0
lurch

Tony suit S-Bird review

Recommended Posts

Finally got to fly my new S-Bird.
As anybody paying attention to suit design knows, they upgrade the suit line more often than most people change their underwear. So this thing is somewhat more highly evolved than some earlier versions I tried and noticeably better performance. Semirigid foam leading edge I thought was very neat. X-bird sized armwings with grippers, S-bird tail, self-retracting. Magnets and snaps hardware, variable airlocks.

Suit is built like a wearable combat dufflebag and is effectively indestructible barring catastrophic zipper failure. Zippers appear to be strong enough for use in a spacesuit so this seems unlikely.

Although I wouldn't necessarily consider it adequate protection against an angry Saudi with a box cutter and a religious grievance I think it would stop a paintball comfortably and would be useful for this purpose if it did not limit ones movements. I'm not sure how much good its gonna do you if you wind up in a tree with it but it will probably help.

So, the suit is tough.

Performance:
Insane.
Conditions were far from ideal for getting an idea of this thing's long range performance. A stiff headwind and only 9250 ft to work with, pulling at 3200 just to be on the safe side, first jump on unfamiliar suit.
Still, the sheer hangtime performance available on demand was unreal.

I've used a Neptune for years...these things can be inaccurate for various reasons but deliver consistently useful info for performance range.

A GTI got me into the low 40's. An S-6 to the mid-30's. A hacked S-6 got mid-low 30's and into the high 20's. An extremely hacked S-6 got into the mid-20's but only rarely, with great effort maybe one out of 5 tries. And the thing was insanely dangerous to fly.

The S-bird got mid-20's first flight with the airlocks left open and spending much of the flight in a turn.

The Neptune logged 24, 33 and 35 mph. This is the first skydive I've ever had where I did not even break 35 on the way down. The 24 may be influenced by being not all that long after exit but I doubt it. I had 250 feet of drop before the first log trips at 9000 feet. The suit flew rock steady stable 10 feet off the step of the Cessna and I think by 9 grand I'd long since hit terminal for this suit. Fallrate didn't go up noticeably until I started to turn.
I was beating my way upwind against fairly stiff upper winds so didn't make much distance till I turned around and headed back to the DZ. Got there with more remaining altitude than expected and wound up turning even more to begin an upwind loop just to burn off the remaining altitude without winding up downwind.

The Neptune did not log opening alti. It read 0 freefall time 248 second canopy ride showing the 4-digit canopy display for much of the way down and the descent rate bouncing rapidly around 50FPS. I pitched at 3200 feet to buy a few more seconds to deal with the opening and see if the pressurization or grippers interfered with the pull any.
No problems at all at least on the "low" setting with the airlocks wide open.
I went to the video and got a 2:10 freefall time for a freefall of 6000 feet averaging 31.36 mph for the whole flight.

Thats under adverse conditions, first flight, with the airlocks open and turning in a shallow bank for half the flight.

NOT BAD!

Gimme a straight line shot and flying like I mean it this thing should get me into the mid-low 20's at will. Dunno how much or if closing the airlocks will affect it, but if it takes any more load off my muscles than the suit already does, it probably means easy mid-20's on demand.
When I learn all the subtle ninja tricks for flying this suit I got a hunch it'll do high teens for short bursts. Flights WELL in excess of 3:45 from normal altitude.

My previous documented distance record was 6.5 miles from 14.5 ish to 2500 in a straight line flying a homemade hackjob. If I had to guess based on the other performance gains I'd guess max range for this is likely to top out at 7 to 7.5 miles from the same alti IF the thing doesn't turn out to be draggy enough to slow me down any. If it gets me lots more freefall time but takes 5mph off my top speed my range won't go up any more than the additional distance I can float in the extra 10-20 seconds of freefall time available. I might not be going any faster, but travelling at 60mph horizontally at a lower fallrate for another 30 seconds gets me a mile further.
When I get a chance to fly it with the heavier guys I'll see how fast it can really go. To keep up horizontally I expect to have to do it fairly steeply head down and with the wings way back so the resulting range when flown fast at normal fallrates should be mindblowing.

