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Yeah I guess we have different priorities in wingsuit flying. I like a canopy that is low bulk so I can focus on thin profile and optimize my wingsuit performance. I also like to have safe and consistent openings. While you just need something that fits in your old container and is appropriate for your skill level and lasts until 2030. Now for the brand war. Your healthy mix of wingsuits may not be as healthy as you think. https://ppc.paralog.net/listtracks.php?sort=Distance Squirrel suits stands for 126 entries on that list. 13 of them are on the top 50. (10.3%) Phoenix fly stands for 353 entries to that list. 3 of them are on the top 50. (0.8%) The suits from the two companies are C-race and CR+ vs Vampire Alpine and Viper. I think these are comparable in size. Maybe all the other 350 phoenix birds that tried to get into top 50 had headwind or something? In the speed category I did not make spreadsheet, but counted 13 squirrels and 2 phoenix among the top 50. Whats not to love about that?

Yeah, true wind totally matters when you record GPS data. The reason the top 2 placements are 20% better than number three is probably because they were done one hour apart in screaming downwind. This affects the maximum and the average. But not so much the median. Which is what I looked at. The median is the number in the middle. Do you really think squirrel pilots only fly downwind while phoenix pilots only fly upwind. I dont think so , Phoenix pilots sometimes have downwind, and sometimes upwind same as the Squirrel pilots, over time the numbers equal out. Never 100% but closer to 100% every single jump that is recorded. The container size is of great importance when you fly wingsuit. Lower profile containers lets you fly your wingsuit with a slicker profile on your back and that means less drag. The lower the packing volume you have per sqft of canopy, the lower profile container you could have while flying. To me this is a main selling point for the Epicene. Is there a flight performance sacrifice to be made by lowering the packing volume? Yes maybe but its not even noticable for most people as they do NOT suck at landing a F111 canopy. Did you know every single BASE canopy is made of F111 or low bulk material, they are landed daily in tough landing areas. F111 or low bulk material also have better opening characteristics in my opinion. I agree ZP have marginally better characteristics that become noticeable at higher speed. For a swooping canopy it would matter a lot. But its not even worth thinking about for a lightly loaded canopy like this one.

I found this thread really interesting after not having read dropzone for a while. Enjoying both wingsuits, canopy flight and brand wars I want to mention a few points. 1. @jarno. I can pack in 20 seconds. I just take off my rig and throw 8 dollars at the nearest packer. I would post video, but I just dont't have enough time to do that, I sort of have a lot of stuff going on, and I totally forgot the password for my youtube account, if not I would just stream it. 2. The discussion was originally about pros and cons of two parachutes that are meant for WS pilots. WS pilots are usually experienced pilots that may have this as their 2nd canopy. These types of canopies are boring and docile and meant to open very safe and provide easy landings. It was pointed out by Anachronist that pretty much any canopy will do the job, and to this I agree. If someone like BryanCampau is getting sore ankles from any of these parachutes, it is either user error or some weird winds that interfered with the landing. Bryan..check your legstraps, are they muddy/grassy on their back? Yeah??, Well thats because you don't know how to operate a toggle. 3. The Epicene has some properties that makes it pretty awesome if you like consistent openings and low pack volume. I dont think there is any difference in flight characteristics because of it's low-bulk cloth from Porcher Sport. It still has a ZP nose and the nose is where aerodynamic stuff is happening. So at least the important nose will last as long as a ZP canopy. I have the same material on my BASE canopy I have dragged it around in snow, blood saltwater mud and dessert-dust since 2007 and put a whole bunch of jumps on it. It still opens and flies like a champ. Will the Epicene still perform after 1000 jumps? I think so, but if not I would just sell it and buy a new one. After 1000 jumps you have spent about of 30000$ on jump tickets and packing and transport to the dropzone weekend after weekend. In the grand scheme its pointless to worry if your canopy is worth 300 or 600 dollars after you put 1000 jumps on it. Just buy the best canopy and sell it when you wanna try something else. Getting a new canopy is fun. 4. BryanCampaus claim that most wingsuits performs about the same. I also find it confusing sometimes. What wingsuit is the best. Certainly wingsuits development has come a long ways the last 15 years. And this is because some manufacturers are better than other. We as consumers should absolutely fire up the brand wars whether its Squirrel vs Phoenix or Android vs Iphone. Otherwise we would all be flying Bird-man suits and having Nokias. With large flashing banners on this very website it says that Squirrel has won over Phoenix in this and that red-bull competition. Looking at the Paralog website, the Squirrel suits are all over the top of that list. Does this mean Squirrel are super slick at marketing and knows how to sponsor the right people? While Robert is more like the authentic hard-core BASE jumper dude from Europe? Hard to say...but my thoughts as an average skydiver Joe was: "What if you just give the suits to the average skydiving Joes and see how they do?" Thankfully there is a website that keeps track of performance among random skydivers with GPS and internet access: https://ppc.paralog.net/listtracks.php?sort=Distance Unfortunately it doesn't sort by manufacturer. So I had to use my amazing skills about which manufacturer makes which suit and then I was able to do a comparison between Phoenix and Squirrel. Of all the Phoenix fly suits in the distance category the median distance was 2.13kms. Of all the Squirrel suits the median distance was 2.581kms. I was too lazy to do the same for speed. But someone should try it for the speed challenge. I was mostly upset about the criticism of low-bulk material. It flies great and it smells even better and also it sounds great when it falls quietly behind you. Not like noisy ZP.

