Who was the first person to really being flying head down consistently?

[Newbie 0]

I mean, to actually try to work out how to do, and decide to try and do it and then begin to practice it jump after jump. I'm just curious as to know how head down flight developed, and what the original reasoning was behind it. Was it Olav?

Thanks if anyone can help me out.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[WrongWay 0]

There's actually a lot of controversy about this. Everybody wants to claim it, so everybody will have different stories.

Wrong Way
D #27371 Mal Manera Rodriguez Cajun Chicken Ø Hellfish #451
The wiser wolf prevails.

[apoil 0]

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I mean, to actually try to work out how to do, and decide to try and do it and then begin to practice it jump after jump. I'm just curious as to know how head down flight developed, and what the original reasoning was behind it. Was it Olav?

Thanks if anyone can help me out.

My understanding is that it was Olav.
Are you sure he didn't put you up to this?

Early hard core RW guys will at this point start talking about "no lift dives" and how they'd been doing it for years before Olav came along.

But that was about diving down to a formation. It wasn't about flying the body position. That is, controlled motion on all axes and the ability to STOP at a fixed point.

So, I'll give credit to Olav for pioneering the idea, but he certainly had help in the early days turning it into a discipline.

[losty 0]

The inventor/pioneer of freefly? A temporal entirely dependant on circumstances i.e. The first cause. How could anyone person claim to independantly pioneer, or for that matter, do, anything?

Anyway.....it was probably "OLAV" if u want to make illusory distinctions.

Yahoo Serious

[rehmwa 2]

what does your avatar say in on edges (3 things). It's a cool one.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[avenfoto 0]

headdown started in the tunnel, as a transitionary move (due to lack of airspeed technology) in the mid-eighties... olav visited flyaway pf a few years later, and took it to the sky...

noone really "invented" or is the "father" of headdown..

olav, however certainly helped develop it in its younger years...

[YM4 0]

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headdown started in the tunnel,

I actually don't remember the exact year when we started seeing head down flying but in 1992 I worked with John Suiter at an old DC3 prop tunnell here in Puerto Rico and he could fly on his back and head preety well, he could do a lot of cool shit only using his Tshirt kinda like a boat sail to give him lift. Dont want to mention what he could do with those huge ballon suits.
He could fly nice and he could go high as hell.

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight,
It's the size of the fight in the dog!"

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[FOF 6]

As "losty" pointed out, it might not really be accurate to ask who "invented" head-down flight. Like many other aspects of skydiving and life, it would be more accurate to say that head-down evolved from a number of sources.

Some friends who spent a lot of time at the Pigeon Forge tunnel during the 80's have credited John Suiter and another tunnel flyer as the first people to master controlled head-down flight (sorry, I don't remember the second person's name). Of course, as "apoil" mentioned, early RW jumpers used head-down "no lift" dives to reach formations quickly. Jumpers who perfected this technique might argue that it actually was controlled head-down flight, although the degree of control they exhibited was arguably much more limited than today's head-down flyers.

For many many years (decades, even) classic style jumpers have used head-down dives to gain speed before starting a style series. This maneuver looks virtually identical to an extremely fast falling head-down freefly position except that it is performed on a solo style jump instead of being used to fly relative with other jumpers.

I've also heard John LeBlanc talk about doing two-way tracking and "no lift" jumps with Olav Zipser at ZHills or DeLand back in the 80's.

Olav is generally credited with bringing modern head-down flying techniques out of the tunnel and introducing them to the general skydiving community, with coining the term "freeflying," as well as helping to promote and develop freeflying into the discipline we see today.

Sit-flying also evolved from various sources. Norm Kent, Gus Wing, Rickster Powell, and a few other camera flyers were already known for their sit-flying camera work by the early 90's. Around that time sit-flying RW was often called by the French name, "chute assis," since many people were introduced to it by French jumpers like Phillipe Vallaud. And many years before then, as far back as the 70's if I'm not mistaken, Roger Nelson and others were known for doing RW on their backs or "freak-flying."

Chute assis and head-down merged into modern freeflying / VRW. It could probably be said that freeflying also has its roots in freestyle skydiving, developed and popularized in the 80's by Deanna Kent, Mike Michigan, Tamara Koyn, and others.

I'm sure that other names and places could be added to the ones I've mentioned here, and I wouldn't be surprised if anyone corrected or clarified some of the dates or order of events. What I've written is simply based on my own understanding and recollection. It would be really interesting if someone wanted to do a bit more research, maybe even interview some of the people involved, and write an article on the history of freeflying similar to some of the historical articles that have appeared in Parachutist recently. This sport has a very interesting history, and I'd love to see more of it researched, recorded, and preserved before too much of it fades into the past.

- Scott

[CrazyL 0]

me

[ccowden 0]

I first did headdown on Sept. 6, 1973.

[CrazyL 0]

It was YOU !!!! 1973 I was still trying headstands in diapers.

[GravityGirl 0]

Is that when you were born?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peace and Blue Skies!
Bonnie ==>Gravity Gear!

[Andy9o8 2]

I did 7 or 8 head-down jumps as a S/L progression student in around 1976. I guess you might say I did it "consistently", at least according to my instructors.
Oh- does "unintentional" count?
Yeah, it took me a while to get my A.

[HydroGuy 0]

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Is that when you were born?

Very sharp grasshopper

Get in - Get off - Get away....repeat as neccessary

[CrazyL 0]

hehehehehahahahaha, then my second static line jump was the first headown in contr, well maybe not in control but none the less i was headown flying free for at least a second till the parachute saved me.

[ccowden 0]

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Is that when you were born?

Yep- You got it!