Sweet spot?!?

[LederHose 0]

I am preparing myself for wing suit start this season and I am trying to collect as much info as possible.
I have problems with the expression "sweet spot". In many threads people are mentioning it but often in different context with different meaning.
Some instructors claim they can teach students to find the "sweet spot" after few jumps, on the other side, some very experienced jumpers need hundreds of jumps to find it.

What is "sweet spot" in wing suit flying?

Thanks!


Here are few quotes to illustrate my findings from previous posts:

1. Whenever I hit the "sweet spot", I can feel and the the suit inflate around the shoulders, down to the bend in my arm, and down my back to the rig.

2. I find I hit what feels like the "sweet spot" when I'm in a bit of a head down attitude...

3. ...just wait till you find the "sweet spot" and hear the windblast die down to nothing and it suddenly takes you forever to reach pull altitude...

4. When working my way to the "sweet spot" which took about 7 or so solo jumps I do feel some nice things happening.

5. ...first time trying to fly slow I found the "sweet spot" and got a new best average down to 44 mph and got 2:38 from 12,500...

6. ...some are able to do it right away and others need to work at it before they find the "sweet spot".

7. ..., but it doesn't really, really fly until they feel that "sweet spot" and heard everything go quiet and stay that way. I feel the rig lift up off my back and then it feels like I'm laying on the wing of a fighter jet. It's a little hard to relay. ;)

8. It's that feeling when you find the "sweet spot" and the air around you suddenly becomes smooth and quiet and you feel you really fly...

9. ...what we teach is how to get out the door stable, find the "sweet spot", and fly a safe, pre-determined path back to the DZ without running into anyone

[Zeemax 0]

The most basic explanation of the term 'sweet spot' is the pilot position used to get the best performance from a given suit.

You may find jumpers mention different types of sweet spot - this simply refers to the different optimum positions used for the different types of flying.

Hope that helps, and welcome to the flock

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[mccordia 73]

Adding to what Macca sayd...

You can basicaly devide flying into two styles..

Floaty, headhigh flying, going for max freefall time...
Steep, fast flight, going for distance...

Though more variations are possible..I think people talk about finding the optimal angle/cruising speed, where they get the maximum performance out of their wingsuit for either of the two given flying styles. When flying in this 'perfect' cruising mode, people often experience it as smooth, relaxed and gayishly wonderfull.....the sweet spot

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[helxen 0]

it's like g-spot. many discussed, but few really saw.

[Zeemax 0]

To reply to myself...

Different suits are flown in different ways to get the maximum performance.

So to achieve the optimum flight in say suit X, you will fly your body in a different position to suit Y.


Crap, I just used X and Y in a post... Does that mean I'm like Yuri?!

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[VectorBoy 0]

Quote

it's like g-spot. many discussed, but few really saw.

So does that explain the popularity of the newer larger suits as quik and easy way to get to the sweet spot? Your saying Sizes matters then?

[mccordia 73]

Quote

So does that explain the popularity of the newer larger suits as quik and easy way to get to the sweet spot?

No..as if you where to fly those suits at their optimum, you'd have a whole different picture then the current flocks done in big suits.
But seemingly people would rather fly a big suit at 50% (in a flock) then flying a smaller one at 90%

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[VectorBoy 0]

But seemingly people would rather fly a big suit at 50% (in a flock) then flying a smaller one at 90%

My silly reply was a pun on the G-spot comment. But I know what you mean by more suit than the glide ratio of the flock du jur requires. Although I don't enjoy flying the slow side more than I have to.

I made a comment in jest to the base on the first jump of the first Elsinore camp to lets please keep the speed up..... well boy put the gas on and everybody was in trail no closer than 20'..... I really got to watch how I joke with people, I'm just not that serious.

[lurch 0]

I've mostly given up trying to teach the sweet spot since everyone just goes for the big wings, but...
Easiest way to find it is do a bunch of solos. Get as wide as you can, as flat as you can. Stick your neck out and hunch your shoulders a bit. Point your toes.
Start thinking "long" thoughts. Literally. This is not a joke. If you kind of stretch your neck and think like you're trying to pull yourself further with your forehead, your body tends to get a bit narrower and your shoulders go back a bit.

Pull the tail tight between your legs, keep the same pressure with your toes and your knees. Pull hard with knees and easy with toes or hard with toes and not with knees is no good...distorts the tail fabric.

Keep your face down. Wanna see where you're going, use your eyes, you turn your head you change direction. What you do with your head and neck has a huge effect on cruise and burst fallrates. Dropping your chin to your chest, throwing your elbows out and shoulders forward can give a -radical- burst of lift that will slow down your forward speed and can cut your fallrate in half and half again in a few seconds. Do not do this anytime there is the slightest possibility of people above you or you will kill them.

If you go to max and stay there you lose forward speed, so go there and then back off a bit until you don't feel like you're slowing down any further.

From there its all about the feel. Tiny movements matter a LOT. You'll eventually know your fallrate by the wind noise alone and be able to guess what your neptune will say after you land before you even look at it. You'll wind up making smaller and smaller movements. The nature of the sweet spot is a bodyshape thats as efficient as possible, so anything you do from there only makes your fallrate worse-speeds you up. You might try dearching a bit more, and the air gets a bit quieter. So you try even MORE, and even though you feel like you're flying harder and should get slower, the air noise speeds up. You just went too far and overdid it. So you back off a bit then try something else, a bit more or less tight toes, more or less rolled shoulders, more or less pushing down with your arms, you get the idea.

