lurch

Check it out Thanks to Drunk for rendering these from .CSV. Any questions? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I never claimed to be either the boss of anything or the best. Far from it. I compete so I can test my skills against pilots better than I am, so that I may improve and get better myself. I -may- be the first to attempt to actually document and perform repeatable climbs, I only think that because nobody else seems to have tried to do so yet to my knowledge, but that has nothing to do with me, just means maybe nobody else has got around to it yet. What exactly is your problem with that? State your objection clearly please, your attempts at mocking or sarcasm only confuse the issue. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok I got it to zoom IN, but now it doesn't zoom OUT. Anyway the thing I want it to do is display altitude/vert/horizontal speed overlaid on each other. I've been told Paralog is available in a limited free version but I've developed a strong aversion to "free version" software mostly because only AFTER you download, install and configure it do you discover that the one function you actually wanted it to do is locked off or disabled and that of course is the part they want you to pay for. So I just expect the free version to jerk me around and constantly demand that I upgrade to the full version. I suppose I might as well just deal with it give it a try and see... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Agreed. I spent half the time before posting the starter to this thread studying the forward speeds involved. I can put em up as screengrabs here too, but the free software is rather...simple and does not allow for any overlays or manipulation/zooming/closer examination of the plots relative to each other. No offense to Tom who wrote it but it is so very elementary of a piece of software as to be nearly useless. Most of the basic functions I'd expect out of such a viewer simply do not exist. Zoom-in, finer time divisions, display of the actual values at any point in the graph... much of it, all I can do is eyeball the graph and take a guess as to what value a given spot represents. One of the more interesting bits visible in one of the graphs is the plot of forward speed after exit. Shows I used the throw of the plane to stay at about a 10mph fallrate or less (I was hanging out well above the plane watching it go) until I finally stalled out entirely at about 40mph forward. Flipping back and forth in the program between the various displays it DOES have show, for example, that a 5mph climb took 122mph forward, and left me with 65mph forward remaining when there was no longer any useful energy left to be extracted and the suit returned to neutral freefall. I can put up even more screengrabs of horizontal speed as well as the altitude graphs that show clear climbs as well, but somebody else would have to overlay them somehow to be able to really make much sense of them in relation to their vertical speed values cause I ain't got photoshop and I don't know how to use it even if I did. I'm doing this on a budget and I can't splash on Paralog right now. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You're welcome for datas. I suggestes you learns to reads datas befores shooting off your mouth about the datas. Please examine the labeled time divisions on the flysight viewer softwares. 4:04:19 to 4:28:61. So a major block is about 24 seconds wides. So each individuals blocks is approximatelys 4.5 to 5 seconds wides. The planeoutses and climbses you are trying to mockses took exactly one block division to complete. Meaning the peaks are not a 5G anything, the peakses were produceds by a controlled planeoutses that tookses about 4 to 5 secondses total to achieveses the changeses in directionses shown. Consider your objection beaten to death, granps. Next time make sure you've got a clue what you're talking about before you start throwing peanuts. (drops lead pipe) Who's next! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

So. I put two more flights on the thing. I added a 10 foot bridle with a 28 inch PC and the deployments were both perfect. Retraction from previous review: It is not that the suit cannot be shut down, its that it requires a very specific technique, and the same lazy "just squeeze it" that worked on an S-Bird doesn't cut it with this suit. I found that bringing my knees up like I'm sitting down in a chair breaks the wing pressurization and allows the suit to be fairly easily shut down, after all. The armwings still present what feels like an alarmingly animated bulge behind the arms when I go for the pull, but a careful, measured movement does overcome the air pressure enough to deflate the thing allowing access to the handle. The grippers just get out of the way on their own. Once I got it tuned up and got used to it the deployment felt about the same as my S-bird, maybe a little steadier actually, except for the whole "squeeze the wings down" part. The suit still can't be entirely turned off, but it can be tamed and scrunched enough that its sheer scale and bulk no longer feel threatening. The 10-foot bridle seems to have totally eliminated the vicious off-heading problem, as expected. Glad I kept one handy in my "just in case" gear file. Consider such a bridle mandatory with this suit. Both flights were test solos specifically intended to demonstrate the suit's climbing ability and the envelope in which it will do so. I did 4 planeouts in 2 jumps, with slightly different approaches to each, and managed to get what looks like a fairly good representative curve of the suit's capability. The first planeout I did from essentially a standing start, just barely above a normal cruise, fallrate of 45 mph, typical while flocking with medium large suits. The result was a not-quite-zero planeout to 5mph. So now I know whats "not-quite-enough" to either zero it or climb. With this maneuver as an outlier I've planted a stake just outside of true-zero territory as a marker. The next punchout I allowed the suit to build up a little speed to a fallrate typical of a mixed-skills mixed-suit flock flying dirty. Initiating a deliberate climb from 78 mph