MTR3 First Impressions

[nathaniel 0]

I've not seen too much info about the MTR3... So I bought one. Got it in the mail this week. Put 3 jumps on it today.

About the suit
The suit is a mono-wing style, as the pictures on Matter's website show. the arm wings are roughly equilateral in shape, and meet the body below the hip. The joint between the arm wing and body is no such thing, the body and wing are one piece of fabric and form a single planar surface. The curve where the trailing edge of the arm wing meets the hip is reinforced--it's rather stiff. On the inside there's no walls between the leg wing intake and the body or between the arm wings and the body, other than the wing ribbing on the arm, which is perforated. The whole suit inflates, and literally flies as one surface (see below for flight details). The leg wing has kevlar inserts, which give the wing noticeable form on the ground. This probably contributes to inflation in the air. The leg wing meets the front surface of the leg fabric, like the Firebird and the Vampire, and unlike the GTi, Classic and the GS1 where the leg wing attaches to the interior or rear surface of the leg.

The rig is inserted from the top end of the suit and zippered into place. The GS-1 uses a similar design. Whereas the GS-1 has neoprene wrapping and velcro seals underneath the cutaway and reserve pillows, the MTR-3 uses woven nylon-bridle type material and snaps. On my custom-fit suit, I had no concerns about the suit interfering with the main cutaway and reserve handles.

Slightly above the knees the suit has some neoprene material. Presumably this is to reduce leg-wing tension.

Remark: In person, the effect of the single body-arm-leg wing continuum makes the arm wing seem proportionally bigger than the pictures on the website. This could either be a perspective issue on the Matter website (perhaps the camera was placed too low) or possibly due to design scaling and body shape--I've got very long arms and legs, and a relatively short torso. The neoprene knees are a stealth feature. They seem to be most helpful in the plane, and are very effective at reducing fabric tension with knees bent in cramped quarters. A problem I didn't know I had, but which I'm glad is solved on the MTR3 suit.

Someone described the MTR-3 as a cross between a heavy-duty wingsuit design and a tracking suit, and this seems to be a good description of it.

Wingsuit cutaway system
A single arm-cutaway handle is connected to cutaway cables running parallel to the arm zipper. The cables are joined at the breastbone with a rapide link. A cloth handle sewn onto a card also attaches to the rapide link, and the card tucks into little pouches to cover up the metal link and the ends of the cutaway cables.

Remark: The rapide link is overkill. Something like an RSL clip or equivalent would be preferable. The GS-1, which uses a similar design, uses a three-ply velcro system. The tuck tabs on my suit are perhaps 1/8 or 3/16 inch too large, making it difficult to tuck them in--and the tuck pocket is inflexible. The design could be improved by making the tuck tabs tapered or by making the tuck pocket out of a stretch-fabric material. Or by using velcro, a la the GS-1.

One particular concern came up earlier this week when I tested the cutaway system on the ground. The flanges on the back of several of the metal grommets had fractured or compressed (see pic), exposing sharp edges on the grommets. The edges had a tendency to catch on the cutaway cable and shave off a little yellow plastic, and significantly increasing the pull-force required to extract the cable. Some type of plastic (eg, UHMWPE) grommet, if it could survive the conditions of wingsuit flight, would be a superior material. I experimented with coating some of the grommets with a steel-based epoxy, I'll update this post when I reach a conclusion. An alternate approach might be to solder down the rough grommets as well...using a low-melt solder--tho some low melt solders have lead and cadmium in them, both nasty toxic metals...

When I found this problem on Thursday, I notified Cedric of Matter Clothing immediately. He responded via email that Matter is investigating the issue.


Putting the suit on.
Arm zippers are on the underside of the arm, meaning they stop at the armpit. Leg zippers are standard. Booties are fine, and it was pleasant to find that the excess material that ebbs up behind the heel on my GTi has simply been excised from the MTR-3. Single, central torso zipper, much like the original Birdman design, back before there was a Classic there was The Birdman Suit with a central zipper. Neoprene collar comes high up on the neck, right up to my adam's apple. The bootie-hip snaps have magnets in them.

Remark: My suit is custom-built, using measurements originally taken by Scott Campos at WFFC '04 for my GTi plus a few corrections based on how my GTi fits. The result is that my MTR-3 is a very good fit.

Since the torso zipper can't go beyond the leg intake, the suit is a little difficult to put on. Pretty much every other suit uses two zippers on the torso that can run down to the thigh, and I prefer that design. The leg zippers are just about right. The arm zippers stop at the middle of my upper arm--probably a couple inches too short, but this really isn't a big deal. By the time you've unzipped your arm wings and are reaching for your toggles, chances are you've taken your booties off already, so the suit has flexion.

Putting magnets in the bootie snaps is a great idea, every suit should do this. Never fiddle with bootie snaps again!

Flight.
Fall rates were in the 60's and 50's of mph, with sustained troughs of 45-50 mph (using indyz's gaussian average of raw neptune data).

