mccordia 73 #1 October 27, 2008 Ok..not really..but still..incredibly cool toys http://www.lunocet.com/ A monofin that uses the same lift principles and a swinging blade to get more propulsion through the water. Meaning this small blade does the same as a huge mono-fun with a 1 meter blade. Just geeky stuff...JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
VectorBoy 0 #2 October 27, 2008 Do you realize how much your ankles would hurt after an afternoon diving with that? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #3 October 27, 2008 Quote Do you realize how much your ankles would hurt after an afternoon diving with that? My guess..much less than diving with a mono-fin that requires three times the strength/effort to swim the same distance? nerdy review early proto testingJC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skyjumpsteve 0 #4 October 27, 2008 Damn....those things are $1,800 a pop! Makes a wingsuit look like chump change Did Lurch ever post his video of his suit with the fins attached? If not I will haver to try and find it..... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #5 October 27, 2008 Quote Damn....those things are $1,800 a pop! Makes a wingsuit look like chump change Did Lurch ever post his video of his suit with the fins attached? If not I will haver to try and find it..... Yea..would be cool to modify a pair of freediving fins (strengthen them) so you could have tailwing thats roughly 2,5 meters long (and than an inflated pieces trailing) and then could thus accordingly size the armwings. Dont know if the result will be high speeds at slow decent rates, or something you could land. But cool nevertheless.. Bring on the home rigging!JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
VectorBoy 0 #6 October 27, 2008 I like the part where he sez we try not to get excited about fins....... Who is he kidding? If there is one piece of dive gear that gets more hype-hoopla-hulabaloo over nothing its dive swim fins. Anybody who dives regularly, I'm not talking the annual resort dive for the tourista, knows this. Dive shops have racks of crazy, gimicky, overpriced crap fins with outlandish performance claims that don't work, are a pain to carry and just grind your muscles and joints for multiple decades now. You will notice the same dive shop owner and instructors just use trusty regular sensible fins..... no hype. He does mention free diving and those would be crap for scuba, but still. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #7 October 27, 2008 Yea..I know..(scuba)dive fins are insane.. If you think we're nerdy in wingsuits, the fins for scuba all have 1cm of added ribs and a weird hinge or extra joint here or there. All to supposedly maximise output. And then you wear it all with tons of bulky gear and insane amounts of loose gear and bits and pieces dangling from every available bit of space...good thing the fins ad 0.001% of performance. But if it makes people buy new gear every year..But the freediving stuff is pretty sweet. Just sleek carbon blades and suits that are as tight and slippery as can be. And some suits have cool panels on the arm/leg ends for more grip/resistance on arm/leg movement. A bit like the stuff you see more and more in comp. freefly suits. This stuff got me exited.. And for some reason, this wing/fun reminded me of wingsuits a bit... For people really pushing the envelope of what they can do in that part of the diving world, an extra one or two % can mean passing a depth/distance worldrecord by one or two meters.. JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PhoenixRising 0 #8 October 27, 2008 kinda like this??Justin Wingsuit organizing, first flight courses and coaching Flock University Tonysuits Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #9 October 27, 2008 Quote kinda like this??Justin Dude..even when submerged in water the wings stay inflated..How awesome is that!JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bengel 0 #10 October 27, 2008 video, por favor!!!I'm a British nanny, and I'm dangerous! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PeteS 0 #11 October 27, 2008 "Hey, hold mah beer and watch THIS!!!!" Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LouDiamond 1 #12 October 27, 2008 Quote Ok..not really..but still..incredibly cool toyshttp://www.lunocet.com/ A monofin that uses the same lift principles and a swinging blade to get more propulsion through the water. Meaning this small blade does the same as a huge mono-fun with a 1 meter blade. Just geeky stuff... I spoke with those guys several months back.As soon as they complete the newest version of the fin they will be sending us one for testing here at work. Its interesting to say the least. We'll see if it actualy works as described."It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required" Some people dream about flying, I live my dream SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #13 October 27, 2008 Quote I spoke with those guys several months back.As soon as they complete the newest version of the fin they will be sending us one for testing here at work. Its interesting to say the least. We'll see if it actualy works as described. Yea..they mentioned doing some tests for the militairy a few months back and thus getting some additional funding for further development. The first commercial versions should be arriving at the buyers roughly about now, so it shouldnt be more than a week or two before the first vids of actual trained freediving champs using the fin make it online... More interested to see what they can do with it..JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jdatc 0 #14 October 27, 2008 Quote Did Lurch ever post his video of his suit with the fins attached? If not I will haver to try and find it..... I've noticed with careful observation, that scuba fins tend to make you go head down in zero wind exits. The snorkel also provides added drag and should be discared.... Not a 100% sure about the goggles.... We'll do more research next year. A picture is sometimes worth a 1000 words.... Scuba BASE http://www.gofastsports.com/~mexico1/imagenes/zona/games08/gfg61.jpg Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lurch 0 #15 October 27, 2008 "Yea..would be cool to modify a pair of freediving fins (strengthen them) so you could have tailwing thats roughly 2,5 meters long" I don't even know if anyone ever took pics of the final versions but yeah, its been done. I started with a set of basic fins cut down and reinforced, with ZP stretched between them and velcroed to my S-6's tail. The silicone they were made of was too springy and they tended to load up, then unload in flight, creating a springy pushing oscillation and a very bumpy ride. The second and last version of this I built out of a set