lurch

In an awesome display of international sportsmanship just recently, most of the top competitors at the big boogie in Hungary joined forces and put together an experimental all-megasuit flock for sunset a couple days into the event. Alexey Drozdov, Valerii Salcutsan, Paul and Elana Cain, Andre Taylor and myself, with Valerii and I on video and Valerii as base. We were flying wide open in a group made of Apaches, Jedeis, and Valerii in a big green Squirrel Calugo. Never had an opportunity to fly with that many top pilots in the biggest suits at once before. I orbited overhead and got all the action on camera from above, Valerii got it from the center. It was a fairly loose flock while we all felt out how our ranges overlapped, people getting in and getting out, but the group held together, Alexey and Valerii got in a dock or two, everyone performed very well. I'd say we were operating in the 45-25 mph fallrate range but holding back a little speedwise to make sure everyone including the lightest birds, Elana and myself, could easily stay with the group because none of us were quite sure how it would play out with such a wide range of body types, weights, fallrates and forward speeds available to us. It went very well. Megasuit flocks are entirely do-able, but you need pilots who actually know what they're doing and how to really use the suit they've got. I think the minimum experience level in that flock was well over 1000 ws flights and one or two of us pushing 2-3,000. If you didn't know how to use your megasuit, you would not have been able to keep up. We had one inexperienced bird, a friend of mine I'd been coaching who is just learning a V4 come along just to see if he could hang, and the group left him below and behind in seconds, as we ended up setting a range no Vampire model could possibly keep up with. All in all, an awesome flight, lasted forever, and gave a hint at what you can do with megasuits when all the birds involved really know how to use them. I had a blast, we all did. My video came out somewhat blurry as I forgot to set manual focus, but it was good enough to get all the action and see how things were going, and gave a hint of the potential the big suits have for flocking if everyone has one and the experience to know how to use it well. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Mr. Germain, I'm answering your question but addressing the reply's tone to newer birds because I want to highlight that the best cure is prevention through experience. And we have way, way too many people trying to get into huge suits 400 jumps sooner than anything like a sane progression. Gonna lead in by saying that to a properly trained bird a "flatspin" is something of a legendary creature like the unicorn. By the time anyone works their way up to the big suits they should have such snap-recovery habits that there -is- no such animal. See Jarno's reply for details. That said, I can't really say this "stopped" one because I never allowed it to get started beyond a single rotation, and this is something I'd never teach a student, (they need to have learned basic recovery before going to more "exotic" techniques like this one) but if they're flying a megasuit they damn well better not -be- a student, so... Go head down. With a monster suit this is the only way I know of to get instant solid control authority regardless of your orientation or rotation. Instead of flopping around fighting to dig in when you're right side up or laying on your back spinning around the center helplessly while trying to roll over, going full headdown deletes the entire axis the spin would be on. Instantly. The one time my big suit (Modified Apache XRW/Rebel) started to get away from me I was already carving into a steep dive with a hard 90 turn built in, (experienced birds will grin, seeing right where this is going, and boy did I set myself up for it...) discovered an arm/tailwing interaction that doesn't exist in an S-Bird (S-bird lets you get away with 2 mutually conflicting arm and tailwing inputs simultaneously... I took this for granted...bigger suit does not) which flipped me upside down by surprise faster than I could blink. While hanging a hard left. My tail was cocked at an angle relative to my armwings so I knew what was coming next the moment the suit started to surprise me. I responded by briefly folding both wings and lunging facefirst straight down. Its really just an evolved version of the "track out of it" recovery technique but built around a different orientation. Thing about a full-vertical dive is, instead of control authority being oriented to a flat plane, with vicious and reversed control inputs any other way but right-side-up, in a steep enough dive the plane of authority is funnel shaped and circular... "down" is to the outside of the funnel so instead of trying the roll-out-of-bed style recovery and waiting till you're right side up and struggling the rest of the maneuver, the moment you're flying facefirst down the funnel you've got a "down" available anywhere around that funnel. Control is only half a twist away no matter which way you're coming from. The maneuver's effect is like breaking someone's wrestling lock on you before they can finish establishing it by moving in a direction their lock technique doesn't account for. Recovered authority in less than half a rotation, result: 1 spin. The pilot saw it happen and