20kN

I think we're talking about two different numbers here. I am talking about airspeed, aka 'total speed' as FlySight would call it. If you're talking about horizontal speed then 145 kph is perfectly fine. Typically when talking about speed in a tunnel one would speak to airspeed which is what I though you were referring to, sorry about that.

I presume you're talking airspeed, which if that's the case 145 KPH is quite slow. That's close to the stall speed of many suits. Even my CR+ cant get much slower than 105 - 110 KPH sustained. While you are correct that a lot of pilots fly at that speed, especially in the EU, that does not make it ideal. A lot of pilots tend to focus on best glide or best time which are not safe speeds to fly at in many situations. For example, the range of my Freak 3 is about 115 - 310 KPH. At 145 KPH I am flying at about 15%ish. On my CR+ that's probably around 10%. Low airspeed is a leading cause of fatalities in WS BASE and it's caused many incidents in skydiving too. Flying fast is good. Speed is your friend. :)

Yes, lots of people. Possibly even most people. Most of the DZs in the southern half of the USA operate year around. Most of those DZs were operating only a month ago.

The other thing to note is the airspeed in the tunnel is low, presumably for safety reasons. This encourages high AoA, inefficient flight. You don't want to be flying slow in the sky--it's dangerous. So while you can practice transitions in the tunnel, they will not feel the same if done properly in the sky at high speed as they should be.

There is no specific rule preventing it.

Those are two entirely different suits for different applications. The ATC2, like most of Squirrel's products, is a performance orientated wingsuit. Not in the same way as say a C Race, but the emphasis for that suit is on efficiency and speed well maintaining a platform that is still relatively easyish to fly. The Carve will probably be easier to do transitions and backflying in. The ATC2, like most of Squirrel's suits, will be less forgiving to technique error. However the ATC will still be plenty cake to fly and transition in once you figure it out. It just has a bit of a learning curve to it. In terms of performance there is no comparison. The ATC2 will completely smoke a Carve in straight-line speed at almost any angle of attack. If you're flying a Funk 2 at the moment, the Carve would not really be much of an upgrade. They are the same class of suit. The Carve is just PF's version of the Funk and vise versa. To answer your question about XRW, yes both the Carve and ATC2 can be used for XRW. The first XRW jump I did was in an ATC1 and it worked great. The Carve may be slightly better for XRW because it's a slower suit which is typically what you want because XRW jumps are usually very slow flights. However, both suits are more than fine for XRW. I use my Freak 3 for XRW and it works good most of the time. Regarding the Strix, the Strix 1 is more along the lines of an ATC1. The ATC2 will outfly a Strix1. The Strix2 is more along the lines of a Freak2 and it is a solid upgrade over the Strix1. The Strix is a fairly big suit for it's intended application, but there is more to wingsuits than just how large it is. Just because the suit is larger does not mean it is faster in all cases. Overall unless your focus is acro, I'd recommend the ATC2. The ATC2 is a fantastic intermediate suit with tons of range and the ability to fly with most suits you'd find at the DZ. The Strix 2 is a good option as well but know that it's a bit more powerful than the ATC class. It's more along the lines of the Freak2 class.

The UV produced by a UV lamp is substantially, by an order of hundreds of times, stronger than the UV produced by the sun from the distance away that Earth is. Intentionally exposing your gear to something that is well known to damage nylon in an effort to kill this virus is exceedingly unwise and borderline paranoia. You ever notice that no matter the brand of a rig, the Cordura portions of a brand new rig starts to become color faded after only a few months (about 200 jumps)? That's UV damage live in person.

Using ANY type of chemical on your life saving gear for any reason is particularly unwise. There are a number of chemicals out there that can reduce the strength of nylon to effectively nothing. I'd say just leave it alone. Viruses cannot live without a host anyway so locking it in the closet until jumping season resumes is more than good enough.

Yep, me too. The issue is some people keep giving a date or time frame as to when they want to reopen for business. 'We just got to get through these next few hard weeks and then we'll be good". No, not really. Quarantine only works as long as you keep doing it. If we go back to business as usual, the infection rate will spike the same as it would if we had not done anything in the first place, except we just delayed it by a few weeks. As much as it sucks to say it, this is not a temporary situation. What we are experiencing is the new normal, at least for the next year or so. Yes it will mean businesses are going to go under and jobs will be lost. However, the alternative is substantially worse.

I find it interesting that all these businesses claim they are going to reopen in a few weeks. This issue is going to get worse and worse until either a vaccine is discovered or everyone has been infected. It starts with a few people getting infected per day. Then it’s 100 a day. Then 1,000, 10k and eventually we are at millions a day getting infected. If DZs are not comfortable operating when we have 20k infected I’m not sure how they could reason with operating when there are 10 million + infected. This is not a two week thing that will clear up with a bit of social distancing. This is an issue that will stretch well into 2021 most likely.

Not necessarily. Probably with a reserve, but not necessarily with a main. I have bought used mains (and even one brand new one) that did not come with slinks. It's a used gear listing so legally speaking the only thing that comes with it is what the seller says comes with it. If the seller does not specifically say something comes with it and the buyer incorrectly assume it does, that's on the buyer. Always ask if you're unsure.

