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When will WSers grow up?

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I am curious when we, as Wingsuiters, and the organizers will grow up and mature. There's been many events over the last few years where were never truly 'got' what was set out to do. Yes, we have come close, but something or someone was still off with the photo's that we had for certain points of time. So instead of saying and being proud for what we did, we call it a 'successful formation' even though it wasn't. Sure it may have been a successful event, a learning experience, and an achievement, but it they weren't ever 'successful formations.'

What's wrong with still feeling a sense of accomplishment for something that has never been tried before, yet not fully achieving the goal? I think the words and descriptions of the end result have to be better chosen in the future or it will look like we are still making all our own rules after initially set some other rules that we didn't meet. In the end, we won't be seen as serious until this is done.. and it has to be as a community.

Where is my fizzy-lifting drink?

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I am curious when we, as Wingsuiters, and the organizers will grow up and mature. There's been many events over the last few years where were never truly 'got' what was set out to do. Yes, we have come close, but something or someone was still off with the photo's that we had for certain points of time. So instead of saying and being proud for what we did, we call it a 'successful formation' even though it wasn't. Sure it may have been a successful event, a learning experience, and an achievement, but it they weren't ever 'successful formations.'

What's wrong with still feeling a sense of accomplishment for something that has never been tried before, yet not fully achieving the goal? I think the words and descriptions of the end result have to be better chosen in the future or it will look like we are still making all our own rules after initially set some other rules that we didn't meet. In the end, we won't be seen as serious until this is done.. and it has to be as a community.



I think somewhere along the line, the community forgot that we're validated merely by our efforts and existence in the sky. A peak performer is someone who insists on peak performance from himself, and "records" or "successful formations" should reflect that performance (IMO).

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Personally, I am always most stoked when we do big "flying vagina" formations with multiple penetrations. Fun 3D stuff is where it's all.

That is all

Chuck
PFC/E, BMCI, Man About Town



Man About Town:

We did an interesting version of the flying vag dive today at Lodi which I'd never seen before. Totally flat, 2D... penetrators flying through the apex of a flat V.
www.WingsuitPhotos.com

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Oh. I read this thread before and was wondering "Why is Zach talking about this now?", but I get it - it's in response to my article in Parachutist. I think I am the last person in the USPA to receive his magazine each month.

I called (and still call) it a "successful" formation because we successfully set out what we aimed to do in that event. Period. I wasn't involved of the planning of it, but I think it was called "Challenge" and not "Record" for a reason.

I don't know about anyone else, but my goal in that event was (1) to have fun, and (2) to look good (or more accurately, my personal goal was to make you all look good in pictures) while you guys were having that fun. ( I suppose "safety" was in there somewhere, but that's my numbers 1 and 2, and I'll stand by them, as anyone who has jumped with me knows.)

Anyway, I never heard about anyone wanting to match any grid or Gaussian equation for a geometric lattice or anything else. From what I understood, we were all supposed to look at a picture that someone took and go "yeah, that looks pretty!" or not.

We got a picture of it that I think looks pretty. Could it look better? Fuck yeah, it could. So could most of my ex-es, but that doesn't mean I didn't love them. Is it geometrically precise? Of course not. I don't know (and to me it doesn't matter) whether it meets The Grid. It is what it is.

Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I admit I may be biased about it - it is my picture after all. But I thought the picture that I took was pretty, so I called the formation a success. And people seemed like they were having a good time, notwithstanding the cold and shivering in the unusually cold Florida night, so I called the Challenge a success. Plus I got to make a wingsuit video of it using music from Dr. Who and people seemed to like that video, so I'm kind of surprised I didn't call it an "orgasmic success". I'm a geek like that.

If someone needs objective metrics, that wouldn't have been the event for them. Could another bunch of 25 in the future get a better picture? Certainly possible, but we all learned it is a tricky formation to fly. But I've not heard anyone propose a binary (yes/no) system to judge vertical formations (for what it's worth, I'm not saying we should). But if we adopted such a system in advance, that would be different. If I wrote about an event that was set up with the goal of meeting those specific rules, then I wouldn't call it a success unless it met those rules. But this one had no pre-established rules for judging.

