New suit design in progress: The Hardcase

[lurch 0]

Well, its official. A new suit has seen the light of day and I'm starting to think I might actually complete the damn thing. Finally took it from concept stage to reality. I'm not going for another super-xl-ultra-megamach step here... This is something completely new designed from the ground up with about 30 new ideas that haven't been used in a wingsuit yet.

I call it the Hardcase. Its the first industrial grade wingsuit and it bears about the same resemblance to existing designs as a jeep does a ferrari.

Theres enough of it in existence to put it on and paddle around the dz in it, I figure its still at least a few weeks away from airworthy though.

Parts list includes
Late 60's hard leather biker jacket.
Nichrome and steel wire.
Lexan.
A leather welding apron.
ZP fabric.
Carbon fiber.
Heavy cordura.
Stainless steel.
Spectra.
And a bunch of scraps from last season's wingsuit modification experiments.

So far reactions from those who've seen the early prototype have ranged from
"holy shit"
and
"Damn thats cool"
to
"You're fucking insane"
"Is that for real"
and
"you're gonna die."

I can't believe how much I'm looking forward to flying this thing.

The Hardcase: Because you can't build a wingsuit out of diamond plate.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[bodypilot1 0]

No bailing wire? WTF........

www.WestCoastWingsuits.com
www.PrecisionSkydiving.com

[monkycndo 0]

Quote

No bailing wire? WTF........

That's only for when he is making a laser or fixing a transmission.

50 donations so far. Give it a try.

You know you want to spank it
Jump an Infinity

[VectorBoy 0]

Does it look like Ed's avitar?

[Jeff.Donohue 0]

I hate to ruin Lurch's great unveiling, but I managed to get a still shot of the new suit in flight when he wasn't looking.

(Pic attached.)

[saffron 0]

....as one of the privileged few to witness Lurch's latest concoction, I feel obliged to note additional materials needed to complete (and/or jazz up) The Hardcase...

Duct Tape (obviously)
lime green polyester-gabardine
rubber cement
old tires from a ' 76 Plymouth Valiant
a baseball mitt
wood putty
2-4 toaster cozies

Voila!

"He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch."~Jean Luc Godard

[lurch 0]

ooo, Rough crowd. Jeff, just remember next flock we put up, I've got a burble and I know how to use it.

Now, the toaster cozies, on the other hand, might make an excellent BASE PC pouch...
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[yuri_base 1]

For best performance, don't forget about the shoes!

Android+Wear/iOS/Windows apps:
L/D Vario, Smart Altimeter, Rockdrop Pro, Wingsuit FAP
iOS only: L/D Magic
Windows only: WS Studio

[PhoenixRising 0]

Quote

Does it look like Ed's avitar?

It looks to me like Ed's avatar is flying.......So NO

Wingsuit organizing, first flight courses and coaching
Flock University
Tonysuits

[diablopilot 2]

Quote

The Hardcase: Because you can't build a wingsuit out of diamond plate.

http://www.southwestbowl.com/DC/41706.htm

http://berninabillings.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/1232

----------------------------------------------
You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[lurch 0]

Awesome link Yuri, I think my old black Cats boots would go good with this, or possibly a light hiking shoe, want to stay away from the "sporty" themed shoes, they'd clash horribly with the industrial machine look.

Might just order a some of that shirts or fabric Diablo just pointed me to... maybe I CAN build some of it out of diamond plate, sorta...
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[saffron 0]

proper footwear always.....

"He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch."~Jean Luc Godard

[Tony-tonysuits 0]

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proper footwear always.....

those boots will be perfect, they'll slow him down to our speed

Life is a series of wonderful opportunities,
brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

tonysuits.com

[bodypilot1 0]

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proper footwear always.....

Better buy some Trojans as well.....

www.WestCoastWingsuits.com
www.PrecisionSkydiving.com

[lurch 0]

Still workin it. Suits about 75, 80% done not counting a bunch of small fit and trim details that're bound to come up as it goes. Still needs one last tail panel to divide it into cells, one connector panel at the waist and a bit more than half of both armwings. Got arm and tail releases done today which rocked because it felt a lot more complete... I can put it on and do zip and unzip routines and its all there.
Eventually ditched a couple of the more exotic release ideas and went with the old zippers and snaps in the usual places layout, most of the cooler bits are in the suit and wing structures anyway. Damn thing still looks like the result of a harley getting it on with a sub-70's crossbraced elliptical. Even if it turns out to fly like shit, it'll still look awesome hanging on my wall.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[bodypilot1 0]

Quote

Even if it turns out to fly like shit, it'll still look awesome hanging on my wall.

Hopefully not with you still in it!......

Good luck

www.WestCoastWingsuits.com
www.PrecisionSkydiving.com

[peggs82 0]

Lurch,

are they going to have to add another page to "Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers: Wingsuits and the Pioneers Who Flew in Them, Fell in Them, and Perfected Them" under the Did Not Work category?

