3 and 4 minute club-post your best time

[lurch 0]

I know these days distance is a more popular subdiscipline than duration. But I've always been a long flight fanatic and recently leveled up with my S-Bird, learned a new (to me anyway) ninja trick combo thats good for a solid 4 minute flight on demand and at will. Did two jumps back to back last weekend from mid-13's pulling at mid-2's and got exactly 4 minutes... 240 seconds on both.

Could have pulled lower and got 4:10 to 4:15 but did not feel like being stupid that day. An S-Bird is still a lot of wing to manage in a low pull while somewhat tired.

Turns out theres a very specific move with the arms knees neck and torso that'll do it, and it didn't even burn out my arms till the end of the second, racked up 8 minutes of freefall in about an hour and a half... I did rest for awhile before going up for the second shot.

I can't be the only freak out there thats figured this one out. It wasn't actually all that hard to do and an S-Bird isn't even the biggest suit available, not even close. There must be others. I'm curious about just how many there are who have.

So if you've done 4 minutes or more from standard altitude, post it along with the altitudes and what suit you did it with. If you've done between 3 and 4, post that too. I'm wondering how long it'll be before we can build a flock. Imagine the formations and moves we could do with a tight 9-way group that can stay aloft for 4 minutes a pop.

My current 3 best are: 3:57, 13.2-2100, 4:00, 13.8-2600, and 4:00, 13.5-2500.

Wondering whats next... 4 and a half? Theres a lot of big suits out there now, sooner or later somebody's gonna do it.
-B

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

[mccordia 73]

Avg/Sustained fallrate for the full jump and altitude is easier to compare

+- 40 mph avg, 20.000 ft, 5:18 (longest jump)
+- 31 mph avg, 12.000 ft, 3:19 (or something close to that time, have to look that one up).

Both with Stealth2. Have done better avg with the Venom, but havent done a full alti time flight yet with that one..only brief 1km flight/alti

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[millertimeunc 0]

4:05 from 13.8-pulling around 3k. Suit was an X-Bird, and I have no idea what went right on that flight. The closest I've been able to come to it since then was around 3:45, but I haven't been able to duplicate it. What's this "trick" you're talking about? I'm intrigued...

The best things in life are dangerous.

[mccordia 73]

can people just post mph (avg/sustained all flight) so we have some actual stats to compare. Exit and deployment altitudes vary from
country to dz to person...mph/avg is a much easier stat.

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[yeyo 1]

or make your own thread about mph , since lurch wants to talk bout times and altitudes.

"So if you've done 4 minutes or more from standard altitude, post it along with the altitudes and what suit you did it with. If you've done between 3 and 4, post that too."

Ive never done 3 minutes...I jump a small suit form 10k

HISPA #93
DS #419.5

[mccordia 73]

Quote

or make your own thread about mph , since lurch wants to talk bout times and altitudes.

I just have this weird habit of liking facts over fiction.
I know some people (none here in this thread) who brag on 4 or 4,5 min jumps from 12 that come down to 14 mph sustained fallrates to make it possible.

If you can read the graphs on altitudes,and name times...you can also read the fallrates.

Which is what lurch is talking about.
How slow can you fall, for how long!

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[lurch 0]

Yep... don't care if you present it as mph/avg speed or simple time/altitude. The numbers all translate back and forth easily enough. I haven't bothered to translate 4:00 over 11,000 feet into exact MPH, but an 11,000 ft 4 min. jump is just over 2 miles. Mental math on that is easy... 1 mile a minute 60 mph, 1 mile in 2 minutes is 30 mph, 2 mile descent in 4 minutes is also 30 mph. In my case probably like 30.5mph because 11,000 feet is 2 miles plus a few hundred feet to spare.

Neat thing about this stuff is the numbers don't lie and anyone who knows what they're doing can tell if someone else is bullshitting... Like Jarno said, the guys claiming 4:30 from 12 or whatever, which translates to performance figures nobody on earth can do yet in any suit. Any of us can now flare a suit into the 20's and teens but nobody can do, say, a steady 21mph the whole way down yet.