Anyway, anyone who feels it wasn't a success is completely welcome to their opinion. I'm not going to debate it. I had fun. I (sort of) made you guys look good. Success.

BTW, I didn't end up going for the CX that you recommended, I went with a different one (same price, I found it used). I'm concerned about the OIS, though - I thought you said you found it was OK, as long as it was "off", correct?.
Skwrl Productions - Wingsuit Photography

Northeast Bird School - Chief Logistics Guy and Video Dork

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Oh. I read this thread before and was wondering "Why is Zach talking about this now?", but I get it - it's in response to my article in Parachutist. I think I am the last person in the USPA to receive his magazine each month.



Still haven't received mine, but at least now I understand the context. Congrats for being published (again), JD!

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I do not understand this attitude. One of the many reasons I enjoy being a part of the wingsuit community is, we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Sense of perspective for ya:
Lets wind the clocks back a few spins of the rock to, say, FnD 2.0.

It was my first WS bigway. I had just under 500 WS jumps. Back home I was by far the most experienced wingsuiter for 500 miles around except for Papa Smurf and I could never find him, he was like some kind of legendary stone age wingsuit ninja or something, flew a Classic 1 made of mastodon hide dating from 1973. The biggest bigway we could build back home was maybe a 3-way made of Ken Murphy Dave Godin and myself. I get to Zhills and its as if half the wingsuit population on the planet was there.

-Nobody- had any serious WS bigway skills at the time by today's standards because said bigways hadn't been done yet and the skills pool needed to build a truly solid 16-way diamond didn't even exist yet and wouldn't for a few years. Think about that for a second. There weren't enough skilled pilots -in the world- to have pulled it off yet because it hadn't been done. These days we often have almost enough to do that at my home DZ alone and when we DID do it we did it fairly easily and with talent to spare.

At the time, "declared" intention or not, the formations being flown were the biggest wingsuit formations in history. I think the max at 2.0 was, what, a really ragged 42-way, with only about the leading 1/3 of the flock in anything recognizable as a slot. The rest was a loosely milling roughly triangular cloud of birds who spent the whole dive sorting themselves out and slowly creeping vaguely into their assigned areas since none of em, myself included, had serious pursuit skills yet and really knew how to go after and take a given spot. For my part I spent dive 1 futilely chasing with wings folded, unable to quite finish closing on the flock, by maybe dive 3 I'd figured out I was going to have to integrate some angled head-downish freefly skills and started actually getting there. I showed up late for one and found Medusa had stolen my slot and was washing around in it in a flashy new S-3 he clearly did not know how to use either. Not that I was any better anyway and at least he got there on time. I was still figuring out that whole "pursuit" thing. I griped at him later for stealing my slot mostly for formality's sake, like "come on, couldn't we at least try to LOOK like we're slot specific?" I didn't really give a damn, it was the effort that counted.

I thought the whole thing was fucking epic.

I got welcomed by Scott Bland, dissed by Chuck Blue, hassled by Harry Parker and partied with Scotty Burns and Scary Perry. I thought all of this to be most excellent.

None of the biggest formations really got close to what we now would call "completion." Check out the videos and compare em to what we see today. But that was simply the best the world wingsuit community could do at the time.

Now, anybody wanna call up Scott Bland and Chuck Blue and tell them the formations they were leading at the time were all a "failure"? Even the smaller 20-30ish ways that would have been considered "completed" were, by today's grid standard FAR from anything like "success". It just meant everyone actually at least got in, and there were no stragglers entirely out of frame.