no you didn't Ah snap. It was post #101, damn why must basic math be so hard? Anyway I appreciate that you guys find my opinions of great value, I guess I did forget to evaluate Tonysuit yesterday. Thanks for the reminder. Evaluating Tonysuit is pretty hard cause I only tried on a t-bird or s-bird or some kind of bird like five jumps 4 or 5 years ago, But, luckily I have read the forums so I am more than enough qualified to give my expert opinions anyway. Tonysuit PROS: - Suits are so easy to fly that you just need 1,5k dozen cardboard-boxes and a fraction of mccordias skydiving experience to land them safely. - I guess Julian flew Sugargliders in the early 2000s, but seems to me that TonySuits are innovators of modern big-wingsuits. (anyone disagree?) - Name wasn't that cool until one day I was hitchhiking back to my car in the mountains. Some old guy that called himself Tony picked me up and told me he made wingsuits for a living. Then I was like "ahhhh, now I get the name, its named after a real person". - Tony looks non athletic and geriatric, yet he seems to kick ass at competitions. If some guy that looks like grandpa can fly faster than Robi and mccordia, then surely his suit must be awesome. CONS: - I was confused already when the letters that came early in the alphabet meant its a suit for chickens that have less chesthair, and the last letters in the alphabet like "X" were for the bros with longest hanging pair of nuts on the DZ. But now its a whole new level of clusterfu€k of names with references to starwars, insects and tribes and what not. - Tony sends prototypes of suits to his basejumping buddies, then after about 10 basejumps he makes a production model that makes skydive-container fire the reserve at random times while jumping. - No suits are the same, this is actually cool because jumping a prototype makes you special and badass, but not so cool if you are basejumping and you needed the version with the armwing-inlet that actually inflates the left and right side at the same time, not when they reach x and y mph. CONCLUSION: Tony suits are so 2010, if you want a wingsuit that is a prototype, you can just write prototype on a piece of tape like I did on my Squirrel suit (picture). You're not trying to impress people that are better than you anyway. You just wanna impress the AFF level 8 students. Impressing this group is easy and will get you more than enough free beer. I guess Tony is probably finished with prototyping on most of the suits by now, so its most likely just a normal safe suit at this point. Whether or not the suit is desirable all boils down to how cool their testpilots are and how they name their wingsuits. Jeff died and all the last Starwars trailer had was a bunch of muppets and a bluescreen. So I guess its simply not as cool as it was a quarter of a decade ago in a continent far far away.

Ha, I made post #100 in that thread... sweeeet.