Re: Millertime: The ninja trick:
Very difficult to successfully describe. Difficult to even demonstrate actually, I've tried.
But try this:

Am assuming you've already got typical maxed-flight down and can get at least 3 to 3.5 at will.

Get out, get wide flat and rigid. Maxed out for speed, distance and time is ideal for none but just sprawled wide decent suit decent pilot, a basic flat sprawl with legs locked and toes pointed gets you in the 3 to 3.5 ballpark, you start from there.

Close eyes and imagine you just laid facedown on an air mattress. Now relax. Concentrate on keeping wings as wide and flat as possible while relaxing everything else. As usual for any serious performance move, allow head to droop a bit.

The relax thing is important. You can get all the rest of the technique down cold, and if you don't get the relax part right nothing in particular will happen. The relax distributes your weight evenly over entire surface and its critical.

Finally allow knees to drop, just a bit. No more than an inch or two, just enough that body is not entirely flat anymore. You can use calves to press down on lower half of tailwing to suit taste in stability, but if you press down enough that you've straightened your legs entirely then you'll go too head-low for the effect to work, you'll slide forward off your air and fly fast forward instead of long, you've spoiled the effect.

Actual glide ratio is nothing record breaking, around 2.5 to 1 maybe... figure, 60 mph 30 down is 2 to 1, but only goes 4 miles. This is good to about 6 miles, only way to further is to say screw the fallrate, tip over forward and try to hit 90+ forward which gets you closer to 3, but sacrifices time. Great for getting home in a hurry when you screw up the navigation though.

Theres really nothing new about this technique at all. Its a bunch of moves every serious performance wingsuiter has known for years. Dropped knees and head? Thats been a basic ninja trick since GTI's were popular.

This is just a very specific combo of a few of the dozens of old low fallrate tricks applied in a certain way, which combined with the "relax" element delivered better efficiency with less effort than any technique I've tried yet.

You kinda know if you're doing it right when it -isn't- hard to get 3:30+. I've had flights of 3:30 where my technique sucked and I was trying way too hard. I can get 3:30 to 3:45 by brute force alone with crude technique but it isn't pretty and my arms and legs are shaking by the end of the jump.

After getting 4:00 my arms didn't even hurt much. It was easy enough to do that I was able to do it again almost immediately after. A 3:40 done brutally can leave me sore and unable to fly right for days after. This isn't like that at all. If you feel like you're "trying hard" to do this trick, you are.

The very Jedi Ninja essence of this trick is that you are NOT trying hard at all.
-B

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

[doi 0]

What is the lowest altitude that anyone has cracked 5 minutes from, 20k sounds pretty high?

[mccordia 73]

Quote

What is the lowest altitude that anyone has cracked 5 minutes from, 20k sounds pretty high?

The lowest sustained numbers are around 30 to 31 mph avg.
By simple math, the lowest altitude one could break 5 minutes with is 2.5 Miles of freefall/ 13200 ft (plus deployment altitude).

So roughly 16.200 ft at minimum for 5 minutes.
At those kind of performance levels, fatigue severly comes into play and the longer the flight is, the more freefall/altitude you will need.

I pulled at around 3500 or so on that 20k jump I did, as roughly 2/3 into the jump, my arms turned into jello..the last 6000 ft or so of freefall was closer to normal freefall than it was to wingsuit flying
My first part of the jump was flown very effective (+- 32 mph was the speed for the first part of the jump). Later as my arms went to shit, I got up to 50 mph speeds for the last part up to pulltime.

Mike had quite a few seconds more on that same jump. He flew a more steady speed through the whole dive. So initially dropped bellow me, but around 12k or so, started visually climbing up on me. And when I was about to pull, he was still quite a bit higher than me.

Good stamina will get you more time than a quick sprint on slow fallrates..

Z-flock video from 2 years ago has that 20k jump after the credits

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[kallend 1,621]

My best where the Alti-Track didn;t time out prematurely is 3:20 from 13.1 I've done that both on a Mach 1 and with an S-Bird

I **think** I've gone longer a couple of times with the S-Bird, but each time the Alti-track decided I'd deployed at around 12 grand, even on the SLO setting.

...

