Wingsuit — feel like a bird

Wing­suit can right­ful­ly be called the most “free” of all exist­ing types of sky con­quest by man. And just by try­ing this type of extreme sport, you can believe that peo­ple are cre­at­ed to fly!

His­to­ry of occur­rence

The idea to use arti­fi­cial wings for human flight arose in antiq­ui­ty, we are remind­ed of this by the leg­end of Daedalus and Icarus. How­ev­er, this idea would have remained just an idea if it had not been final­ly com­plet­ed, and the scheme of a spe­cial suit was for­mu­lat­ed.

Accord­ing to his­tor­i­cal data, more than 75 dif­fer­ent inven­tors tried to mod­ern­ize and devel­op the idea of ​​​​self-guid­ed flight, who risked con­quer­ing the sky with their own inven­tions resem­bling wings. How­ev­er, prac­ti­cal­ly all these attempts end­ed very bad­ly, and most of the inven­tors crashed, falling from a height. Due to the high mor­tal­i­ty rate, the Amer­i­can Para­chut­ing Fed­er­a­tion even banned for some time var­i­ous kinds of tests relat­ed to fly­ing on impro­vised wings.

The first work­ing pro­to­type of a wing­suit (fly­ing suit) was cre­at­ed in the mid­dle of 1990. This inven­tion was claimed by the French­man Patrick de Gail­lar­don and was a spe­cial suit with three wings instead of the tra­di­tion­al two. The “pro­to­type” of the inven­tion was an ordi­nary fly­ing squir­rel, which, dur­ing its flight, bal­ances and keeps bal­ance with the help of its tail.

In a mod­ern wing­suit suit, con­trol is car­ried out by chang­ing the posi­tion of the body, as well as decreas­ing or increas­ing the angle of inci­dence. Flight suit designs are con­stant­ly being refined. This is done so that one suit mod­el can be used in sev­er­al sports at the same time. For exam­ple, com­bine wing­suit with base jump­ing (jump­ing with­out a para­chute from var­i­ous heights) and sky­surf­ing (jump­ing with a spe­cial board and per­form­ing dif­fer­ent fig­ures dur­ing a free fall).

To date, the most fash­ion­able is the attach­ment to the suit for a jet engine wing­suit. But this mod­el is still being final­ized, so it has not yet received mass dis­tri­b­u­tion.

What is a wing­suit?

Wing­suit — trans­lat­ed from Eng­lish means “fly­ing squir­rel” or “bird­man” (man — bird) and is one of the types of para­chut­ing. In this sport, the ath­lete or ama­teur puts on a spe­cial wing­suit made of airy fab­ric (two-lay­er mate­r­i­al with air intakes).

Dur­ing a free fall of an ath­lete, the mate­r­i­al of the suit is inflat­ed with the help of ascend­ing air cur­rents, and cre­ates lift for fur­ther move­ment. Wing­suit dur­ing the flight opens three wings in the air: two wings in the area of ​​​​the arms, and the third — between the legs. With the help of such an inter­est­ing suit, the ath­lete eas­i­ly con­trols his body. And in order to avoid falling, a para­chute is used in a wing­suit. Thus, a suit and a para­chute help a soar­ing per­son to achieve max­i­mum free­dom in flight, to feel like a bird. The main goal of the sky­div­er is to reduce the speed of the fall as much as pos­si­ble and pro­long the con­tem­pla­tion of the mag­i­cal land­scapes of the wild.

Types of flights

Wing­suit flights can be car­ried out both in sin­gle and group form. Dur­ing solo flights, the pilot can sim­ply soar in the sky, per­form var­i­ous acro­bat­ic flips and turns.

In the group form of the wing­suit, pilots can per­form var­i­ous tricks, flips col­lec­tive­ly and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as well as cre­ate whole fig­ures in the air. Such a group flight is called a flock. Unlike oth­er col­lec­tive flights, the ath­letes do not hold hands and soar freely, and can also talk to each oth­er. Dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion in the col­lec­tive type of wing­suit, sky­divers com­pete among them­selves for dis­tance, speed, flight time and the num­ber of acro­bat­ic stunts in the air. Such shows are always very col­or­ful and spec­tac­u­lar.

Types of suits for wing­suit

All exist­ing wing­suit mod­els, as a rule, are equipped with spe­cial quick-release mech­a­nisms, thanks to which the ath­lete can choose his own type of descent (flight). There are sev­er­al types of wing­suit suits:

• Clas­sic (for begin­ners)
• GTI (for sky­divers with an aver­age lev­el of train­ing)
• Skyfly­er (for pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes).

Clas­sic mod­el

These mod­els include, for exam­ple, PF Prodi­gy 2, PF Acro 2 and oth­ers. These mod­els are quick and easy to put on and easy to con­trol dur­ing flight. In these suits, you can make your first dives and turns.

Mod­el GTI

These mod­els include the PF Ghost 2, the ver­sa­tile PF Phan­tom 2Z and oth­ers. These mod­els are designed for mid­dle class pilots and do not cre­ate too high speed dur­ing the flight, are obe­di­ent in con­trol and reli­able. These mod­els of suits are designed for the aver­age lev­el of train­ing of an ath­lete who can already per­form var­i­ous acro­bat­ic stunts and flips dur­ing the flight.

Mod­el Skyfly­er

Mod­els are designed for a high lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in a sky­div­er. An exam­ple of such mod­els can be: PF Vam­pire 3, PF Stealth 2 and oth­ers. They have excel­lent aero­dy­nam­ic qual­i­ties, thanks to which the ath­lete can fly and descend with greater speed. And the wing area is designed in such a way that dur­ing the descent, the para­chutist can descend slow­ly and mea­sured­ly.

Impor­tant!

In order to fly in a wing­suit, you must have basic train­ing. The for­mal min­i­mum to start jump­ing is 200 para­chute jumps. Also, many orga­ni­za­tions con­duct spe­cial cours­es for the train­ing of pilots in wing­suit, brief­ing.

Arti­cle pro­tect­ed by copy­right and relat­ed rights. When using and reprint­ing the mate­r­i­al, an active link to the healthy lifestyle por­tal hnb.com.ua is required!