translated to what appears to be about a 6mph climbrate. A curve drawn between those two initiation speeds would show a minimum speed for levelling off at around 50 to 55 mph and a minimum speed for climbing of what looks like 55 to 65 mph. Sooner or later I'll hit it at exactly the right speed in between, and after collecting a few samples of those, I'll be able to neatly fill in the holes with actual speeds for the whole range map, but for now I'm content with having bracketed it. I'd guess that by 70 mph the climb is miniscule...3-5 mph and by 60 its very hit or miss, but we know that 78 was definitely more than enough, and so the actual flatline is a roughly predictable distance below that speed. After seeing the results from the first test flight showing that I had succeeded in hitting and deliberately not-hitting the desired results from roughly the speeds I expected, I went up again with the specific intention of showing at least two climbs in one skydive just to beat the point in with a lead pipe that not only are climbs doable in this suit, but they are repeatably doable, at will, under precisely documentable conditions. What I got was a GPS track showing exactly the two climbs I wanted, when I wanted them. The first maneuver showed a 5mph climb from 95 MPH, the second showed a 10MPH climb from 85 MPH. I'm not sure if this just means my technique is still a little rough or that it was more efficient at 85 than at 95, or simply that I just did it better the second time, but both attempted climbs did in fact show as clear climbs on the GPS. Observation: Jarno had pointed out that the altimeter could have been fooled with my initial result showing a 21mph climb by air pressure. Since I had no decent track for that one I couldn't argue with it or prove it wrong, and it seemed likely enough. But now that I get a chance to play back Altitrack recordings while comparing them to Flysight readings, it appears that far from being fooled, assuming the GPS -is- in fact fairly accurate, the Altitrack consistently either ignores or UNDER reads climbs. A climb of 10mph by GPS shows as 2 to 6 MPH when played back on the altimeter itself, and one of the two aggressive climbs barely showed on the altimeter at all. In retrospect it seems quite likely that the rise in air pressure pushed in front of the suit during such maneuvers would effectively camoflage the climb from the altimeter, and the alti will only show a climb when it is so overwhelming that the resultant drop in air pressure overcomes the artificially exaggerated rise in air pressure the altimeter is exposed to in the displacement wave produced ahead of the suit itself. So not only would I lay a bet that my first recorded 21 mph climb was "accurate", but I'd bet that if I do it again with the GPS on, the GPS will reveal that a 21mph climb indicated by the altimeter is in fact more like a 25-30+ mph climb. On closer review it also appears the Altitrack consistently reports higher fallrates than the GPS indicates at the same moment. They agree with each other about the moves, the scale of them, and when, but both dives in the doubleclimb track showed as slightly over 100mph by altimeter, and well under 100mph by GPS. Nuff said. Let the feeding frenzy begin. Anybody wants to challenge this or thinks its fake, ask and I'll send you the original GPS tracks by email. I can do these all day long and prove it again and again till the cows come home. As I build further experience with this suit I'll fill in the rest of the gaps and get a feel for exactly how much climb or flatline I can get from exactly what speeds, but suffice to say that, it would appear the suit can climb, beyond a shadow of a doubt, verifiable by multiple instruments at once, at-will and on command, so long as I have sufficient fallrate available from which to harvest the necessary energy. The Game Has Changed. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok, Mister Desert, I'm not really sure here, was that a compliment, a sarcastic insult, or both? I've never been compared to an in-flight magazine before so I'm not quite sure how to take that... I hate in-flight magazines, I can't say I find them authoritative, mostly just boring... Ok, so you're telling me I'm authoritatively boring? Right. Thanks. I'll get to work on it, my prose could use more clowns anyway. ALWAYS need more clowns... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hey Luke, I didn't say "the flocking speeds I'd be doing in a flock made of these suits" I just said flocking speeds. A flock made of these things would be operating at speeds more like 25 to 45. I mean, a typical group made of mixed experience, smaller birds, Phantoms, Raptors, Rbirds Tbirds n such, I'll see fallrates from the 60s through to the low 80s, obviously getting less as the suits get bigger and the birds get better, but right now if I went and flocked with a group and that group cruises at about 60, 65, I should get a flat zero or a miniclimb at will. Besides, this whole review and thread wasn't about objectivity. It was about the fact that what the suit did was so out of hand it got a pilot like me, all cranked up. I love my Sbird but it was definitely getting stale. I didn't see anything coming along that was gonna get any better till I got ahold of one of these things, and it has exceeded my expectations so badly that yes, my objectivity was shot, but yes, it looks like almost any fallrate north of about 55+ will get me a climb when I want it. Yesterday's results neatly bracketed the go/no go range for extracting an at-will climb out of the suit. 45? No go, not...quite. 