beatcreation 0 #1 March 25, 2008 What do you all think about the new tony suit intro or beginner wing suit? Will this bring down the jump numbers required before being able to put on a wing suit? Please no flaming I am by no means trying to rush into wingsuit flying and I definitely am not trying to get my self hurt. I will obviously wait till the appropriate time and train with the appropriate people but as I am sure most of you were I am very eager to to have a chance to fly. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bodypilot1 0 #2 March 25, 2008 QuoteWill this bring down the jump numbers required before being able to put on a wing suit? 200 is only the recommended number of jumps before trying a wingsuit. Some are not ready at that number, but then some are ready even before. Get some coaching from a ws pilot that is qualified to help you with your progression toward your goal.www.WestCoastWingsuits.com www.PrecisionSkydiving.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
beatcreation 0 #3 March 25, 2008 I have been contemplating all of the added risks due to wingsuit flying but I was hoping someone would be willing to list the major ones to help ease my curiosity. Having never flown one I can think of issues on exit and issues when deploying. I'm sure that some of the wingsuit flyers at my dropzone could answer these questions but I am just to impatient when I get these types of questions. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Chris-Ottawa 0 #4 March 25, 2008 Dude, Check a previous post of mine (See link, it includes video and pictures). The Intro was explained to me as a beginner suit that was suggested for 150 jumps. I jumped it with the designer (Jeff nebelkopf) over Christmas in Florida. The suit is fantastic. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3073382;search_string=tony%20suit%20intro;#3073382 As far as your suspicions go...yeah, it's different. You lose tonnes of control and severely bump up your risk. Please talk to someone experienced. If you can make it to florida to do some jumps with Jeff or Tony himself, highly recommend it. If it's helpful at all, I made 9 jumps in Florida, left after 3 weeks and I now own a tony Suit Raptor. I got better performance on the Intro than I did on my first jump on my Raptor. Feel free to msg me for more videos and pictures, but for actual advice...talk to someone knowledgeable. Chris"When once you have tasted flight..." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PhoenixRising 0 #5 March 25, 2008 You can check the suit out with me. I will be doing a wingsuit weekend at cross keys on april 27. Jeff and i might both be there, but i will definately be there for sure. 50 jumps is a little short, but we can talk and ill show you the suits. Flock U is based out of pepperell, and i do wingsuit weekends all over the northeast all summer long. check out the site and see our events schedule. We have a big CASA boogie in august, and by then you might have enougt jumps to go for it. ill be happy to teach you. Justin shorb Flock UWingsuit organizing, first flight courses and coaching Flock University Tonysuits Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
beatcreation 0 #6 March 25, 2008 Thanks To both of you. I will most likely be at crosskeys that weekend (weather limiting obviously) in april so hope to see you there. I finally got my own rig and im finally making good money so I plan to jump as much as possible and plan to be prepared for one of your events this summer. Cant wait. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeff.Donohue 0 #7 March 25, 2008 Quote...I was hoping someone would be willing to list the major ones to help ease my curiosity... I'm gonna let others complete this list, but a start would be the following. (Please note none of this is about the Intro Suit - it's all about traditional wingsuiting. I have no idea how much of this applies to the Intro, if any. I leave that for others to explain.) Risks I think about are: - Your wings can get in your way at pull time. There's a lot of nylon flapping around, and it can be difficult to find your hackey. There are solutions to this problem, but you can find yourself feeling around back there more than you are used to - or want to. - You have restricted arm movement. Generally, you will need to unzip/undo your arms before you reach your steering toggles. Different people have this problem in different degrees. (For instance, I can reach my risers without unzipping my arms, but I can't reach my toggles). If you're trying to steer to, for example, avoid colliding with another jumper, your response may be limited. - You have restricted leg movement. If you have line twists -- and those who know me know I am the king of wing suit line twists -- you have less of an ability to kick out of the twists immediately. Picture kicking out line twists while wearing a sack. -Flat spins are no fun. With a lot of wing, you can end up flailing through the sky. Again, there are solutions to flat spins, but if they take you by surprise, they can ruin your jump. -This is my personal observation (i.e., I may be wrong), but I think it's easier to generate line twists on opening than without a wingsuit. This is because (I believe) if your wings aren't properly closed down, you can generate a turn while in opening (which results in twists). Your results may vary. - You can lose altitude awareness. At first, you keep thinking "I must be at pull