murf62

Yes, providing they're made aware that they may get a PC hesitation.

Looking through it, there's also a few bits of info in that manual that are a little outdated: "The Phantom 2 is an intermediate wingsuit; it is not suitable for beginner wingsuit pilots." With suitable instruction the Phantom series of wingsuits are now considered perfectly suitable for a first flight. "reasons you may want to cut your wings away could be: • You are unstable or not comfortable with your flight. (You can cut the wings away in freefall and bring your arms up into a box position)" Not something we recommend anymore. Keep arms in suit and fly out of the "instability".

The only pic I can find is here: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=126255; Not perfect, but you will get the idea.

@devildog The suit you have is not covered by the manual posted above. If you look at it closely, you will probably find that one of the tabs where the cutaway laces up through will be marked in some way by a previous owner. When lacing it together, miss out the marked tabs and that's where the laterals and front of rig (just below handles) come through. You may need to adjust one or 2 up or down depending on your own rig though.

As the rules have now changed for the PPC online competition with regards to voluntary wind limits, can we upload old data? Somewhere, I have some old V3 speed runs done at Dunkeswell, UK a couple of years ago with a >50kt tailwind. If my memory serves me correctly, they were within a couple of km/h of Robi's speed posted but I didn't upload them due to the following line which was in the rules as recently as 26 Oct 12: This line was removed from the rules sometime since 26th Oct 2012, meaning the Elsinore comp results are now included in the online comp. If I have previously recorded epic results with insane tailwinds then it's fair to assume the real ninja WS fliers (of which I am certainly not) will have better ones. I know the PPC online thing is just a fun comp, but it's the best way realistically of comparing how you're doing against others outside of an actual event. It would be far more meaningful if the upper wind conditions were displayed against the scores, or all the scores adjusted accordingly.

Why don't you go to the Recon site & read the info there? "Recon Instruments MOD was designed and built for giving real-time info to skiers direct-to-eye. The sensors within this device, however, are ideal for providing flight metrics. There is an onboard accelerometer, altimeter and GPS system, which would allow us to provide forward speed, glide ratio and altitude. We would need to build completely new software to accurately pull and display this information, which is the whole point of this Recon Labs project."

So I'm sure you know that Tonysuits is run by a guy from Europe England actually, the land where English is spoken, not "US English". I hear Tony was even fluent in our language at one time.

If the "birds" there like ATM, I'm all over it!

Yeah, having your hands connected to your feet takes some getting used to for sure. Certainly can't get away with flapping your feet around like you can in a smaller suit. Lots of people underestimate how different it is to a Phantom or V3. Ghost 3, Stealth or similar is a good stepping stone I found.

You flown it yet Fish?

Below is what I would do personally and feel comfortable with at my experience level. Other people may be more conservative (and/or shaking like a shitting dog when exiting below 10000ft). Exit for all altitudes zipped up. @5k, this really should not up for consideration here. We've built a tight 4 way diamond from ~4.5k and flown it for a good 20 secs, so 5k is not even what I would consider "low" for a WS jump. @3k, I would fly until 2k then pull (probably 30 secs or more), dependant on spot (spot over the ground, not the Elsinore one). @2k, it all depends whether I have an AAD, what canopy I'm flying, where the spot is among other factors. Most sensible option would be to just get out stable and pull ASAP. "Sensible" is very subjective though, plenty of WS base exits are lower than that.

I see the Apaches are now getting consistant >3.5 GR. Out of interest, what were the wind conditions on day 1?

......or 200 freefall jumps within the last 18 months. Where did you do your FFC?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4338186;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread How many jumps do you have in total? How many WS jumps do you have? How many on intermediate suits such as S-Bird/Ghost 3?

Another pic

Nope, the majority seem to be fat old men who argue like children via the internet.

Maybe abs & pecs should be an option for all manufacturers' designs? Perhaps a huge crotch package too?

That's what I meant by "outside video". I will try and get some next week in Belgium but there are not that may people around that can fly slow enough to get video of it maxed out. When I have some, I will post it here so be patient.

Firstly the girl is not mine, nor has she flown the suit, I just got her to stick it on to get some photos. The suit is obviously too big for her but it fits me perfectly. I did get some gopro video with a rear facing cam but you couldn't see anything useful on it so it's been deleted. I will try and get some better outside video soon. By "performance" I am talking glide ratio and fallrate. However, I think Tony has proven that the horizontal speed is also pretty good by winning the BASE race hasn't he? I've not done a speed run in the X3 yet, but will do next week in Belgium if they let me get out far enough away.