78? Climb with enthusiasm. North of THAT, get whatever. Anyway when I get the screengrabs grabbed I'll make new thread about it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Not long. Couple seconds, max. Its the exact equivalent to pulling a weak high-speed exit equal to whatever speed you're doing when you punch it. So unless you dive like a MOTHERF'Ker -WAY- past 200+MPH don't expect to get any impressive climbs. The energy exchange efficiency is still horrible. As wingsuit climbs unpowered by augmented aircraft launch speeds go, you're lucky to get +50 feet, IF that. Anybody getting a 100+ foot climb is GOOD. Today was basic cruise/dive/punch tests that just showed I had a good handle on this thing"s theoretical range and could in fact establish a climb from commonly available fallrates. When I sober up and my underwear dries out again I'll put up more detail on how and under what conditions the suit will allow a climb plus GPS from both flights today. By now I have no doubt left at all. My eyes, ears, inner ears, Altitrack and Flysight all tell me I got climbs on demand except when I tried demanding it below 50mph fallrate and every time I DID demand a climb above that speed, I got one, verified by two independent instruments that work two totally different ways. If theres any better way to prove "I go up" than what I've got, I don't know of it. Look for a new review shortly... This suit deserves two threads one for first impressions the other for reality...except reality doesn't seem to be the letdown I expected... quite the opposite actually... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Gray, you big grizzly bastard... My first real impression of you ten years ago was this enormous beard with eyes looming out of the dark by the fire while I was in AFF, telling me "Don't be a dumbass" Naturally I didn't want to let the giant scary awesome guy down. I listened. I learned. I made it in the sport. Out of a lot of people offering me advice you were one of the few whose opinion really mattered to me. I wanted to make you proud, and later when it turned out I did in fact have what it took to cut it as a jumper and then a wingsuit pilot, you let me know that I had. If it weren't for you I might have ended up remaining a bit of a recluse but you ran around telling everybody this Lurch character may be a freak but he's ok... You told me "Come on out to Jumptown I've been tellin' em all about you" I go to Jumptown and seems half the reason I got a warm welcome was "Gray says you're cool" Because of you I know where slack is...over there (vague gesture) somewhere...not here... Because of you I really gave a damn about doing the job right. Not wanting to disappoint you I made sure to never...ever...miss the airfield at your place. The couple times I -almost- did, and landed at the very edge of the field, I knew you'd been watching because you were there with your truck, waiting for me, before I'd even landed. I'd see your truck coming for me as I came in dodging treetops and know everything was gonna be cool cause Gray's got my back. Nothing lifts the heart like getting into a sketchy circumstance, and seeing a friend coming for you. I took building professional-grade air skills so seriously because you expected me to. That high expectation saved my life more times than I can count. Out of everyone at Jumptown you were the first I'd look for when I showed and the one I was always the most happy to see. My first priority was to go find and hug the big guy who had so MUCH to do with getting me started and teaching me to survive. To me Jumptown is now a ghost town...almost all my friends have gone. Gary. Charlie. Howie. Dennis Senior. Muppet. And now, hurting most of all, You. No worries big guy, I'll just toughen up a little more. I'll deal with it. I'll move on. I'll just keep flying like you told me. When I was told you were gone, I twisted away, shouting in denial anger and disbelief. No way. Not Gray. I went out back and screamed rage at the sky so the ancestors will know a great warrior is on his way. They heard me. They'll be holding a special place by the fire for you. They're probably throwing a huge afterlife bash in your honor right now. Save me a spot by the fire friend, I've got a life of my own to finish, might last another 50 years but like all lives it'll end someday, probably as unexpectedly as yours did. You're one of the people I'll most look forward to seeing again someday around that fire in the clearing at the end of the path. Just be there. I'll bring the beer. -Lurch Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Luke, take another look at how Skwrl saw the suit as I was flying it. I wasn't diving...I was simply flying scrunched trying to stay down with him. The resulting rebound was not a result of putting the nose down, diving hard, piling on the speed and then punching it like I'd do in competition, all I had to do was stop trying to keep up. So far as this suit's physics go, the suit appears to consider simply flying dirty and staying down with others to BE a dive since its so far out of the suit's range the only way to jack the fallrate that high without pointing the nose at the ground is to scrunch up in a mess. Anyway this is all so much noise till I get more data and back it up to the satisfaction of you and every other naysayer out there and this, I will do. Stay tuned... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Thats why i said frame by frame analysis...I'm sure somebody like Spot, expert in video data, could produce a piece of video where a frame by frame of the canopy's movement allows its descent to be precisely quantified and subtracted from the wingsuit's "visual climb" and any vertical separation velocity remaining has to BE a climb. And who says it has to be a high performance canopy in front risers? I'd only do THAT if I WANTED to create an exaggerated illusion of a climb. What I want is the opposite, so people stop claiming it IS illusion. To minimize the differential illusion, I'd try it relative to a big, slow-ass lightly loaded 260 student ride thats barely moving at all, even have the pilot ride in deep brakes so its the next best thing to a standstill balloon platform. If the pilot of that canopy then sees me rocketing on past, at a 45 degree angle doing 30 UPWARD relative to that canopy, subtract that canopy's 5-10mph floaty descent (and hang a GPS on HIM too just for the sake of thoroughness) and you STILL have an unmistakable undeniable and totally provable climb. Lets see how thoroughly I can prove this. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I think yes, thats the one. I never actually looked at it before but it looks exactly like what I'd have expected to see on my own track. Now that I know to try another setting lets see if I can produce a track like that myself on demand... Just to make the Lukes of the world happy. