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gottabefunky

Article on landing wingsuit w/o parachute

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The wingsuit that might one day be landed needs to look very different from today's wingsuits.



Yes, this I believe as well. We are just waiting for the technology to catch up with the desire. The problem with our current perspective on the reality of a WS landing is the current design/technology limits our imagination. Nothing is impossible. Think outside the box.

Now Jeb's little superslide look at me thing... That's not progress. That's just a gimmicky stunt to entertain the whuffo masses.

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The wingsuit that might one day be landed needs to look very different from today's wingsuits.



Yes, this I believe as well. We are just waiting for the technology to catch up with the desire. The problem with our current perspective on the reality of a WS landing is the current design/technology limits our imagination.



You guys keep throwing around this word "technology." You need to understand that the technology used to make wingsuits is neither cutting-edge nor recent. We are sewing fabrics together... to take advantage (slightly) of aerodynamic concepts that have been understood in excess of 100 years.

Where exactly is the technology limited? The fundamental problem is not with the tech, it is with the human body. Unless we come up with fabrics of negative mass, then technology will not solve the problem.
www.WingsuitPhotos.com

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the technology used to make wingsuits is neither cutting-edge nor recent. We are sewing fabrics together... to take advantage (slightly) of aerodynamic concepts that have been understood in excess of 100 years.



exactly. Note that I said Technology/Design.

You could say the exact same thing about Parachute design progression. Army surplus rounds made out of silk back in the day and a 27cell Xaos 83 are just fabrics sewn together to take advantage of simple aerodynamic concepts. yet... WOW! what a difference.

Back in the 50's a parachutist would NEVER even imagine the things that we do today with our parachutes or our bodies in freefall for that matter. Read the history books. When skydiving was in it's infant stages people believed that you could not even control your body in freefall. That is, until they figured out how to do it.

Now go to youtube and watch some BASE proximity flying videos and think about it.

Or... Keep living in that tiny little box that you built inside your head. [:/]

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***
Think outside the box.
.



correct!
take small elliptical canopy , hook legs for rear risers and make nice 360 degree hook turn without flare!
That is how WS landing on grass will look!
or....

Get two tables together lie on it so that your body is symmetrical w the edge line of were the tables meet together.. ask your friends to move the tables , but so that you don't know when it will happened.. yes tie the hands on your back before!
You'll finish in the hospital or will be dead probably... On top of that feeling now ad 100 km of horizontal speed!

BTW, To land WS - possible! People doing this from time to time by using hang gliders... :SB|:P[:/]
Robert Pecnik
[email protected]
www.phoenix-fly.com

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Alright, if you won't take it from a bunch of the highest ranking wingsuit pilots around, maybe you will from a wingsuit designer and prototype artist. I've actually built and test-flown some suit hacks intended to see how close to landable I could get in something that was actually flyable. So far as I know I've flown the biggest wingsuit design ever made, lexan-and-fabric exoskeletal tail extensions, armwing mods going from wrist to ankle with a cable suspension allowing me to use my shoulders and elbows to keep the wing taut down by my ankles. The sum total assembly, when flown was nearly 7 feet from collarbone to tailtip with a 135 lb pilot. Notsane actually saw the hardware and coined a new measurement to describe it, the "balls-to-sense ratio."
It doesn't work. The thing was all but unflyable. I was -almost- wrong about my ability to manage and survive flying such a thing and retired the design before I joined the ranks of all the other dead wingsuit design pioneers. The human muscle and skeletal system can't sustain a load like that. Anything you do to offset that load adds so much drag and complexity its not cost effective by the physics. Its an asymptotic curve... the slower you go, the more functional wing area you need to go even slower. Bigger and bigger suits get less and less performance increase. I got mid-30mph descent rates in a medium sized stock suit, low-30's with small wing mods, mid-low 20's with wings as big as they could possibly be made. With each increase in wing size, the gain it delivered was cut in half and it took bigger and bigger mods for ever-decreasing gains in performance. The end of that development curve results in... a canopy.
To get out of the 20's and into the teens and tens, I'd need to double my wing area yet again, which is impossible without 5 foot long arms and muscles to match. And again, if you DO build something like that, you end up with what we already have... a canopy.
We're not being negative here, Cloudtramp, we're being realistic. Landing a wingsuit under extremely controlled circumstances (such as Jeb's ramp stunt) as a physics demonstration is doable. Landing wingsuits the way we currently casually land our canopies under daily-driver casual flying conditions is not. And I don't think we need any more dead pioneers to drive home that fact. I got as close as I cared to get, in my quest to answer that question for myself. The others speak the truth: Anyone claiming they're going to be the one to make landable wingsuits happen is talking nonsense in an attempt to get famous and does not understand the physics their claims would demand that they have mastered. If you won't take our word for it, try asking the commercial designers out there... Jeff Nebelkopf, Robert Peknic, Jari Kuosma...
Technically speaking, it is NOT impossible under theoretical perfectly controlled conditions. practically speaking, it is. In the end I had to settle for performance development within the envelope of wing sizes that made sense, and there is plenty of room for growth and improvement within those limitations. If you want to do a piece on wingsuits, I'd suggest focussing on how far we've come and the fact that we've totally filled the gap between normal freefall and canopy flight because believe me, the "landable wingsuit" topic has been done to death.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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First off RobiBird is "THE MAN" and I have total and complete respect for his opinion. I'll say it again. YOUR MY HERO ROBI:$

