Event: TopGun canopy/wingsuit project

Date: 27 oktober 2007

Location: DZ Schaffen, Belgium

November 15, there was a small scale TopGun meet at Schaffen, Belgium.

Bo Wienberg travelled from Denmark to meet Alejandro Lopez, Costyn van Dongen and Jarno Cordia to experiment with canopy / wingsuit relative flying.

Jumping a Velocity 90 and Velocity 84, with a high wingload and a special set of retractable frontrisers, the canopy was be flown from full altitude, while the wingsuit pilots tried to pass as close as possible.

The canopy achieved a downward velocity of around 24 miles per hour. While fast, it wasnt enough to maintain relative flight. Flying the wingsuit, around 32 mph seems to be the maximum sustainable (low) fallrate. Still leaving an 8 mph gap between canopy and wingsuit.

Several jumps were made, and Jarno and Bo passed eachother several times within grabbing range. But for safety, decided against docking attempts. As a sustained dock between wingsuit and canopy, flown for a reasonable time, is what we are after in the long run. And with the current differences in speed, a quick slap on the arm or foot would have been all thats possible.

Its quite amazing to be flying next to a canopy, and be passing it at walking speeds relative to eachother. But at the same time a bit frustrating, as the difference in so small, while at the same time just a bit too much for what we want to do.

Its going to take a few more attempts, but give it a bit of time and a bit more engeneering on both the wingsuit and canopy side of things, and we will bridge the gap, and fly a sustained dock.

Special thanks to Performance Designs for use of their canopies

Event: TopGun Banner Advertising Experiment

Date: 9 April 2007

Location: Sibson, UK

Our sport is very unique with some amazing advertising opportunities that really stand out in the marketplace. This has mainly involved experimenting with marketing assets such as logos and text on the wingsuits wings. This time we decided to try something a little different. Mark Harris, a very accomplished rigger and wingsuit pilot, designed a banner which could be towed by a wingsuit, sporting anything an advertiser could want. He placed the ?Birdman Blade? logo on the prototype, promoting the latest wingsuit from Birdman. The experiment involved Mark towing the banner whilst Steve Such and Duncan Wright flew a tight wedge formation around the banner with Dave Haygarth taking photos and video.

From Marks perspective there was a lot more to think about. How was the banner going to react on exit? How would it affect his flying? What was going to happen on deployment? There was nobody to ask advice as it was the first time someone had tried towing something this large from a wingsuit.

Mark exited the plane on his back with the banner rolled up and released it as soon as he hit the slipstream. After a little buffeting he settled down into a stable backfly position. In relation to normal wingsuit flying the others experienced more downward and less forward speed due to the drag of the banner. Whilst Steve and Duncan flew into position at Marks ankles they noticed that although Mark was stable the banner was not. It was frantically waving around as a flag would on a windy way. They would have to change their trajectory and move to the same level as Mark a fair distance away to avoid getting whipped by the banner, Once in place, flying at a comfortable relative speed, the wedge was tight and stable, allowing Dave free reign to fly around getting photos from all angles.

Event: TopGun team training

Date: 3 July - 8 July 2007

Location: Cochstedt, Germany

Once a year, skydivers gather at a big abandoned airfield in Cochstedt Germany, to jump out of a huge Antonov72 cargo plane.
The idea for the TopGun team was born in Empuria Brava, during the summer of 2006. And from that point on, a slow selection of good flyers made the team grow. During the 2006 Cochstedt event, the last jumpers were added to the line-up, completing the team. So 2007 was in some way a return to our birth ground.
There was a lot of bigway jumping going on at the boogie, and the team flew along in most formation attempts.
But halfway through the boogie, we took a day off, as we wanted to also get some team training in.

We worked out a few dive plans, varying from single point to multi point formations.
Most focus was on even spacing within the formation. Making the formations completely symmetrical, and clearly visible from the ground.

As the formations were coming together nicely, we also experimented a bit with formations consisting of more then one point. Having flyers switch slots. Compared to RW and Freefly, the hardest thing with wingsuits is that you don't always have full view on whats happening around you. The limited field of view meant we had to change the 'key' for a next point from one person to another.
That depended mostly on who had the best overview on what was happening within the formation. The other flyers would then key their movement on the flyers changing slots.