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I just got a message incidentally, telling me I've got the GPS configured wrong anyway, the stock setting is apparently already proven to be confused by climbs and the 2G mode model is the more accurate for this kind of thing. I haven't done anything to the settings yet, the thing is stock, I simply added some juice to the battery without bothering to charge it all the way, turned it on threw it in my wing and went. In other words, the one thing you'll accept as evidence, for these three runs, isn't. Turns out I was using it even wronger than I thought I was. So I'm going to go set it, try it again, and see if I can get you the track you ask for. I'll be fascinated to see if I do the same maneuvers with the different setting what exactly is it going to show? Stay tuned kids... I'm not bothering to put the early stuff I've collected up on PPC because I see no need to clutter the system with what may or may not be garbage tracks on introductory flights where I wasn't trying to produce a recordingworthy flight anyway. When I have a decent result worth bothering to put up and crow about, I will. Theres nothing wrong with skepticism... but just because I feel like I'm being heckled, I AM going to see if I can get enough results to beat MY point in with a lead pipe ASAP. Whos going to eat their words...you, or me? Probably me, really, but the experience provided by that suit, says maybe not. ALL my gear says I climbed, the GPS just says I didn't climb, MUCH. And it was set wrong. Be interesting to see... set to mode 2, will it show no climb at all and I'm full of shit? Or will it show that yeah, it was a helluva climb but the first setting rendered the gadget almost totally blind to it? Few more days and I'll stop by this thread again and report back. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Luke please pardon my exasperation... My problem is with the first impulse being "Nah aah, did not unless you back it up wit GPS so lets see it!" That review was not written FOR you. It was not written for any of the birds whose first impulse is to demand charts and graphs. Its a review of my impressions of the first three flights, a description of what it was like, a report that its extraordinary enough to have produced an extraordinary altimeter result appearing to indicate the climb I felt and an expression of my opinion of the suit, not a rigorous comparative performance analysis. If I have to justify every little thing and turn of phrase to you to get you to stop calling bullshit, consider this then: Multigen jump: Taken literally, thats about how it plays out. Take an XBird and have em fly with a Classic. The Xbird will look like I looked flying with Skwrl, folded in half and still outfloating it. The Xbird will struggle to stay down with the Classic and outfly the classic the second it opens up a little. The Apache just did the same flown next to an Xbird piloted by an experienced cameraman. What I got from the experience of the first three flights was that with this suit, it was easy...so easy... to planeout to speeds that produced the same zoomy-uppy sensation of a climbing high speed exit followed by a zero-G hover sensation as my speed bled off at the top accompanied by windblast that died away to near-total silence and a dramatic shift in the direction of travel of everything in my visual field that you'd normally only see when you flare a canopy to a popup stall at medium-high altitude, all without tearing my arms off the way any other suit would doing a maneuver twice as strenuous for half the reward. Now, my eyes say I climbed. My ears say I topped out by the silence at the top. Whens the last time -you- flew a suit that could turn off the windblast just by opening up and bearing down a little? My inner ears say I got the same boosty-uppy shit a high speed exit gives you and my altimeter seems to think the same, plus a GPS that, although just as doubtful as the altimeter, also appears to agree that something climbey took place. At the end of the Gransee comp, Oliver was congratulated on his run for having showed a climb as well...on the GPS even. I never even bothered to look at the trace...I believed them. I didn't bother to crow that I think its bullshit unless they let me see the numbers myself to prove it. I was competing against this suit, or rather its immediate predecessor, and I'd got a pretty good idea what it could do from seeing it in action. I was excited about it even then. Over enthusiastic..? Really? Try one yourself and judge again. If that wasn't a climb, it was the best most convincing illusion of it reality has thrown me yet. The sudden change to the landscape sight picture REALLY got my attention. If it wasn't a climb it was so close TO it in sight, sound, feel, result, and effect on my hardware that to all available senses, -including the GPS- it appears to have BEEN one. This is the part where I stop quibbling over whether and how accurate my gear is and whether I can prove whatever to whoever and just go "Holy shit the suit goes back up" I think the people who will come out looking a bit silly in the long run are the pedantic who will continue to insist "going up isn't happening unless you back it by GPS" even while SEEING wingsuits regularly climbing past canopies as these things become popular, enough people start messing around with them and a large database of their results is accumulated. We have a suit here of a scale thats starting to get awful close to Luigi's microcanopies... do you really think having the suit be able to flare to a stop or a minor climb is so farfetched? I'll make you a little bet: That over the next few weeks or months, sooner or later I'll be able to produce an actual video, from a canopy flyby, visually SHOWING the suit in a climb, and somebody can sit and do a frame by frame analysis proving the visually evident climb rate exceeds the canopy's descent rate just to eliminate any possibility of illusion, with a GPS track that still says it never happened... and people like you will refuse to believe their eyes and ears if the fricking gadget doesn't say it happened. Not only that, lets change the picture a bit. I'll bet I can do a canopy ride, flare the canopy to a popup or an outright crumpling stall at a given altitude, and half the time the GPS will say THAT never happened either. In fact I think I will go and DO just that thing, just to establish for myself what I can and can not expect the GPS to actually see. If the GPS tells us that my canopy does not in fact actually flare or go up, are you going to believe that over the evidence that yes, it does, and I typically land with it? Lets find out. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Thanks Drunk... I'm not sure how charged it was, nor was I using it right. I tossed it into my wing as an afterthought and fired it up in the plane hoping it'd get something interesting. My focus was simply having a flight or three not making sure I followed the correct operation procedure for the widget. I don't have paralog yet and the available free flysight viewer doesn't seem to do anything useful beyond a couple graphs and a google earth overlay. The first two runs were clearly garbage on the fallrate graph...huge spiky graphs that made no sense. The third run I'm calling a climb, makes a bit more sense and after staring at it for awhile it sort of resembles the behavior in the jump as dived, but doesn't match known similar circumstances and the details it recorded make as little sense as a climb or the lack of it do. For example it does show a big steady buildup in speed as I was staying with Skwrl... however it is a single steep slope up to over 100 mph fallrate, with a brief stop in the 40mph range and Skwrl, (in his Sbird for that one) although fatigued, would have had to be diving limp and headdown to force me up to 100 staying with him. Horizontal speed at that point peaks at 148.3mph (238.7 KPH) which I'm also taking with a big grain of salt, I seriously doubt I was going THAT fast chasing a tired S-bird. Lowest fallrate at the bottom of the flare shows as 17.5mph which isn't unreasonable, if slightly disappointing, but would be less disappointing if I thought that 17 was any more accurate than the rest. Lastly, the Altitude display DOES show a solid, clear climb. A small one only. The altitude graph is a single solid line down from about 14,000 feet with one zigzag in it showing a sudden stop at 6294 feet, a popup to 6336 feet and a resumption of descent after that. I did not pull until quite some time later which does show clearly. If I felt like smacking Luke for being obnoxious I could crow about this as proof except I doubt that little climb as much as I doubt the fallrate graph because they don't match. It means the numbers the GPS derived or the program is displaying don't even agree with themselves. The altitude graph shows me ascending slightly at the same moment another graph of the same dive shows a 17.5mph fallrate. One or the other number is bogus or the program is doing a piss poor job of interpreting and displaying it. But the bottom line is there looks to be an inaccuracy in the only half-clear run I've got thats at least 15-25 mph wide or else the program is ignoring certain data and making it worse. Either way I'll put up some decent runs on PPC when I have some actual decent runs to put up. My focus was getting to know the suit, not producing engineering data to satisfy the petulant heckling of nitpicking netsurfers demanding that I throw down proof to their satisfaction before my fucking underwear has even dried from the LAST flight. Anyway I'm going to simply keep collecting em, next few runs I'm going to follow the quickstart procedure properly including a solid ground bootup and see if I can repeat and improve on what this thing gets, see if the results make a little more sense, maybe buy a copy of paralog. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Luke... The term "ninja skills" or "ninja tricks" is essentially a made-up comic technical term for specific subtleties that are difficult to teach and even harder to quantify in any meaningful way except by results. I'd have thought it silly and self-deprecating enough already that people would not mistake it for skygod attitude. Silly me. Speaking of results, you say my performance appears substandard to you... for awhile that run you mention was not only the #3 longest freefall ever recorded behind Toby and Helmuts records, but that one competition put me in the top 5 stats in two of three disciplines and made me the only pilot in a suit as weak as an S-bird to do so, a distinction that last I checked, I still hold... beating a bunch of records set by others flying XBirds and Apaches in the process. Although I have recently been unseated from top5 time by some newer results, I remain the #5 distance record and still the only top 5 competitor to take an S that far. In what way is this substandard? Do I have to actually take a #1 spot to be judged proficient? And lastly, aside from the radical altimeter results, which I have every reason to believe I can reproduce at will, Ive only just started using a flysight of my own, still figuring out how to get clean tracks, (using it without a lock on the ground first doesnt seem to work) gimme a bit to collect a bunch of data before you jump to scorn me willya? Jeez. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