This is all very good information. For me it has always been as easy as clicking order and then pay and receive my goods, whether its from PF, S-fly or Squirrel. But I realize now that its not so easy. Here is what I have gathered from reading these forums and beeing on dropzones and jumping from mountains the last couple of years. Phoenix fly: PROS - Run by Robi, strong brave Socialist leader, like old dictator Tito. - Makes sure peoples republic of Croatia is employed by keeping a line. - Has nice employees like Mccordia that will make sure you get a suit if you bitch in a forum and, he can also cut slow-mo footage so fast that it looks fast. - Invented the sharkfins. - Sharkfins has socialist star on them. CONS: - Several people has died of old age while waiting for sharkfin-booties. - Aerodynamic genius Robbie, can not be expected to forward business emails to the right person. After all he is busy with MAKING and DEVELOPING suits. He doesn't have time for pushing the forward button or setting up automatic forwarding on his email, dont try to suck a dick, use proper channels or wait extra 8 months. - One part of a suit they made looks like its a complete rip-off from that other suit that the other guy made. Squirrel. PROS: - Run by Matt - the guy has written a freakin book, so he is legit. - Most WS pilots are just normal weekend warriors like me, and they generally speaking seems to me to be better than Phoenix pilots. I mean, I kind of eat them for breakfast and Im not even that good. - The suit is delivered on time and your questions gets answered fast, even from hot-tubs. - Suit-features has cool names like "nutsack", "glideskin", "innie-outie" etc. CONS - Wingsuits are not made of enviromentally friendly cotton. - One of the 6 suits they made these last two years looks like another suit. - I have heard that owner Matt drives his Bentley through the dirty streets of Dhaka and Calcutta kidnapping small children from local schools. After years of working them hard in a dark basement, their fingers gets way to chubby for them to work fast enough, thats when he sells their organs on the black russian market to finance prostitutes that works as email operators in a hot-tub filled with the tears of their factory children. Then he photoshops pictures to make it look like it is from some kind of clean modern looking factory with adult happy workers that are even allowed to listen to music in Vietnam. What a character. Conclusion. I guess it comes down to personal choice. Is Socialist star on your sharkfin cool, or is "glide-skin" or "nutsac" something that is of higher entertainment value. For me it was the fun names from Squirrel that settled the brand war. I think the glide-skin simply has the better penetration properties. As the next year approaches, I am certainly looking forward to making more insane accusations against everyone in the name of winning the awesome brandwars, I think that if Phoenix fly cant even answer simple emails, they are bound to loose...anyone disagree?

In that case a whole bunch of CRW competitors at nationals have defective canopy skills. Well, maybe beeing able to cough up the entry fee to compete isnt such a good indicator of canopy skills then.

I also agree the Lightning is perfectly capable of soft landings, just takes a bit of timing and coordination. If you cant land it soft and standing up, there is something wrong with your basic canopy skills. With the right modifications it would even seem like a nice and safe canopy. Its got re-inforced everything, low aspect ratio, comfortable Dacron 600 lines, and just 7 cells, it seems pretty safe to me. For every wingsuit jump I would pack it for soft opening, put on a different bridle, use different attachment point for the bridle and a different pilot chute, probably also put it in a d-bag and remove one or two of my Bowie knifes from the cheststrap. Then I would have to spend 20 to 30 minutes to run around the dropzone desperatly looking for my other bridle and pilot chute, then change it all back every single time I wanna do CRW again. It seems much smarterer to just get a second canopy and risers. Unlike CRW, wingsuiting is pretty much a sport for the rich and busy, we dont have time to stand around and wait for your friend to get his shit ready, so you better tell him to get a designated setup for WS.

I like this altimeter. Its got easy to read numbers, its set up with 12k ft on the 12o clock position. It could be confusing that both 12k and 0k is the same place. This has never confused me, but I imagine that if I ever find myself confused, then I could just look out the window of the airplane. So its not a big deal. The concept of having 12k ft and 0 ft on the same position is also known from watches. This makes it very quick to read since I dont actually have to read the numbers, I could just make a quick glance at the angle of the needle, and I know from my many years of experience with normal watches what the number would be at that angle if I would have read it. Saves me about 0.12 seconds every time I take a peak at the altimeter. The needle moves past a yellow area when its time to concider your altitude, and a red area when you absolutely should start concidering it. I dont honestly dont know how usage of the altimeter could get any easier. The dial on mine became bent, and it became impossible to adjust it. I dont know how this happened, but I am suspecting heat damages, so I was preparing all kinds of defensive arguments about the sun and the summer and the time of year a typical skydiving season occur, so it I am just using it normally. Just in case they would comment on this or accuse me of negligence. But this never happened. Au contraire. All emails was answered friendly and professional within a few hours. They sent me update emails when they had received and sent it, they used very short time to repair it, and they even sent it back to me free of charge. You put it on with a velcro around your wrist and two fingers through a rubber ring. Not everyone has the same finger circumference, and sometimes I use gloves. Yet I dont see any adjustment opportunities on this rubber ring. So its a bit too loose or too tight depending on how fat I am each day. I also thought it was a bit heavy. But at the same time I realize its made from sturdy material. So I guess its a balance. Still I cant help noticing that my quad core smart phone with barometer, screen and GPS weighs less than this altimeter.

