matt002

I don't think I've met anyone who could give such a detailed description of his approach and turn as Nick, ahead of the curve in technical detail for sure. I've tried his techniques and found I don't have the flexibility and coordination to get into the position properly before having rolled out of the recovery arc, nick is built for that very well. I also think that having a small frame and maxing out on lead helps with distance as the suspended weight offers less drag for the came wingload.

Its funny to see the many recycled analogies given to answer this one every few months. Most funny as its presented as absolute fact by those that post it. The truth is of course that the water in the fish bowel, or air in the plane/train is often moving or swirling or interacting with the other objects that share the space, and this will have an effect on the paper plane/fish/ball moving inside of it. In most skydiving situations the basic analogy holds good and is a vast improvement in understanding over the basic ground school explanations. Occasionally tho, you will see a canopy partially collapse, or find yourself dropped or lifted a few metres when flaring. Best advice is to jump in low, steady winds and then the basic explanation will see you right. If you speed fly, para glide or skydive in ridiculous winds, you will require a better understanding tho.

I suspect your're wrong, I know a few jumpers who fly the Petra, they are experienced jumpers, still alive and loving their canopy choice, main benefit of the shulman wing shape is the low speed lift avaliable on toggles. If a person should want to become a hole in the ground there are plenty of sub 80 sqft wings available of the non Petra variety.

Fair one, let me rephrase that. If you don't know what the term 'x braced' means or how it relates to a canopy, then this topic has little to offer you, its no spectre or storm and the term 'everyday' is being used in the context of high performance wings. I'm keen on this design, have been wanting to fly a Shulman wing since the petra showed up but can't justify a petra now I'm no longer competing, hope it makes it to a final product.

Be scared, that's kind of the point. Jump anyway... Now your only option is to do what you were trained to do, there is no other choice so it becomes pretty easy once you have nothing else to focus on. Repeat.

This thread has made me laugh! I can't help picturing some dumbass looking up at his Petra lite for the first time wondering why it doesn't look like the PD storm he was expecting to see, and unstowing the brakes all feeling like being back in freefall. Most swoopers would describe anything that doesn't come made out of sail,without an RDS as standard and will lines thick enough not to snap when deployed after a 10second delay as being an every day canopy. Similarly most swoopers expect a swooping canopy to fly steep in full flight and dive easily with a long recovery arc, those that don't are toggle hooking a stiletto. If your not flying a cross brace, move on there's nothing to see for you here, this discussion is not for you.

I always found that with PF suits, the bend at the elbow helped to tension the arm wing and gave better max glide performance. I used bend at the shoulder to dive inefficiently for proximity flight. I believe that PF suits required much more imput from the pilot to maintain good glide ratios and efficient flight, that is why many people struggled to get the higher glide ratios from the V3. The 'mattress' class suit inflates into an efficient flying shape without much or any input from the pilot, I found that they were much easier to fly on the whole and that all the tricks I used on smaller suits did not have any effect on the large suit, they fly at near optimal glide with almost no effort, and keeping the suit stable while flying really steep becomes the art. I don't agree that small suits will teach you much about the modern matress class suits.

1 First step, leave the internet posting alone from now on. By all means read, but without any experience of any of the things your talking about, nothing good will come of this. 2 Get on with your AFF. Your aiming high, this is good as you will need a lot of motivation to complete the journey. Your previous experience with DH bikes is going to work against you. Having experienced a high level of competence in one activity usually makes the person assume they do not have to start at the beginning at the new activity, I had a friend try to convince me to teach him Speedflying as he was experienced in 'extreme sports', roller blading as it turns out, but he had watched plenty of you tube videos and proceed to explain to me how to fly a speed wing with 'the strings'. Don't be that douche bag. You have a lot of fun and new experiences ahead of you, it will be a wild ride. You should understand however that in wingsuit proximity flying, there is usually little or no margin for error. I would compare it to playing Russian roulette, no amount of skill or preparation can over come a zero margin for error. In fact, the more you jump the more times you are exposed to the risk. It is dangerously addictive, too and the desire to fly close and fast with cloud your judgement on many occasions, if safety rawly is a priority for you, steer clear of base full stop. I suspect this is not the case, But these are problems for your future. I would be happy if I do not see another post on here from you for say 4 years if all goes well, with just an update on this thread to say that you have achieved your dream.

I rarely see two identical tony suits, I class them all as prototypes.

If by advanced you mean high performance landings, then no such videos exist. There are lots of great swooping videos of various events but you will not find HP landing instructional material in video. The Parachute and it's Pilot by Brian Germain is the most informative material that has been published on the subject, the rest you will need to seek advice and coaching from instructors, coaches and the proficient pilots you meet at the dropzone.

Turn looks good, if your consistent with that turn in the videos you could start working on flying a lane, then adding a gate to that lane. If your looking to get a little more speed from the turn you could try changing the turn rates a bit. I like to think of the 270 as being double fonts for a similar time to what you do already leading into a wide 180 tightening into a snap 90. The canopy will be steeper at the end of the turn, and will lose more height in the recovery, it should give an increase in max airspeed tho. If the same turn rate it's maintained throughout the turn, I find the recovery are to be a bit flat.

