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Butters

What is "the work"?

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Thanks for the reply. Would you recommend someone focus more on atmonauti and tracking verse relative work? What about freeflying?

PS: I wouldn't consider my canopy to be fast. I've had tandems flash me to move over into the slow lane. :P



Personally, I don't see the value in really doing much freeflying before 200 jumps. You aren't going to be proficient at anything if you merely do everything without focus on specifics.
I personally don't believe you can have a competent sit, back, or head down with less than several hundred jumps. At one time I thought otherwise, when I believed I had mad skillz from flying with *really* good people that compensated for my lack of ability.
Relative work, especially learning to dive to a formation, is critical, IMO.
Case in point....we have a guy on our DZ that spent 3 months in Eloy last winter, he became a good freeflier after hanging with that crowd. He started flying camera around 100 jumps, and was asked to film a round for a farewell jump for one of our TI's leaving the US at season's end. He dove to the formation. He took out the group.
Why?
Because in his 200 jumps, he had fewer than 50 jumps on his belly, and zero experience in a diving exit. He's lucky he only bruised his arm and the legs of the person he hit. He had zero experience with burbles (you'll eventually learn a lot about burbles in a wingsuit, just ask Burble Mike, who now handles burbles quite well). IMO, spend time focusing on these kinds of things.
Like Jarno said, take the time to put in the effort and you'll be twice the skydiver before getting into the more complex jumps.
I do think atmo can help develop readiness for wingsuiting. I don't believe atmo is the uber-cool revolutionary thing the Italians think it is.

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Personally, I don't see the value in really doing much freeflying before 200 jumps. You aren't going to be proficient at anything if you merely do everything without focus on specifics.
I personally don't believe you can have a competent sit, back, or head down with less than several hundred jumps.



I think thats why people should work on having more experience than just the mere/bare minimum 200 thats most often quoted...;)

You cant do and learn it all in those few jumps...though at the time..it always feels like you do know it all..
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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I think thats why people should work on having more experience than just the mere/bare minimum 200 thats most often quoted...;)

You cant do and learn it all in those few jumps...though at the time..it always feels like you do know it all..



I 100% agree, no need to rush.. Going to a wingsuit is akin to downsizing a canopy. 99% + of the time it will be fine BUT when things go wonky they go that direction FAST and you need a solid base to draw info from to react correctly. The more jumps (i.e. experiences) you have the better prepared that you are for unusual situations. I did not try a wingsuit till I was close to 3000 jumps.. I guess I just needed the extra practice with my remedial skilzs compared the the jumpers out there with "mad skilzs" ;)

Scott C.
"He who Hesitates Shall Inherit the Earth!"

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Thanks for the reply. Would you recommend someone focus more on atmonauti and tracking versus relative work? What about freeflying?



(Again, butting in.)

Let me try to put it this way:

I would not recommend emphasising anything *less*. I would only recommend spending *additional* effort on tracking.

Yes, you may take that to mean do the bloody 200 jumps as if you're *not* preparing for wingsuiting and then do some extra tracking. OK, do a lot of it. Do 20 solos, 10 smallways, 10 bigways (a freefly bigway starts at about 4 people!) and don't forget to do other things in the meantime as well.

By that time, you might just barely start to know what you don't know.
Johan.
I am. I think.

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Personally, I don't see the value in really doing much freeflying before 200 jumps. You aren't going to be proficient ..

That's exactly the value of freeflying before wingsuiting in my eyes.

It gets you used to instability, recovering from it and generally to being other-than-belly-to-earth.
Johan.
I am. I think.

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Personally, I don't see the value in really doing much freeflying before 200 jumps. You aren't going to be proficient ..

That's exactly the value of freeflying before wingsuiting in my eyes.

It gets you used to instability, recovering from it and generally to being other-than-belly-to-earth.



Now the information is coming out. So you would recommend doing some freefly to practice instability (not to become proficient at freeflying). So we have:

1] Relative work - practice docking, diving, and flying relative to others.
2] Tracking - practice heading, body positions, and flying relative to others.
3] Freeflying - practice instability.
4] Deployment - practice wingsuit deployment sequence.
5] ...
"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

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PS: I wouldn't consider my canopy to be fast.


That's OK, I'll do it for you.

Your profiles says you fly a Spectre 150. That's a high performance canopy. There is a reason the manufacturer recommends a kill-line pilot chute on it, at any wingloading.

If you don't consider yourself a high performance canopy pilot, you have no business under that wing.

If you don't agree with me, yank down one toggle deep and hard, and see what happens.

(My view: there are no low performance squares, medium performance does not even extend down to 170, and beyond high performance there's always extreme and ballistic. The simple fact there exists a Spectre 97 does not make your 150 any slower.)

Actually, if you do not consider your canopy very fast, please reconsider. And learn appropriately, even if this postpones the g*dd*mn wingsuiting a few jumps. (Neatly returning to the topic at hand here. I'm so smooth. :)
Johan.
I am. I think.

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Personally, I don't see the value in really doing much freeflying before 200 jumps. You aren't going to be proficient ..

That's exactly the value of freeflying before wingsuiting in my eyes.

