decwa

"What if the WS flight was done cross-wind, and the measurements were able to factor in wind direction? That way wind speed wouldn't matter." For ground based reference: No matter what you do, the ever present wind affects you. No matter what you do... Go here: http://www.csgnetwork.com/e6bcalc.html Scroll down and click on the "Course, Ground Speed, And Wind Correction Angle" calculator Punch the following in: Wind Speed: 30 Wind Direction: 360 True Airspeed: 100 Heading: 270 If you hold a 270 heading your course (ground track actually flown) is 253 degrees. Result: Ground speed 104 (not 100) What's it worth? In your drawn example, 4% (or the perception that you are achieving 4% better performance when in reality, not). If you could actually improve a suit by 4% and race at competition level this past year, you would have won $20,000 in China - the difference between 1st and 3rd or 4th in most races is a fraction of one percent. If you fly one day in the above conditions and the next with only a 12 kt wind. The result is a ground speed of 101. "so what?" you might ask - but now, you came in last place in the race... How about a 40 kts tail wind on a pilot that runs 150 airspeed? 190 ground speed, fly the next day in no wind and you are a slug. Blasting across the ground at 190 would be fun though! So why do this - to see an accurate picture of performance and to be able to compare and most importantly, improve! It makes it possible to actually understand if a suit is faster or glides better with real information instead of hearsay or much guessing. You can also change a suit and see if it made a difference or if you are flying better instead of it being a wind change.