Because I'm not in the game of calling anyone out. Just look on Facebook and you can find out for yourself. Yes people are still going. You can believe me or not, but it's happening which I know as a 100% absolute firm fact. You seem to be under the incorrect understanding that everyone takes the virus seriously. I assure you there is a rather large group of people who are of the opinion that the virus is nothing worse than the flu and it's not a threat at all. I've heard several skydivers directly make that claim in support of their complaint that their local DZ is closed.

yes there are still some DZs jumping to date. Many businesses, DZs included, will never close unless the government forces them to close.

But note that you may lose that money. This pandemic is not getting better anytime soon. It's going to be (many) months before things start improving and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. As a result some businesses are going to go under. That's just the nature of the beast. This is not by any stretch of the imagination a two-week thing like people are thinking.

Hua? What are you talking about. What I said was: 1. Yes there are still some [civilian] dropzones that are still running loads as of this moment. Not all DZs are closed. 2. Eventually everything may be closed except for the military, hospitals and other government entities.

There are people jumping. There are still DZs that are open.

Yes there are still many DZs that are still jumping. However, I think after a month the only place you're going to find any open businesses are those located on Antarctica or the military/ government/ hospitals.

It probably wont increase the resale value. Most people are not willing to pay extra for one single feature. There is tons of gear on the used market and so it's pretty easy to pass over a deal for something else. I would not pay $450 for one if you plan to get a new rig soon. But it depends on when soon is. If it's several years down the road, then that's not really soon. Soon would be like this year. You'd also want to look at how many cutaways you have and how often you pull low. Are you the type who pulls at 2500' on every jump (and 2000' sometimes maybe), or do you pull at 4k? How often are you cutting away? How busy is the pattern when you're landing? Are there canopies everywhere increasing your risk of a low canopy collision? What type of canopy are you rocking? Are you flying a large seven cell or a 120 elliptical canopy that will loose 400' of altitude every rotation if it spins up? Those are all risk assessment questions.

I dont think he plans to proxy fly out of an airplane. He said in his post that he wants to stay a few thousand feet up. I was the one talking about terrain flights and I am aware that a terrain flight should be treated as a WS BASE jump regardless of the vehicle used to get there.

Is BASE gear allowed out of aircraft there? In the USA it's not so the common substitution is freepacking BASE canopies in skydiving containers. The famous WS demo teams do that on their demo jumps when they are pulling sub-1k'. Mirage makes a W series skydiving container for training WS BASE from aircraft for those who need to remain legal.

They do, but some models are legitimately superior than others and some brands are provably faster or more acro-friendly than others. It kinds of just depends on what you want.

Related to this, does someone know of a source for WS BASE (w/ skydiving rig, freepacked BASE canopy) out of a helicopter? I'd love to do some terrain flying on the Eiger with my BASE canopy. I reached out to the guys in the links above but they said the agency they use for the ride to altitude does not permit terrain flying out of their aircraft.

I have flown the Hog, Freak, Strix Strix 2 and most of the other suits on the market. The Hog is a fine suit. It has inflatable grips so the grips are basically just part of the arm wing. The carbon rods are in essence just installed into the wing and you hold onto that. Some people like it. I personally dont, but it's just a preference thing. The suit itself is big and has lots of power. I dont think it's as fast as the Freak 3, but it is likely faster and more powerful than the Strix 2 and it's still a quite fast suit. I outflew a friend in his Hog while he was flying my Freak 3 to demonstrate that the suit can still go fairly fast given it's flow well. I cant comment on its acro ability as I just flew it for performance. Overall it's a fine suit. Not too much to complain about with it. That said, I'd still prefer a Freak 3 as I think the Freak 3 is the best all-around advanced suit made to date.

How are you going to differentiate between a canopy opening and wingsuit operation that looks like a canopy opening? It is entirely possible, and not even that hard honestly, to replicate what appears to be an opening canopy using a wingsuit. I can dive my wingsuit to a vertical speed of 120 MPH and then over the course of 600' flare up to a 20 MPH decent rate and hold at that rate for several seconds. On a graph annotating only decent rate, the two scenarios would look quite similar. That's why altimeter manufacturers struggle with correctly identifying when the canopy opens with wingsuit use. Many of the digital altimeters out there have a wingsuit mode, but with a large wingsuit they still dont work and they misjudge the opening altitude all of the time because there is no way for them to differentiate between a canopy and a wingsuit when flying a wingsuit that has the ability to gain altitude. With only one sensor indicating only air pressure, the device has no way to determine anything other than fall rate. The only company out there that has had success with this issue that I know of is the AON X2 because it uses GPS to determine canopy opening info so it can measure on all three axis. However, even at that the altimeter misjudges opening altitude sometimes. Even my own AAD sometimes misjudges opening altitude. It does a much better job than most digital altimeters do, but even it gets tricked on rare occasion if I am flying a large race suit and doing flares.