valentin

Excellent video, I laugh my ass off. A good way to relax after all these post. I am a hang glider pilot, paragliding instructor and wing suit flyer (base and plane) and I jump with a modified S3, years ago. I had sewn something like 15 Kevlar batten (like windsurf, but especially made for the suit) It fly much better, but too dangerous and uncomfortable. My first reaction when I read the first few post was : Hey guys hang glider is already there! But then, I remember that so many things in history look impossible and eventually work very well.| But now the challenge is very precise. If I understand well the point in this post is: Would it be possible to build, something witch is not a hang glider and can soar in strong wind and maybe land? Well, to give a base to work on, I estimate that to keep somebody in the air on a soaring hill in 40 km/h /50 km/h (25/30 mph/h) dynamic wind, you would need at least 6 m2. It would mean to increase the surface of a good wing suit at list two times. That’s a lot! If you do that you would face 3 major problems (all mentionned before) -How to fold and unfold it? -How to hold it in the air? -How to stir it? We could build something which would work right now, but these 3 problems are so serious that it would involve an extremely complexe skeleton, bulky and heavy and probably unaffordable for most of us. The result would be something between and hang glider and a wing suit, flying at about 50 km/h (minimum horizontal air speed) with a sink rate of about 4 meters/ second (15 km/h vertical) landable. But one important question is do we really need it? Hang gliders are great, light, cheap and safe, but not in fashion anymore and if you want something light small paragliders are great as well, and do you know the woopy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hlRTAisMeg http://vimeo.com/11576249 By the way somewhere, somebody said that increasing aspect ratio doesn't increase speed, sorry but it's wrong. When you increase AR, you just decrease the drag caused by the end of wings vortex, for the same surface and doing so you increase speed. Take air Christophe

Well, It look like I disagred with most of people, the one saying "try it and see" Except if you can make 30 or 40 jump with it. Why? Because each wing suit is diferent, I agreed with that, but because of that, before to make an opinion of one -You must learn to use it! And it maybee very diferent than your previous one. And this may take 30 or 40 jumps. Then you can have an opinion.

Hi Tom There is a small problem in your vote. Most of people who answer your question, like to chat so it's more convenient for them to have only one forum. If you separate it, it will simply bring you (more) people (like me) who are not bother to go on because it's too much chat! I didn't go on since 2 month by the way, just go on now to check something. Take air Christophe

Hi Nick I notice that a guy is missing in your list (in the second part because this guy died skydiving) His name is Alain Prieur (french) He was one of the first base jumper and a fantastique guy -even if I never meet him. He was mainly a motobike stunt man, he had many world record (still umbited) of jump with motorbike (280 feet, in 88), I saw him when I was a kid jumping 16 busses... and he was off course base jumping with his bike -often with 2 round parachute, one attach to the bike. He was also the first (not sure about that) in 88 to jump without parachute (just a harness under the suit) . Up what I know he died in a routine stunt (for him) passing from a plane to a sale plane , or the other way round, without parachute and something went wrong. There is more infos about him on Google, I think he deserve a place. Good luck. Christophe