We managed to make a dozen or so team jumps during the boogie, also joining in some of the bigway flying with the rest of the wingsuit flyers present. Mark, Alejandro and Jarno took turns flying inside the formation doing outside camera. Combined with the formations flown, this resulted in a really nice collection of photos and video at the end of the boogie.

Event: TopGun team training

Date: 23 December 2006 - 1 Jan 2007

Location: Castellon, Spain

The last week of 2006, the dropzone of Skydive Castellon (Spain) was invaded by the TopGun skyflying team.
The TopGun team is made up of 10 flyers, so that there is always a team of 4 to 8 flyers able to fly, train together or organise and coach at boogies.
We had had brief meetings before, with part of the team present. But this would be the first full week of team training with almost everyone of the team present.

The week started with some playfull jumps. Just getting current, and getting re-acquainted with each other, flying as a team.
As the week progressed, we started making dives a bit more challenging. Starting off with simple wedge shapes, flying off a base in the front. We tried new formation with X and Y shapes. In these, it wasn't always possible to fly off a base in the front, so we had to use a lot of cross-referencing with other flyers, trying to keep formations symmetrical and evenly spaced.

As the week progressed, we also experimented a bit with vertical (also sometimes called '3D') formations. Flying vertical stacks and inverted pyramids.

Most time was spent flying a simple wedge formations. Where the speed at which we built the formation, and proximity between the flyers was the biggest point of focus.
Quite often it only took one jump to fly a formation the way we wanted. But on some of the more complex formations, it quite often took more then a few dives to get them looking exactly the way we wanted.

The pilot, flying a nice roomy Cessna Caravan, was quite accomodating by flying jumpruns specifically for our wingsuit exits. Allowing us to fly to the dropzone in one straight line, without having to make turns. This greatly helped in building the formations. And the people of Skydive Spa, also did us a big favour by manifesting us as often as we liked.
Allowing us to do 6 to 8 jumps a day. The dropzone is situated close to the sea, which meant we had a great backdrop for our flights. Perfectly captured by Mark, who was most often seen backflying underneath the formation, with a stills and video camera fixed on top of his helmet.

As the week progressed, we completed our initial planning, and decided to focus on some more playfull dives and some phot and video experiments.
We took one full day of jumping, and shot all the jumps with a special double camera setup. Jarno then post-processed both videos in the computer, and created a 3D video. Viewable with special red/green (Anaglyph) glasses.
Duncan, Steve took a few skydivers along for a ride. Doing wingsuit Rodeo dives. With normal freefallers riding on the wingsuit flyers' back, even flying a 2 way in close formation.
Belgian freeflyer "Blokki" even managed to do a full stand up on the back of our teams resident base flyer, Bo.

During the week, it also became made clear which team members were most comfortable flying a specific slot within a formation.
For future meetings, we intend to take these people, and have them fly outside this comfortable position. Which means we wont be taking pushing any team member into a specific slot. But really have everyone work to increase their skill at an all-round level. Being able to pick up any slot within a formation, or any role within the team.

Blade prototype testing

Looking back, this was definitely a successful week. We shot a lot of good video and photo material, and everyone learnt a great deal. But flying together as a team wasn't the only reason we came to Spain. We had also been asked to test fly a new wingsuit from Birdman (link). The 'Blade' as it was called featured wings with dual inflation (front and back) and airlocked wings. And a new legwing design, attacked to the back of the leg, along with some experiments with swept back armwings and new leading edge materials.
The team was asked to thoroughly test the suit, and provide changes and feedback, which would then result in the final production version of the suit. The suit performed incredibly well, and was as solid and stable as can be. Especially when backflying.
Over the week, the suit was testing for maximum flight, backflying and formation flying. Resulting in some changes to the design.Most noticeably on the legwing.
The new legwing design meant that the legs had to be rolled out to fully utilize them. Which worked, but provided such an awkward flying position, that it was hard to maintain maximum flight for a full jump.
The attachment of the wing on the backside of the leg also meant it was a bit harder to feel what the wing was doing. As you no longer had the pressure on the front of the legs.
The team compiled made approximately a total of 400 jumps (around 40 jumps each) on the suit during the week. This resulted in a detailed list of recommendations of changes that would be made on the final release model of the Blade.