johnmatrix

That would be for the current Vampire models, each quite a bit larger and higher performance than the Vampire 3. From memory I think the original recommendation for it was around 100-150 WS jumps, which seems about right to me.

I think basically it means in 5 years time we'll be seeing a whole bunch of new jumpers with Swedish names winning the performance and acro competitions. Certainly a big development though. I am interested to see what comes out of it.

What's more important is what happens to the recovery arch after the relign. I defiantly think there might be other problems too.

That my very expensive, under two year old powerhouse laptop (4th gen i7-4810MQ, GeForce GTX980M, 32GB DDR3 1600, 3x SSD) needs an upgrade to smoothly handle the high-bitrate 4K streams put out by these cameras. Maybe that is the case but you could try checking the power settings, if I unplug my laptop it automatically changes to a power-saving mode which results in video not playing well. Make sure it's on a 'high power' setting.

One way is to zoom out using the zoom tool and then Transform - Ctrl+T - to manually resize the grid. As someone said above, hold down the shift key when dragging with the mouse to retain image shape (i.e. to make sure it stays square).

Open your still in Photoshop. Copy the grid into the image, it should appear as a new 'Layer'. You could also just drag the file from the desktop onto the still image to do this. The grid layer will now sit over the top of the still image. This should work as long as the grid layer is transparent, if not you can find the opacity control (where the Layer window is, bottom right maybe?) and reduce the opacity to see the still beneath it.

No probs. Also, for a first tracking suit I highly recommend the standard Phoenix Fly tracking suit. I've noticed that many people who decide to go straight to a high performance tracking suit (perhaps expecting the suit to just fly itself) find it harder to fly at first, which inhibits their learning and as a result the suit has the exact opposite effect of actually making it harder to get a good track than with the standard PF model (which you can get a great track with anyway). But whichever suit you get, if you put in a lot of dedicated tracking jumps working on your best glide with a Flysight, your first trip to Europe will be awesome.

Yeah that seems like a good idea. I would do dedicated tracking dives with a Flysight both 'slick' and with a tracking suit to improve your glide ratio first. Then if adopting that body position causes issues going too steep on break-off then just go a little flatter for those jumps instead. And yes - use the tones as you've said to get real time feedback. :) Do dedicated solo tracking jumps with a Flysight or coach jumps - not group tracking jumps where you're trying to stick with someone else. If you're getting good performance out of your tracking suit (past 1:1 GR) then it can be really helpful if a wingsuiter films your body position. Here's some more advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTQXxaGWSE0

Yes. Max glide would work but yes, you could be diving compared to others (depending on how they track, obviously). The key to getting a good glide ratio when tracking is forward speed, which generally is increased by taking a steeper angle of attack. But remember for break-off you really just need to get clear of your fellow jumpers. A really good tracker using all the altitude available to them on breakoff could potentially track into the air-space of the next or prior group (especially if you have an equally good tracker coming the opposite way from that group), so just be aware of where you're headed and how far you're going.

The Sony FDR-X3000 does look very interesting. The GoPro 5 Black doesn't look to be much of an upgrade on the 4 Black, though I'm keen to see how the added stabilisation looks.

Very silly - tracking is a life-saving skill. You need to track at the end of every multi-way jump to help avoid collisions, so you should learn how to do it properly.

I don't think many people could tell the difference between 25 vs 29.97 fps. I'm sure I can't. I would go with PAL if that is the UK standard, just because if you do end up editing footage together from different sources it can help if it's all the same. But it really doesn't matter too much now I don't think.

I don't agree with that at all. I agree that it would be good if people noticed, but they're not obliged to. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves first and foremost. It's not like at a DZ where you can be standing around at an emplaning area doing nothing for 20 minutes, all boarding the plane together and sitting down on the plane doing another 20 minutes of nothing. That's heaps of time to check gear - YOUR gear, then someone else's. In this situation it looks like the guy just wandered out on the bridge as people were jumping. If I was there scared and trying to focus I'd just try to ignore him too. I always cast an eye over other people's gear while I'm standing around doing nothing - but not when I'm about to jump.

Flies fine, lands like shit though.

In case you missed it - it's also the short lines (posted above) that you need to think about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwX33oCHP9s

Be careful, if your wingsuit is bigger than your canopy, the air gets confused and can turn you upside down when you come into land. To stop this from happening you can carry a selfie stick in each hand to act as winglets, this anchors you between the wingtip vortices and prevents spontaneous inversion. Consider also removing the control lines from your canopy to avoid entanglement.

:'(

You may find more people in Australia using the Axe bag as Downward Trend are based here I believe. I have a mate who really likes his, he has been using it for quite some time and does a lot of wingsuit jumps with it.

Many of the suits currently out now have more or less stiff leading edges on the arm (performance foam / inserts, stuff like that) which - while still very flexible - might lessen any assymmetry you have with that arm. It sounds like a Phantom would be a nice choice for you.

+1 Well done Squirrel. Haha.

Wow - thanks for the post. :)

Monotrack's gone off the rails?

Now this is what the wingsuit forum is for! Awesome!!

Thanks for the review. :)

+1 Having been jumping for about 7 years I've definitely noticed there does seem to be a long-term safety awareness cycle. It takes a couple of deaths for people to really focus on basic safety again, but then after a couple of years you have newer jumpers in the sport racking up 500-1000 jumps and reckon they're on top of it, and it starts all over again. Just recently one such jumper was asking me whether he should purchase one of the new big-surface area wingsuits as he's interested in XRW - then told me he had around 30 wingsuit jumps.