slowest regular track

[leroydb 0]

Did a jump today (((((((BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR)))))) it was freaking cold...... I jumped out realized that I was way away from the DZ... To get to the point, I tracked back from about 8 or 9 k ft and my protrack said my bottom average was 93mph. Needless to say my lowest speed was probally a little lower than 93 for that to be an average. Question being, "What is the slowest track without a wingsuit"?

Leroy


..I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio...

[Hooknswoop 19]

Time (sec.) Altitude (feet) Speed TAS (mph) Speed SAS (mph)

55.50 2463.16 74.10 69.60
55.75 2446.18 72.48 68.10
56.00 2422.42 72.43 68.07
56.25 2402.06 71.20 66.97
56.50 2378.33 70.76 66.57
56.75 2354.62 70.31 66.17
57.00 2334.31 68.70 64.67
57.25 2314.01 67.88 63.94
57.50 2300.48 65.50 61.72
57.75 2283.58 63.51 59.86
58.00 2263.32 62.30 58.74
58.25 2239.69 61.87 58.37
58.50 2216.08 61.43 57.98
58.75 2195.85 60.22 56.86
59.00 2179.01 58.25 55.01
59.25 2165.54 55.89 52.82
59.50 2148.71 54.70 51.70
59.75 2128.52 53.50 50.58
60.00 2104.99 53.08 50.22
60.25 2078.12 54.19 51.29
60.50 2054.63 54.15 51.26
60.75 2031.15 54.89 51.99
61.00 2007.69 55.62 52.69
61.25 1984.24 56.35 53.39
61.50 1964.16 56.70 53.75
61.75 1944.09 57.05 54.09
62.00 1920.69 57.01 54.09

These numbers and graph are from my pro-track from a 22 way dive. I was last diver out. I was wearing a normal RW suit w/ booties. I regularly see these speeds on longer tracks. I can feel myself accelerate as I come out of the track, so I usually pull very quickly after coming out of my track for the softest openings. [edited for spelling ]

Hook

[leroydb 0]

53 mph? i dont get that with my wing suit

Leroy


..I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio...

[Hooknswoop 19]

I'm sure you get more foward speed.

Hook

[LouDiamond 1]

Lowest I got at Eloy was something like 62 on a Classic II but I think Jari got something like 18 once. I believe that info is on the Birdman site.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[kevin922 0]

Quote

Lowest I got at Eloy was something like 62 on a Classic II but I think Jari got something like 18 once. I believe that info is on the Birdman site.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but the question was slowest REGULAR track.. i.e. no birdman suit, correct?

[LouDiamond 1]

Quote

Quote

Lowest I got at Eloy was something like 62 on a Classic II but I think Jari got something like 18 once. I believe that info is on the Birdman site.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but the question was slowest REGULAR track.. i.e. no birdman suit, correct?

My reply was to leroys last post about 53 mph. Sorry, my bad on the regular track. But to answer that, I was a diver on the formation dive at Eloy and was in a track for most of the jumps and I believe my average of those 6 jumps had a slowest speed of 70 something with a max of 198. RW suit with booties

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[Staso 0]

i got 41 mph in tight RW tony suit with mega booties. but i cheated :) i speed up
a little before my track. well, a lot actually

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[kevin922 0]

Quote

i got 41 mph in tight RW tony suit with mega booties. but i cheated :) i speed up
a little before my track. well, a lot actually

stan.

Dude I find that hard to believe.. 41 mph??

[Staso 0]

Quote

Dude I find that hard to believe.. 41 mph??

i told you i cheated :) let me find some numbers and graphs for ya.
ok, here it is. i won't import numbers from jumptrack, just the screenshot.

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[Hooknswoop 19]

I believe it. I'm sure he means after a speed dive, into a full track, pitch up as much as possible, converting all that speed into lift. Like a cyclic climb in a helicopter. Of course, you can't sustain that fall rate, and speed back up after the "pitch up" manuever. I think it would be very, very difficult to get that fall rate just tracking, w/o a dive first.

Hook

[kevin922 0]

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I believe it. I'm sure he means after a speed dive, into a full track, pitch up as much as possible, converting all that speed into lift. Like a cyclic climb in a helicopter. Of course, you can't sustain that fall rate, and speed back up after the "pitch up" manuever. I think it would be very, very difficult to get that fall rate just tracking, w/o a dive first.

Hook

ahh ok

[mnischalke 0]

Mid 70s in a slick bev's suit with booties and upper 70s with a long-sleeve t and MX pants. I didn't know what that shudder thing was when I was really working on tracking. I realized it was actually stalling my body. So, I just kept modifying the position to get even slower before that stall started.

Pretty freaking cool shit.

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[quade 4]

That's a great graphic and shows quite well how the slowest decent rate isn't really the best glide ratio either.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Staso 0]

Quote

That's a great graphic and shows quite well how the slowest decent rate isn't really the best glide ratio either.

why not ? when i break off and go to track i cover a lot of distance. i bet my glide ration is pretty
good at that time :) i even get a little unstable when i go from track to just flat. :)

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[quade 4]

The absolute best explanation I've found on the web, with animated graphics and everything is http://home.att.net/~jdburch/polar.htm.