The simple point I am trying to make is to never say that anything is impossible. Things that were once believed to be impossible have time and again become possible through unforseeable advances in technology. Key word is unforseeable.

Who knows, maybe it will never happen. Maybe it will.

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as a physics demonstration is doable. Landing wingsuits the way we currently casually land our canopies under daily-driver casual flying conditions is not.


I never implied this at all. Maybe someday a super advanced $20,000,000 controllable "Flying Suit" will be built and landed by somebody somewhere let's say in the year 3009.

and then again... maybe not.:P

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WOW! How's that half empty glass workin' out for you people?

There was a time in recent history that people laughed at those who believed we could acheive flight at all. Now we are all skydivers and we are blasting on people attempting to progress to the next level. They may very well die trying just as many many pilots and skydivers in the past have passed while developing technology that we take for granted today.
We can put people on the moon and we have humans living in space for months at a time but you say that it is impossible to land a wingsuit? sad, sad, sad.

It will happen.



Re-read my post. Read my other posts on this subject. Did I suggest it couldn't be done in _this_ thread? Or did I rather append the humor of someone else'? Since it appears you're chasing my posts with negativity today, search out other posts of mine on this subject. I happen to think it's doable. I also think the subject with the information we currently have, has been beaten to death.
Kick back, go next door and have an Acai ice cream on me. Chill.

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Lurch,...both you and Matt Hoover ( the 111) are talking most logically from my perspective.

First a bold statement: : A human being WILL intentionally land a "wingsuit" on level "earth" leaving a flying aircraft or helicpopter and departing thousands of feet above the ground ( perhaps after intial water landings and ski-jump type ramp landings for test purposes) and they will do it in the next 20 years. It can be done sooner if someone with enough money to fund the project and the right flyer appear sooner than that)

I have seen Jeff's brief vertical climb data ("albeit with a 120 to 140mph forward speed),...and something like the soft talcum-like "Playa" out in Nevada or a level, plowed, closely planted and cultivated wheat field could be a usable landing area. Morphing "sewable" fabrics exist now that could allow the arm and leg wings to be stretched during a landing flare to provide some forward speed braking jsut prior to touchdown and fabric bi-wings, deploable flaps and SIMPLE aerodynamic slats and airbrakes can be designed to deploy at the last moment below certain forward speeds to reduce the actual touchdown impacts horizontal force vector ... Hard "fabric landing low-friction material or lubricated rub-skids/strakes could be used on the flyers head, the sides and the chest portion of a stiiffer fabric ONE-piece "kevlar/nomex honeycomb cored" fabric head/shoulder/neck/upperbody protective section of the suit so as to allow for touchdown without head/neck and back injury.

Now a comment and question: At what point does a "fabric "wingsuit no longer become a wingsuit and instead become a piloted "aircraft stucture" made of fabric (piper cub wings were once fabric) Oh,..I can just 'see' the comments when someone actually does land a wingsuit ..... ie "it wasn't just a wingsuit ....it was a stucture so really an aircrasft glider etc etc"....