It gets you used to instability, recovering from it and generally to being other-than-belly-to-earth.



Now the information is coming out. So you would recommend doing some freefly to practice instability (not to become proficient at freeflying).


If this is new to you, you could have searched the forums. This definitely has been posted before.
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So we have:
1] Relative work - practice docking, diving, and flying relative to others.
2] Tracking - practice heading, body positions, and flying relative to others.
3] Freeflying - practice instability.
4] Deployment - practice wingsuit deployment sequence.
5] ...


And we have the concept of a burble, the concept of level, recovery from instability, there is looking through a formation to keep heading and level, there's a lot of things that I'm going to stop enumerating because if you are a well-rounded skydiver with a couple hundred jumps, you will have learned by then. You will have jumped in all seasons, you will have exited from minimum legal altitude, you will have pulled your handles on the ground (because your rigger made you do that the first time you took your rig for a repack - right ?!?), there's all sorts of things that you will have done after two years of jumping.

There's all sorts of things that come in bloody useful when you go to your back at pulltime and start spinning on the first wingsuit jump you make. And if you're such a prodigy and don't do it on your first wingsuit jump, it'll be back to bite you on your 100th because you just had to crank out that 12th jump of the day, are tired, had a lazy throw, got just the tiniest bit complacent and now you haven't been in this situation before, and here you are, deploying at 2200 because you've done this a 100 times, on your back, spinning, tired from that two and a half minute flight, sore from all those jumps today and daylight fading and messing with your altitude perception. What do you do? What do you do? (I don't know what movie I'm quoting here, but it conveyed exactly the same stress levels I'm trying to.)
Johan.
I am. I think.

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The most important skills I'd be looking for are "soft" skills, not entirely quantifiable and maybe not something you can specifically train for.

Flying some other way from where you are looking. We all learn to look where we want to go. Later, much later, you learn to go where you want to go while looking in any other direction.

Keeping a heading, not because you are working at it but automatically, without even thinking about it.

Keeping level (whatever level is appropriate) with the formation, automatically, without even thinking about it.

Not reaching for grips, but flying your slot. Level, proximity, grips. Automatically, no thinking. (Still learning this one myself. :)often a problem these days.)

Anticipating things. Even on the ground, in the dirtdive, not even with a correct physical sight picture available because the creepers were already taken, being able to expect certain problems and maybe prevent them right then and there. But also in the air.

All of these are not strictly necessary for learning to fly wingsuits. But they do make jumping with you in general safer, and they make for you having more energy and attention to spare to put into this new thing you're going to do. The thing with al the flappy cloth, which is soooooo much fun. The thing that can bite your ass if you make a mistake. And it's not so much not making mistakes that keeps you alive, but being able to prevent the mistakes from getting from bad to worse. Everyone makes mistakes. But you do need to be able to solve the problems you just created for yourself. Experience in general helps in solving problems. I can't always quantify how. So I just say 300 jumps.


















(No, I don't subscribe to the 200 jumps minimum for wingsuiting. But I'm not an instructor. :)

Johan.
I am. I think.

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Personally, I don't see the value in really doing much freeflying before 200 jumps. You aren't going to be proficient ..

That's exactly the value of freeflying before wingsuiting in my eyes.

It gets you used to instability, recovering from it and generally to being other-than-belly-to-earth.



Now the information is coming out. So you would recommend doing some freefly to practice instability (not to become proficient at freeflying). So we have:

1] jump more, post less.
2] spend time at the DZ, refer to #1
3] Find a WS instructor that has been doing this for awhile.
4] Buy him beer during #2~
5] Pay him for Coaching and Instruction, listen, understand, ask questions,
6] refer to # 1.

That would be the best thing you can do, along with leaving your laptop at home so you can, well, refer to # 1.

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTION FOR SEAT TIME, WEATHER IN THE WINGSUIT OR UNDER CANOPY. Regardless of what kind of skydive your doing, you always have to LAND YOUR CANOPY. and in a wingsuit, even more so with so few jumps, you will be landing in areas you dont want to.. Unless your a pilot and understand navigation, you will make mistakes. that is how you will learn, and unless you plan for that on every jump.; YOU WILL GET VERY HURT

Just my opinion. There is no substitution for proper education. if your going to do it, do it right.
Z Flock #11; Muff #1909; PFI #15, USPA Lifer
Commercial Multi-Inst. Airplane/Rotory
www.flyteskool.ws Aerial Photography

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I'm closer to your level of experience than most of the people here, Butters, and for what it's worth, I can testify about how not to do it.

I had 200 skydives (maybe a couple more, maybe a couple less, my log book isn't a model of clarity) when I started. I never thought I was an amazing skydiver, but I figured I was pretty good. I had done a bunch of tracking dives, and practiced the wingsuit pull a ton of times.

But I knew I wanted to wingsuit badly. And that's exactly how I did it: badly. I did a series of coached jumps with great instructors, but I generally fell like a rock. My pull times were like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I was the king of line twists. On solo jumps, I found new and exciting places to land off because of my poor navigation. At 200 jumps, I wasn't inherently ready.

