EvilDuck

Hello. Beginner (~300 ws jumps, 200 in a small suit, ~100 in intermediate) wingsuit pilot looking for advice here :) I am trying to learn how to gain as much altitude as possible in my WS, but I really struggle at the moment. I jump a lot of solo jumps where I just dive-level-flare the whole jump using Flysight, but most of the time is can see I waste all that energy I have at the beginning of the flare. I have of course watched and read all videos and articles on the topic. What causes the most confusion for me is the input needed to start transitioning into level flight. In Squirrel video they say "push your toes down". What the hell exactly does that mean? I'm assuming my toes should still remain pointed and stretching the suit. Where should this movement come from? Does it mean adding pressure to the legwing through bending in hips using your abs? I have noticed, my best flares so far (12 and 10 meters (39 and 33 feet)) came from jumps where I did not do a steep dive and was going full power at GR 1+ and then started the flare, which again indicates I waste all power transitioning from the steep dive. Could someone help me out with the advice on this? 

I fly AG Inspire 2 which is very similar to ATC2, here is an example of my better flares (https://skyderby.ru/tracks/51391, https://skyderby.ru/tracks/46946) and here is the example of "wasteful" (https://skyderby.ru/tracks/51356)

So a little update here. I demoed the Winx this weekend and I super loved it. I had a full ZP version. It packs slightly smaller than Storm 150. Openings were super on heading all the time. I tried deployments at the apex of the flare, or after gaining some speed after the flare both were great, although the latter gave me snappier openings (as expected). I liked the slower deployments more, although it always took longer to start deploying because of the burble. The reason I tried faster openings is that's the only way I found to get more consistent openings from my Storm, as fast opening literally give it no time to act out and the swing gives me a great opportunity to grab my risers and pull them the fuck apart. Back to WinX, i had a line twist once, because it came out with one twist (I don't have a back facing camera, but I'm sure the bag spun once in the burble). No problems fixing at all. Flying is a little less fun than Storm, it flies less steep, but it doesn't take forever like for example Pulse I had before and flares much better. Flare was great and very very easy to land, but there was a consistent ~8m/s wind this weekend, so difficult to say. Strongly considering getting one. I might also get my hands on Pilot 7 147 next week so will compare too.

Overall, it was great wingsuiting without a constant fear. Made me much more focused on the actual flying and enjoying my time in the suit flying with others as opposed as getting more and more anxiety with every altitude warning from my audible.

I heard the term "pack to favor center cell inflation", but I was never able to find what that actually means for packing procedure. Any suggestions?

Haha, that made my day. One thing I must say though, apart from openings I love my Storm. On slick jumps it is awesome (again, a bit weird on openings, but not that big of an issue on slick jumps) and fun to fly. I'm not into high performance stuff, so for me it is quite swoopy  But alas, my preferred path is wingsuiting and I'm not rich enough to have 2 rigs, so will have to deal with it

Thank you! I'm outside of US, so I'm not sure if it's very easy to get demo stuff from Squirrel. 

On 11/4/2019 at 3:25 AM, 20kN said:

Alright so a few things. It's a bit hard to tell everything from the video, so I'm making some generalizations.

- When you get linetwists the FIRST thing you do is get the risers even. Look at the slinks and make sure the left and right riser sets are even. If they are not, even them the fuck up pronto. Uneven risers are effectively equivalent to inducing a harness turn into the canopy by which the lines on top of the canopy are uneven. That effects a turn in the canopy and it will start to spiral down on you very quickly (which is what happened in your video). The more you spin under the canopy the more friction you're going to build in the lines making it harder and harder to even the risers up as you spin under the canopy. That's why it's important to get them even quickly, immediately open opening.

- The type of linetwists you experienced are called body twists. They are mostly specific to wingsuiting. They occur when the canopy opens without linetwists, but you spin under the canopy. It often occurs when the risers are loaded unevenly, which in effect throws your body in a spin as soon as the canopy starts to slow you down. The cause of this is failing to fly the opening correctly, and in almost all cases it's because you dipped one shoulder low which made one riser effectively shorter than the other.

To reduce the occurrence of dipping a shoulder low and causing this chain-reaction events, look at the horizon through the opening and keep your eyes on it so you have a reference. When you collapse your arm wings to reach back for the PC, fly with your shoulders to ensure you're still flying straight. Keep your hands on the BOC for a quick sec to make sure you dont start turning or dipping a shoulder low. You can practice this on a jump by flying your WS with both hands on your BOC. Try flying straight with only your shoulders.

-If you do have linetwits with uneven risers and the canopy starts to spiral down you, try to twist the linetwists down onto the risers which in some cases will allow you to straighten the risers up. If that doesent work in a very short amount of time, cut main away.

- You took too long to initiate EPs. Dont mess around with a canopy spiraling down. If you cant make progress on it within the first three seconds if it spinning like that, chop it immediately. In the USA, the first three fatalities of 2019 were all from what you experienced. Canopies that spiraled down on linetwits and the pilot ended up spiraling down too low. That has killed a lot of skydivers over the years. You burn through altitude very quickly when the canopy is spinning like that and you have less time than you think.

- The Storm is not an ideal wingsuiting canopy as it will spiral down easily like you experienced. However, far more important is flying the openings correctly and getting the risers even if you have linetwists.

 

thank you for so much for the information and advice.

I believe reason I took long for EPs was because I am pulling a little higher now (1200m, which is about 4000 feet) and I thought I had some time to try and fix it. I don't remember exactly now, but I was still above decision altitude (700m in Sweden, ~2250 feet) when chopped. But I agree in retrospect that was dumb.

Thank you so much everyone for your comments and help. I had a little break from skydiving since the post, but I have started jumping again recently and hoping to improve my situation. Unfortunately I had another very similar cutaway again a week ago  To be honest, this introduced a lot of anxiety about WS jumping, which is a shame.

I think I have improved my body position and pull technique in my last jumps compared to previous, but still what I experience with the Storm that during openings it just loooves to randomly turn one way or another or sometimes makes a 180 after fully inflated. This happens even on slick jumps. I know people wingsuit on Storms successfully, so I was wondering if anyone maybe has any storm-specific packing advice to help avoiding that behavior? I also got a semi-stowless bag and a large skysnatch since the last cutaway. I think it helps, but still I can see sometimes it just wants to twist me.

Here is the video of my latest jump where I believe I did alright, yet, the mofo still wanted to twist me and did a 360 after fully inflated: 

Also might get my hands on WinX 150 demo this month. Should be interesting. Heard only good things about it.

Thanks. I will browse that thread.

Hello. I am new to this forum so I will start with a brief intro. I am Alexander. I have 498 skydives at the moment of writing this post out of which ~70 are wingsuit jumps. I jump at Skydive Stockholm in Sweden.

The best way to illustrate my problem is this video. This happened to me this weekend. The problem is it's the second time it has happened to me in 2 months in just 70 WS jumps. 428 other jumps, of which ~200 are in a high performance one-piece tracksuit (Airglide Mono) and never was even close to cutting away or having line twists like that. Needless to say, it makes me very anxious about jumping wingsuit, which is a shame, since that's what I was aiming for with skydiving. I want to try ws base one day, but with problems like that I know I shouldn't even think about it now.

Does anyone have any good suggestions, packing tips words of wisdom, how I should approach fixing this?

Current canopy is PD Storm 150, with a wing load of about 1.3.

Thank you.