IslandGuy

Well, right now, looks like Chuck, Scotty, and myself, plus 3 other wingsuiters will be there for sure. And, maybe Pilot Paul, and a couple others high probability. And, there are usually at least 4 or 5 other local crossdressers that swing several ways that will join us. So should be some fine flockin going on. The hi-alt jump will be out of either the Otter or the Skyvan - not sure yet. Cost is about $60 and you need to manifest - the earlier the better. (DZ phone# is 813-783-9399). Be ready to jump at 8am. Briefing at 8am immediately followed by gear-up and board the plane.

#1. Yuri - going to enjoy turbulence-free flights while all air-disturbing L/D=0.5 f**ckers are a thousand miles away. 001. Scotty Burns 111. Matt Hoover 4. Andreea (Supergirl) 5. Jarno 'Mc' Cordia 6. Robert Pecnik (maybe:) 7. Justin Shorb (Jsho fo sho. 2020) oh and flock U 8. Matt Shroyer 9. Scott Bland (notsane) 10. me (badenhop) 11. Rick (dzjnky) oh, and flock U fo sho 12. Marion Mobley (fmmobley) 13. Michelle (EmLo) 14. Todd (DaMan) 15. Scott Gray (The Brothers Gray) 16. Paul Cain 17. Elana Cain 18. Brian Barnhart (did I make in time? 19. Paul Johnston - SLUM University - 20. Gray Mike (Z-Flock) Play like your life depends on it.

Famous? Maybe more like infamous. And, just for the record, I did NOT know the camera was running when we were on the ground. That was pretty embarrassing. Geeze.... no wonder I can't get a date.

Come fly with the Z-Flock this weekend. Temps are supposed to be in the 80's. Gainers, maybe a high speed exit... we'll see what we can do. Last weekend we were flying the clouds so it looks like the summer fun has begun. Also, hi-alt load (22k ft.) Saturday (usually like 8am). There may be one Sunday too. Should be a blast, and if not, it will definitely be different.

1) Scott Gray 2) Chris Gray 3) Andreea Olea 4) Brian Barnhart 5) Marion Mobley 6) Scott Bland 7) Jeff Donohue 8) Rick Hough 9) Gray Mike With a little luck, gonna join the 5 minute club this time.

001) ScottyBurns.com 0) Justin Shorb (phoenixRising) 1) Notsane (Scott Bland) 2) Butters (Tony) 3) fmmobley (Marion... bringing my whuffo wife) 4) Supergirl (Andreea) 5) The111 (Matt Hoover) 6) stoney3434 3) yeyo (gargamel) 8) dzjnky (Rick... "I'm back!!!!") 9) Chris Gray (Booyah!!!) 10) Scott Gray 11) Brian Barnhart (this one goes to eleven!!) 12) Jeff Donohue (teh Skwrl) 13) Danny (droquette) 14) Jose (Turtie) 15) Nacho 16) Purple Mike 17) Bill K.- another fat azz, hope I can keep up 18) Tony suits 19) Phil Peggs 20) Stu- montana 21) Bones (Randy) 22) Gray Mike 23) Ingrid 24) Salta (Blanca) 25) Alx72 (Alex) 26) Michal (michalm21) 27) Paul Johnston (whizzif)

Thanks for posting this in the Bonfire VB. Hope it helps Scotty out. Do a Google Images search on eagles fishing and you get hundreds if not thousands of pictures… of eagles fishing. Arguably, half of them are better in some way than the one posted in the photo competition I’m surprised by how many skydivers suddenly become photography experts/critics. Composition, color, whatever. Me, I skydive, and I’d rather look at some ratty ass skydiving picture of any discipline, than just about anything else. And, if I’d rather look at it, I’m voting for it.

Excellent pics Matt... your usual fantastic work! Wish I was there with you guys. Somebody must have paid the weather bill in advance, big time - those skies sure make for some incredible visuals and background. Looking forward to the vids.

I just read in the "record to beat" thread a comment Glen made about some folks "racking ups some serious air miles" (or something to that effect). Well, it got me to thinking about what exactly would be considered serious air miles. Certainly a different perspective for me because I'm mostly looking at vertical speed and times, even though I do wear a couple of GPSs and download and analyze the ground track data. Anyhow, I guess because I've always looked at that data in chunks of a couple minutes or few miles, that it never really struck me that by only 300 jumps or so most of us have easily covered 1000 miles over the ground. For some reason, the vision of flying 1000 miles in a wingsuit just brought a smile to my face. Thanks Glen!

Very nice video James... some awesome shots there. Thanks!

3:05 from 27,000' 2:22 from 15,000' Tony Intro suit Wow, those are pretty different numbers - are you sure about both, or maybe a typo? Now the 2:22 is something to write home about (especially for an Intro, very good), but, the 3:05… hmmm… might want to carry fire suppression just in case... put the flames out.

WOW, that is a long flight! How tired were you after that.... 283 seconds over 18300 feet gives and average of 64.66 feet/sec which calculates to 44.086363636363636 Miles per Hour http://www.calculateme.com/Speed/FeetperSecond/ToMilesperHour.htm That is a very nice average for that long of a flight.. Scott That 44mph avg. seemed a little low so I went back and checked out the data. Most of the flight was between 45-50mph. A good throw from the plane and a long snivel at the end seems to have skewed the flight data a bit. (Paralog plot attached). Cool converter - thanks. Looking forward to trying that flight next year in a SM1 or Stealth.