altitude by NOW!", because you are falling at a slower rate. It can be disorienting. It is a bigger problem when you take off your wingsuit (and then the jump goes much faster than you are used to). That's one of the reasons why I never take my wingsuit off. Ever. - Finally, the biggest risk (in my opinion): you will end up hooked on the nylon crack and flying to strange locations with the odd characters who hang out on this fourm. - Your probability of landing out is higher. Spotting for wingsuits is more complicated than it is for traditional skydiving, and it is not unlikely that you will end up landing out from time to time. All of the nasty things that can happen to a person landing out (power lines, killer cows -- thanks, Soby -- trees, landmines, etc.) are all more likely to be in your future. As a result, you should be very comfortable with your canopy piloting skills. In any event, find a good instructor/school and learn from people who do it a lot (i.e., not me, I'm only slightly less of a n00b than you). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mccordia 74 #8 March 25, 2008 I fully agree with everything you sayd Jeff, but think the physical dangers are way to often the focus. The suit is just one factor. But actually being able to fly it well (skillwise and navigationwise) is most often overlooked. And people screaming for straight from AFF wingsuit jumps tend to only focus on somebody being able to handle pulling their main while under a littel stress. Things such as awareness of other traffic (freefallers and wingsuits), flying a correct patern to the opening spot, and even just plane simple awareness of what an opening canopy is doing, and correcting it with some simple harnas inputs are skills you rarely (if ever) find with 100 jump wonders who are always (as I thought I was too back then) Waayyyy ahead of the curve.. Whatever the curve might be...The current 'limit' is just a rough guideline of jump#, in which you hope people have had sufficient exposure to the enviroment in which they want to play to gain some essential skills. For some it will be enough..other may need 10.000 jumps and will still suck...and there is always someone with 15 jumps who tried and did fine.. But some common sense as to when to start flying wingsuits would be nice.. Im not saying flying a wingsuit is rocket science...heck..look around, and you see some people who (if they lost one more braincell) would probably shit on the kitchen floor and sit in the corner of a room drooling while banging their head on the wall...(and Im not just talking about purple mike when he spots a schoolbus) With a bit of preperation, everyone can learn to jump a wingsuit. Though only some will actually learn to FLY a wingsuit, and use the extra aerofoil the suit gives them. In general..the more experience the better...sending people up with less and less experience under their belt sure wont make it a whole lot safer... JC FlyLikeBrick I'm an Athlete? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skyjumpsteve 0 #9 March 25, 2008 Quote Im not saying flying a wingsuit is rocket science...heck..look around, and you see some people who (if they lost one more braincell) would probably shit on the kitchen floor and sit in the corner of a room drooling while banging their head on the wall... God damn it that is funny....and true Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Jeff.Donohue 0 #10 March 25, 2008 Quotelook around, and you see some people who (if they lost one more braincell) would probably shit on the kitchen floor and sit in the corner of a room drooling while banging their head on the wall... Whoah Jarno! Who told you about me in PR?!? Oh, wait... Ummmmm.... never mind. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
peggs82 0 #11 March 25, 2008 Did we also forget that I jump at cross keys??? Come on guys!! Also look up walt. There is a phantom floating around xkeys, and hopefully I can convince tony to send a couple suits up there. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ScottGray 0 #12 March 26, 2008 We also have two Intros down at Skydive Orange in Va. WSI-5 / PFI-51 / EGI-112 / S-Fly The Brothers Gray Wing Suit Academy Contact us for first flight and basic flocking courses at your DZ or boogie. www.thebrothersgray.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MarkM 0 #13 March 26, 2008 Quote Things such as awareness of other traffic (freefallers and wingsuits), flying a correct patern to the opening spot, and even just plane simple awareness of what an opening canopy is doing, and correcting it with some simple harnas inputs are skills you rarely (if ever) find with 100 jump wonders who are always (as I thought I was too back then) Waayyyy ahead of the curve.. The navigation one is the thing that worries me. If you flatspin into the ground that will most likely just affect the person. But if a newbie flies into a tandem you'll start to see restrictions placed on wingsuits. It's like with swooping. People biff in all the time and no one says much of anything. As soon as there are canopy collisions though then you start to see talks about restrictions on the type of hook turns allowed at some DZs. Even at ZHills which is the wingsuit mecca, get a couple noobs to buzz too close to Randy when he's working a tandem and I bet it wouldn't go over too well. I saw a 160 jump guy doing a wingsuit at Seb get a talking to because he got in the way of the tandems landing, which most normal skydivers never have to deal with. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
