Birdman weekend

[billvon 2,991]

Lots of wingsuit flying this weekend.

On Saturday I did a first flight with Didier at Perris with Amy's classic. He was hooked. (Side note - gotta find me a small women's suit; I had to tell two people they'd have to wait until I find a suit that will fit them.) Did a sunset solo and ended up pulling at 6000 since I was the last one in the air. This confused the pilot, who was used to me pulling at 3500 and who then circled at 6000 feet looking around for me. Someone on the ground radioed up and told him I had opened high. It was odd to think that Rob actually keeps track of what altitude I usually deploy at, but it was cool that they are that aware of who's on the load and who's opening and landing where.

On Sunday we had the second Otay Birdman Sunday (Bird person sunday since Kim was there too.) Flocks ranged from 6 to 10. It's a great place for flying a wingsuit - you fly back over the lake through this canyon. It makes for great video as you fly back over the lake with the mountains in the background.

The second jump was interesting. I opened at about 3500 and watched as someone fought their spinning Stiletto for about ten seconds. I remember yelling at him to chop it. He finally did, so I set off in search of the freebag and main. At about 500 feet I saw the reserve fly underneath me, do a low hook turn, and then stab the toggles to get out of the corner. His reserve (a Raven) was having none of that, and it collapsed at about 10 feet and dumped him on the ground. He hit on his back and didn't move. I landed next to him and ran over (dragging everything through the charcoal from the fires) but he was mainly OK - lots of scrapes and bruises, but nothing major broken. He couldn't walk on it but he could stand and totter about. I helped him get his gear off, and Kim and I walked back to get a truck out there to pick him up (he was about 3/4 of a mile out.)

What with a locked gate and a problem with the quad it ended up being 45 minutes before we could get someone out there - we have to work on response time for these sort of problems. Maybe a pair of bolt cutters would come in handy. As it turned out there had been _two_ cutaways on that load.

We did a few more jumps, and each time Rob (the leader) punched it out more and more until we were all flying pretty flat. After five jumps my arms were trashed so we watched videos for a while before heading out to dinner.

Thanks to Ira for setting up the flocking dives; it was a lot of fun. They're Sundays at Otay if anyone else is interested. They'll probably become a weekly thing.

[VectorBoy 0]

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Lots of wingsuit flying this weekend.

It was odd to think that Rob actually keeps track of what altitude I usually deploy at, but it was cool that they are that aware of who's on the load and who's opening and landing where.

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You got to remember this pilot also on occasion flys wingsuits himself and is very helpful with wingsuit specific jumpruns when the workload and traffic allow. What more can you ask of a DZ's chief pilot?



Thanks to Ira for setting up the flocking dives; it was a lot of fun. They're Sundays at Otay if anyone else is interested. They'll probably become a weekly thing.

And this DZ let us all know how much they liked our group being there. I heard some good ideas bounced around for making this regular good time thing with Demos and instruction for people looking to join in on flocks. Spraed'n the love.

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