Well, of course the drag capacity of a Pilot chute is more important than the diameter. Ideally, we should refer the PC with their drag capacity, which is not easy, but if not, to use the surface area would be better, because using diameter gives the wrong idea about size proportions. For instance, a 40-inch PC look like 10 % bigger than a 36 (+ 4 inches) but if you calculate the surface, it’s 20% bigger! The drag can vary with the material and the design of the PC, for instance, if you increase the length of the apex line, you increase the stability but you decrease the drag. So how do we measure this drag capacity? Quiet simply, if you consider that the average effort to pull the pin and the parachute is around 10 pound, then you just have to throw from 100 feet or what ever height you have available a PC with a 10 pound weight attached to it and measure the time it takes to touch down. It should reach it's terminal speed after one second. So you can calculate the sink rate (or vertical speed) quite easily and then you can compare your pilot chutes. If you want determine your extraction force, you take your estimate speed at deployment time (3 seconds = 50 miles per hour, etc), then subtract the speed of your PC falling with 10 pound, and the difference will tell you how fast/ strong your chute going to be pull from the container. -If for instance your PC falls at 20 miles per hour and you pull at 3 seconds (at 50 miles per hours) you have a good difference. You wouldn't want to pull at 3 second with a PC falling at 50 miles per hour (with 10 pound under it), because it would just stay behind you in perfect balance. - To pull fast the chute out of the container limits the risk of twist of the canopy (like in skydiving, if the D bag comes out slowly, it has more time and chance to turn). -To have a very big PC (big speed difference) is not so good because it can violently shake your canopy at opening, maybe damaging it. It also increases the opening shock. BECAREFUL, these principles concern only short delays of maximum 3 seconds. Also don’t use my math numbers as reference; they are theoretical, and many factors can alter the result. Always err on the safe side. -Our PC has two jobs to do in a base jump. 1-Clear the turbulence /depression behind us, also called burble (Name that I don’t like, because it’s not accurate and it give a quiet wrong idea of the phenomenon) 2- Pull the pins or Velcro and the chute. What’s interesting is that these two jobs work in totally different ways. -With less than 4 second delay (around 50 miles per hour speed) you don’t have to worry much about turbulence behind you, because the speed is too low, but you have to worry about the PC size, if it’s too small or old, or if you threw it too early you may end up with a PC in tow (I seen 42 PC staying 2 second before to pull the pin on a 2 second delay and that was not because of the burble) -Now when you go over 5 second delay (100 miles per hour and more) nearly any pilot chute will pull the stuff for you (in skydiving some guys use 24 inch f111 pilot chutes at terminal, when the smallest one sold by Basic research is a 36 ZP) but the problem is now about the turbulence behind you which increases at the square of the speed… We seen before how to secure the size of your PC in order to pull your pin and chute correctly at delay below 4 second, now we will see how to avoid having the PC stuck in the turbulence behind your body. This turbulence works the same way as in a river. If you look at a place where the water is flowing behind a big stone in a river, you will see similar turbulence. If you threw a ping pong ball in the water there, it would stay for a while before being swept away, If you throw a larger ball made of the same material, it will clear the turbulence faster. If it’s big enough it won’t be held in the turbulence at all. Same things with a PC if there is enough volume material (doesn’t matter if it’s F111, Zero P or mesh) it will clear the turbulence behind your body. That’s why with over 10 second (terminal speed), we use a much bigger PC then in Skydiving: we don’t have time to let the PC play in the turbulence behind us before it clears the turbulence. I am working on a 36 zero P Pilot chute, on which I will put four vents of 1 inch each, looking to have the volume of a 36 inch with the drag power of a 32 to reduce the opening shock at terminal speed. By the way I d like to mention that I am very new in base jump but I been working in design of paragliding and hang gliding equipment for long time. I have a bunch of others ideas, anyone is welcome to contact me for some suggestion. For instance, if you separate on a canopy the back risers in 2 risers (Cs and Ds) you will have a canopy much easier to fly with the back risers (only the Ds now) easier to fly back word and much safer to land if you lose the toggles. And I can’t see a negative! Jump safe Christophe [email protected]

Hi Interresting thought definitely. Especially for me, I just start jumping last month (20 jump at 480 feet bridge) and I was wondering when I will really enjoy base jumping. I am 20 years into teaching outdoor sport, so what I mean, is each time I landed, I yell, I shout and I am happy, but I know that what I really enjoyd is to have overcome my fear and ... to be alive. In the first few jump , I can't even remember much of it and even in the next, I don't think that I had really any controle on what was going on , except the automatisme I had learnd (count, jump, count , throw, arch and wait to go for the riser) One of the reason if the fear past faster in sky diving is simply because we can cumulate jump and air time, so we can build a truct into it. When I stop sky dive for 6 month , I need around 10 jump to rebuild this trust and be habile to enjoy my skydive. It's difficult with base jump, but I guess if you could base 5/6 time day for 2 weeks, your level of fear will drop and you could enjoy it more, your confidence would increase, but becareful your level of awarness wil drop IN THE SAME TIME THAN YOUT FEAR. -Raising the bar is definiltely a wrong choice and It's infortunately the road on which too many base jumper are, looking for more adrenaline. The point is by doing that you end up to reduce your safety margin, and that cannot last very long. -About the connection fear/ safety, I believe that a human living in nature (and doing natural stuff) have a level of fear which is just right to protect him. Infortunately we live in a societe which spoil our natural reflex so our fear /protection systeme doesn't work properly anymore and also human is not naturally equiped for things like base jump which is one the most antinatural things you can do. -An other last point , I fully aggred about this number things , too many people in Skydiving especially are just going for the number (I was in Russia last summer, most people was jumping 15 time / day, some 20 with 2 rigs because the jump was 9 dollars...I was jumping as usual 5/8 time a day. So yes some people come to base jump with the same atitude. When I was by my own after the course, I could jump only one in the morning, one in the evening because I was too warn out... Good jump every one Christophe

I been travelling a lot, but Corsica is definitely the most beautiful nature place I ever been -and I been there 10 years. I never base jump there, don't know anybody who did, but I believe there is places, especially if you are a climber (I learn to climb there) because rock face are generally very steep and very sharp. Your best chance is to talk with french (or other) climbers about it. The col de bavella would be a good start (many steep climb) By the way I will be in France july/ august looking for climbing and base. Take care Christophe (Newbi)