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Your Longest Flight Time?

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Took me most of a season of flying it to prove it, but I was right. The S-Bird IS a 4-minute suit.


I suppose, Helmut Tacke, winner of "Wings over Gransee 2010" in category "Time" can beat 5 Minutes in his X-Wing. His average vertical speed during the competion was 40,1 kmh (24,9 mph).

http://www.wingsuitcompetition.com/ppc/showtrack.php?trackid=759

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Jarno, one thing I learned from this one is, you can injure yourself flying that hard. My leg fell asleep in the plane due to being squished behind a tandem. I was worried I wasn't going to get full circulation back in the time I had before exit. Sure enough, seconds after exit my left calf cramped up badly.
I ignored it and kept flying hard the whole way down, but by the time I deployed I thought I'd already blown the time attempt and put in a substandard performance. I figured I'd probably got between 3 and 3:15ish, much of my attention during the flight was dominated by that damn cramp so I had no real idea how long I'd been flying. I was surprised as all hell when I played back the video and found instead that I'd smashed my own record by quite a margin. But now, two days later, that leg is still sore as hell.

Most of the reason I haven't shown up on the competition site or tried to make any public claim to the title of "Longest/slowest flyer alive" or whatever, if there is such a thing is because I just don't want to come off as a skygod. I don't show up on this site much anymore because of how much ego and chest-beating goes on here, and whenever I show up here it feels like I'm just doing more of the same myself.

Still, I couldn't help putting up this result because ego or no ego I'm damn proud of it. I've been trying for years to see if someday I could pull 4 minutes flight under normal jumping conditions so although its just another relatively trivial achievement, for me anyway its kind of a big deal because of how much work and for how long it took to finally be able to do it at last.

Tell you what though, I'll throw my old Garmin back into my gearbag just for the hell of it and see if I can get a good track to put up on wingsuitcompetition.com anyway, next time I try to see how far past 4 minutes I can make it, if I can. But so help me god, if I start running around claiming to be the greatest -anything-, somebody, please smack the shit out of me ok?
-B
Edit: I'd never really looked at that site before, I figure if I'm gonna compete might as well see who I'm taking on and what they can do... got some kickass flyers up there, but I think I can give em a run for their money, we'll see...
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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Took me most of a season of flying it to prove it, but I was right. The S-Bird IS a 4-minute suit.


I suppose, Helmut Tacke, winner of "Wings over Gransee 2010" in category "Time" can beat 5 Minutes in his X-Wing. His average vertical speed during the competion was 40,1 kmh (24,9 mph).
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Negative Deniq...as all competition jumps include a powerfull dive and flare..
Full flight performance over a whole jump is a different catagory...and you of all (technical flyers) shouldnt be the one to make this silly confusion between two different diciplines..

Peroformance flying (with flare) or full altitude endurance flying..
And at those times, stamina also comes into play.

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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I'd never really looked at that site before, I figure if I'm gonna compete might as well see who I'm taking on and what they can do... got some kickass flyers up there, but I think I can give em a run for their money, we'll see...



Judging your scores, including a flare within the competition altitude should push you into the top region easily. And would for sure be fun to shake 'the establishment' up a bit, with regards to who thinks he or she is the slowest flyer on the planet.

And when it comes to times, and showing hard data..none of that is ego...its all just numbers and facts..

Also waiting for Justin to finaly show up in the ranking...with him organizing one of the performance comps. Might as well show a bit of slowfall as well with all those 4 minute claims:P

And yes...that IS poking people....
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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...and boy, are his arms tired....
:P
-B
I went back and did the math. My neptune has repeatedly shown sustained 36 FPS, (24.54 mph 2 minute cruise) and 28 FPS (19.09 MPH 60 second sustained cruise, I.E. not a flare, but burning my arms out in one minute) but I know damn well I can't fly like that the whole way down...
However
3:57, 13350-2100=11250 ft freefall, 47.46 FPS, 32.36 MPH average for the entire 4 minute flight. Not too shabby for a slow carving flight done with a cramped leg.
And yeah, my arms were tired.

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

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My longest flight time was 3min23s on my S-Bird. It's one of the older models with the R-bird sized arms. I'm 5'11 / 170lbs. See attachment for Altritrack/Paralog graph. You can see where my arms die just before 3min and my fallrate just keeps getting higher :)

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New personal record from standard altitude:
Saturday October 2, 2010, Jumptown, Orange, Massachusetts
Suit: Tony Suits S-Bird
Flightpath: one and a half overlapping circles
Exit 13,350
Deploy 2,100
Neptune result: No data
Time on video:

3:57

Took me most of a season of flying it to prove it, but I was right. The S-Bird IS a 4-minute suit.
Hell of a design, guys.
-B



I need to try harder. 3:20 from 13,100 is the best I've done in my S-Bird.

I find I'm flying my S&M Bird (TM) more, because I find the S-Bird harder to fly dirty in a flock.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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Doc, I wouldn't beat on yourself too much, man. I'm quite a bit taller, wider wingspan, younger, leaner and prone to brutal gymnastic parkour-like behavior, plus I've got several hundred solos done specifically dedicated to long-flight discipline. 3:20 for a middle aged career academic is outstanding. You'd beat the snot out of most average pilots with that performance, and take it from me, you're already within a few seconds of the absolute limits for a guy of your size and weight in that suit.
:)-B

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

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Thats damn good, Trix... Heres a tip: Slightly narrowing your legwing and jamming your elbows up toward your ears allows you to pull the outboard wing area down the sides of the suit taut. Instead of feeling the load on your arms it winds up being mostly between shoulders and legs. Instead of feeling it in the usual places you'll feel the load in the backs of your upper arms and your forearms might even feel almost unloaded. Thats how I get mine into the sub-20's range for as long as my upper arms and legs can stand the loading. When you do this you'll know its working cause the whole suit will give this lofty lifty feeling. The sensation is rather like trying to lift a heavy load on your shoulders.

Second, don't try to float... drop head and shoulders and go for a bit more speed. Its both easier on the arms and more productive. Flying like that is combining float technique with speed technique and if you get the balance just right you'll get more airtime easier than just trying to fly for one style or the other. Thats how I got that flight this weekend and unlike a hard cupping float-only flight, my arms were tired but not burned out or shaking, even after that flight. When I hit the air I immediately made myself try to relax, conserve energy for the long haul, put my head and shoulders down and went for a medium-effort that'd last the duration and it worked. Flew far longer than many flights where I burned out my arms by trying too hard. Its all about technical combos and energy management.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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