So. There have been a variety of solutions tried by others. This is mine. I wanted simple, straightforward, and as much as I can guarantee it, bulletproof. How it was done: 1: After doing a trial setup and discovering the mod was definitely going to be necessary, I put the rig and suit on as they were. Obviously no way this was going to work. Handles were almost in the armpits. 2: I traced out on the surface of the suit exactly where the lift web and handles actually were, underneath. 3: I took a razor blade to my brand-new never-jumped suit. This took a bit of nerve. I made 3 cuts for each handle forming a cute little door the size and shape of the opening I wanted with the door facing inward, toward the center of the suit. 4: I pulled the material of the door behind the lift web, which placed only the handle and the associated section of main liftweb outside the suit entirely. 5: I added a bit of velcro as a placeholder just to hold the door shut behind the liftweb and allow me to assess the resulting geometry. Long story short, it worked. 6: I took it to my local rigger, Don Mayer. He has helped me with a number of my crazier projects over the years and he was good for this one, too. After showing him what I had done to the suit and explaining what I was trying to do, he jumped into it, adding much larger door-extensions of velcro to the door and doorframe, and hemming the razorblade slashes neatly with binding tape. By the time he was done, I couldn't tell his work from Tony factory stock, myself. 7: Final suit reassembly: I put the whole mess together, pulled the rig through the holes and closed the doors behind it. Then I ran around wearing it, bugging random friends to try to find anything wrong with it or any possible failure mode I might have missed. Kinda hoping somebody would spot whatever weakness might be hidden in this idea that I might not see myself. A little peer review. 8: After thoroughly examining and re-reexamining this, I jumped it. I couldn't find any way this could possibly fail. The velcro/door forms a 3d interlock in such a way as to make it pretty much impossible to either pull the handles back inside, or accidentally pull the handles themselves, or somehow prevent the handles from being pulled. You'd have to tear the suit apart around me in order to disturb this geometry enough to affect any part of the rig involved. The doorframe sort of grips the liftweb without touching the handles themselves. As an afterthought for EXTRA security I might add a piece of velcro to the liftweb itself and a matching piece to the suit so the two are not only interlaced but bonded together... but it doesn't seem necessary. Neither the suit nor the rig can move enough relative to the other to actually disrupt or disturb this setup. So If you're a skydiver who has been drooling over the new suit but choking on the whole handle-access problem, this might be a good way to make the suit useful to you. Make sure to take extra-special good care of your rigger after. I could have done this myself but my sewing skills are atrocious...Don made this look Factory. I owe you one, man.

Sabre1 120 packed straight hang, no nose stuffing or rolling, 3 rolls tail and thats all. Very short line bites in the stows, several feet of the lineset freestowed on the bottom of the container, packed grommet-up. Extremely resistant to line twists this way. As in, haven't had twists in well over 1000 jumps. So far so good. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok will do... Brief detail: Up till now I've used an 8.5 foot bridle combined with a very particular wingsuit-specific packjob and a deployment technique best described as "Throw and Scrunch" to minimize the size of the burble. Up till now it has been extremely reliable and consistent in results as well. Trouble is, with the Apache, the Scrunch part, is all but impossible. Depending on how you define it, the suit effectively cannot be shut down, and this ties in with what Skwrl just said about experience required to fly this puppy. You can make it smaller, but you can't turn it OFF. The best I could do was to narrow the tailwing to about the width of a wide chair and that was with locks OPEN. I sure as hell could not squeeze it empty, not even close. The one flight I did with all locks totally shut, (Flight #2) I couldn't even narrow it significantly. First flight was with armwings locked and taillock open about 4 inches. I could squeeze the tail down a little. Those 4 inches of zipper travel make a HUGE difference come deployment time... forget narrowing the wing... with that last 4 inches closed, I couldn't even do THAT. It was like trying to crush an inflated tire between my knees. The third flight, I left the armwing locks 90% open with the zipper only an inch or two away from the full-open stop and the tailwing lock 100% open and the suit STILL could not be shut down. The arms could be shut down a bit more effectively than the tail because elbows against ribcage give far more leverage with which to deform the wings, but the armwings will continue to develop dramatic wing effect no matter WHAT I do with them. The resulting burble behind this thing compared to the burble I left behind a shutdown S-bird has to be phenomenal. All three deployments so far have been firm and twist-free but all three were also somewhat off-heading toward the right, increasing with each jump, last one being so asymmetrical that I got a nasty riser whack upside the head and neck on the left side as the canopy deployed far off to the right. I think this behavior is being triggered by the act of beginning to look and lean to the right about 2 seconds after the throw. With each one, I thought I was beginning to perceive a PC hesitation or delay, which I was rather expecting anyway and have been deploying high in anticipation of while I see how it actually works out. My best guess as to what is happening behind my back at that moment is my PC isn't grabbing any significant air and is likely flopping loosely around in the right hand side of the burble until the delay starts to get my attention in a second or two and as I start to look and lean one way to check it out, I'm disturbing that status lockup and getting a launch, but a launch that takes off in an extremely asymmetrical fashion. The first one or two I could just write up as variance or error...can't draw too many conclusions from just one or two jumps but three times the same way back to back makes a trend and this will likely continue until I alter my gear properly for this. I'll be getting a 12 foot bridle with at least a 26 to 28 inch ZP pilot chute as soon as possible. I could continue to jump this configuration and try to find a refined technique that will correct the problem or see if I can make it deploy more cleanly by forcing a symmetrical posture throughout and trying to keep the wings small enough but its probably not the smartest way to go. The cause and nature of the issue were pretty predictable and the solution well known already. Next post I'll put up pics of the skydiving handle-access mod for discussion. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Ok to address several replies in one... I'm 135 lb, 5 foot 10. I'd have to go get a tape measure, I've never actually checked what my wingspan is. I can't speak for Gary nor do I know exactly what he had in mind when he set up his approach, but what I notice about the way he came in is that he spent much of his flight swaying from side to side before locking down into a straight line for the last few hundred feet. To my mind this says he came in with a lot less speed and energy than he -could- have. I'd imagine his actual flight profile and thus available range was terribly restricted by the necessity of -not missing the target-! Probably had to settle for whatever forward speed and fallrate he could get when he actually aimed it at the target. The suit didn't appear to be -really- flying until shortly before landing. What I'm saying is that if the suit were a canopy, he looks as if he arrived with the canopy already half flared-out. I think that if he had had a longer, shallower approach run with more time for the suit to settle instead of that steep and wobbly approach, we would indeed have seen him arrive at a near-zero or true-zero fallrate, and/or a visible climb/popup before landing. And I think thats also exactly why we did NOT see those things. If he HAD, he'd have overflown his target and missed entirely because thats what an all-out zero-planeout IS. Its not that he couldn't do so, its that he chose not to so that he wouldn't miss. re: differences... The difference between an Apache and an X or Sbird is FAR more than simply "a little more wing". To really get it, you'd have to see a sample of, say, those three suits laid out side by side. The A is similar in size and appearance to the X series at a casual glance if one doesn't look too closely at it but the construction, characteristics and actual shapes are VERY different. I haven't flown an Xbird myself actually...never came across one that fit me well enough to bother test flying it. The X itself was extremely impressive, but the fit of the ones I got my hands on was poor enough that I'd get better performance out of a properly fit S-bird than I would have out of an X that fits me like a tent so I didn't bother. To my eyes, the X and X2 are both essentially hyperextended S-Birds. Same suit, just a little bigger. Its also why I never bought one. I knew it wouldn't get me THAT much more performance than an S, especially since skinny guys really don't load suits that size very well, and I suspected the armwing loading would simply be too extreme for my skinny frame. I think the X's are ideal especially for heavier guys wanting serious low-fallrate flocking, but what I'm trying to drive at is that the X's are still suits whose design is three separate wings, on a suit, and still derived from the same basic chassis layout of all the "-Bird" series. The Apache is something else entirely...designed as a unit. It doesn't feel like 3 wings...it feels like one giant wing with 3 major control nodes of feet, left and right arms. The "-Bird" series (and all prior suits I've seen) are suits with wings attached to them. The Apache is a single massive inflatable wing, with a suit shape inside it. Laid out flat, the wings still take a clear, classic wing profile seen from the side. It is especially obvious if one looks at the side of the wing where the grippers are attached. And last, is the nature of the pressurization of the suit and how effectively it makes its own shape, allowing all the user's effort to go into precisely selecting the suit's shape instead of spending the lion's share of the effort on merely keeping the suit open and the wings down. My S-Bird, I typically left the locks wide open unless I was either flying with/taking on a particularly floaty friend or just flying a solo where I wanted everything the suit has got. But any way I fly it, the S-bird takes continuous effort to actually maintain a fallrate in the mid-20's to mid-30's. The S-Bird itself is a fantastic suit and will remain my suit for flying with others, but its just not even in the same class as the A. Closing the locks acts as a supercharger for the S-Bird and makes it far easier to produce low fallrates, but relax and go limp and an S-Bird will pretty much fall out of the sky like a rock, as will every other suit I have ever flown. The Apache, different story. To stay DOWN with an X-Bird I had to deliberately go totally limp, then start winching in as much wing as I could until it fell fast enough to stay with the X. If I simply totally relax, go limp and do NOTHING the Apache will keep right on flying anyway at fallrates I still had to work for in other suits. Even with all locks left wide open, the Apache's internal pressure and self-shape are far, FAR more tight and rigid than my Sbird was, all closed up. If you scaled them in sequence, it is as if Tony skipped several grades that would have been in between. An imaginary series would be...Tbird Rbird Sbird Xbird, "Ybird" and the Apache is about 2 more steps past the performance grade the "Zbird" would have occupied had it ever existed. Bottom line is, although the increase in size relative to previous suits isn't all that dramatic, the design is so highly evolved that every significant control factor is amplified far beyond anything available in suits of similar size and appearance. Its weakest setting starts about a "Ybird" and a "Zbird" PAST where an Xbird or an Sbird max out. The single most impressive and dominant impression I got from it so far has been the fact that you get all this for zero effort whereas the best possible results from an Sbird, bought at a price of inhuman effort, still fall FAR short of where an Apache's envelope even BEGINS, flown limp with the locks open. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'll try to be brief and to the point. I have put three flights on mine and I am thunderstruck. Up until I flew this wing I wasn't sure I believed a suit that flies like this was even possible. It is. I am jawdropped. Stunned. Completely, utterly, floored. The suit blew my mind. This thing let me go back up. My altimeter registered a fallrate of -21mph. Yes you read that right. Minus 21 mph. At will. It can climb. Easily. Pretty much whenever you want to. It was not a fluke of airflow, a data spike or an artifact of altimeter position. Playback of the maneuver from altimeter records shows a clean smooth rampdown to 0mph, continuing past baseline through the teens to -20, -19, -21mph, gradually slowing and reversing once again past zero into normal flight as I went over the top and bled off what little speed was required to get this. I didn't even know my altimeter could DO that! It feels exactly like a high speed exit except I don't need a CASA or a Skyvan to do it anymore. Just an act of will. It can be done just on the energy carried by flying with other suits. An actual dive is not even necessary. My experience with wingsuits is extensive and spans nine years of wingsuit development. Nothing I have flown came anywhere near to what this suit is capable of. This is a quantum leap forward in performance and has opened up a shocking new range of speeds, flights and possibilities. It goes so far beyond anything I ever expected to get out of a suit I found myself sputtering enthusiastic gibberish in foreign languages I don't even SPEAK, trying to describe this after landing. I have sought after flight like this for my entire career. Never quite believing in it but chasing it all the same. Its here. Its real. And I get to fly it because I went and bought one. My Altitrack logged deployment the first time I twitched a wing after exit resulting in an inadvertant little planeout below 21 mph. However the Altitrack continues recording to the ground, so it does capture every maneuver regardless of whether it thinks I'm under canopy or not. Playback of the records it is producing show flight results so impossible that last week I'd have laughed at any pilot claiming them. Its default fallrate range, flown in a relaxed, effortless manner ranges from roughly 9-39mph with a 135 lb pilot. Flown dirty, it can be used to stay with x2's S-Birds and similar large suits but it is difficult to restrain the suit to the limitations of other suits and so far as I am aware there is nothing else in existence that even comes close. This suit creates and occupies a whole new class by itself. There are all other suits and then there is THIS one. And this one goes, Beyond. To the point of seeming completely unreal. I can't believe it, but it is stubbornly real, nevertheless. After flying briefly with a friend armed with an X-Bird with my wings scrunched down to almost nothing, I unleashed the thing and let it fly. The X-Bird, flown all-out by my companion cameraman, disappeared below me like a dropped anchor. Within seconds the windblast died off to total silence. For as long as your forward speed lasts, it can essentially hover for as long as the user wants it to. This suit is to the X-Bird what the X-Bird is to a Birdman Classic... a suit so obsolete many wingsuit pilots will never see one. It can be flown to the edge of stall resulting in an almost complete standstill on all axes. Forward speed and fallrate slowly built up after that. It is effectively a wearable high performance canopy and flies much like one. "How long your arms can take it" is no longer a question or even a relevant factor. Choose your wingload by how tightly you shut the variable airlocks. The numbers I state in this review were accomplished with the locks OPEN. The available power only goes UP from there. The suit's MINIMUM setting is so far beyond all other suits' range that attempting to compare them is ridiculous. The suit can planeout to zero mph from almost any available fallrate and forward speed, and can get a solid, measurable climb with just the energy left over from typical flocking fallrates of 50-80 mph. The pressurization is extreme. So much so that it takes nearly 100% of the muscle strain out of flight. An all-out flight of 3:45 to 4 minutes in an S-Bird required serious effort to accomplish and was difficult to repeat at will. In this suit it requires next to no effort at all. My best guess as to this suit's ultimate potential is somewhere between five and five and a half minutes of freefall/flight. This just can't be called freefall anymore. There is nothing "Falling" about it. You can go completely limp in this suit with all the airlocks left open and it will sustain a sub-40's fallrate anyway. Add the slightest amount of wing and it plunges to the low 30's to low 20's. It prefers to cruise in the mid to low 20's, if allowed to choose its own default flight. Pick up the grippers and flick the wings just-so and it will deliver either low teens, single digits, or actual, dramatic, unmistakable climbs with nothing but an effort of will and the correct technique depending on how fast you were going when you do so. The power put at the user's fingertips is nothing short of Godlike. The workmanship is flawless. With the BASE soles reinforcing the one weakness I ever found in other Tony suits this suit appears indestructible and will never wear out. The grippers do not need to be gripped. Released, they do not flap. The suit does almost all the work. The user has but to choose how it should be flown and choose the correct shape for the fallrate and speeds desired. The resulting usable flight range has so far gone from 90 to -21mph. I have yet to push this thing to high enough speeds to find out what its diving Terminal is or what it will permit me to do once I have acquired that much kinetic energy. I look forward to finding out. I will post more to this thread as I learn how to really use this thing. If this is what its like just getting started, then...? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'm a long time wingsuit freak...the day after Gary's jump, I show up at the DZ with my own new megasuit... and I was offered a box of triscuits to land on before I'd even dropped my gear. I was then offered other cardboard boxes all through the day, and assistance in piling them up in the field if I wanted. Its nice to have friends, they help you with your gear. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

AHEM...: I told you so. That is all. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.