Step 1) Lookup wind data/pilot wind data - http://www.aviationweather.gov/products/nws/winds/ Click on the red dot on a site near you. Johnmatrix, for your location - try the Australian Gov't Bureau of Meteorology (?) http://www.bom.gov.au/aviation/charts/grid-point-forecasts/# or http://www.bom.gov.au/aviation/charts/wind-temperature/ crwper, for Canada winds aloft data try this link http://www.flightplanning.navcanada.ca/cgi-bin/CreePage.pl?Langue=anglais&NoSession=NS_Inconnu&Page=Fore-obs/fd-text&TypeDoc=html Step 2) If using Paralog, check the box on the right side of the screen for "Wind Correction" and make entries in the popup window for winds. You can see it on the attachements in my posts. If not using Paralog, you need to build a spreadhseet with formulas to calculate the wind component based on the winds and your heading/track. -------------------------------------------------------- Here's an example (winds are given as the first two numbers are the wind 'From' direction and the second two numbers are knots, +/- number is temperature): (Extracted from FBUS31 KWNO 070202) FD1US1 DATA BASED ON 070000Z VALID 070600Z FOR USE 0200-0900Z. TEMPS NEG ABV 24000 FT 3000 6000 9000 12000 18000 24000 30000 34000 39000 ACY 2011 2416+02 2620+00 2724-06 2628-16 2534-29 264444 264554 275066 ALB 2022 2315+00 2416-03 2619-09 2630-18 2640-30 274545 274856 276368 BUF 2328 2324+03 2329-02 2331-08 2541-19 2546-29 255146 255156 256268 JFK 1913 2314+01 2619-01 2723-07 2629-16 2637-29 274245 274355 275566 PLB 2124 2420-01 2524-05 2533-13 2636-18 2745-30 275246 275857 266769 SYR 2134 2121+02 2322-02 2433-10 2537-18 2542-30 264845 264856 266068 CLE 2414 2424+03 2535-03 2440-08 2546-17 2441-30 255146 255456 255466 CRW 2321 2529+05 2530+00 2532-06 2532-18 2544-29 254444 254755 265464 EKN 2523+06 2630+00 2529-06 2531-18 2542-29 254444 254654 255465 So for ACY above ACY 2011 2416+02 2620+00(Atlantic City NJ, USA) the winds at 3000' are from 200 degrees (From the South South West) at 11 Knots (times 1.15 for MPH), at 6000' winds from 240 degrees (south west) at 16 kts and the temp is +02 degrees, 9000' is wind from 260 at 20 kts temp is zero degrees out and 12000' 270 (west) at 24 kts, temp is a brisk minus 6 degrees (so I won't be jumping there anytime soon!). CRW is interesting in this group of data, you can have a 30 knot (34+ mph tailwind through the comp window). If you fly at 150 mph avg, you would have a 185 mph groundspeed downwind. What's the wind speed for 9k to 12k' for CLE above? Think taking winds out of gps data makes sense yet for performance comparisons? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *****Details / Extra long answer and more details******** Alternately, use weather balloon data and computer models for winds (convert knots to mph if using Paralog, direction is 'From' i.e. 16 knots/18.4 mph from 303 degrees ar 9268 ft in the example below). Do a search on Skew-T charts if you want more info on this data it is more detailed and time consuming - here's an example from a prior flight. It's done in millibars (mb), a pressure reading, so altitude/ft numbers are different than above: Alt (ft) Pressure(mb) DD Dir Spd(kts) ---Temp F C --- DewPt C 91 1009.0 A 290 4 79.3 26.3 14.8 164 1007.0 A 292 4 77.7 25.4 14.7 308 1002.0 A 293 4 77.0 25.0 14.5 374 1000.0 A 293 4 76.6 24.8 14.4 531 994.0 A 294 5 75.7 24.3 14.3 826 984.0 A 296 5 74.1 23.4 14.0 1272 969.0 A 297 5 71.8 22.1 13.7 1725 953.0 A 300 6 69.3 20.7 13.3 2181 938.0 A 304 6 66.9 19.4 12.9 2591 925.0 A 308 6 64.8 18.2 12.5 2644 923.0 A 308 6 64.4 18.0 12.4 3113 908.0 A 311 6 62.1 16.7 11.9 3589 892.0 A 313 6 59.5 15.3 11.5 4068 877.0 A 314 6 57.0 13.9 10.9 4553 862.0 A 317 7 54.9 12.7 9.1 4944 850.0 A 316 7 53.4 11.9 4.9 5045 846.0 A 316 7 53.1 11.7 3.8 5544 831.0 A 307 9 51.4 10.8 1.4 6053 816.0 A 292 9 49.8 9.9 0.7 6564 801.0 A 290 9 48.4 9.1 0.1 7089 785.0 A 289 10 46.8 8.2 0.0 7621 770.0 A 292 11 45.1 7.3 -0.1 8159 755.0 A 295 11 43.5 6.4 -0.8 8710 739.0 A 299 13 42.3 5.7 -1.2 9268 724.0 A 303 16 40.6 4.8 -1.4 9849 709.0 A 302 18 39.4 4.1 -1.3 10190 700.0 A 295 17 37.9 3.3 -1.5 11578 664.0 A 268 12 32.2 0.1 -2.4 12237 647.0 A 234 14 32.0 0.0 -3.9 13011 629.0 A 227 17 31.3 -0.4 -4.6 14888 585.0 A 241 19 24.3 -4.3 -5.8 You can cross check your wind forecast information against prog charts and local weather patterns to see if the general conditions match up and if they match up across time. You will start to recognize good setups i.e. in isobar lines for certain conditions, consistency of wind patterns etc as you gain experience - or also when heavy winds are coming with compressed iso lines. ***Important*** Next item: For wingsuiting, since we tend to sit near the front of the plane close to the pilot, look at the onboard GPS (or your own) and cross reference the GPS ground speed readout, airspeed and mag heading (or directional gyro). When cross referencing these three in the plane, you can tell if the winds being experienced at points on the climb match the forecast winds. Most onboard gps's can do this automatically, talk to the pilot for more info. If forecasts to in air data match fairly closely, go ahead and use them, if not ignore it all for that flight/day. After some flights, over time, you will see that your metrics repeat fairly closely. Sometimes I get repeatability (loosely stated) within about 3 mph of certain events in a flight such as peak speed or best glide with glide ratio and ground speed numbers matching closely on several flights. Going into all the detail with fine granular winds, cross checking the aircraft gps/airspeed/direction etc is good for testing prototypes and getting very detailed data while working on goals or changes in a suit. Most of the time the basics are good enough for general use. A much more fun way to do all this is to just jump from a balloon, turn your gps on before takeoff and on short climbs to altitude, the winds can be fairly accurate that you just took on the ride up (to be subtracted out from your flight down).

Heavy duty Velcro works well, Home Depot or Lowe's carries it. Been jumping a setup with that since the Flysight came out. Use Riggers tape around it to make it more secure.

Just curious, does your Flysight get satellite capture with the lid closed?