Yeah. You make some strong points here. We definatly wanna be careful to not get Folklore into these forums, I mean, people will use this thread as their primary source of wingsuit discussion background material for many years to come. With this great power, comes great responsibility. Therefore I see no other way right now than to object to your alleged "facts". First of all, lets agree what we are discussing here. Is it who came up with the concept of reaching toggles in a wingsuit first, or are we discussing which wingsuit came out first with full access to the toggles without additional zipper/cutaway steps for the pilot. Then there is also the question of what a wingsuit is. The Prodigy consists of two parts, pants and jacket. It could be argued that it actually is closer to a tracksuit. I think that if the wing is so small that you dont actually need to cut it away to reach your toggles, have you really made an invention by still reaching up, or is this just how the "suit" works? If there is no need to cut away anything to reach up, then you have basicly just invented a huge jacket. But even if we somehow agree that the Prodigy is a legit WS, I am still very dissapointed by the level of folklore you bring into the forums when you claim that the Prodigy suit was the first to achieve this. What about the S-fly Access? It came the season before Prodigy.

Yeah, I saw your picture, and I totally agree that it looks possible to get your handles swallowed with such a big hole. My suggestion was to shorten the rubber cord. But we seem to have a different opinion of the benefits of doing this. I do not think the opening of the hole get any bigger than its maximum, not matter how oval or sideways or whatever you make it. Since I am at work, I had to use whatever office supplies I had at hand to visualize. (see attachment). No matter what angle I flip the reservehandle or change the shape of the hole, I can not make the hole swallow it. Simply because its too small and dont expand more than its maximum size. I think the same principle applies to your wingsuit. As long as the max size of the hole is smaller than the reserve handle, its not going to be swallowed no matter how you twist it.

*** It's because he is half-trolling I think posts that states the point nice and clear makes for more fun and engaged reading. And to be fair I have gotten two good replies describing how the problem can possibly happen. Making it somewhat clearer but still not quite there. *** Just seems that you are absurdly certain in your conviction that it is impossible for this to be a real issue. My assumption was that a 4" handle cant dissapear into a 3" hole regardsless of rig and body type. I still believe this is true. *** I should have stated...that picture was best case scenario. When I move around the hole grows and the handle goes right in. On the picture I see a hole that looks bigger than my own hole (feel free to quote that). Is this really with the original bungee attached? I would probably shorten the bungee, or contact Squirrel and ask what to do if it keeps happening. They are super friendly and helpful. *** I'll gear up and post and video of mine. Using no hands, I can get it to cover at least part of the reserve handle with enough standing up and sitting down. I will seriously be insterested in seeing this movie. Also interested to know if your handles and holes top to bottom are of different sizes than my 4" and 3". Cause like I have said many times now, theres just no way the hole will bite over something bigger than itself. And especially when you stand up and apply tension on the zipper, its going to pop right out again from whatever its trying to bite over. *** Can I fix it before I leave the plane? Duh - Picard Maneuver. Easy. I'm just not sure I want to have to remember to do that as well. Picard Maneuver videolink was awesome, much appreciated. But I really dont think it should be concidered a hassle to check if your gear is in order before you jump. Its so basic, once you get up and even look at the door, touch pilotchute, and at least look at your handles. This is not unique to wingsuit flying, the handles could also come loose and dissapear from their velcro while boarding or dealing with seatbelts, helmets, changing place with tandemmaster, turn on gopros and so on. If you are just not sure if you want to have to remember to do this little check, then I think you need to reconcider how you approach safety in wingsuiting. ***P.S., talk to your physician about Albendazole or Mebendazole to treat your microbial infection. The word trypophobic came after I googled phobia for holes , but yeah, I agree the results seems to remind me of infections.

