Will the 200 pre-req be lowered with latest suit technology?

[mixedup 0]

I've been reading a bit about wingsuiting & some of the latest safety improvements. For example that the Tony Suits can now allow one to just stretch the arms out to grab toggles.

Just wondering if the "200 jumps in the last 18 months" pre-requisite might lower in the future?

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[sinjin 0]

kinda tough to grab the toggles in a flat spin, blacked out with your canopy in your container. sure, give it a whirl at 30 jumps. if you could make your gps and camera crater resistant, that would help alot.

dont let life pass you by

[mchamp 1]

Probably not, as its not so much about reaching the toggles immediately unless you are using it for BASE, but more about stability and adding another tool for your skydive which adds a bit more complexity to your skydive.

For info regarding lift ticket prices all around the world check out
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[mixedup 0]

ok

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[mccordia 74]

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Suits can now allow one to just stretch the arms out to grab toggles.

Regardless of brand, most suits allow 'limited reach' when lifting legs. Something that works okay on a clean opening, but during a spin or on a twisted up canopy, lifting knees will be something that wont happen (as many videos of these situations on youtube etc show as well).

Most sleeves that are supposed to offer easy reach also depend in function largely based on the clothing worn underneath.

200 skydives already isnt much....if somebody doesnt even have the energy to enter a sport with the least possible effort...why even bother to get instruction or do any skydives at all before flying a wingsuit.

Skydiving has shown multiple wingsuit related accidents linked to low experience. In basejumping, wingsuits also are a large percentage of accidents. In hardly any of the accidents in these two sports, the ability or lack of reach to 'reach toggles' is part of the reason those accidents happen.

At 200 skydives, you have slightly over 3 hours of experience in the sport.
Try entering a profesional boxing match with 3 hours of training....much more fun to watch for us...much less dangerous for you

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[phoenixlpr 0]

Quote

Just wondering if the "200 jumps in the last 18 months" pre-requisite might lower in the future?

Notice that he had a currency requirement too.

In Finland now it's min 200+ (freefall) jump.
There is no strict currency requirement.

[Mac 1]

I personally don’t think that 200 jumps in 18 months gives you the experience required that 500 jumps does, so certainly don’t think it should be lowered.

I did my first 200 jumps in a year, I started WS after >600 jumps. I don’t think I was at all ready for WS after those 200 jumps.

Obviously the added caveat is people are different and learn at different rates etc, but as most rules in the sport “seem” to cater for the lowest common denominator, I feel this one does not.

[piisfish 140]

I think it could be lowered to 199, so that the 200th would be the wingsuit jump

On a more serious note, I do think that very often 200 is "very young"

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[michalm21 2]

I would actually like to see it raised to a higher number.
What would that number be? I don't have an answer - things like this are hard to quantify, given many conditions but I doubt majority of FJC students are prepared at 200 jumps.

One argument I see about training early is that student doesn't have "bad habits" from other disciplines so some may learn faster and progress safer. But of course the counter argument is the lack of experience to deal with emergency situation (some things you just gain steady over time)

To answer the OP question - hell no. even 200 seems too few in my book.

[BenediktDE 2]

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I would actually like to see it raised to a higher number.
What would that number be? I don't have an answer - things like this are hard to quantify, given many conditions but I doubt majority of FJC students are prepared at 200 jumps.

One argument I see about training early is that student doesn't have "bad habits" from other disciplines so some may learn faster and progress safer. But of course the counter argument is the lack of experience to deal with emergency situation (some things you just gain steady over time)

To answer the OP question - hell no. even 200 seems too few in my book.

+1
and the suits get faster and bigger all the time. In my eyes 200 is veeeeery low already.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

[DSE 5]

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+1
and the suits get faster and bigger all the time. In my eyes 200 is veeeeery low already.

It's not that the suits are getting bigger/faster that are the potential problems for 200 jump wonders.

The problem with the big suits is that there are people incentivized to sell big suits, and worse...peopel that tie big suits to ability. We see it every month here...some dude with 10 Phantom jumps shows up with an Xbird because someone told him/her they needed it to fly better.
It's as stupid as someone with 100 jumps under a 1.0 wingloading suddenly jumping to a 2.0 wingloading because they were told they'd swoop better.
Whatever happened to "learning to fly your body?"

We've already seen a couple DZ's change up their policies on wingsuits in the past 12 months; I suspect we're going to see more. Most of the problems are due to poorly trained people in suits that are well beyond their capacity/skill level.

I don't expect we'll ever see the BSR for 200 jumps lowered. 200 is a great gateway point for current, heads-up would-be wingsuiters, IMO.

[dragon2 2]

This weekend I got asked about how a suit fit. Guy had slightly less than 200 jumps, in 6 years () and was going for the FJC in Germany somewhere.

The suit he picked out was a Tengu. "Yes but I get the suit for my course with the course so I need a suit for after, and suits are really hard to find so I'll buy this one".



Luckiliy it was on the smallish side for him, because whatever I said he was bent on buying it.... Not sure I really got through.

I talked to the store about it, later, as they're only used to selling classics etc. And was glad they sent the guy to me first

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[lurch 0]

Second all the other responses. Put bluntly, no way.
The Intro is as big or bigger than yesterday's "expert" suit, say a Birdman S-6 and far more tail-heavy. An Intro doesn't have much for low-fallrate potential because the wings just buckle if you punch for low fallrate, but flown steeply like a lot of students do it goes very fast and very far, and if the student doesn't already have very high-functioning skills they can go very far very fast and get into very deep trouble even faster.
I've seen some people with 5000 jumps get into wingsuit and get in trouble and come down scared shitless. An Intro or a Prodigy can and will spin you so fucking fast your eyes bleed if you haven't a clue how to handle it and solid basic freefall instincts. Don't believe me look up Jeff Neb''s bloody eyes photo. I'm not kidding. I've seen the pics. He has spun so fast it busted all the blood vessels in his eyes and I think his toes turned black. He didn't do that in an Intro but he could have.