Remark: The suit inflated firmly and very quickly and flew stable down the hill. I'm used to flying my GTi with a combination of probably 40% shoulders and 60% feet, and after ~ 200 jumps on it I feel very agile flying my GTi. The MTR3, by comparison, reacted very little to shoulder input, and a little less to foot input than my GTi does. Part of this I'm sure is me being conservative on my first flights, but much of it is the monowing design--there's tension between the legs (hips) and the wrists, in a way like the GS-1 and unlike BM and PF suits I've flown. It's different form the GS-1 tho in that the GS-1 had direct tension between the toes and the arms, on the MTR3 it's a restriction more on the arms than the legs. The leg wing has a tremendous effect. It reminded me of the sensation I had flying a Vampire, although I don't feel totally confident to make a direct comparison right now since
* I've not flown a vampire that was custom fit to me
* I've put a combined total of 5 jumps between the two suits
* I didn't have GPS for any of the jumps
* it's been months since I flew a Vampire.

Massive disclaimer notwithstanding, this suit gave a good push. Like yuri_base has shown us with his beautiful L/D graph, airspeed gives lift. This became highly noticeable to me on the MTR3; when I surged forward my glide ratio improved dramatically. There were scattered clouds today, and on two separate occasions I completely overshot the hole I was aiming for, by what felt like 1/4 mile .

I've read that the MTR2 design was prone to leg-wing flapping. I experienced moderate flapping when I relaxed my feet, but the flapping stopped immediately when I pointed my toes. Anyone who's seen me in a flocking video knows that I know leg wing flapping...there is no flapping issue with my MTR3.

First impression summary

The Good * True mono-wing design, body and wings share a continuous flat surface.
* Good inflation.
* Cutway design, despite implementation problems. Very easy to assemble.
* Fast horizontal speeds. I'll tell you exactly how fast once I get my GPS rigged up.
* Neoprene knees make the plane ride much more comfortable.

The Bad :
* A little difficult to put on; single torso zipper and arm zippers.
* Rapide link has to be undone and redone every time you put on the suit on.
* A little inflexible. I won't be doing 75mph flocks in this thing...not even close.
* No intakes on the back. But to be fair I haven't tried backflying it yet...stay tuned.

The Ugly :
* Metal grommets on cutway system have exposed edges and can catch on the arm cutaway cable, increasing cutaway pull force significantly.

First impression overall grade: B+.

Deserves an A- if / when the cutaway grommet thing is fixed.


edit: grammar

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[riggerrob 558]

That grommet problem is not unique to wing suits. I have seen this problem several times before on containers.
The solution involves correctly matching the grommet to the thickness of the material, buying high-quality grommets and using the correct tools (dies) to set them.
Any decent rigger can replace those grommets in half an hour.

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

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Any decent rigger can replace those grommets in half an hour.

Any decent rigger shouldn't have to...

.

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[nathaniel 0]

Seems like the requirements on a wingsuit are slightly different from a rig tho, which was got me motivated towards plastics instead of metal. There are more of them (14 per wing on my suit), there's presumably less pressure on each one individually, and there's much greater sensitivity to friction since I'm pulling a long cable through them all. Tho a spur is probably worse on a rig grommet since the closing loop is woven nylon & very prone to catching and sticking versus a cutaway cable getting shaved...

I'll hand the suit to a rigger in person, see what they think.

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

[VectorBoy 0]

>>>>>* No intakes on the back. But to be fair I haven't tried backflying it yet...stay tuned.

I have found that the large openings in the suit for the rigs laterals allow a great deal of air inlet area ready to be used for back flying. My Matter 2 flies better on the back side than my prototype back vented airlocked S-3. I've got several jumps worth of video of a buddy backflying his M2 and later M3 the entire flock including the pattern turns and doin a fine job of it. You will love back flying in your M-3 when the time comes.

Not that our older suits had any grommet problems but one of the mods I did to mine was to sew in soft housings to keep the cuttaway cables from straying all around the arm area. I also lowered the collar from Euro to a more casual western half as high look.

Glen

[Costyn 0]

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My Matter 2 flies better on the back side than my prototype back vented airlocked S-3.

Dude... pretty much anything flies better than your S-3 prototype. That thing was a bitch to fly. I think the airlocks on the back weren't really working and letting all the air out again or something.

But it was a fun jump anyways, although the most tiring wingsuit jump I've ever done.

Cheers.

Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

[VectorBoy 0]

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My Matter 2 flies better on the back side than my prototype back vented airlocked S-3.

Dude... pretty much anything flies better than your S-3 prototype. That thing was a bitch to fly. I think the airlocks on the back weren't really working and letting all the air out again or something.

But it was a fun jump anyways, although the most tiring wingsuit jump I've ever done.

Cheers.

It does bleed air but I've found that this aspect relieves the arm strain. In fact I had know idea about the S-3 arm pain until I tried Steve Manbird's production S-3, I spent a year thinking S-3 owners were whinners.

But I believe it flys pretty much the same as any other S-3, without the equal amount of lift, felt mostly by the arms. Too bad Steve can't respond I'm curious if it was considered hard by others that have flown it.

Glen