So, I hear what you are saying and I seriously did not like the idea of having missing handles while I practice malfunctions at 2000ft, so I tried to investigate this problem more seriously this time. I once again got into the suit, to test out if its even possible to make the handles dissapear inside the holes if I try my absolute best. Once I had moved the zippers to cirkus freak mode :-) the optimal posistion for handle comsumption, I tried to sit down while moving my body in a rhythm inspired by flatspins, Shakira and the time I had pinworms. I agree, it looks scary, not the pinworm movement, but the actual gaping hole in the wingsuit so close to the handles. I found comfort in the fact that I measured the height of the hole to be about 3" while the cutaway, or ripcord handle is about 4". It makes it pretty damn hard to fit it into the hole. I would still say its impossible using your upper body. Even if the width of the hole seems to open up like a big mouth when you are sitting down, the height of the hole remains the same. If you use your hands you can stretch the bungy so that the WS material goes over the handle. But it seemed to pop back out again once I stand up and hold the armwing out. So to me it seems that simply avoid trying to use your fingers to cover your handles would solve this "issue", so would a simple knot or ziptie that restricts the max size of the hole. Even if this is overkill in my opionion. I might be biased cause I have flown this suit and loved it so much, but still I never heard of this issue before, I tested it and could not not re-create the error, logic tells me 4" handles dont fit into 3" holes and I also check my handles before jumping out of the airplane. This is why I think the issue is mostly relevant to yourself and a selected few other trypophobic jumpers.

After doing almost nothing but jumping the Funk and the Aura from planes and planets this past month I was shocked to read on an internet forum that handles such as the reserve handle, a handle that could prove itself essential for survival has been close to be consumed by suit material. I have had no problems with this issue. Not even close. So I decided it was time to investigate and start posting my opionion and findings on this matter. I do agree that the Squirrel suits have an awful lot of zippers (I counted 13) and even some bungees, buttons, velcro and magnets, it is a gotdamn IQ test to figure out how to attach the rig. Even now after I have done it 8 or 10 times, I still get questions from AFF students if they should help me out. But once you put it on, it should be fairly obvious if you did it right or not. If its wrong, just keep on trying until you get it right, read the user manual, call customer support or ask some random skygod for help. And in all fairness, all the zippers actually seems to have a function. After reading this thread, I once again spent like 7 or maybe even 9 minutes to hook it up to see if I understood how it is possible to lose a handle inside the suit while sitting in the airplane (or on the couch or toilet in this case). I found out that yes, it is possible to do this. And yes, you could jump it out of an airplane. I also tried to see if it was possible to route the pilot chute handle inside the wingsuit between the zippers. It totally is. So if you in some moronic way manage to burry all the handles inside the suit and turn off the cypres, then the suit is nothing short of a death trap. But with the rubber bands in place between the zippers and the suit hooked up correctly, I honestly think you got to really fight a suicidal near impossible battle against the small gap to make this happen. I would really like to see video or photos of this happening. Im almost saying with certainty that I think its impossible to do without using your hands (very) actively. Now since I am such a safety oriented jumper that I even hook up my wingsuit in the weirdest ways to cover all the handles after reading about some stranger that saw a dangerous looking gap on his suit on an internet forum. I also have some safety tricks that is meant to help me out next weekend when I forgot I even did this. So say on saturday morning, I try to put on a rig with all 3 handles covered in wingsuit. My super awesome trick is to check the handles before I put it on, before boarding, and before jumping. Its not rocket surgery. Its just basic skydiving stuff. And WTF is up with people not beeing able to use the RAD system. (Rapid arm deployment). I sometimes even forget to unzip, thats how easy it is to use. You guys must have stolen the suit from a midget or lied about your height or something. Its not supposed to be hard to use. In fact the whole Funk suit is pretty easy to use. But thats just an opinion.