly formations. But suits are of course quite expensive, and as a fresh turkey money is more often than not something that you don't have too much of, so try finding used suits! They can often be modified quite easily to fit ok, and when you've found out what kind of jumping you wanna do you can order a brand new. :) //Liz - skydiving student = used gear all the way baby! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