So to sum it up, it delivered the best performance I've got out of a suit before, on the first flight knowing none of the subtle ninja tricks for getting low fallrate out of this suit, under worst case conditions experimenting with body position instead of flying consistently, in winter while wearing several pounds of extra warm clothing, with the airlocks open. And flying in a shallow banking turn half the time.
And I'm rusty cause I haven't jumped since November. If I fly it when I'm back up to speed, in a straight line under ideal conditions the performance level is going to be stunning.
Nice suit design guys.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Quote

S-bird tail, self-retracting.



Can you elaborate on this part? And where's the pics? :)



I thnk this is what he is talking about...

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=690989920&ref=name#!/photo.php?pid=2917647&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=194427988323&id=747289530

then

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=690989920&ref=name#!/photo.php?pid=2917648&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=194427988323&id=747289530&fbid=185483884530

Just a guess though..

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

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote



I like that retracting idea. I've seen enough tails that got worn badly in the middle from dragging while walking.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote


Looks like a gathered prom dress.

However, my S-Bird due next week (or so they tell me).
...

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

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

First, "THANKS" to Jeff & Tony for the 3 recent flights on demo suit. As noted, it is well constructed & engineered and in my opinion a "Tank". Would'nt hesitate in buying from them. The 1st flight was following Jeff & a very erratic student. I really had to shut the suit down to stay w/ them but then at the student pull time Jeff & I soared away for some fun of our own. The other 2 flights were solos ((I'am analog w/ audible) no data to see, inspect, or disect) and the flights were just amazing! What felt like pull time (out @ 13.5) found me at 7K w/ a little more than 4K still to play with. :)
Jim R.

Jim

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
For those not on facebook (including myself) who can't look at the pics, the retractable tail is simply a couple of bungees inside the tail that cause it to bunch up on its own when its not being flown. Elegant.

Need to correct myself... in the review I said another 30 seconds at 60 gets me a mile further. This is a beer induced brainfart. It gets me half a mile further.

The reason I'm pretty happy with this thing is its the first commercial design in 4 years that would do anything for me.
The Mach and supermach designs were useless for a body type like mine. I tried a supermach last year and it was so balloony and so draggy it slowed me down to a crawl. I had to have my tail nearly maxed out just to keep up with a normal flock. It was so much of a handicap that a lightweight newbie in a Blade could have dusted me effortlessly. It got 3:11 freefall time easily enough, but it was never going to get any better than that because I couldn't get an SM1 to fly any faster without forcing it into a dive, and by that time I could get 3:45+ with my homemade rags by way of efficiency sleekness and speed. The Machs are wonderful for getting heavier people into performance ranges previously reserved only for light skinny people but did nothing for us skinny people.

So the whole time the so-called "mattress suits" were becoming the rage, I've stood by on the sidelines left out, keeping ahead of the state of the art by hacking my older gear with zip-on updates.
I hadn't considered buying another suit because there was nothing on the market that even came close to what I could get out of my homemade gear let alone beat it. I was able to outfly most machs easily with a stock S-6 and technical ninja tricks alone and all of them with minor mods. Major mods gave me an untouchable advantage.

Last season when the X-Birds showed up the new variant on wing design got my attention. Guys like Justin who had been flying the big Machs for years suddenly got a lot faster. For the first time in years I got dusted in my stock S-6. I could barely match the float, but get left behind. I might have been able to match the speed, but would have had to dive 500 feet below them to do it.
With the midgrade zipon S-6 mods I got some of my unfair advantage back and could just match the forward speed and just barely outfloat the X-Birds I took on but it was a near thing. I might have had a 2mph fallrate advantage, if that, and it took so much effort I don't think I could have sustained it for an entire flight. I was impressed... that new wing design had a dramatic effect on the performance of the guys flying it.