Very nice vid. The mountain scenes are excellent. Tony and Jeff don't get that kind of scenery here in Florida.

You're gonna love the tailgate.

WOW, that is a long flight! How tired were you after that.... 283 seconds over 18300 feet gives and average of 64.66 feet/sec which calculates to 44.086363636363636 Miles per Hour http://www.calculateme.com/Speed/FeetperSecond/ToMilesperHour.htm That is a very nice average for that long of a flight.. Scott Ya, my arms were pretty tired toward the end. Wasn't quite sure how tired so I pulled a little high in case I had to go back for seconds. Not sure if it was the lazy throw from tired arms and hands or the sloppy pack job from the nite before (QC goes out the window when there's cold beer and icy rum drinks calling

Congratulations to you both... welcome to Bird World!! And, at the risk of restating what you probably already figured out - from here on, your life will not be the same.

4 min, 43 sec. 21k - 2.7k. Puerto Rico this year... sights were so breathtaking, did everything I could to make it last as long as possible. Next year, I'm going to make every high altitude load I can get on.

Brian... seriously, if you don't write a book at some point in your life man, you will have missed your calling. and... can't wait to fly with you in that thing... no spectator charge - right?

Got a chance to make a jump w/ Tony yesterday. The no-cutaway wing certainly works as described. In the plane or out of the plane – pretty much near full range of motion. Just flying along and he pulls his arms forward, I’m guessing to about a 45 degree angle. (Seemed to me further than the range of motion Matt demonstrated in the pics he posted.) Put his arms back into position and the wings instantly returned to their original fully extended and position. From what I understand, he’s even made a full jump without undoing the zips, all the way thru landing, no problem. In addition, there are some other very clever innovations, but that’s all I’ll say about that. Definitely looking forward to flying one. Hopefully we’ll get some more first hand accounts from Matt and Scott.

Already been spreading the good word. I'll admit, 3 out of 34 (total?) is a bit light for such a great event. I'm sure we'll be stronger in numbers next time. Keep those pics coming - that's about the best advertising possible.

Finally made it home and got internet access. I personally wanted to thank everyone for an awesome time – I had a absolute blast and am definitely looking forward to the next time. Special thanks to Bill and Kathy for running such a smooth operation, to Ed for organizing such a great event - all the activities and the flocks, to Kristen for arranging for dinner and the lunches, to Avery for flying excellent video, providing the event shirts, as well as generously covering the Mexican dinner. The jump into Ed’s place was a ton of fun (even though I’ll never get all the hitchhikers out of my shoes

Very cool Dan. Hope you get a chance to join us for some cloud surfing this summer. The towering puffy ones have finally arrived. Play like your life depends on it.

Now, really, how much fun could y'all been having... Chris wasn't getting stitches now, was he?? Play like your life depends on it.

I'll add a couple quick comments about my impression of the suit. First, I concur with most everything Phil mentioned. First of all, the suit was tight on me. But being a demo, I was lucky it fit that well. This caused the handles to get uncomfortably close to the slots. (In the air, this turned out to be a non-issue.) It also made it a little difficult for me to reach up far enough to close the slider. I found the suit very stable in all flight regimes from exit to flocking with Phil while he was on his back (faster fall rates), to flat out/max glide. On my belly, the suit was solidly inflated and very easy on the arms and legs. On my back - and admittedly, I'm not the best back flier - I couldn't get the wings to really inflate. Not sure what is cause and effect, but as Phil points out, it seems like the inlet at the elbow requires the arm to be straight to let the air enter properly for good inflation. But that's a bunch of wing, and without a little help from pressurized air, it's not so easy to extend your arm straight. I'm guessing this would not be a problem with practice, more muscles, and/or better technique. At pull time, shutting down the suit was not a problem, but then, for me, it never has been, even with the SM1. At pull time, I pitch up to slow down (which I'm speculating decreases the pressure in the wings), put my legs together and pull my feet up towards my ass, and then go for the hack. Had no problem at all with wing getting in the way, but what did happen is that as I reached back to the BOC, the right hand loop came off. Now I'm thinking, OK, I have this loop whipping around back there and as I go to pitch the PC, it's going to wrap around it and then I'm screwed. So I grabbed around with my outer 2 fingers until I got a hold of the hand loop and then went for the pull. I've always much preferred thumb loops to hand loops or webbies, and this gives me just another reason for that thinking. On the second jump I made with this suit, I made sure I held on to the loop with a couple fingers to make sure it wouldn't come off again. I tried different things to get the suit to flap and I couldn't. Inflation is very nice. On my second jump Phil didn't join me so I had some quality time flying with the plane... we were descending at the same rate (average about high 30's) but the plane was faster horizontally and so I took the inside track and we were able to stay with each other. Second jump, exited at 13.7 and opened at 2.8 with over 3 minutes on the wing. Point being, so easy to dial-in, even an old guy can do it.

I saw someone cut their wings away on the ground in one and it didn't look like they could reach up much higher than with them on because the arms only opened up to about halfway up the bicep. Can you reach your toggles after cutting the wings away? I think it was Flying Bob who demonstrated that. We were all admiring the cable cut-away system (which I personally like best) but when he pulled the handles to show how it worked, he could only reach just a little bit higher than before the cut. Just speculating that maybe the fit was too tight or something. Pierre, would be interested in hearing if you have a similar issue with the cut-away system.