[lurch 0]

You gotta be kidding me. After the insane exoskeletal shit I was flying last season this looks downright timid. The more successful armwing extension mods I was willing to fly in public weren't the half of it. Last year about midsummer I had an 18 inch lexan and ZP megatail to go with em making for a wingsuit over 7 feet long with the combo assembly. It wasn't exactly what I'd call all that flyable really but technically speaking it DID work since I survived flying it and nothing broke. It delivered the insane speeds expected but at the cost of stability and an incredibly bumpy ride whenever it wasn't being flown at absolute max... which with a wing that massive I could only do for a few seconds at a whack. This time I'm dialing it down a bit and going for something closer to a homemade S-6 with a few tweaks, I figure as bad as I could butcher the handling of this suit couldn't be any worse than riding that lexan monster down from 14 so all I have to do is make it snagproof and failure resistant, an issue I'm addressing with a certain industrial overkill approach involving building it 5x tougher than it needs to be, everywhere, just for the fuck of it, the description of which immediately earned me the run-on sentence of the year award, twice.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[Jon26 0]

Good luck. Don't forget the cameraman.

[lurch 0]

Thanks... I've been working on it at a high intensity to get it done before the ADD kicks in and I lose interest or get distracted by something shiny. So far its been 4-7 hours a day for 3 weeks straight, toughest project I've ever taken on by a long shot. Theres parts of this thing that I thought would take a couple hours that took days. Hanging the tail topskin and creating the cells and tapering wing trailing edge in 3D was much, much harder than expected. Persistence has paid off though because the bottom half and tail are done, complete and ready to fly, and the upper half isn't all that far behind now, all thats left is the armwings and some structural detailing, nailing down loose ends and such. If the armwings prove as tough as the tail was I figure I'm 2 weeks away from first flight, 3 if I give it extra time for unexpected difficulties and some serious inspection and bug hunting. Even after I declare the whole thing done I'm probably going to wait another week or two for on-ground troubleshooting and going over it 50 times looking for hidden boobytraps and potential cascade failure points.
Finishing that tail after 3 weeks of relentless effort was one of the most intensely satisfying moments of my life though, sat there drinking beer and doing the happydance for quite awhile. If thats what I get just for finishing half of it I can't wait till the whole thing is done, be bouncing off the walls about it for days when I get there.
Pics coming soon, its just about to be worth taking pictures of at this point. I've got the grippers cut and shaped, and all but one dimension of the wings laid out, currently building the arm/body attachments, soon as the zipper anchors are in place I can begin hanging the panels.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[Mirjam 0]

Wow... you're really serious about this thing. Cool. Can't wait to see pictures and hear details of the build. You are taking pictures along the way to document the process?

[Costyn 1]

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Wow... you're really serious about this thing. Cool. Can't wait to see pictures and hear details of the build. You are taking pictures along the way to document the process?

Sorry, that was me posting that. I was logged in under my girlfriends account by mistake.

Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

[VectorBoy 0]

Its OK as long as she likes wingsuits too.

[sdctlc 0]

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Its OK as long as she likes wingsuits too.

I don't know about you VB but I am thinking her picture is much nicer to look at then his...

"He who Hesitates Shall Inherit the Earth!"

[lurch 0]

Actually I haven't, I kind of felt like I should have been, but up till recently the thing looked awful, scraps and absent panels and tangles of spectra as structural placeholders till I could build the more elegant fastener mounts, zipper attachments and that sort of thing. I figured I'd start some photosets after I have at least something like an armwing hung and it actually looks like a wingsuit. Neat thing is, I'll cut all 4 skins, top and bottom both sides at once, so once I get going and have the layout and pieces cut, assembly'll be fast, go from wingless to fully winged in one go. I'm thinking a few more days till theres something like a final wingshape, few more decisions to make about the attachments first, which probably means 2 weeks in reality. I've learned to expect every bit of this to be far trickier than I thought when I get to it.
The flipside is I keep getting neat geometry coincidences, things I hadn't planned out yet where simple solutions to complex lineup problems suggest themselves just from the way the stuff lines up when I assemble the parts I HAVE planned. A lot of that tail I had no idea how I was going to do it till I actually tried to by pinning chunks of fabric together. The entire bottom half of the tail topskin and 3 of 5 tail cells were made at once, out of a single square piece of fabric with no cuts, hemmed on all 4 sides. When I tried figuring out how to build legcells I mucked about for days thinking about making little tubes and tacking em together, horrible brute force approach to making that shape would have been tough as hell and worked poorly, everything I tried to make sucked donkey balls. Finally occurred to me a single square, japanese fanfolded just the right way creates a 3 cell wedge shaped wing with a perfect taper, all it needs is a frontskin. I'd already built that. After that it was just like assembling a cellphone, only with a lot more thread. If I can find a solution that elegant for the armwings this thing is going to be badass.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.