All through the name calling and suit wars I haven't had a dog in the fight. I'm not sponsored by anyone and didn't need it. I don't sell suits so I don't have anything to gain by promoting one over another and could beat everything on the market with an obsolete suit and a 50$ sewing machine anyway. I won this S-Bird in a raffle and after this, Tony is unlikely to be able to sell me another suit anyway. Neither is anyone else.

I test flew two lesser versions of this in November and was properly impressed because finally there was a commercial suit that could meet or beat my homemade stuff but I held off on judging it till I got to fly my own. The thing I noticed with the lesser ones was that there was so much less drag that unlike every other Tony suit I'd tried it did not slow me down and may have sped me up a bit. I felt clumsy in a Mach and that clumsy sensation was absent.
The raffle prize was for any suit I wanted. I long debated a full blown X-Bird but the tail was just way too much and I decided getting one would be a classic case of way too much suit for 99% of flying conditions. I wanted to have a prayer of being able to shut this thing down far enough to be able to flock with it. The added size of an X-Bird might gain me another 1-2mph fallrate and forward speed when totally maxed out and would be a hindrance under all other conditions. I think the X is just the thing to keep the heavier guys in contention though. I'm just more interested in best possible performance for all conditions than I am in having the biggest possible suit I can get. As it is, I've seen overhead video of what I look like flying a lesser S-Bird in a flock and its silly...tailwing squeezed down to 6 inches wide.

All in all I'd call it a fairly major advancement in wingsuit design. This is the one and only suit I've flown that could not only meet but beat what I could do with homemade gear and do it easily. Thats fucking impressive. Obviously an X-Bird would as well but so far as I'm concerned for my purposes the distinction is trivial. I used to be able to do 3:30+ semi-consistently and 3:45+ as a freak performance peak that was only seldom repeatable but it took a hell of an effort to do it. This suit puts 3:30 solidly into "whenever I want to, easily" range meaning 3:45+ should be comfortably repeatable and another 30 seconds on top of that should be possible with ninja tricks, granting access to previously unheard-of freefall times from normal altitude of 13-14ish. Whether this actually IS the 4-minute suit I've been waiting for and trying to build remains to be seen until I actually DO it but I have every reason to believe it is.

And it isn't some homemade hackjob, this is far better built than anything I can do on my kitchen table. Its also the most stable suit I've flown to date by a long shot. I got the idea of how these suits want to be flown from previous test flights so I let it do what it wanted immediately after I was clear of the plane and the damn thing practically flew itself. It required no active management to get it to fly rock steady in a straight line whereas all my homemade stuff was very skittish and required brutal muscle effort to get the performance and make it behave.

It made quite an impression at Jumptown. Video shows I lingered only 15 seconds in the door getting onto the step after the other 3 guys in the plane exited. And even pulling high, people told me the first guy was already landed before I even deployed. Must have been one fast canopy ride, but still...
Heres the only good pic I've got so far.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

For those not on facebook (including myself) who can't look at the pics, the retractable tail is simply a couple of bungees inside the tail that cause it to bunch up on its own when its not being flown. Elegant.



How about that.. :)
"He who Hesitates Shall Inherit the Earth!"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Paul, I'm not actually certain. I studied the X and S suits and specifically requested X wings with S tail since I was pretty sure the X gigatail was going to be a handful to manage at flocking speeds but I wanted the power obvious in the X armwings. Justin then showed me an S-variant someone else had asked for and said "Like this?" I said hell yeah. Its actually what I'd call slightly scaled down X-wings but still way bigger than the other S's I tested. So its "by request" to what I think will probably wind up being their new standard build for this suit anyway at least until next week or whenever they update it again. If this variant hadn't already existed I would have just got an X-Bird since the S's I'd tried met but didn't beat my hackjobs and if I was going to get a suit I wanted to gain some performance over my current max at the time. This variant was EXACTLY what I'd had in mind and in the air handily beats anything else available by a FAT margin including my most radical hackjobs. Justin said it didn't really have a name yet so go ahead and call mine a Lurch-Bird.
So I dunno if this is the new standard offering or if they're going to keep refining it or cut it back a little so the models don't overlap too much, or what. You'd have to ask them.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
AWESOME!!!!
(runs around in circles, jumps up and down a few times)
WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

You hold the string, Dave!