One thing I forgot to say. Now that the arm inlets have been split (see pic) I am fairly confident that the inflation problems that have been encountered on some Apaches will no longer be an issue.

Right, sorry it's taken a while for more info but I've been away and can't really post anything useful from my phone. I've had a heap of PMs so will answer the questions asked as I go along. It's not me in the pictures by the way, but it's probably the nearest Zoe is going to get to a modelling assignment.

I've had a couple of requests for feedback on the X3, so here we go. I'm 5'11" (180cm), around 100kg (220lbs). I have around 700 or so WS jumps from just over 1300 jumps in total & I've done probably 150-200 WS jumps in large suits where the wing root comes from the ankle (Venom, X-Bird etc). So bear in mind that your experiences with a suit this size may differ from mine. I remember trying an X-Bird at around 100 WS jumps and certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone that early on. I use a 9ft bridle with a 29" ZP PC and have done for quite a while. I jumps a Crossfire 2 139, psycho packed and loaded at 1.70. I deploy in flight but drop the knees to go head high & slow down a little, then fly through the opening until linestretch when I close my legs. I only flew the X3 twice at the weekend due to the usual crappy met in the UK. Both flights were straight in at the deep end with the pressurisation "pussy zips" fully closed. First flight I was out at 13,500ft, stable straight away and felt like I went straight into seriously slow flight. People still in the aircraft said it looked like I was staying level with them for ages. From a relatively slow run-in, it felt like it climbed a little even after staying closed up for a good while. I tried to maintain slowfall for the entire flight and deployed a little higher than usual incase of any dramas (4000ft). A practice pull or two up high would probably have been sensible, but I've always worked better under pressure. Turned out that pull was no problem at all, although others said they took a while to find it on first few flights with the XRW/Rebel/X3. Altitrack showed me deploying at 12,500ft without me consciously flaring the suit, which it has never done before. It is in "SLO" mode as it has been for all my other WS jumps. Second flight I tried smoking it along a little to see what the forward speed was like, then flying it lazy, flying it slow & generally messing around. Arms were tiring a little towards the end, but pull still fine and I was surprised to see that I still did a 38mph average (22mph min if I remember correctly?) whilst messing around the whole flight. As with all Tonysuits I've flown, it feels to me like my legs are too close together, but I've done the vast majority of my WS flights on V3, Ghost 3 & Venom which all have a wider leg stance. Also, from a handful of previous flights on S-Birds, I've felt that there needs to be a little more legwing as they tend to fly a little head high when all wings are maxed out. The X3 doesn't have this "problem". With everything maxed out, it rockets along and to slow it down (vertically and horizontally) you need to drop the knees a little to get your head up. I much prefer this to the way the S-Birds/Wings seemed to fly, during my very limited experience with them. With the X3 and a mate's Apache XRW laid side by side, the suits are identical (well as "identical" as two Tonysuits ever are) apart from the rig being on the outside on the X3 of course. He has gone on to the XRW from an X2 and thinks there is now less work on the arms, probably due to the chest taking a larger percentage of the weight than with the rig outside. If his Apache XRW fits me, we will swap for a jump when we get chance for a better comparison. For anyone that's interested, he has done a pull test on his thumb loops and they were well within limits if pulled downwards, rather than outwards away from the chest. For info, I use a 9ft bridle with a 29" ZP PC and have done for quite a while. I jumps a Crossfire 2 139, psycho packed and loaded at 1.70. I've never had twists, off heading openings or PC hesitation on any suit since I went to this configuration. I deploy in flight but drop the knees to go head high & slow down a little, then fly through the opening until linestretch when I close my legs. I will take some pictures next weekend of both suits and hopefully get some maxed out flights in with a flysight to get a better idea of performance.

No, and there won't be as he wasn't wearing a camera.

I have an X3 sat there waiting to be flown. I will get some pics and give feedback after the weekend.

I'm intrigued by the little "alleyway" he uses to walk out of the box fortress. The fact that such alleyways exist would imply that the box fortress has some empty spots in it... which seems kind of sketch. Or maybe I am misunderstanding something. If there were not 2ft gaps in between the banks of boxes to get ladders inbetween we would have had to start at one end and just work along, meaning only a max of 10 or so people could have built it at once. The gaps meant that many sections could be built concurrently. Like someone else has rightly said, a box is an empty gap anyway! It's certainly not an exact science either. Look how neat the box rig is at the end furthest away from the approach, which is where we started. The other end is pretty shoddy as we decided just lobbing them up quick was the way ahead. Gary didn't seem to care. We even asked him if he wanted it extending with the extra boxes leftover and he said "nah, if I can't hit that then there's something wrong."