This is what people are talking about when they say it can take hundreds of flights to master. It does. You can find a "rough" workable sweet spot fairly easily, but there are several hundred slight small movements and combos that work together in different ways and work or don't work at different speeds and different angles. Some of those hard to find combos are what allow fallrates that look absolutely impossible with medium to small suits. Its not just the 105 lb birds who can do this- properly used, a lowly little Birdman GTI suit can get over 3 minutes of freefall from 14.5 with a 160 lb total exit weight.

Both the cruise and burst sweet spots aren't one move. They're a couple dozen little moves all done at the same time. I've only just scratched the surface with this... you could spend a hundred dives just experimenting with toes and knees. And this is just a sample of the detail to master for just one single subdiscipline, the art of hangtime. Haven't even mentioned speed, distance, cloud surfing/surface targeting or acro yet...
This is why I don't find solos boring. Every time I fly alone and experiment with this I learn another small ninja move.
And then of course you can get into flocking, technical formations... and people at my home DZ wonder why I never take my suit off.
-B

-Disclaimer: This is not a suit by suit breakdown. People will quibble about some of this saying Not-With-This-Suit or that. Some of this detail will work on whatever suit you are flying. Some of it will not. This is just a guide, a few places to start looking for that sweet spot. Good hunting!

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

[yeyo 1]

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But seemingly people would rather fly a big suit at 50% (in a flock) then flying a smaller one at 90%

Thats what I like about flocking with my 'small' suit. If I dont fly it at 80%+ all the time, Ill miss out.

HISPA #93
DS #419.5

[pattersd 0]

Great explanation, and nice to see a detailed straight answer.

[dzjnky 0]

Funny - I always thought that a sweet spot was any time you got out of the plane within striking distance of a sweet puffy

Getting back to the DZ is just bonus points

tweet

[lurch 0]

Oh you got THAT right amigo...
Puffies....MMMMmmmm..... Ain't nothing like scoping your exit and having a puffy farm as far as the eye can see with half a dozen 10,000 foot tall bright white towers within range to choose from. All those canyons slopes caves and valleys to surf. Given a choice between a fine wine and a nicely defined crispy white surfable puffy, I'll take the puffy any day. You can get wine whenever. Perfect puffies however, are a delicacy, and no two are the same, and you never know whats going to come drifting over the horizon. Difference is, thats a sweet -Spot-, which tends to encourage soloists to find the Sweet spot. And when you got it, theres only one thing to do.
Surf. The. Puffies.
...and bring a phone.

-B

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

[skyjumpsteve 0]

Quote

...and bring a phone.

...yes Lurch, bring a phone but remember...you have to actually take it outta yer pocket and use it! Bad bird....bad bird!!!

[lurch 0]

Oh you got THAT right amigo...
Puffies....MMMMmmmm..... Ain't nothing like scoping your exit and having a puffy farm as far as the eye can see with half a dozen 10,000 foot tall bright white towers within range to choose from. All those canyons slopes caves and valleys to surf. Given a choice between a fine wine and a nicely defined crispy white surfable puffy, I'll take the puffy any day. You can get wine whenever. Perfect puffies however, are a delicacy, and no two are the same, and you never know whats going to come drifting over the horizon. Difference is, thats a sweet -Spot-, which tends to encourage soloists to find the Sweet spot. And when you got it, theres only one thing to do.
Surf. The. Puffies.
...and bring a phone.

-B

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

[lurch 0]

Damn, you're quick.
(hangs head in shame)
Guilty.
I'll consider myself smacked. Again.
But in my own defense not one of you laughing-ass nerf herders thought to bug me about my dismal failure to report in.
You're still packing a crackberry right? Send me a memo next time...
-B

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

[stoney3434 0]

LURCH THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT INFO ON FLYING TECHNIQUES...... NOW I WILL DOOOO SOLOS MORE OFTEN and know WHY I am doing them.....I REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR SHARING ALL THAT INSIGHT !

Stoney

Life is what happens while we are making other plans.

[lurch 0]

A couple other bits that might help:
You have to stay head-low for this to be useful, otherwise you'll stall instead: if you cup your arms enough to provoke side to side potato chipping, then back off just enough to stop the wobbling, keeping your knees locked, toes pointed and head below your shoulders it ought to get you in the neighborhood. The idea is catching as much air as your muscles can stand without slowing down your forward speed any. Some of your lowered fallrate comes from drag...air resistance alone, the force you'd feel in a 50-90 mph wind with your wings wide open standing on the ground. The other lift comes from being a wingy shaped gliding object. Maximizing both at the same time is the sweet spot. You're blocking as much air as possible from below and forcing as much of it as possible to push you forward. Too far head down, you sacrifice "kite" action and fallrate goes up, too head-high and although you have loads of braking action holding you up, you're stalling and sacrificed your glidey lift...and your fallrate goes up. I got a friend who is just over 210 lb who pulled about 2:30 in my old GTI when he found its sweet spot. The suit was visibly flying like a highly loaded canopy, theres a certain taut abruptness about the way it moved that made the sweet spot very visible when the suit was flown in it... and his average fallrate went from high 70's and low 80's to mid-low 50's and stayed there. For a smallwing suit like a GTI thats amazing. It was something to see.
-B

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

[yeyo 1]

How about this quote from the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull to explain the sweet spot...

Quote

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there." -Richard Bach

HISPA #93
DS #419.5

[lurch 0]

You know, you aren't the first bird to tell me this one. Got another bird around here feels the same way about it, perfect speed is being there. He don't flock much, but brother Murphy is all about the cloud surf and he usually gets one.
J-sho's back in town so the order of the day for us is probably gonna be scary rolls, for me perfect speed is getting in a couple cloud surfs before I go to work.
-B

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