of Justin's old snowboard bindings he donated to the cause, (Thanks Bro!!!) and large flat slabs of Lexan about 18 inches from toes to tips, then integrated it into that set of zipon armwings with toe cable connections that people took to calling "the godzilla mod" when I went to Florida and flew it in public. The combined assembly was a wingsuit over 7 feet long collarbone to tailtip and made a SuperMach1 XS look small in comparison. It was almost unflyable. The armwings worked great and I'm still flying a downtuned version of the zilla mod today, still the only true convertible suit in existence so far as I know. But the tail was a disaster. The effort it takes to straighten your legs with that much wing back there is ridiculous, like "muscles convulsing under the load desperate gasping effort" ridiculous. I am NOT exactly what you'd call "unfit" in terms of muscle tone and short burst strength, can hang by my toes or a couple fingers and lift almost twice my own weight if I have to and it was all I could do to keep that lexan monster under control. Justin flew chase for a number of test flights- it was a fast forward suit, but NOT fun to fly, VERY difficult to turn and steer and after maybe a dozen attempts I retired it as a developmental dead-end. Also... Try to imagine the post-deployment process for getting snowboard bindings and quickrelease shackles off your feet, getting arms and legs unzipped, legwing stowed, lexan slabs hung from your chest strap, slider and toggles popped and ready to fly. I once had to do all this while navigating to a safe out landing in a field about 4 miles away. That houdini shit got old inside half a dozen flights. I'm a technology developer, not a stuntman. I decided to kill the project before the project killed me. Still pretty happy about that decision. I never made the tail public because although I'm sure it'd have had its supporters like a number of my more outlandish projects, it was an awful lot of trouble to build a piece of gear that was, ultimately, almost lethally unusable. WTF, somebody had to try it. -BLive and learn... or die, and teach by example. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #16 October 27, 2008 Maybe have the flippers extend about 30 cm 'behind' your feet. So when you stretch your toes, they lock on your calves in the outstretched position you want em..? And pix man..we want pix!JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
The111 0 #17 October 28, 2008 I'll believe the full breach claim when I see it. Still cool stuff, regardless. Jarno, since you're into freediving head over to deeperblue.net and check out the thread called "underwater fin surfing." There is a small group of guys expanding on the sport of "subsurfing" which is basically glorified body-surfing, but really so much more. With the right waves they can go for very long times and distances under the wave just as a board-surfer would above the wave. It requires a different kind of wave than a board-surfer needs and they're still learning where the best breaks are. They describe the visuals as amazing, and to me it sounds like the "buzz" the reefs the same way we buzz clouds. Some use fin(s), some not. I've seen a photo of a guy actually BARELY getting a full breach with a monofin after using some leftover speed from a subsurf. But we're talking a rare occurrence here, not the same as what Lunocet is claiming their new product will do. Also, somewhere I found a photo of Laird Hamilton subsurfing, it was taken from the side underwater, and he had no fins and EXACTLY the same body position as a good tracker would in the air. No surprise, of course. Hydro is hydro.www.WingsuitPhotos.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 73 #18 October 28, 2008 I think the lunocet is in the '27 mph sustained' phase atm. :) But there should be some people posing at offices atm with those things, so the real proof of their claims will be with the users yea soon...also sceptic on the 10 mph swiming speeds quoted. But I guess we'll see soon enough. And from what I hear, some users might even get a real camposs with their office pix ;) Also seen some vids on monofin action where a full breach was made, thou like high jumps (jumping up and bending/flexing out of the water) and not like a dolphin..being truly airborne for a few seconds with the complete body...curious to see what this thing does in the hands of capable people... And yea..regular reader on deeperblue..the bodysurfing sounds cool..Im already having great fun 'tracking' underwater during dynamic (distance) swimming. Funny to see its still the skydiving elements that attrack us in other sports....JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lurch 0 #19 October 28, 2008 Jarno was that last reply for me or Jdatc? If me, the problem wasn't my feet or calves. The bindings had ankle backstraps that dug into the backs of my shoes and acted like a small version of the extensions you just described. The result was fairly easy on my feet ankles and calves but the total load from the knees on down was atrocious, so all the strain winds up being in the thighs, like trying to stand up from a crouch with 200 lbs on your shoulders. If you want to get an idea how bad it really is when built and flown, try riding in a car at 60mph while holding a rectangular sheet of cardboard about 4 feet wide and 18 inches across out the window, flat against the wind, at arms length. If you want pix you gotta ask Steve or Justin, I'm sure a few were taken but I have no idea what happened to em. There IS a brief clip of the earlier scubafins version being flown in last season's Flock U season wrapup video. I called it... wait for it, wait for it... ...Skybadiving. Somebody MUST have seen that coming. It looks fairly stable in flight- it isn't. -BLive and learn... or die, and teach by example. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
VectorBoy 0 #20 October 28, 2008 Jarno> Maybe have the flippers extend about 30 cm 'behind' your feet. So when you stretch your toes, they lock on your calves in the outstretched position you want em..? And pix man..we want pix! Lurch> The combined assembly was a wingsuit over 7 feet long collarbone to tailtip and made a SuperMach1 XS look small in comparison. It was almost unflyable. The armwings worked great and I'm still flying a downtuned version of the zilla mod today, still the only true convertible suit in existence so far as I know. But the tail was a disaster. Quote You two are going to get somebody killed and wingsuits banned forever. Right off the FAI acceptance desk and into heavy syndicated rotation on funny but lethal video programs. All of the skydivers and most of the wingsuiters will hate your broken asses....... keep it up. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