Might I suggest tent stakes though? You only outweigh me by maybe 15 lbs or so. If I catch a gust, you're coming with me.

And, uh, I take that back...Tony might just sell me one more suit... if I can get consistent mid-20's I'll order an X-Bird and start landing the sucker in the swoop pond at Lebanon. I get extra points if I come up with a fish in my teeth.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
The original Suit Lurch flew was an S-Bird that had normal T-Bird style grippers. Once the trailing edge was made Perpendicular to the line of flight, there was a need to add gripper extensions. When Lurch ordered his suit, I showed him the S-Bird that is the current design, before it was production. Sorry Lurchy, its production now.(However, I challenge anyone to out float him in it :-D ) The Elastic leg is a very cool design. Simple, yet effective. I wont elaborate as to how it is built, but the design sucks the wing up until it is inflated with air. Keeping the tailwing free from damage as you walk in it.

Jsho
Wingsuit organizing, first flight courses and coaching
Flock University
Tonysuits

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Thats quite alright J, just means there'll be some competition as these things get around.

For me the next handful of flights are gonna be all about experimenting.
I already know it can do an average 31 mph meaning roughly half the flight was below 31 and half above. Keeping turns to a minimum we'll see if I can do an entire flight without ever getting into the 30's. Shouldn't be that hard, 2mph average improvement is all. At the least I'd expect to be able to get running averages in the 26-28 mph range. Also can't wait to see what kinds of fallrates I get if I fly it hard and fast. Without a heavy guy as a yardstick I tend to fly fairly slow, with someone to chase its much easier to tell how fast I'm going. Once I'm up to top speed horizontally then we'll see what it can REALLY do.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

The original Suit Lurch flew was an S-Bird that had normal T-Bird style grippers. Once the trailing edge was made Perpendicular to the line of flight, there was a need to add gripper extensions. When Lurch ordered his suit, I showed him the S-Bird that is the current design, before it was production. Sorry Lurchy, its production now.(However, I challenge anyone to out float him in it :-D ) The Elastic leg is a very cool design. Simple, yet effective. I wont elaborate as to how it is built, but the design sucks the wing up until it is inflated with air. Keeping the tailwing free from damage as you walk in it.

Jsho



Ordered mine a while back but still waiting. Does this mean I'll get the same design as Lurch?

I'll be happy to have a floaty contest with Lurch. (I can go under 80mph in a tight RW suit).
...

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

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oho, a challenger!
:)Awesome.
(trash talk mode)
Bring it on, Doc. Whats your height and weight? Even if you're 20 lbs lighter I hope you're packing some serious slo-mo ninja skills man cause you're gonna need em. I was pulling 3:15 from 14.5 to 3 with a GTI 5 years ago. But if you've got ninja skills and you've got the same suit, physics always wins. You just might smoke me.
(exit trash talk mode)
Seriously though, if yours winds up being the exact same model, lemme know the results you get out of it. I've been growing a graph in my head for years of weight/height/speed ranges I see people do. If you weigh even less than I do it'll be useful info. If you want the ultimate in low fallrate ninja skills talk to Scary Perry. Crazy bastard must weigh 20 lbs less than I do, (I'm about 135) and has 6000 jumps worth of ninja skills. He's been out of the sport for a couple years now but when I was getting my start he must have been one of the top 5 slowest falling human beings alive. That guy was able to pull 3:42 with an unmodified Vampire and with an S-Bird I'd expect him to cruise at a steady 21, maybe 19.
-B

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

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
My S-Bird arrived yesterday.

It's a beautiful piece of work and the fit is great. Interesting where the air intakes are located. I see it also features the "Big Butt".

Unfortunately the DZs here are still closed for the winter!
...

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

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

0