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mchamp

Ideal perfect body

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IF there were to be an Ideal "perfect" body type for covering the most distance while losing the least amount of altitude possible what would it be?

Height? Build? Weight?
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Some guys that are a little heavy do really nice in glide distance suprisingly. Skill meybe?

The best body would be the athletic but average in shape allowing you to try as many different demos suits as you can to find the right one for you. So you can can just fly a lot.

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Specifications for a 1976 Lurch:

Verified distance: Birdman S-6 hypermodified: 6.5 miles
Approximate max distance, Tony S-Bird, unverified: 7.5-8 miles
At-will ff time: 3:30-3:45
Maximum recorded FF time, 13,200-3000 ft: 3:52
Estimated theoretical maximum endurance, 13,500-2000: 4:20
Lowest on-demand repeatable continuous sustained cruise, 2 minutes duration: 36 FPS, 24.54 mph
Lowest sustainable burst cruise, limited by muscle endurance: 60 seconds: 28 FPS, 19.09 mph.
Typical forward speed: 60 mph
Pursuit/distance speed: roughly 85 mph
Maximum recorded speed after prolonged dive: 208.8 mph

Height: 5'10".
Weight: 134 lbs
Build: broad shoulders, lean everywhere else, heavy bones. Body is dense enough that I sink in water unless I am actively swimming. I cannot float unless my lungs are full. My bone density is unusually high, so much so that the moment I breathe out I sink like a stone.

Strength for a given weight is important.
I am not an endurance athlete but my personal workout involves a lot of climbing and hanging. Although I probably couldn't run a 5k I can casually pick up and throw an object 2/3 my own weight, and carry more than my own weight with some difficulty. I can also hang from a bar by one hand using any two fingers or hang by my toes. I can't quite do a one-armed pullup but I can do about half of one.

I could benefit from adding 15-20 lbs of muscle, but my current weight/strength balance is as close to ideal as I could get. If I weighed 15-20 lbs more, the added strength would mostly be wasted supporting its own weight against the added wingload. So if I was any heavier it really wouldn't do me much good. And if I was any lighter, I wouldn't be strong enough to get the performance. I was sick for awhile about a year and a half ago and was down to 120 lbs for a few months. My performance fell off dramatically.

Maximum performance still has a scale. Jeff Nebelkopf is slightly taller, about as lean as I am proportionally, and about 30 lbs heavier. So although his fallrate limits will be a few mph higher, he is also exactly that much faster forward and would most likely outrun me by a quarter mile or so in a long range head to head run.

Lighter flyers fit further up the spectrum. Scary Perry is probably the highest performance "superlight" I've seen, estimate he weighs no more than 120, 125 lbs but his strength/weight ratio is about like mine and last I knew he could pull 3:42 in a stock V-1 back when I was barely breaking 3:15, but that weight means he really has to dive hard to hit high horizontal speeds.

Like me, he is light enough that the Mach suit series was useless for him because he couldn't load the suits effectively. I'd love to see what he could do with the new "-Bird" suits, he'd be in the 6-7 mile range and pulling 4:15 at will in an R-Bird. In an S- or X-bird he'd do a solid 4:30. Given what I knew of his capabilities last time I flew with him 4-5 years back I'd estimate he could do a sustained cruise in the high teens with a modern suit. I swear the man has hollow bones and lives on birdseed.

So there you go. How you define "ideal" depends on how you want to fly. You wanna be a bit faster? Be built like Jeff. You want to balance ideal speed with time? Be built like me and you'll be slightly slower but get a bit more hangtime. You want pure hangtime? Be built like Perry and as muscular as possible for that weight and you'll be on the slower end of max performance but your hangtime will be insane.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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Enjoyed reading that :)
Losing weight will immediately show in the forward speed department. I was 87kg one BASE season and 72kg the next .

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Jeff Nebelkopf is slightly taller, about as lean as I am proportionally, and about 30 lbs heavier. So although his fallrate limits will be a few mph higher, he is also exactly that much faster forward and would most likely outrun me by a quarter mile or so in a long range head to head run.



If he is heavier(almost same height and same suit), he will be in front of you the whole time, you may out glide him but you will on most occasions not be ahead of him in a race.

