Birdman night jumps

[lurch 0]

I owe beer. Got 2 flights last night and a new #1 top of my list of coolest things I ever got to do. Hauling ass through the sky with the Nashua area light grid spread out below as far as the eye can see is simply mindblowing. Who else out there has flown at night? I know its been done before but I'm wondering how rare is it? Anyone out there who hasn't yet, DO IT! All I gotta say is make sure you have your navigation down SOLID and have a spare pair of shorts handy cause you're gonna need em. Wow. They just don't make reality like they used to....

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[ManBird 0]

A few of us have (inspired by Kevin Orkin) jumped with glowsticks in our wings. Kinda cool. That aside, night wingsuit flying kicks ass. Total freedom. I didn't fly directly over a grid, but I did head north for awhile and checked out the lights of downtown Portland. That'd be cool to be right over a lit up city. Nice one.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[gus 1]

I did one at Z-Hills with the runways all lit up, it was pretty cool . Would love to do some more.

Gus

OutpatientsOnline.com

[fenceline 0]

Haven't looked real close, but how do you get glow sticks into the wings??

[ManBird 0]

On the GTi, you have to pop a stitch or two. On the S3, there's already an opening between the tabs. There's a tutorial somewhere on http://www.flybirdman.com, but I can't find it. I did my night jumps in the GTi.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[ziboulateur 0]

Thats awesome Lurch!

I spent an hour looking at the moon yesterday imagining IT while you were actually doing IT!

Is that DZ planning night jumps again tonight or over the week-end?

Come to fly over Orange, MA some time.
The flock is growing quickly over here!

[Tonto 1]

I did one a couple of months back. I only had a few wingsuit dives at the time, but quite a lot (about 50) night jumps. Made me want a LQRS. Didn't like doing the whole leg zipper thing not knowing where the other traffic was for sure - so I ordered LQRS on my S3.

It was the coolest thing - but you already know that!

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[kevin922 0]

Ah wow.. i wonder if I was the first to do that glowstick thing .. hehe :)

anyway, looks like after a quick search I haven't done it on FBM or it isn't there now.. here is the link to the original post here about it.

Got a lot of updating to do on FBM :(

Kevin

[ManBird 0]

You know, I think I just confused this forum with flybirdman. I knew you had a "Glowstick Mod" tutorial, but couldn't remember where it was.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[jmfreefly 0]

Quote

Ah wow.. i wonder if I was the first to do that glowstick thing .. hehe :)

Beer

[KrisFlyZ 0]

I did one last saturday. Did not want to mess with the stiches on my GTI so I stuck some glowsticks to the wings with some clear tape, needless to say these were gone soon after exit.

I did have a strobelight mounted on the top of my helmet and people on the ground said that they could see me flying around from the ground.

Has anyone used strobelights on the ground to indicate DZ location? I know it is not a big thing for regular night jumps but maybe helpful for birdman night jumps.

Kris.

[Spy38W 0]

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Has anyone used strobelights on the ground to indicate DZ location? I know it is not a big thing for regular night jumps but maybe helpful for birdman night jumps.

Yup, we tried lining a runway with them at an unlit DZ, they are far too weak.

--
Hook high, flare on time

[always 0]

We did a night jump here in Kamloops on Saturday. It was the B! I haven't done night jumps in probably 10-12 years. I was excited to give it a try again after reading the threads on this topic here. caCAW!

We've got Classic IIs here with white wings. And this is what we did.

We went with 6 glowsticks in each arm wing. The left wing had the yellow or lime green ones that are popular. This is because the brightness that came from them meant you didn't need an illumination source on your wristmount. So, the left wing had six.

The right wing we went with a different color to distinguish who was who in the air. Cause we're flocking it.

We didn't put any in the rib immediately next to the body because on the Classic II there is a hole at the bottom that made them fall out. Sneaking in a glowstick in the small rib next to your wrist is a good thing but, not mandatory to read your dial.

Don't worry about the orientation of the sticks in your ribs. They seem to line up with the airflow in flight and didn't interfere with main activation.

We didn't put any in our legs because there wasn't easy access like the arm wings. Next time we will figure something out and stuff those ribs to the gills.

The flock was easy. We did a three way. Exit was tight because we've been doing that linking thing I mentioned in a recent thread. The colors were easy to see. And the burble hopping that Veggie and I did was hilarious. Zoom , zoom, zoom...

We used the moon as a heading. It was a harvest one, about 75% full. We also had the city lights. Next time we're going to fly back over the city.

The people on the ground could see us very easily. Some of the comments I remember were "you guys looked like fireflys" "UFO's " "Wild" "Crazy". Apparently most people saw us from exit all the way to pull time. Exit 9,500 Open 3,000. There were other loads of freeflyers and flatflyers but, nobody saw anything until they were under canopy. Sucks to be them, I know, I know...

Gonna have to do another one next month. Faking awesome!

caCAW! caCAW!

Always Rodriguez