I don't mean to sound like I'm arguing for lowering the bar or anything: I'm not... the bar is gonna keep raising itself like it has all along anyway just by skills growth of the community at large. If everyone had a blast, and what we get out of a given event shows progress and growth, then what is there to be negative about? 2.0 and its formations were fun and the result was "better than anything else done to date". To me thats success. I was at Elsinore for the big ones both '08 and '09. I don't give a fuck WHAT the final number actually is. 68? 71? 74 but ragged? Whatever. We can quibble about what does and does not amount to "complete" until the plane runs out of gas, doesn't make any of it less valid in and of itself. When a layman sees a resulting image and expresses wonder and excitement at what we do, do you think their sense of wonder is any less if theres a couple birds half out of slot in the image?

Who are we trying to impress, anyway? I guess my point is, if you don't want to regard a formation as a success, fine, but whats the alternative? Call it a failure? It just doesn't fit with what I remember from any major event I've attended yet.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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I guess my point is, if you don't want to regard a formation as a success



I think thats where for most the thinking error occurs.
There is a difference between a great jump, and a record. In that records should be a performance to aspire to. Regardless if thats only a max attainable 4 way or 6 way at this point in time.

It is the excact hunt for 'official' records that has led to debate and doubt in all competitors mind on the accomplishments of a lot of formations that would otherwise simply be 'awesome'.

In going with the gradual climb we've seen the dicipline do over the past 8 to 10 years, making sure each next step is the right one, and not skipping 10 steps in between, is key. As thats what will make official records something to aspire to. I know the 400 way FS and (100?) way freefly records currently out there demand a level of flying I can never attain. Does that make it a bad thing? Should they lower the standard? No. As it makes me want to be a better freeflyer/FS skydiver. And the fact that there is a good standard set for both diciplines, doesnt mean I cant enjoy a shitty sitfly jump or FS jumps thats all over the sky, without a single dock.

I truly dont get why talking about a certain good standard we're striving for, means we should throw everything else in the (verbal) trash.
There are A LOT of greys in this black and white conversation/debate, that are all to often skipped.
JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

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An addendum to what I wrote before.

I don't think that the formation that we pulled off is the best possible EVAR, but it's impossible to judge success or failure without criteria for success or failure (and to my knowledge, there was nothing else proposed other than the "pretty picture test").

I do believe that we wingsuiters should challenge ourselves to do better next time.... That's part of what will grow the discipline. (But of course that requires us to figure out what "better" means, dudn't it? I'm staying out of THAT shit storm, personally...)

But I look at the vertical events and saw a bunch of wingsuiters who were able to pull together (more or less, judge for yourself the results by the pictures) a pretty tricky to fly formation that, to my knowledge hadn't been done by wingsuiters before. Skills demonstrably improved at the challenges, after a lot of effort was put in by the participants. It wasn't a record, for sure. But it was definitely a worthwhile project - in part because the organizers sidestepped some of the politics (I thought) by not calling it a record - and the events pushed the sport forward.

-JPD

P.S., Instead of "record holder", we should call participants "challenged". It seems sort of fitting for wingsuiters. :)

Skwrl Productions - Wingsuit Photography

Northeast Bird School - Chief Logistics Guy and Video Dork

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"Success" and "Record" have different meanings of course ... and we get to pick which meaning we want to use. On the 25-way verticals, I think success meant pretty. And even that depended on the angle of the camera. If we'd insisted on being pretty from the side AND the back at the same time, we'd have failed. If we'd insisted on the "must be held for 3 seconds" rule, we'd have failed. But for that one short moment, it was near perfect, and it was *cool*.

Lurch's long post pointed out how the definition of large formation success has evolved from "being in the same piece of sky" to "some grid-like thing". That's good I suppose. People want to judge themselves against some standard and get better. The standards have to be physically measurable and repeatable ... I'm not sure that's happened yet. If we'd all just take grips there would be no question about it ...

"Record" means there is some organization that recognizes your "Success" ... so far that means getting a photo in Parachutist ... and that's okay with me, as long as we have fun doing it.

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Scott, I'm insulted. My posts are not "long", they are eloquent, like a badger choking on dish detergent, or that nifty sound the microwave makes when you've overcooked a 5 pound block of Silly Putty on "high".
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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