Now another comment ....... somewhat sick maybe,..but possible.... Suppose we have a "human being" who is a midget/dwarf/small person/Paraplegic or maybe the physical result of a severe eating disoreder (or whatever)...and therefore is very "lightweight ...

Now ,...suppose this same human being is DEFINITELY adventurous (or money motivated) and wants to me the first human being to land a fabric wingsuit. Can a control system be designed for such a human that would allow them control, flare and land an all fabric wingsuit ? I think so .....

Lurch/Matt/others? .....put your minds to the above comments and PLEASE,..if it ever happens to "ME" that I somehow become very lightweight, (LOL -you've seen me eat! ) remind me of these comments of mine and I'm pretty sure I'll be willing to be the flyer who tries the first such landing.
I came off a Husquevarna motocycle at 20 years old and at about 45mph in a tall grass field without anything but my helmet and Motocross boots on ...( and yes it was very painful for a week or so but I didn't break any bones, and I survived with just some neck and cervical compression I live with)
I have seen professional racers come off bikes and skis and out of hyroplane boats at 100mph plus and survive the impacts .....so I DO believe that even a "botched landing" can be survived....

The only question I have is... ?WHY? ....why would someone want to attempt such a thing, make the investment of money and time needed, and take the risk of dying or of a serious injury..... if the accomplishment does not in some way contribute to the sport or to others being able to do something similar on a consistent, safe and fun basis???/--or to show what certain people are capable of when presented with a seemingly impossible challenge.

Personally,...there have been time I really can't explain when I have taken great pleasure in just doing something that others told me was probably impossible to do without really getting hurt or killed.I'm not really sure why,...except that I just wanted to do it ast that moment and for some reason I "just knew" I was "not" going to be hurt or killed(and for some reason that always gave me a feeling of calmness, clarity and focus- not an adrenaline high at all ) that I enjoyed feeling during those moments when I was totally ignoring the possibility that "they" could be right. I believe many and surely most people would call that stupid, reckless, a deathwish, something else even more derogatory,..or even some sort of courage,...BUT while I don't really know what it was ( except really feeling more "connected" to life and past explorers of the unknown ,..I "do" know it was NONE of those former things people may have thought ( at least for me and at those moments) . I assume there are many others out there now ( or to come) who will have that similar feelings and that one or more of them will relate it to the landing of a fabric wingsuit on level ground without a parachute. Sooooo....

A fabric wingsuit WILL be landed and survived... and eventually will be landed "safely" ...I belive it is something that is just a matter of time ( and I hope a result of some good planning, research and implementaion)
Life is what happens while we are making other plans.

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Since it appears you're chasing my posts with negativity today



whoa there cowboy! I just happened to click the "reply" button of your post but I was actually refering to the few previous posters pessimism. My post was directed towards don321 and Notsane.

I was under the impression that my posts were actually pointing out the positive viewpoint of "anything is possible" to counter act the flat-out "THAT'S A STUPID IDEA" . go figure:S

maybe it is you that needs some Acai chill time.;)

right on. Have a good one then.

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Thank you for your opinion; it does give me more doubts about this, but would you absolutely rule out the possibility of a water landing? Why, vertical speed, horizontal speed, or both? I think 30 MPH into water is survivable. Wouldn't you be able to reduce your vertical speed to that, or less, before touchdown? At the same time, horizontal speed can be reduced quite a bit with a flair. If anyone could do it, you could, in my opinion, so if you don't think it can be done then it can't.
But what do I know?

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Maybe someday a super advanced $20,000,000 controllable "Flying Suit" will be built and landed by somebody somewhere let's say in the year 3009.



Maybe. And I will refuse to call whatever that is a wingsuit. Hell, I'll be over 1000 years old, so I will be grumpy! :)
www.WingsuitPhotos.com

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Actually Robi, I sorta already did that ,..from the helicopter back at F&D in 2008,... from around three to four feet.....and without any forward speed ( cause I was told "not" to push off from the skid,....but WITH a rotor blast tha drove me into the ground before I could even get my arms out fully extended,.... ( and I bouced from my belly-chest to my face twice and slightly altered the shape of my nose ( my chest,face and bellly hurt for a few days and my nose for a few weeks just like the time when I hit a tree head-on in the Sierra Madre Mountains at about 40 mph and was saved by my belt and airbag/// but the impact "is" indeed survivable....I had planned to go fromonly a foot or two but the pilot said he couldn't do that without catching a rotor tip so I asked him "to give me what he could"... I still wonder how much damage I would have done to myself if he had given me 6 to 8 feet instead of 3 or four... ( I really think things would have been MUCH worse) ,...