That's a petty accurate summary of the katana at high wingloadings, its like a non cross braced velocity, and that's not a good thing.

Why did you land downwind? If you decided to land downwind intentionally against the landing pattern of everyone else on the load landing into wind and without telling anyone else then yes, dangerous. A bit like driving the wrong way down a freeway. I imagine that's not the case and there was some other reason that you could plan your landing better next time.

No reason to chop that, the canopy was above you and flying straight. If you see how the first twist develops, the risers must first come together to twist, if instead of grabbing the rears, you just grab both riser groups (front and back together) and push them apart, that would in most cases have prevented the first twist from occurring, if the first one can't happen, the next 5 can't happen either. Trying to steer the canopy on the rears during opening can cause problems, the imput only really takes effect after the canopy is fully open, before open can cause funkey inflation rather than steering.

I never found a technique that really works, if a twist started diving aggressively, my plan A becomes cutaway and focus on getting a clean reserve deployment at a good altitude, the speed at which you burn though altitude in that situation is just too fast and there is a tendency to get fixated on winning the battle, especially if your only 1 twist away from getting out. I used to fight them and won a couple if times but upon checking my altitude after, realised that it was probably not such a smart idea. I focused my attention on preventing line twists instead and have had much more sucess doing that.

I use them in every rotation, just in big turns I let them completely max out before giving them up and using harness, on smaller turns I will give them up sooner, as I like to finish any turn on harness imput, I find it easier to snap the end of a turn around on harness and that won't work well if your still hanging your weight on the fronts.

Nothing specific you can do in the gym, tho being in good shape will help with life in general For skydiving - wind tunnel Base - hiking with weight for 2-4 hours Wingsuit skydiving- looking at google earth for 3 mins.

I stopped trying drag the canopy to the ground on the front risers as is so easy to do with the katana, and instead use rotation to fly it towards the ground, actively giving up on the fronts in order to engage the harness instead.

When I got my first x brace (katana 107 - velocity 96) I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by the initial flights. I imagined that x braced canopies were something super hardcore, I don't know what I was expecting but it was just a canopy, much like any other. My katana despite being larger, lost more height in turns, had lower riser pressure and seemed to me at the time more high performance, I later came to realise it was just less efficient as a wing and with the correct technique the x braced was so far advanced that I couldn't go back to 'flying' any 9 cell. I think your observations are quite correct, although most x braced canopies at a lower wing loading will tend to have less reliable openings, from what I hear some of the newer models are better in this respect. Like you say, the very negative recovery arc is something all x braced canopies will share, this is a necessary characteristic of modern high performance wings, provided the pilot is experienced in flying a canopy that has this property, then of course x braced is an option. I guess the reason that x braced canopies are held up as being solely for experienced high performance pilots is that most people looking to fly them are basically looking to fly hard and use then for the purposes they are designed for, few people looking for an everyday canopy to land straight in would look for such a wing as there are usually cheaper and more suitable canopies avaliable for that purpose, but like you say, that doesn't mean a x braced canopy can't be used, just it would rarely be the best option to such a jumper.

I would never make any rotation from the minimum height or even close to it, if you make a mistake from mimimum heights the result will mean impact with the ground. I would instead make all your rotations from near the max heights, and default to a smaller rotation(90 is usually my fall back) if you miss your intiation height.

The hesitation is caused by insufficient force to lift the weight of the bag and canopy out the container, it's not going to be the pin tension causing the hesitation, I would go for a larger pilot chute size and ensure proper pin tension.

If there are more talented people in your class, this is a good sign for you. Talent is a curse, it makes people lazy and removes the feelings of challenge and triumph that are essential to maintain motivation. If you persevere, you will succeed, true story.

I think that classics piece of American wisdom is particularly relevant in this situation. One individuals freedom to swoop ends where another individuals right not to get killed by some one swooping begins. Separate landing areas or passes for large turns is the only real solution and works well at eloy. If your keen on swooping do it away from the spectators and other traffic and walk back, the lack of audience will probably save a few lives.

This works really well, I had a stock velo 96 that was a real handful during openings, this technique completely tamed the heading performance and I can't recall ever getting twists again afterwards.

Agree with all that's been said, double fronts allows you to reach a higher airspeed within a smaller rotation, that's the main advantage. With 630+ it's unnecessary and you can reach canopy terminal with rotation to spare. However, harness only rotations are only an effective means of turning a very highly loaded wing, for new guys flying appropriate learning wings at normal wingloadings, the imput is not effective enough on its own and must be combined with other inputs to create the turn, hence back to double fronts. I love the big harness only rotations, having your arms fully up gives a great view of the approaching ground and is almost effortless compared to aggressive double front riser turns where you are balled up and basically holding a pull up for 10 seconds