But I got a ton of good coaching from guys who knew I wanted to wingsuit and was really dedicated to being able to do it well (or, at least, not badly). I spent a lot of time watching wingsuit videos, not so much to go "neat, I want to do that!" but to watch for subtle nuances of body position. My instructors were wise enough to keep me from large flocks where I easily could have done some real damage. I started very small and gradually, fitfully, improved.

So what's my point?

"The work" is not something you complete. You wrote of "the work" as like a binary switch: something you complete and then you're done and qualified to be a pilot. Like a lot of stuff in life, that's not how it works. Learning to fly a wingsuit is a process of gradual improvement - for some, it's quite fast, for others, much slower.

In my opinion, whether it's 200 or 500 or 1000, jumps when you start, you're best served by:

- practicing everything without a wingsuit (exit, flight, navigation, deployment);

- finding top notch instructors who are willing to spend the time to work with you and actually tailor their instruction to your strengths and weaknesses;

-learning as much as you can about how your wingsuit works (what control surfaces are most effective if you need to shift your yaw without rolling, what's the optimum position for your shoulders, for glide? for speed?, etc.); and

- practice, practice, practice.

Personally, I think the better approach is not to worry about whether you met someone else's perception of whether you "did the work", but instead to do what's called "beginner's mind" in Zen - as a beginner, you're constantly absorbing new information: you're never saying, "well, shit, I know how to do that". As a result, you discover ways to do what you do better.

For what it's worth.
Skwrl Productions - Wingsuit Photography

Northeast Bird School - Chief Logistics Guy and Video Dork

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This thread is lame! Butters if your gonna stir up shit try making fun of Chuck or Scott Campos -- its much more entertaining ---- But then if you HAD MORE JUMPS you would know that:P



Jeff is the new Campos. Just ask Uncle Charlie... ;)
www.WingsuitPhotos.com

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I am confused ..... Jeff said Phil Peggs was the best wingsuit pilot out there -- Justin's website says Jeff is the best wingsuit pilot hands down (though I think that is a sexual thing)
James Boole is soon to be worthless when the bambino comes -- Chuck is getting to old to be good -- Campos only poses for stupid pctures of people with new suits - Birdman now makes jeans - Shorb is in every newspaper in New England area but claims he hates it .........................and now we have 200 jumps wonders or even jumpers that have only been in the sport for 2 years that are fucking experts --- and 70 something wingsuit pilots that spend 5 days doing a 1 point skydive. It then takes them a month and counting to put together a decent photoshop picture with everyone in their slot


Who did I leave out??????????

See butters thats how you do it you are such a newbie but you have ambition to take over where I left off as I am soon to retire of fucking with old burned out Cali guys with perfect hair and even the ones who are loosing theirs.
I am willing to train you come become a Texican and we can get started it should only take a couple of years and you will be ready

I forgot you will have to pay for training:P

Peace out presidents!



The pimp hand is powdered up ... say something stupid

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Who did I leave out??????????



Costyn was the best wingsuit pilot on the internet for a long time (#1 spot in trackingderby the first year or so?)

And would have at least also expected a hint at me being self proclaimed awesome flyer by video editing and animation magic....maybe with a pony or two thrown in there for good measure..
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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And dont forget DSE.
Even though he flies his slot in every single picture and video I see online, and seems to know his shit a lot better then quite a few 'respected' instructors I know, he shouldnt forget he is just a lowlife newby that just started flying wingsuits and actually doesnt know shit..know your place damnit:P;)

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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Who did I leave out??????????

take over where I left off as I am soon to retire of fucking with old burned out Cali guys with perfect hair and even the ones who are loosing theirs.

I forgot you will have to pay for training:P

Peace out presidents!



Awh, welcome back. Are you sure you can't stick around? You old time gangster.:D

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You did catch where I called you out too right?

I am not going anywhere - its that job thing thats been kickin my ass - well that and Call of Duty - I can't seem to turn that fucking game off - but I have figured it out if playing on line you have to wait until the kids have to go to bed ---- then I am a bad assB|B|

And I don't think I can ever be like I was ....... they don't seem to ban anyone anymore:ph34r:



The pimp hand is powdered up ... say something stupid

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Who did I leave out??????????

take over where I left off as I am soon to retire of fucking with old burned out Cali guys with perfect hair and even the ones who are loosing theirs.

I forgot you will have to pay for training:P

Peace out presidents!



Awh, welcome back. Are you sure you can't stick around? You old time gangster.:D

I'm glad it was Glen you were referring to about losing his hair.

*crawls back into his corner and watches with amusement*
50 donations so far. Give it a try.

You know you want to spank it
Jump an Infinity

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It then takes them a month and counting to put together a decent photoshop picture with everyone in their slot!




I take exception to that. It only took me about 10 mins to photoshop everyone in their slot.
Really pissed me off that Scotty seemed to be EVERYWHERE, and then there were those guys in the yellow suits. They weren't as pretty as the Ill Vision team, but they were pretty tight, even if distracting.

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Got him covered:P



Aww shit. I was hoping I fell into the "too old to be good" category, since Chuck is almost young enough to be my son...:D

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