Easily.

And he was a master. Imagine getting into that by a slight wrong control input with zero experience and you -don't know what to do about it.-

I've broken the 200 jump rule exactly once myself about 5 years ago. Took up a guy at 157 jumps... he was an exceptionally gifted apprentice whose progress and skills I'd been monitoring since his first few jumps, and I'd been teaching him basic wingsuit drills off and on for months. It was his specific goal and I gave him extremely exceptional preparation. He did just fine, but I won't break that rule again. Not long after, the wingsuit community at large started experimenting with sub-200 numbers, I started hearing about a lot of 75-150 jump wonders trying to or actually getting into wingsuit and the number of scary/fucked up wingsuit incidents jumped. Like the tailstrike guys a few weeks back.
They had no clue about the forces they were playing with, no better guidance and had no business in a wingsuit at all. And I don't think they were even sub-200 jump wonders. They just didn't know.

A wingsuit flight is just plain too fucking complicated even at its simplest to start hucking sub-200's a lot. Experience has shown they just do not have the total awareness and control to handle it as a group.

We could teach kids how to drive at 12 years old and thered be plenty of exceptional kids who would do well but as a population they really can't handle that either and we'd see a huge jump in accident rate if the driving age was lowered to 12 no matter how safe we made that training. Coordination and skills and especially judgement just aren't developed enough for it.
For some things only saturation level experience grants ability. Wingsuit is one of those things. There is just no substitute for accumulated airtime.
-B

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

[mixedup 0]

thanks - excellent info - amazing that through this site I can get feedback from you guys who are actually flying wingsuits - I'll keep wingsuiting as my "light at the end of the tunnel" goal for somewhere quite a bit further down the track...

Anything I can do as I go through the AFF program and then the first couple of hundred jumps that could start preparing me for wingsuiting in years to come? I'm keen to do tracking dives once I'm up to that after the AFF program. There's nothing else between basic freefall/tracking and a wingsuit flight is there?

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[mccordia 74]

The worst students tend to be the ones who waste 100 to 200 jumps on solo 'performance' training by doing only tracking. They are great at holding one static body position, they suck at everything else.

Learn to SKYDIVE! Do formations, learn basic freeflying. Tracking is included at the end of every jump in those diciplines.
Learning to fly your body in al orientations, learning to fly relative to others etc. teaches you much, much more than any solo trackingdive can ever do..

The best wingsuit preparation is no preparation, and A LOT more experience than the minimum 200 jumps...

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[piisfish 140]

Quote

The worst students tend to be the ones who waste 100 to 200 jumps on solo 'performance' training by doing only tracking. They are great at holding one static body position, they suck at everything else.

Learn to SKYDIVE! Do formations, learn basic freeflying. Tracking is included at the end of every jump in those diciplines.
Learning to fly your body in al orientations, learning to fly relative to others etc. teaches you much, much more than any solo trackingdive can ever do..

The best wingsuit preparation is no preparation, and A LOT more experience than the minimum 200 jumps...

golf clap... golf clap... standing ovation....

worth repeating

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[slim_shady 1]

Quote

Learn to SKYDIVE! Do formations, learn basic freeflying. Tracking is included at the end of every jump in those diciplines.
Learning to fly your body in al orientations, learning to fly relative to others etc. teaches you much, much more than any solo trackingdive can ever do..

I agree.... i had 215 skydive jumps when i did my FFC. I did RW and basic freefly (sitfly and trying docks ) jumps in this 215 jumps. Only 1 trackingjump, and did this make me a bad student because of the lack of tracking jumps? I didn't think so.
Jarno will probably confirm this.

PS: OK ok a little coaching from my teammate Bavo will probably have helped a little bit too during this 215 jumps !

[Titanium_Gecko 0]

+1 for eveything above.

200 should not be lowered in my opinion and the currency requirement maintained. Features to improve useability and safety are great but no substitute for experience in the air.

As a 1st flightee on Jump 188 in 8 years and 3 months it was too early in hindsight, let alone the first 30 WS jumps being on my own. Hence, I've put about 300 jumps on my "intermediate" suit before a small upgrade for specific reasons.

Don't rush becoming a solid skydiver and then take your time becoming an even better wingsuiter!

www.gathhelmets.co.uk
www.flyyourbody.com

[phoenixlpr 0]

With modern small surface suits like Prodigy even 100-150 jumps could be enough.

FYI Jari from Bird-Man got an idea to have a AFF like course with jump nr1, too bad its never get implemented.

[mccordia 74]

Like many other brilliant ideas such as jeans etc Im personaly quite happy to see that one never took of either...

Watching said person personaly train one under skilled and under experienced jumper showed me all I needed to know...for some 200 wouldnt even be enough.

Modern 'small surface' suits are quite a bit bigger than many 'classic' designs'.

For FFCs its PFs stance that for sure 100/150 isnt enough. Why cather to low experience? Urge people to work on skill!

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[phoenixlpr 0]

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Modern 'small surface' suits are quite a bit bigger than many 'classic' designs'.

True, but lot easier fly than any of old ones.

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For FFCs its PFs stance that for sure 100/150 isnt enough. Why cather to low experience? Urge people to work on skill!

You can fly an impact which considered just as a track suit.

I did fly a Prodigy. It felt a bit fishy and I think my Phantom was easier to fly...