However, "without" the rotors "blasting me downward" and with a little bit of forward speed like maybe dropping from a real slow ultra light or hang-glider with enough time for the wingsuit to airlock and with a good arching flare,...( which "was" my thought process when I decided at first to try it from the helicopter,...I really believe I could have landed on the ground with not much more damage than I actually encountered ( I keep in mind that in hindsight,...it would "not have taken much more force" on landing to have perhaps broken my ribs, puncturing a lung , hit hard enough to syop my heart or hit so as to cause internal bleeding or brain damage,....so I am not planning to recreate that event,...BUT if I were younger, weighed only half what I do , had maybe 40 to 50 mph of forward speed,...and an upper body protective stiff kevlar suit with skids and "a real soild protective helmet" ALL made to absorb impact with some layer of honeycomb "something" ,..I actually do believe a landing could be injury free.

I suppose a ski boat witth a ramp pointing inland or a launch from front hood of a quick braking truck into a swoop pond ( like I had in mind at Tiki in 08 ) and then a launch from the same hood onto some soft plowed ground could test my theory,..but for my part,.. I'm just not THAT interested in finding out if I'm right or wrong! I "was" once but I'm over it now.

Someone WILL land a wingsuit before Matt Hoover gets to be my age!....

Matt and Scotty,...I hope you are both there for the video and stills when it either happens or doesn't happen,...but either way it WILL eventually "be attempted and eventually will be "done"....... How many people have gone over Niagara falls in a barrel or with nothing and look at what height waterfalls the kayak guys are now doing. I have seen some really hard and fast landing falls from motorcyle jumps back from Evil Knieval's days on through today///// ( its just a matter of time, money, a the willingness for someone who is good enough and adventurous enough to believe they "can" do it , then gets the right physical training, mental preparation and also gets some very good planning and exact execution)
Life is what happens while we are making other plans.

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What do you think about hooking bungee cord between to high buildings. And jumping WS with some carbon ancor attached to your legs. Hooking bungee cord in mid flight ?!
Buildings have to be enough high to safely deploy base canopy if you miss.
It yould be doable I think and it would be similar to aircraft carier landing B|

Robi, would you do it ?:P

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IMHO, all this talking about the body amour and protection as the way to go is useless as there would not be much help from this.
Human body is made so that whenever you jump from something you need to land on legs. Legs are human landing gear , not chest not head, not neck.
Placing the armor around the back chest neck or wherever will not protect the human from serious injury or death.

The outcome is similar if you confront two tanks and make them frontal crash at high speed ( 50 mph)
Whole crew in both tanks will be dead despite the tons of protection around them...
There is no deformation zone...
analogy to this is that it is irrelevant if the chest cage would be smashed from impacting on the grass, concrete, asphalt or will be crashed from impacting in to body armor...

Hangglider is the perfect example how is possible to land and what span we need top provide enough lift.. also, check hangglider pilots on landing... they use legs!!!
Robert Pecnik
[email protected]
www.phoenix-fly.com

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Either way, I am not a volunteer. Don't want to land less than 117 sq ft. It may take a while before that gets made as a wingsuit.

Dont count us out just yet:ph34r::ph34r::ph34r::ph34r:
My arms .. my poor arms .. I get muscle cramps just thinking again of the Stealth 2.

I'd need an exoskeleton to fly your extra-ludicrous-Bird. Define "wingsuit" .. :)
Johan.
I am. I think.

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IMHO, all this talking about the body amour and protection as the way to go is useless



What I always say when people start 'adding' things to make a landing possible...

Why not ad some wheels. Wil make landing much easier.
Why not ad some solid wings. So the arms dont get tired.
Why not ad a propelor. So you have more controll.
Why not ad a little cabin around your body. So you have a more comfy enviromnent and place to mount seatbelts.

Ooh...wait..somebody already built such a device...its called an airplane.
And I do agree. Making wings bigger and bigger untill we're able to land them, its just turning us more and more into hanggliders...people suspended under wings in a sleepingbag...and perfectly safe to land AND take off..
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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