LukeH

On a shortish jump (25-30 secs or so) it sounds like Venom and V4 give very similar overall average glide but the Venom is slower. How does the average glide compare over longer jumps, say something that would be about 90 seconds in a v3/v4? What is the advantage of the Venom, is it just the slower speed which some may prefer? Rumor is both have a shorter start than the V3. Are they similar in that regard? I suppose another way to ask the questions is: 1) which has the shorter start? 2) which has the best glide when maxed? 3) is there much difference in the two suits regarding these two parameters?

If you don't like ear buds, get a cheap motorbike intercom helmet speaker, you can fit them and leave them wired to the gps. no fiddling with buds or loose wires. It quite versatile the way it is, it can be mounted anywhere with clear sight of the sky and use any speaker, or headphone style you like. I don't think it should be redesigned to suit your current helmet style or listening preferences!

Air inlets and an airfoil shape. Fuck me they are brilliant ideas! I had no idea that they were Tony's innovations. 3.6:1 in Nov 2009 is quite impressive, I wonder why the current suits can't do that?

By my calculations 2021, is only 10 years away not 20 at - least going by the Gregorian calendar. It is highly unlikely that wing-suits will improve by the same amount over that 10 years as they have over the last 10. Patricks suits (1998) were claimed to have a GR of 1.5-1.6. The new suits coming claim to be up to 3.0 but I'd expect very few pilots to be able to get that and it may not be sustainable for very long. All of the low hanging fruit has been picked, there isn't much room for adding extra surface area without turning the suit into a hang-glider. The human air-frame limits how thin you can make the suit and materials aren't going to change significantly in just 10 years. As Matt pointed out trees don't grow to the sky, you can't just take the trend from the past and extend in a straight line. Everything you have written above is hot air, and stinks of the wild claims made by previous "designers". It's easy to sit and type how you are going to do this and that but the reality is you don't even jump! With respect you are ignorant of the subject about which you write. How about getting a 100 wingsuit jumps under your belt and come back to us, I guess that'll take a couple of years out of your 10.

Take a look at the other thread about these cameras, http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4031500;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread It says in that thread they they have optical stabilization which is usually not ideal for Skydiving. Electronic stabilization is generally preferred because you can turn it off and it won't be affected by vibration.

I have about 25 jumps on a Shadow, and while it is a bit different to fly there doesn't seem to be any noticeable performance difference to me. I have made a few jumps flat out with others in Phantom 2z, and have jumped various Phantoms myself. I'd recommend the Shadow over the Phantom to the original poster.

Perhaps I just got lucky each time, but adrenaline seems to do a good job of suppressing the pain until well after landing. After about 30mins it gets quite sore, so hope you are in hospital by then. I wasn't sure it was dislocated the first time, just thought I'd pulled or broken something. I was able to reach my PC but couldn't extract it, so went with emergency drill for a no-pull. If you think you are prone to this problem, you could run through the drill, you could also include trying to reach your main with your left hand (depending on canopy) and flying and flaring your canopy with one hand.

Hi, I think it depends greatly on what the injury was. I've had 3 dislocation of the right shoulder - and eventually had surgery. I've never found wingsuiting to be a problem. In fact I found that the limited range of motion caused by the wingsuit helps. The111 has previously commented that when he had an injured shoulder wingsuiting was the only discipline that wasn't sore. I was flying a large suit (Vampire) withing 6 weeks of the first dislocation. Talk to your physio.

Have a look at this: FlySight GPS designed by a jumper for jumpers. I have modified a copy of the software to give direction and distance information. More info here: FlyBlind Software

Zip connection system rather than teflon cables. While there may be a few other minor tweaks they are cosmetic\manufacturing related - otherwise it would have been called the Phantom 3. Think of it as Phantom2 (zip version).

The original FlySight supports two modes of indication. Mode 1 is the pitch of the beep, and mode 2 is the frequency. With FlyBlind software you can set Mode 1 to indicate Direction or Distance, and Mode 2 to the other. Or you could set both modes to Direction. You choose which way to use it. I've only used it for a couple of jumps but my preferred setups so far are: Both mode 1 & 2 set to indicate direction. The tone goes from the lowest pitch just to the right of the desired heading all the way around through 360 degrees to the highest pitch just left of desired heading. This makes the pitch change at the desired heading very obvious. The frequency also getting faster as you approach the desired heading. By doing this you can tell how close you are to the heading and which way you need to turn. The beeping ceases if you are +/- 5 degrees from the desired heading. I find this the easiest use when concentrating on other things like other jumpers. Mode 1 set to direction and mode 2 to distance. The Pitch works more or less the same, it just doesn't go silent when you are very close to the right heading. (If it was silent you wouldn't hear the distance feedback.) Approaching the destination is represented by an increasing frequency. The FlySight hardware doesn't support separate left and right channels. You safety point is quite valid, and I thought it was obvious that just like any other indicator device, pro-track, altimeter etc they should never be relied upon entirely and do not replace skill. Thanks for bringing it up, I should have pointed it out earlier.

