Wingsuit Indicated Airspeed

[Anachronist 2]

If I'm not mistaken, a "strong thermal" would be in the 500 feet per minute range (of course they do get much stronger), which translates to about 5 or 6 mph. They also tend to be rather small, you would blow through a big one in a couple seconds. I would be surprised if that is what you are seeing.

Maybe you just had a really good run, a couple data points isn't really a good trend to make a determination. If it is a huge difference, it could be GPS error. They aren't as accurate or as consistent as we'd like to think, not saying they aren't really good; but I've seen a car GPS climb to over 100mph for a few min then back down while cruising at 70 on the interstate the whole time. There are also some technical limitations I won't go into because I don't understand them well enough to repeat them accurately.

[dthames 0]

I went back to my records looking for the jump that I was thinking about. It was a fairly warm sunny winter day at Zhills.

The marked area is 35 seconds, 5 samples per second is 175ish data points and it was locked onto 10 satellites. I can't make a strong case for a thermal other than I would not expect to gain better than 10% all the sudden without an outside influence. And there were thermals that day.

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Instructor quote, “What's weird is that you're older than my dad!”

[Anachronist 2]

Interesting, could be. Low altitude and being over a big ol lake/retention pond both support it.

[dthames 0]

Anachronist

Interesting, could be. Low altitude and being over a big ol lake/retention pond both support it.

I am now thinking maybe not thermals. I did that again last Saturday....flew slower vertically than normal. I thought I had learned all the tricks with this suit, but I keep getting surprised now and then. Post breakoff, averaged 34 MPH for a time. Rbird.
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Instructor quote, “What's weird is that you're older than my dad!”