Downside to Wingsuit?

[mofo554 0]

I'm very new to the sport. However, I've done a bit of reading about the Wingsuit, and it sounds amazing. At the dropzone I jump at, I have not yet seen any Wingsuits. When I asked, I was told only one person at the DZ (an employee) owned a wingsuit. The person I spoke with said the owner didn't use it that much, but didn't specify why.

This is a medium size DZ in Michigan...I would think more people would have Wingsuits. This leads to the question: Is there something bad about the Wingsuit? Are its flight characteristics not as good as claimed? Or is it just coincidence that nobody there seems to jump with them?

[LouDiamond 1]

There are probably a few factors but none of them are due to reasons you mentioned. I think the big one is

1. the cost involved in owning a suit, most can't justify spending that much.

2. Unless you've demo'd one there is no way to explain to someone REALLY, how great it is.

3. There are very few people who fly suits on a regular basis compared to the numbers of skydivers

4. Unless, your at a DZ where someone owns a suit or you visit a DZ with suits, there is very little most people can tell you about them.

5. Doing BM flights by ones self can be like doing solos, so some people don't do it as much if they are the only person that owns a suit on a DZ.

6. It's actually a conspiracy, we just don't want everybody else to know how much fun it is. Otherwise everyone would be jumping BM suits and abandon skydiving and Free flying all together. Can you imagine if everyone on the plane was in a BM suit? the world would implode as we know it

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[fergs 0]

Is there something bad about the Wingsuit? Are its flight characteristics not as good as claimed? Or is it just coincidence that nobody there seems to jump with them?

[kevin922 0]

The few people I've run into that have a suit but doesn't jump it have the following excuses:

A) They are working on "mastering" other discplines first

B) They aren' that much fun when there is no one else to jump with

Reasons why it may be difficult to find people interested in them:

A) The suit does add some danger to your jump, you have 2, possibly 3 new cutaways to consider (although these typically will not be used during your "normal" cutaway procedures)

B) The suit is very fun, however once you've jumped with another birdman the solo jumps that were fun before now become kinda boring :)

C) I think there is a lot of "unknowns" when it comes to a wing suit.. people who don't have exposure to them don't know about them and because they make you look like a flying squrriel people are a little leary of finding out about them. They are wierd looking and because they keep developing like they are, they are becoming more and more like a ram air parachute. Hopefully I can get a good FAQ put together to dispel some of the unknowns. BTW - do you have any other questions I can stick into the FAQ?

[skr 1]

>Or is it just coincidence that nobody there seems to
>jump with them?

Wide spread use is relatively new, and I think it just
hasn't reached its equilibrium percentage of jumpers
yet.

Also there aren't very many jumpers total, so there
aren't very many people doing anything - boards,
wingsuits, head down, 4 way ...

If USPA has 34,000 members, and if 10,000-20,000
are really active, that averages out to 200-400 per
state.

I don't know the numbers for other countries, but
skydiving is a really, really small world.

Skr

[ManBird 0]

There is no downside to jumping a WS, and I have abandoned all other forms of skydiving (except tracking without a WS). There's really no equal to skyflying. Not just in skydiving, but in general. I really can't think of any other thing I'd rather do.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

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