I've owned their first and second version. First gen units were ok at best. The screen was not adequetly adjustable and if positioned slightly off or if the goggles were moved, you would have difficulty in seeing the screen or anything at all. This is not a major issue for their intended purpose - but for wingsuiting from an aircraft it's not good. Gen II came along with improvements and different issues. Eyepiece monocular was vastly improved and fully adjustable - problem solved, good job. New problem is they loose capture in the plane and most of the time are of little use with no sat lock or freezing up when skyjumping. If you get a lock, there is another problem with the unit not keeping up at high speed apparently. So, this brings us to the currently offered third version. Hope it works. I have high hopes they will and even so with over 500 ordered already, my guess. is even if they work flawlessly, you will likely see them for sale used shortly after after they come out as well as plenty of reviews. Do you currently fly a wingsuit or track and use anything for performance info?

Aprox 150 mph +/- ground speed, corrected for winds - any more in it? When I fly the same suit at roughly a 45 degree angle, 1:1 glide ratio, the fall rate increases, the 3D speed increases and the ground speed decreases compared to the attached run. This suit seems to fly best in the 1.3 to 1.5 glide ratio range for speed - lift vector(?). Anyone found similar results where forward speed decreases as you approach a 1:1 glide?

Speed run on a cloud with a flare at the end. Working on flying steeper for speed....still some to go on that. Suit flew totally clean, no porpoise or buffeting, tail inflation was good. Cloud was fun to watch on the flare, seemed to fall away from me but the gps says still in a small descent. Fun to be out flying that day, nothing like big clouds!

How about a thread on wind corrected wingsuit flight data. Perhaps we can share info instead of what the usual threads degrade into. Anyone dare to actually post data on each post instead of the all too common BS talk and attacks? Here's one from today, working on speed. I noticed the plane was not falling away as usual so I gave chase from 10 sec to about 30 sec then was working on body position. Looks like it would have been better to keep chasing the plane! At about 25 seconds in on the flight I started to have a very small porpoise like action. Reminded me of over correcting, as a student, while learning to fly a hang glider. Very controlled and dampened but a minor pilot induced oscillation I suspect (can't really see it in the data well). I'll push for more time at that speed range on the next flights. GPS: Flysight

I fly the rebel at 114 MPH on best glide. My best steep glide is 128 MPH in the rebel, there is more in there though. All numbers are wind corrected. How fast do you fly the X1 or X2?

"Too long bridle can also cause trouble, see base fatality list for example. " What number?

Jump as much as you can, get over the 200 in 18 months mark and go to Z-Hills for the last week of December and 1st week of Jan. Z-HIlls is a definately a WS destination. Scott and the whole crew down there will show you a good time with plenty of WS organizing if you are flying. They have camping on the DZ with awesome showers, food and a bar on site. January weather is perfect! They also have a clubhouse filled with Wingsuits to demo. They run two Otters and the place is hoppin with people from all over the world there at the end of December every year. If you get bored with jumping somehow, Cocoa beach is to the east and the city of Tampa is 45 minutes to the West for night life. What more can you ask for!!!! Do the jumps between now and then and get yourself up to the required numbers. You'll have fun there. P.S. There are some good spots in California too that you might check and DZ's all over the east coast of FL to trip to as well if you want to change it up a bit while you're there.

All good advice. I'll add this, for the jumps from 120 or 150 up to 200, work on tracking like crazy. When you get into this jump range a tracking suit could be a good buy. Go on tracking dives, solo track and then lead track dives and work on tracking. Work on flight patterns, winds aloft and it's influence on you, deployment locations. Watch the line of flight, watch the tandems and other jumpers as you track, watch the plane. Work on tracking, practicing wingsuit exits and pulls will help for when you get to the wingsuit - talk to a ws instructor when you get there. Wait until you are headed towards the 200 jumps as I said above, do RW, freefly, work on canopy flying and accuracy and jump with friends now and learn as much as possible. Best student I ever taught to fly wingsuit came to me with about 70 tracking jumps, had his own tracking suit that he built from rain gear from wal mart or kmart or the like. Discussed winds, jump run, exit, flight pattern and deployment etc. He flew it perfect in his track suit and I flew next to him in a vampire, took him up with a w/s for his next flight after groundschool. It was as if he was flying a wingsuit all along. Preparation really makes a huge difference. I used to run about 1Min 29 sec on a track in Birman Pantz and a long sleeve shirt - can't imagine what could be done in a modern tracksuit. Didn't have gps back then but could cover decent distance, there is plenty to work on before jumping ws. Walt

Count me in. Went on my first wingsuit jump with Chris. Scott Bland Chuck Blue Scotty Burns Walt

Blue skies Chris, thanks for the jumps and flights.