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Easy enough question:

highest flying bird: Ruppell's griffon vulture at 11,274 in (7 mi)
From Wikipedia:
Rüppell's Vulture is considered to be the world's highest-flying bird, with confirmed evidence of a flight at an altitude of 11,000 metres (36,100 ft) above sea level. Rüppell's Vultures commonly fly at altitudes ranging up to 6,000 metres (19,700 ft). The birds have a specialized variant of the hemoglobin alphaD subunit; this protein has a high affinity for oxygen, which allows the species to take up oxygen efficiently despite the low partial pressure in the upper troposphere. A Rüppell's Vulture was confirmed to have been ingested by a jet engine of an airplane flying over Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire on November 29, 1973 at an altitude of 11,000 metres (36,100 ft).
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. " -John Galt from Atlas Shrugged, 1957

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Unfortunately Perry's been out of the wingsuit circuit for the last few years, guess he had to go home and take care of his Dad for awhile.

I use guys like Jeff as performance yardsticks- I'm not out to "beat" or outfly anybody, and for us floaty guys the real challenge is flying fast enough to keep up. I have to get all ninja with minimizing my drag to hit the same forward speeds a heavier bird can do with ease, and although I might stay aloft 10-20 seconds longer the heavier birds with ninja skills will always go a bit further... speed over time equals distance, simple math. Flying with the heavier birds helped teach me how to freefly a wingsuit- because often I had to get very creative with the headdown techniques to build up the necessary speed to catch or stay with them.

I haven't had a chance to fly with Loic yet. Looking forward to it sometime though... I need to get out to Europe one of these days. I've flown with almost all the major players in the U.S. wingsuit community and anyone from Europe who has come here that I ran into at an event, but theres still a big pool of pilots over there I haven't even met yet because they mostly do mountains and I just do aircraft, so the only way I'm gonna get to fly with em is if either they show up at a skydiving event or I take up WS base, and theres a real shortage of jumpable cliffs around here.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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I haven't had a chance to fly with Loic yet. Looking forward to it sometime though..



Sadly he isnt jumping anymore...having him as your pilot on the ride up is as close as you can get.

That aside..you'd be welcome for some flocking and flying around these regions..plenty of EU birdies would take you up on that request..
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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:)Check it out. I've got a new apprentice here and I'm fairly excited to see what this guys gonna be able to do. Get this: He's either a spaniard or mexican guy about 6'4" 150 lbs. Probably the most ideal surface area/weight ratio I've ever seen in any flyer. He won't be the fastest bird in the sky and like me he's gonna have to get used to flying with his arms behind his back in the heavier flocks but he's got the potential to be the slowest-falling human being alive.

I'd hoped to be on his first flight but he wound up doing that out in Madrid, then showed up back at my home DZ with a T-bird and about 30 flights. So far his best time is already up to 2:45 and he's just getting started. I'm pretty sure this is the student who will outfly me as soon as he's learned a few ninja tricks and ready to handle a big suit.

If his muscles are up to it this guy is going to outfloat everyone in the universe and I get to train him. Over the course of the next few dozen jumps I'm gonna teach him every ninja trick I know and see what he can do with it. I think he'll be able to do around 3:40 with a T-bird and maybe out to 4:20-4:40+ if he gets ahold of an X-bird a couple hundred flights from now.
:)-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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I think choosing the right wingsuit for your bodysize and intented flying (formation, long solo, distance etc) is a bigger thing, than the actual body size itself.

Seeing quite a few people fly big 'solo suits' behind formations, strugling to catch up. 'Dress for succes' is key...
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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Its also great for ironing, weightlifting, sailing and kitesurfing...



"Disclaimer: Phoenix-Fly does not recommend ironing your wingsuit...":P


No, but you can certainly iron while wearing it. Very comfortable B|
Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

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Exactly. That's why i spend most of my life in my Phantom 2z. Perfect for everything :)



Most of your life? I only skydive in mine. :P


Haven't you learned from Zach yet? It's great attire for all your day to day activities. Especially useful on those long commercial airline trips... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAecgM-q8b8

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Its also good for skateboarding actually, I sometimes indulge in wingsuit skatecross near the loading area at Jumptown. When the plane pulls up I can tack across the loading area on the propblast like a sailboat.

I do not recommend wingsuit rollerblading though. Its a lot harder than it looks.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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