For the directionally challenged: FlyBlind is a modified copy of the FlySight software that adds direction and distance modes. It take a set of GPS coordinates from the settings file and works out what direction that location is from you current location (relative to your current heading) and how far it is. This is then relayed to you via audio tones in a similar way to glide or speed information. It is an early proof of concept version, but initial tests look good. I'm posting it here in case anyone else is working on something similar or would like to test it. This version is not intended for general use. It has had very limited testing, but is available here for anyone that is comfortable with loading and using test software on FlySight. It can be tested on the ground and you can go back to the old software at any time.

It's a safe bet that he knew he needed legstraps. There have been quite a few people that have forgotten legstraps and gotten away with it. I've heard of someone that didn't even learn from the first time and jumped without legstraps a second time. Do you think that any of these people consciously decided that they didn't need legstraps or did they make a mistake? People make mistakes, when you are less experienced, tired or hungover you are more likely to make a mistake. Adding extra complications to a jump such as a new type of suit, camera etc. can lead lower experienced jumpers to focus on the new stuff to the detriment of the basics. When you have hundreds of WS jumps it can be easy to forget all of the new things someone has to think about from exit, to flying position, recovery techniques, navigation, deployment etc. over their first few WS jumps. This is a lot extra for someone with only a couple of hundred jumps to take on all at once. This is why a minimum experience level and proper training are important, to minimise the risk of such a serious mistake being made. Proper training of someone with at least the minimum experience level will point out the potential for these issues (obvious as they are to most) and teach good practices like the habit of never closing your suit with out the leg straps fully tightened. These type of fatalities should never happen, proper instruction and instructors that abide by the industry recommendations would go a long way to preventing more in the future. Anyone that tries to improve the standard of instruction should be lauded. Gimps that sit on the sideline grinding their axes and taking pot-shots should be just ignored, they are more interested in their personal gripe that improving the discipline.

Don't use the file menu to open the log files. Leave them with the .csv extension and drag and drop them onto the bottom left corner of the viewer. Only open one file at a time as there is a bug if you open multiple files and try to switch between them.

Hi Michael, When calculating GR does fly-sight make any compensation for change in air-pressure as altitude decreases, similar to SAS/TAS in Pro-Track? I assume this has a much greater impact on vertical speed rather than horizontal?

Thanks for the reply. When i said slow to focus, I'm referring more to when the active spot (i usually just have the center spot active) is on a plain area, eg, dark patch of jumpsuit fabric, or empty sky in the middle of a formation. It's the lack of a good edge to focus on rather then the speed of the lens motor. For general purpose skydives what focus points do you suggest are active?

What would you classify as a good lens and good body? And what is a good set up AF for general purpose skydiving?

My experience is from a 350D with Canon 10-22 lens. First few jumps were with auto-focus, some were ok, but on some I was expecting pictures where I knew I have clicked the switch but the frame was missing, or the picture was a little delayed. I suspected AF was the culprit and switched to manual focus and didn't have a problem since. As AHoyThere said, with an aperture of f8-f11 there is no need for AF when taking Air-Air stills. You'll know the distance you'll be for most of the jump anyway so why not set the focus for that on the ground? Eliminate the unnecessary focusing delays.

Hello and congratulations on your purchase of a Wingsuit. By starting with a larger wingsuit it will be more difficult to learn, it will also be difficult without an experienced flyer to learn from. The Altitrack data is not particularly useful. The best thing you can do is visit a DZ that has some experienced WS coaches and do some coach jumps there. Failing that at least some jumps with expereinced WS pilots will help. If both are really out of the question and you really want to do it the hard way, buy yourself a Flysight. This is a GPS system specifically designed for Wingsuiting. It will give you audible feedback while in flight and better info that you can analyse when back on the ground. It really isn't a great way to learn the basics it's better for fine tuning but as a last resort it's better than looking just at fall rate data. Otherwise it's just trial and error and trying to cover ever longer distances over the ground (trying to take upper winds into account) Have fun!

Auto-Focus is for the people that shoot skydives on "Sports Mode" Auto-focus sucks for most regular jumps. For most jumps you will know the distance and be using a fairly wide DOF so manual works better. With Auto-Focus if the active focus points aren't on a point where they can easily focus, there is a delay between pressing the shutter release and the photo being taken or worst case the photo isn't taken at all.

you two need to get a room

I haven't done it so go ahead. As the manufacturer you probably have a better chance of getting it included. You might ask them to consider adding the following fields to their internal intermediate file format: velN Velocity north (m/s) velE Velocity east (m/s) velD Velocity down (m/s) (They have other device specific fields such as HeartRate and Cadence for Garmin) They can use these fields to calculate their output fields: PATH_COURSE PATH_SPEED PATH_DISTANCE May as well ask them to add a calculation and output field for GR too.

Yup, looks fairly straight forward. See style file attached. Use from command line as follows: gpsbabel -i xcsv,style=FlySight.style -f 09-25-03.CSV -o kml -F Test.kml For GPX: gpsbabel -i xcsv,style=FlySight.style -f 09-25-03.CSV -o gpx -F Test.gpx The default KML file isn't particularly nice, but this can be customised with a similar style file.

Is the file format used by FlySight unique? If not is it available in GPS Babel? If it is unique would you submit it to GPS Babel for inclusion so people can convert to KML and GPX easily?

Yes.