Yes, the text was written for pilots and uses gliders as examples, but, if you think about it, that's exactly what wingsuit/BirdMan/tracking is.

We just have a very steep rate of decent.

Check it out.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Staso 0]

Quote

The absolute best explanation I've found on the web, with animated graphics and everything is http://home.att.net/~jdburch/polar.htm.

Yes, the text was written for pilots and uses gliders as examples, but, if you think about it, that's exactly what wingsuit/BirdMan/tracking is.

We just have a very steep rate of decent.

Check it out.

i'm the yellow glider ! :) i understand what you're saying though.

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[mnischalke 0]

That graph shows distance covered horizontally as well as vertically for a given time. I am not sure of the exact numbers, but from nearly 14k, I can get more than 60 seconds of freefall time and still dump at 6k. I understand there is theoretically a point of diminishing return, but I would bet in unaided tracking, it's negligible.

This could make for an excellent practical experement: Two jumpers exit an aircraft side-by-side and commence on two different flight angles. At 5k, each dumps. Who went farther? Would be interesting to see.

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[quade 4]

The problem would be getting twins that weighed the same, had the same body position and had enough precision over their tracking to maintain a precise angle of attack.

Far easier to do is to just look at Staso's graphic.

Look at the altitude line as he increases his speed from exit to 273 KTAS. Then look at it again as he begins his slow down and level out at around the :30 second mark.

It looks to me that his best glide ratio on that jump came somewhere around the :33 second mark at a decent rate of about 125 KTAS, a speed significantly higher than that decent rate of 41 KTAS near the :36 second mark.

In his attempt to have the slowest achievable decent rate, he gave up having the farthest gliding distance. It shows up quite well on the graph.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ManBird 0]

Nice. Ever break 300? I had speed-diving stint for a bit, but never did better than 247. I can backup that 41 MPH claim. Tracking out of a 200 MPH+ dive would always put me anywhere between 50 - 65 MPH.

As far as regular tracking goes, I usually sustain c. 80 MPH for the entire jump, in a freefly suit, and have definitely been below that after swoops. I usually get about 75 - 80 seconds on a non-WS tracking dive.

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[skydiver41 0]

Wasn't the original question "What's the slowest regular track"?(w/o a wing suit). Last August on a tracking dive I averaged 86 mph (Pro-Track set on SAS). I misread the "Winds Aloft" chart in the manifest office and track the wrong way. I had a 33 knot tailwind. Yes, I did land off. I can't help to think that the excessive tailwind helped my glide and decreased my vertical speed. The slowest speed I had been able to attain previously on a tracking dive was 92 mph. I'm 5'10'' tall @220 lbs. Not the build for a natural tracker but the Pro-Track doesn't lie.

Scott Cowan is my co-pilot...N203E

[TomAiello 26]

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I can't help to think that the excessive tailwind helped my glide and decreased my vertical speed.

Once you reach your "cruising speed" will this matter? I had always thought that the physics worked out such that the head/tail/cross wind would only matter during changes in motion (i.e. turns, dives, etc). Why would a tailwind generate more lift?
At rest, I would think that a tailwind would actually decrease lift on a wing surface. And once it was in motion, I can't see any effect on lift--just on ground speed.
Does anyone who really knows the physics want to explain this to me? I'm very sketchy on all this sci-uhn-tific stuff.
Thanks,

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[Staso 0]

Quote

Nice. Ever break 300? I had speed-diving stint for a bit, but never did better than 247.

my best so far is 291 mph. 9 mph away from 300. but the way speed is measured on speed
competition is average over 1000 vertical meters. my best average is 284 mph so far. the world
record is 300 mph. i plan on going to this year world speed skydiving cup :)

stan.

--
it's not about defying gravity; it's how hard you can abuse it. speed skydiving it is ...
Speed Skydiving Forum

[ManBird 0]

Good question. Trying to look at it logically, and judging from experience... the tail wind would increase your glide, of course, but the lift you may attain from forward speed is only relative to your environment. Groundspeed, you may be travelling 60 MPH forwards, but relative to the tailwind, you may only be doing 38 MPH, thus not generating any more or less lift than you would without the tail wind. If all the wind in the sky was going up at some weird angle, which doesn't happen, that would give you some lift. Recovering from a swoop always throws in a lot of lift, being that we all have a built-in, low performance "trim".

A consistent 86 MPH fall rate in a track is very easy to swallow. If you know and have the right body position for yourself, you can maintain an 80-90 MPH fall rate on every tracking dive. The more conceivable explanation for the decrease in fall rate is that you just nailed it on that one. And if you went the wrong way, you probably weren't looking at other jumpers/canopies, and therefore weren't "chasing".

"¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯"

Click

[skydiver41 0]

Yes, I do think I nailed it on that one. I was experimenting with body position. My hands were about 6 to 9 inches off my hip, my fingers spread open instead of closed, and my ankles were touching while I concentrated on squeezing my legs together throughout the entire track. I can't wait to try a Birdman Suit but from everything I've read I'd be wise to wait until I've got 500 dives under my belt.

Scott Cowan is my co-pilot...N203E