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

[lurch 0]

You probably did.
I don't trust any gadgets at those speeds. A Pro-track is useless. Its only good for 2 minutes anyway and it typically thinks I deployed out the door. The only things it still does right are count jump numbers and beep.

A Neptune is also supposed to be designed to deal with wingsuit speeds but push much past 3 minutes and it starts producing gibberish readings and random pull altis. Its just too slow for any digital alti to tell the difference between freefall and a fast canopy ride.
Only thing that gets me accurate time data is video. I suggest a Contour myself. I use a CX100, only because I hadn't seen a Contour yet when I bought it, and the helmet I built around the CX100 was a work of art I couldn't bear to junk just to get an even smaller camera.
-B

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

[mccordia 73]

Just use the playback on the altitrack? It logs down to the ground regardless...

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[urowolf 0]

Neptune recorded 186sec from 13.5K to 3.5K on my one jump using Shorb's XBrird (unzipped).

[roostnureye 2]

i got 201 sec from 13.1 to 2700', 25mph min,
33 avg, 41 max. on an RBIRD.

next best is 198sec 13.3 to 3000' 27mph min
33avg 48 max. on an RBIRD

im 6' 145lbs

Flock University FWC / ZFlock
B.A.S.E. 1580
Aussie BASE 121

[trixonik 0]

This is data from my Altitrack flying my older S-Bird (smaller arms like r-bird). The Altitrack said 203 seconds on the screen. I exited at 14k and pulled around 2500ft.

[doi 0]

Interesting, thanks for the comprehensive reply.

I plan on a bunch of 18k jumps, lets see how I go then...

[Martini 0]

3 minutes on an S-3, neither my V-2 nor my Raptor has come close but I don't jump much these days.

Sometimes you eat the bear..............

[LetsGoOutside 0]

Quote

3 minutes on an S-3, neither my V-2 nor my Raptor has come close but I don't jump much these days.

Yeah, did 3:06 on my S3 once. Total freefall was ~13,000' (15k - 2k), so like 47mph average. Was also quite a bit lighter and younger than I am right now.

[repcool 2]

The attached is from my first solo in an S Bird a month or so ago, I used a Flysight. I think I can do a lot better but I don't get to do many solos.

195 seconds from 14,200 and pulling at 3,500.

Simon


edit: for bad splling.

[LukeH 0]

What software is the screen capture from?

[medusa 0]

I got 3:57 jumping form 12.000 Pulling at 3.000.

I also got 6:16 from 30.000 pulling at 4.000.
I need to hit the gym, Ill be trying this again after 3 months of training.

Time is cool and sounds awesome, but your not really going to far if your just concentrating in delay.

Cya

Medusa

Get Killed or Die Trying!
Patent pending ATFK15456

[Martini 0]

***Time is cool and sounds awesome, but your not really going to far if your just concentrating in delay.***


Definitely best time does not necessarily equal best distance BUT my best time happened to be my best distance (around 5 miles) due to nice tailwind.

Sometimes you eat the bear..............

[lurch 0]

Damn, Medusa. That ain't bad. If you ever get up this way you and I ought to have a little friendly contest. The 3:57... what were you flying? And can you do it again?
-B

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

[repcool 2]

Quote

What software is the screen capture from?

The screenshot is from an early version of iAlti Logbook an online logbook solution for manual and supported logging devices. Imagine logbook meets facebook meets runkeeper\garmin connect. It will automatically link you to others on the same jump (if using GPS) and share details, photos and videos. Easy publication to Facebook and Twitter to show off those wonderful flights!

One cool feature is it automatically determines which DZ you jumped at simply from the GPS database, great for us lazy loggers!

It should be in BETA in the next month or so. We will need people that can do manual entries and flysight entries in the initial beta. You can sign up here:


http://tinyurl.com/ialti

[LukeH 0]

Sounds good.

So long as it easy to mark the exit, opening and landing points and calculate average GR, speeds etc you should be on to a good thing (auto detection would be great, but it's difficult to get right so easy manual adjustment is a must). Paralog and FlySight viewer are great, but it's still tedious to get this basic info.

I assume it'll have the option to apply PPC style mask to a jump to view the competition performance? And submit jumps to PPC?

An android app that connects to it or at least a smart phone usable web-interface would be nice too.