beatcreation 0 #14 March 26, 2008 Why would a wingsuit be more likely to get in the way of tandem landings? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bodypilot1 0 #15 March 26, 2008 QuoteWhy would a wingsuit be more likely to get in the way of tandem landings? Because your exiting after them, and pulling about their altitude when they are under canopy.www.WestCoastWingsuits.com www.PrecisionSkydiving.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MarkM 0 #16 March 26, 2008 QuoteWhy would a wingsuit be more likely to get in the way of tandem landings? The way the exits and deployments are. Normal skydivers go out before tandems and deploy at 3-5, students and tandems are next and deploying at 5-6 and have a pretty slow decent under canopy. Wingsuits go out last, stay up longer and deploy @ 3-5k and often have a moderate to high canopy decent. That means normal skydivers are landing before students and tandems while wingsuiters are often landing at the same time, often deploying above or on level with them and descending faster down to go past them. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
beatcreation 0 #17 March 26, 2008 Man I cant wait to get a suit on. Looks like im gonna be jumping as much as I can afford over the next few months to get my jump numbers up. Hopefully ill run into some of you guys and will have a chance to pick your brain. Are there a good number of wing suiters around the skydive palatka fl area? Ill be visiting there in august. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MarkM 0 #18 March 26, 2008 I've heard that Palatka has some regular wingsuit jumpers. I know Art the owner has a wingsuit and used to jump it at the boogies. Worse case, Palatka isn't far from ZHills which always has wingsuit action going on. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bodypilot1 0 #19 March 26, 2008 Quote im gonna be jumping as much as I can afford over the next few months to get my jump numbers up. Keep in mind, quality is better then quantity in this case. Dont go out and do just "jumps". Get alittle ws coaching right now and practice mock ws flights, this way you'll be stelar when you do put one on. There is a post on here somewhere that I wrote along time ago for what to work on while getting ready for a ws, I just dont remeber where it is. Good luck. www.WestCoastWingsuits.com www.PrecisionSkydiving.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
fasted3 0 #20 March 26, 2008 I often land at the same time as the tandems, but find it easier to avoid them than a swarm of canopies that often results from regular jumps. I would think that anybody ready to try a wingsuit should be able to land without causing a problem for anybody. As an Intro flier, I recommend it for anybody that wants a very user friendly suit with good performance. At Z-Flock several people commented on being surprised at the speed and lift I was able to get with it, and I'm no expert, or lightweight either. It's very fun to fly, and less stress to know that you can easily get out of spins or canopy problems due to the arm freedom it allows. The quality and service I got has been unsurpassed; 47 flights and it looks brand new and beautiful, at least to me. The low price and buy back program are great, but I don't think Tony will be getting mine back.But what do I know? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
beatcreation 0 #21 March 26, 2008 Quote Quote im gonna be jumping as much as I can afford over the next few months to get my jump numbers up. Keep in mind, quality is better then quantity in this case. Dont go out and do just "jumps". Get alittle ws coaching right now and practice mock ws flights, this way you'll be stelar when you do put one on. There is a post on here somewhere that I wrote along time ago for what to work on while getting ready for a ws, I just dont remeber where it is. Good luck. Most definitely. Trust me I feel bad for the next wingsuit flyer I come across at cross keys. Im gonna be like that really annoying kid that follows you around asking nonstop retarded ass questions. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
VectorBoy 0 #22 March 26, 2008 Keep in mind, quality is better then quantity in this case. Dont go out and do just "jumps". Yeah do some atmonauti it will help tremendously and you will already have that navigation part down when you add the extra nylon. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SkymonkeyONE 4 #23 March 26, 2008 Tthe Intro is fantastic. It takes ten seconds to rig, flys greaat, has no arm rangee restriction, and is amazingly iinexpensive. The buy back program iis very cool, too! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
chrisgray 0 #24 March 26, 2008 The INTRO rocks. It is fast and easy to put on and flies stable. In the right hands it will haul ass too. BTW...Our two new INTRO suits placed first & second in the WS Race at F&D4.0 by Justin Shorb & Me fresh out of the box. BANG!!! WSI-6 / PFI-55 The Brothers Gray Wingsuit Academy http://www.myspace.com/cgwingsuitpilot http://www.myspace.com/thebrothersgray Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PhoenixRising 0 #25 March 26, 2008 BANG!!!!!!!! Team Lime Green ALWAYS winsWingsuit organizing, first flight courses and coaching Flock University Tonysuits Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