thought it was a deliberate barrel roll, asked me why I did one that soon after exit... (maybe 5 seconds) Feeling sheepish I admitted I'd actually allowed the suit to slip the leash for a second, and that wasn't an intentional move, at least not when it began. The bigger the suit the more authority it has at lower airspeeds meaning you don't have to go headdown for long, not even close to long enough to hit headdown terminal, just long enough to solidly establish linear airflow down the length of the body... recovery winds up being even -faster- than in a small suit. You don't need to "fight" a flat spin, just eject right out the bottom of it to where the airflow is. Afterthought is, if you haven't already got a vast bag of tricks for catching and stopping spins before they start, you got no business in a big suit in the first place, and getting into a flatspin is proof that the spinnee isn't ready for that suit yet and should step back and work on this flipping and tumbling with smaller suits until spin-prevention is entirely instinctive. When the dreaded flatspin stops being an animal you fear and becomes a mythical animal you laugh at, an illusion, then you're ready for that big suit. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I don't really count my first 5 years @1 tandem/yr, so I call it 11 years, but if I did I've been in the sport for a total of 16 years, pretty much my entire adult life, but didn't really get in till AFF at 25 when it became the defining activity of my life. 11+ years as an active jumper 10 of those a dedicated wingsuit freak, 8 or 9 of those years teaching it. AFF now looks and feels like childhood in my memory. First 3 to 5 years I wondered if I had it in me to keep it together and stay in it for the long haul... but never really had much doubt. As the seasons rolled by there was no room for doubt, too busy flying. Way too much fun, way too many friends, way too many glorious sights, the harder I pushed the more rewarding it became. Getting in on the ground floor as wingsuits were just getting started was the defining choice. Watched suits go from primitive stumpy triangles to car-cover-sized aerial battleships you can fly alongside open canopies with that require 5 years of flying just to properly qualify for. Participated in their development. Watched completely impossible things become easy, then taken for granted by the new generations. Learned what an endless progression -really- means. 10 years in as a human bird, I'm still just as excited and on fire about it as I was the day I began, and I'm mastering my 6th suit, counting homemades and handbuilt modified variants. I've learned it takes about 2 years just to truly begin to master any particular suit. Longer, and you begin to learn all the subtle, awesome secrets that complex gear reveals only to those who gain unconscious mastery by patience and discipline over timespans measuring 2-5 years at a whack. Fly something 2 years longer than anyone else bothers to, and you begin to manifest honest-to-god superpowers with it, complex effects you can't eve SEE till you've flown it for so long you haven't thought much about it in a year or two. Ask any serious canopy pilot. When you see someone who actually wore out a piece of equipment, fear them. They've forgotten more about their art than most people will ever learn. Works the same in all disciplines. Now I see somebody with 4 or 5 years in and think, a couple more years and they'll start to get -really- good, start to display the kind of awareness in the sky only the real hardcore jumpers have. You just recognize it... yup, this guy lives up here too. Lived up here long enough to know the neighborhood. After a decade, a picture really starts to form. You know the long and short timers. Entire short generations of jumpers come, work up the ranks, peak out, fade away, and you're still here. Some last a few seasons and life takes them away, some realize they finally have come home, dig in their heels and stay forever. To stay in, I've kept my home within 15 miles of the DZ and done whatever I had to in order to stay active. Haven't gone uncurrent since the day I started AFF. By now I know I'm in this for life. I've toned it down in recent years, finally just to divert funds to motorcycle, retirement, savings, mature adult concerns... but for 6 months of any given year, flight is my life, travelling, competing, teaching, testing, never enough weekends to do all I want to do, which is how I know this can keep me happy for a lifetime. To this day, when I land I usually come down laughing, howling, or both. You can't put a price on a life spent this way. Closest thing to immortality a person can experience, I suppose. How bad do you want it? The question answers itself. I sold my soul for this. Got a damn good price for it, too. Decade of intense happiness, no end in sight? SOLD!!! To the man in the blue and white wingsuit! Welcome to heaven. Your assigned cloud is whichever one you want that you can reach. Have fun, don't snag your halo on your way out the door. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Been an avid reader since early childhood. My mom says she didn't need to teach me to read... I eavesdropped on her teaching my older brother and by the time she got around to me, found I'd taught myself already and was devouring any reading material I could find by age 4. Used to spend summers as a kid riding my bike back and forth to the library getting as many books as I could carry and chewing through all of them in a couple days, then back for more... When I'd exhausted the local library of interesting books I discovered the local used bookstore where I could turn in bags of scrounged books and get even MORE books in trade, was making several runs per week... I remember curling up with a 565 page novel when I was 13, then suddenly I'm at the end of the book a couple hours later having read the entire thing in one sitting. I don't speedread, but my default reading rate is like playing a movie in fast forward... the only books that really satisfy and take me more than a couple hours are big chunky thousand-pagers... Atlas Shrugged or The Stand... To me books are more like head movies. I stop being aware of the world and the book itself and just get the images and story. Its hard to hit "pause" and pull my head out of Bookspace. The only thing that keeps me from becoming a total book addict that never sees the light of day is a need for physical activity and book supply issues. I can't keep enough of them handy without constant runs to used bookstores... got hundreds in stacks and scattered about my apartment, I've read every one, and it'll soon be time for another used book tradein run because I haven't got anything new around my apartment. Even worse is, your average small used bookstore, has maybe a few floor-to-ceiling shelves worth of sci-fi, many used bookstores I step in, I've already read the majority of what's on their shelves and uninterested in what remains... I have little use for swords and wizards books, and they're a major shelf-filler everywhere. Sci-fi, I've largely exhausted the entire genre, and I'm totally burned out and turned off by most horror style novels, (Clive Barker, no offense bro but you've cranked out one too many pointless magical-gay-people horror novels, and to a straight male its like, yuck, ok, we get it, you like hot guys, can we move along?) Steven King still gets my time though because he seldom disappoints and he's got an even more vivid imagination than I do. I have no use for a Kindle because I'm all set with a personal device which Amazon has more control over than I do and can go in there and delete anything they like over DRM issues... Like Matt I use my phone, the internet's the best thing to ever happen to a voracious reader, anywhere I've got signal, I've got an infinity of reading material available if I take the time to just look. When all else fails there's Wikipedia... I'll study semiconductor fab tech, cellular biology, medicine, geology, meteorology, zoology, astrophysics... When traveling by airline I usually have 4 or 5 paperbacks stuffed in my carryon with rig and helmet, its usually enough to get me through a trip. Although the net is effectively infinite source of reads, there's just something much nicer about real books... reading digitally is like using an E-cigarette, barely acceptable substitute. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Probably going to have to blow off work and hitchhike again, do the skybum thing and throw a tent out back, but I get to so many events that way. I'll get to this one. I'm in. Registered. This'll be my 6th Fnd. Only boogies I've caught more have been Tiki bar at Lebanon, (10 years straight) and Pepperell's boogie at my own home dz, (8 years, was overseas or busy and missed a couple). Time flies. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Working in a bottlemaking plant. Powering up a huge machine makes 38,500 bottles an hour. Guy is supposed to be training me how to turn on machine utilities. Goes behind, starts turning valves. Coolant in, coolant out, air in... (600+ PSI) then he hesitates, grabs another valve, hesitates again, then turns it. It was an air main depressurization dump valve venting 600 PSI into an exhaust muffler. Only meant to make sure the line was open to the room before taking it apart. I saw what was going to happen, said "No, Mike!" And dropped the visor of my hat in between my eyes, and that muffler. Loud hissing roar, then BOOM Like a shotgun blast from 10 feet. Shockwave almost knocks me off my feet. Followed up by a blasting hiss till Mike regains some of his wits and closes the valve. I raise my head cautiously, there's an incredible confetti cloud of the hard packed fiber muffler packing material and a rain of metal fragments falling. I look down and I've got a large jagged chunk of 1/32 thick heavy metal mesh screen stuck firmly in my chest. I happen to have been wearing a hard leather biker jacket at the time since I just got to the plant. The jacket stopped it cold. Took an effort to pry the shrapnel out of the jacket. I still have the jacket, turned it into a wingsuit over a decade later. I figured, I had a lot of luck stored in that jacket... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/travel/hong-kong-duck/index.html?hpt=hp_c4 Billvon does HK, ends up in harbor. Details at 11. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"All they want to do is have their little guns and do whatever they want with them.” I know, the NERVE of us lowly serfs, who do we think we are, wanting to retain posession of our own property like that when politicians know whats best for us. We should just obey and render ourselves helpless like they tell us to. Rights? Ink on a page... we've got an agenda here! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Bullshit. I've BEEN putting up $100/mo for some years now. And going without TV and most other optional middle class nice things to be able to do it. The idea of "saving for retirement" or "building a nest egg" at that pitiful crawling rate is laughable. At 1 year you have...$1200. Lovely. That'll cover a fraction of a single minor injury or one single major car repair. At 2 years you have...$2400. The interest earned on this is equally laughable. Even at 10X this, the interest is still laughable and doesn't do squat to build up the bulk of it. OOh, I got a few hundred bucks extra. At a decade you have... $12000. Still chump change. After 30 years you have... $36 grand. That'll buy you a nice new Nissan. And nothing else. These days everything costs amounts that ordinary workers must work months to accumulate and it vanishes in one single purchase/emergency/whatever. I've tried plain savings account, tried a Roth IRA... put 1k$ in the IRA... watched it vanish, slowly... watched it recover, slowly... a decade later, I still have...$1014. Yeah I'm really gonna retire on THAT. If I could save at 10X the rate, then MAYBE I could retire on it. But I'd need to jack my income to 100k/yr to be able to do that. Most average americans will never get anywhere near this. The cost of everything escalates far, far faster than they could possibly keep increasing their incomes to keep up with. When this catches up with the majority of working class people and we can no longer sustain the illusion of prosperity by credit and debt, we're fucked. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

...Yeah, 5:36, rather disappointed actually which is why I wasn't exactly runnin' around hootin' about it afterward. Besides, you saw how much damage that effort cost me, could barely stand or walk rest of the day. I'd been (unrealistically) hoping for closer to 7, figuring I can get 4 with 10k descent, so gimme a 20k ft descent would double that, subtract a minute from the expectation just cause I was out of practice, what I hadn't taken into account was how much strength I was losing over a 6 month winter of inactivity. I held up ok till around 5:00 after that I was almost falling limp out of the sky and more concerned with surviving the dive than caring how well I performed for the rest of it, pulled high. And it ruined my flying for the rest of the day. Lesson learned- Next time I probably won't bother with a high-alti unless I'm at top fighting shape and whatever shape I was in when I made the jump it wasn't THAT. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

*starts counting emergency leftover coin stash* *gets all excited and bounces up and down for a bit* *perches on chair briefly just for practice* *checks supplies of birdseed and pineapple juice* Ok I'm in. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Is there gonna be high altitude? I LIKE high al- Ugh. Who am I kidding? That last one almost tore me arms off. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Well if it's -his- cat, then there both is and isn't a cat till we look, right? Probabilistic wavestate function collapse. So, how do we know if the coin even got wet? Is this like Heisenberg's uncertainly buttered coin? If a buttered coin with a cat taped to it falls in the ocean and nobody looks at it, did it get wet? Or does it just mean we can't tell how fast it's moving or if it got wet, at the same time? Because if it got wet, it means it fell in the ocean because the cat wasn't there and thus didn't work, so we know where the coin is, (in the ocean) and thus cannot determine its velocity due to the absence of the cat. Whoa. I swear if we turn this over and shake the box a few times Warp Drive is gonna fall out. Or maybe just a pissed off cat. If there is one. Billvon help me out, here. I'm dizzy. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

There Is no cat. Otherwise the coin never would have hit the water surface. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Does anybody know, facts, not spec or news rumor, what they were doing with houses where nobody answered the door? Move on? Kick the door in? The size of the backlash might depend on the level of damage, might be a lot of property damage and lawsuits here... How many doors, how many places did they actually break their way in? None? Few? Dozens? Hundreds? Video proves they collected anyone who answered the door at gunpoint but what if you either weren't home or pretended you weren't and didn't answer? I don't think we actually know much about the real situation, what actually transpired. Are there 1000 residents all came home last week to find their doors destroyed and homes open and ransacked "drug search style"? Or just broken doors? I'm suspending judgement till I've got a clue actually. That whole episode looks like the intro to "half-life 2" so over the top I'm not sure I'm buying it. Something fishy here. Media hype? Waiting for more facts. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I don't think thats really "admitting guilt", is it? And I don't say anything in particular till they tell me what they want. That'd be my reply to being asked if I knew how fast I was going. "fast enough to piss you off" isn't anything specific, to me its just acknowledging that it must have been enough to do so or you wouldn't have pulled me over in the first place, right? More to the point though, is if I've been pulled over, I understand their point of view and expectations, so I cop a deliberately courteous and amiable attitude so they get the idea I'm not a threat nor confrontational. I've only actually spoken that line like twice in my life, both times it made the cop laugh and set a good tone for the rest of the encounter. Neither got a ticket. back to topic... I do think this new collecting citizens at gunpoint behavior will prove very counterproductive though. The lesson I draw is that if I ever hear the area I'm in is "under lockdown" I should bug the fuck out this second, flee the area before they can even expect to have cleared the cars already on the road and stay on the move, preferably the interstate, till its over or I'm far away enough not to matter. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You misread my attitude. I'm the furthest thing from a blustery wannabe rambo you can imagine. I never have trouble with law enforcement because I don't come off like its a confrontation. If I'm dumb enough to drive too fast, attract attention, I come off polite like "Didn't realize I was going fast enough to piss you guys off. Guess I was wrong. Hows this gonna play out?" 9 times out of ten they get the idea I'm not here to cop an attitude... I've had exactly 1 speeding ticket in the last decade. I've never gone to jail because I DON'T make a confrontation out of interacting with police. Its the LAST thing I want. I don't want to pick a fight, I just want to be left alone. I know confrontational types and I'm not one of them. But I've also had my door kicked in by gankstas, (woke up being strangled actually) fought back and won. This is America, this is my neighborhood, not Cell Block 6. Last I knew by every law there is nothing in the system that says they can go door to door collecting families at gunpoint. Frankly I think they're lucky as HELL that THEY didn't get shot. This isn't fucking Haditha. I'm not playing Rambo...I'm scared SHITLESS. If you can't even hunkerdown and be left alone in your own home... And yes, I will be staying the hell out of dense urban areas. If thats how they play now, I'm not staying there to be collected. I'm already out at the "edge of town" so to speak... but this makes it an active goal of mine to move someplace unconcentrated where the door-to-door SWAT raid shit won't come to me if this happens again. I was ROOTING for the cops throughout that incident... but this... this is just...plain... unacceptable. I've avoided activism until now. I'm about to get into it. Gotta draw a line somewhere and that line, is my front door. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

THAT does it. If this happened in my area, I'd have been dead. Shot for resisting. Or, my animal side would have snapped and I'd have made an ill-advised break for the jeep and tried to flee... and the outcome of THAT would be equally a foregone conclusion. But one way or another it wouldn't have ended well for me because "submit with my hands behind my head" is NOT in my wiring. I run or I fight. Either would have got me killed. What a stupid way to die. My question for anyone in this thread who knows: Lawyers, cops, (current and former) legal people... who do I have to talk to, to try to make sure they never, ever try to bring this shit to my area? Senator? Congresscritter? DHS android? Who? I have no desire to be mistakenly gunned down by a SWAT team. And if they ever tried that shit in my neighborhood, that is what would happen. I'm pretty sure I'd have died defending my doorway or been shot in the back, fleeing. There HAS to be some process for preemptively fighting back BEFORE the SWAT team storms your house. Preventing it. Or at least trying to. What is that process? Further: anybody who actually knows how the system works: Do I have a prayer of actually making the authorities agree to never do this shit again or am I just shouting down a well here no matter how much activism I get involved with? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Zing! For me its a tie between: Coming in under a reserve, bad wind conditions, worse reserve. Wind had a nice downrotor to it, flared and nothing happened... Other one was age 17. Mountain bike, steep ridge, in the jungle, Baguio City, Philippines: Ridge falls off to either side, 5 feet wide max, ridgeline itself is at a 45 descending. Hauling ass, halfway down the spine of the ridge, on a curve, I see some dink kicked a football sized rock, directly into the center of the path. Can't turn, can't stop, can't jump it. Guess I'm gettin' airborne. Bang. Rock takes bike out from under me leaves me superman off the side of the ridge, ground dropped away... Oh, this is gonna hurt... It did. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Twardo, that pic, says it ALL. LOVE it. I think moments like that, are the only moments, when we're in the REAL reality. Unlimited excitement, shared with people you care about more than anything, smiles to light a city. GOD, I love this job! -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Now, THAT'S the spirit! Must have been awesome, jump with your kid. I got my Dad out for a Tandem a few years back. They exited first, I got out, carved down to join em, flew up and grabbed my Dad by the hand, nice neat dock. My Dad is a businessman, normally very self posessed, and the look on his face was -priceless-. It was so awesome, we went right back up for another one. It was worth it when my stepmom Yoshie found the video... "You didn't tell me you were gonna do that!" Always easier to apologize than to ask for permission... My Dad and I are thick as thieves and twice the trouble, its fun having a Dad who is secretly even more mischievous than you are... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I think most veteran jumpers like the extra space, I know I do, and I too like watching em exit. I especially love the reactions from any Tandems aboard... only when they see people "fall out" do they really internalize the fact that, yes, this is happening...and you're next! The energy is awesome. Fly how you wanna fly. Nobody worth listening to is going to give you a hard time because you like Hop n Pops. They're traditional, part of our culture along with Cross Countrys, zoo dives and beer fines. Hop n Pop to your heart's content. Think a lot of the time you'll see a bunch of grinning faces watching you through the door. You're skydivin! Revel in each and every one. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Robin. Takes a lot to provoke me into speaking up in this forum at all anymore. I've got friends on both sides of this debate. Everyone else I've personally spoken to about it has kept it polite and civilized. Agree, disagree, doesn't have to get personal. Example: Dr. Kallend. I happen to be against much of what Dr. K is FOR, in the political debates in SC for instance, and I strongly dislike the way he goes about it. Big deal. I'm sure some people are outraged by my hair, too, but it means nothing. I've met, hung out with, and talked bird stuff, all kinds of stuff, with Dr. K at a whole fistful of events by now, I think he's an ok guy and differences of opinion and worldview aside, I still call him a friend and I'm happy to see him whenever we meet. I could engage the man in a debate about whatever without resorting to insult or deliberately abrasive attitude. You couldn't find a more different pair to put together... a professor, a career academic, a Doctor, and me, a half-feral technical hacker whose native habitat is more like factories, mechanical spaces, junkyards, alleys and industrial environments, but we get along just fine. It is all about the respect and respect goes both ways. I have the most amazingly broad social circle ranging from the scuzziest looking people you've ever seen, to Manhattan professionals operating at levels I can only ever wistfully look up to but cannot reach, all because I understand respect and deep down, I think most people are awesome and I treat them as such. " y'all jes' gonna keep beatin' yore punkin haid up against another brick in The Wall. " Was that necessary? Really? I don't know what that is, but it sure as hell isn't respect. Your attitude towards Spot comes off full of not-even-thinly-veiled jabs, scorn and mockery. And now we can add gloating to the list. That's classy. What's that meant to accomplish? I don't think its working. You're against what Spot is for and you disagree with his methods. We get that. But must you express it by insult? There are better ways to make your point. "It has been said, be proud of your enemy, and enjoy his success." Throwing peanuts and mocking your opponent...? That's just low, man. You don't like Spot? Fine. Don't like what he's doing or his methods, fine. But the least you could do would be to show the most basic of respect by engaging his work intellectually instead of this teardown and mock tactic you keep using. I've never met you, but after the way you treat Spot on here, not too sure I'd want to. Clearly you feel you and/or "your side" of the debate have "won" and Spot has "lost". Fair enough. Would it be asking too much to expect you to be gracious about it? -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I did both. Got years in on Birdman Gti and S-6, didn't get in real trouble till the S-6, handled it ok but butched the reserve landing something wicked, (ICU for the night wicked), end of following year moved up to S-bird, 2 years on that, moved up to Apache XRW by which time I'd worked my way up to freeflying the thing headdown. The thing to do is to get used to dominating your smaller suit. Get comfy with it, then get radical, do acro, or rough and tumble burbley flocks with your mates... flip and spin till you can recover from anything in a half-twist. Keep at it and you'll get quicker and quicker on the recovery. This makes you essentially flatspin-proof... things start to rotate you just flip over and stop it whenever you want. Then you're ready for the big suit and when it gets you, it might take another flip or two for you to catch and tame it, but you'll have the tools, tricks and skills to do so, it'll be just like what you mastered in the little suit only more so. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'm part-owner of a fleet of these things with our local wingsuit school. P3 is one of the best light general-purpose suits out there. You can learn pretty much everything in it. I don't fly one myself most of the time, being partial to the heavier high-powered suits but anytime I need a lighter more flexible and versatile suit for tight fast fallrate work or acro, I grab a P3 for that. Think you'll like it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.