Skysurfing checklist?

[wildernessmedic 0]

Can anyone give me a recommended checklist before seeking out a sky surfing mentor? All I see in the SIM is it lumped in briefly with free flying at "recommended 200 jumps."

I imagine you'd want to be comfortable with belly, sit, and standing with enough experience for controlled turns? As well as being comfortable in EPs etc.

Can anyone fill me in on a bit more of what's necessary beyond the SIMs nearly nonexistent mention? A person or two said when it came out most people didn't even know how to free fly. They were belly jumpers who just threw it on and figured it out.

Thanks.

[yoink 321]

The biggest thing that stood out from the other thread for me was the guy who has 24,000 jumps saying that you need to be very, very good in all axes. That's a good indication that we had it wrong in the SIM just because we didn't know any better, I think.

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aving made a few hundred skysurfs myself in the early to mid 90s through 2007, my opinion is it's just too difficult, which turns most jumpers off. Skysurfing is the most difficult of all disciplines. You have to be a very very good flyer on all axis. Wingsuiting by comparison, is very easy and does not take much experience to learn, 200 jumps and your wingsuiting, they are both very dangerous, however, it takes much more skill and experience to skysurf, yes there are exceptions, some are just natural flyers.

[DrewEckhardt 0]

wildernessmedic

Can anyone fill me in on a bit more of what's necessary beyond the SIMs nearly nonexistent mention? A person or two said when it came out most people didn't even know how to free fly. They were belly jumpers who just threw it on and figured it out.

Thanks.

MIchelle and Brian Germain told me you should be able to rotate both directions on all three axes while head-up: back flip, front flip, left cartwheel, right cartwheel, left turn, right turn starting and ending standing.

Tamara Koyn's web page from 1994 is good:
http://www.koyn.com/CloudDancer/articles/Surf.html

Double wing sit suits providing more drag to stay on top of the board were common. You can have a channel sewn down the leg for the cutaway cable and velcro added for a pud.

Some of us used to wear webbed swimming gloves to give our hands more input on our yaw axis.

[QUOTE]
A person or two said when it came out most people didn't even know how to free fly. They were belly jumpers who just threw it on and figured it out.
[/QUOTE]

Freestyle was fringe but well-established. Sit fly with double wing suits was not uncommon at the time. Head-down was a new thing kids were doing in Arizona and Florida.

[grimmie 186]

I would reach out to Scott Smith, Sean MacCormac or Tanya Garcia O'Brien.

They have a lot of experience at it and were competitors at the world level, and Sean still jumps a board every so often.

[rjklein4470 23]

in the late 90's early 2000's I racked up around 500 jumps on a board. It's like trying to stand on a surfboard in the deep end of a pool at first.

Make sure your core is really strong is the best advice I can give.

practice your recovery technique. That would be sit flying with the board out in front of you. You really have to own this move.

make sure you are 100% stable standing with your arms in all different positions before you move to more complex moves. If you wave off and pitch, and then become unstable it could be bad for you.

I spent around 25 jumps on each one of those moves before I moved on.

Not sure a AAD is a good idea, I always turned mine off

canopy choice is important. I always jumped with a stiletto. I felt like it was a great canopy for jumping a board with.

[jclalor 12]

I’m just curious how disruptive (If at all) a sky surfer would be on your average load.

[Remster 30]

jclalor

I’m just curious how disruptive (If at all) a sky surfer would be on your average load.

Not bad actually. They go out 1st, and you just need to give them enough seperation.

Remster