Wingsuit Flying Guide for Beginners: How to Fly Like a Bird

Recently, a large number of mesmerizing videos of people gliding in the air in special suits have appeared on the network. The spectacle of the daredevils soaring at a bird’s eye view cannot leave you indifferent. This extreme sport is called wingsuit flying. The idea of ​​flying in special suits was borrowed from flying squirrels. For a long time, attempts to design a flight suit ended tragically. It wasn’t until about twenty years ago that the modern reliable form of the wingsuit was developed. The suit was equipped with three wings (instead of two, as in earlier versions), equipped with two layers of fabric, capable of being filled with oncoming airflow. So this is our wingsuit flying guide for beginners, where we will talk about all this in more detail.

The Flying Tailor Franz Reichelt

When describing the history of the wingsuit, the first person we remember is the Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt, who in 1912 died while testing a “cloak-parachute” of his invention. Reichelt tried to create a suit that allows the aviator to escape if necessary to jump out of the plane. His experiments with dummies seemed to be successful, although he could not get a stable result.

Franz believed that the low height was to blame – he threw dummies in costumes from the fifth floor. The inventor asked the authorities to allow him to experiment on the Eiffel Tower, and after repeated refusals, he finally got his way. Reichelt told everyone that he would, as before, drop the dummy. However, he decided to jump himself, which shocked those present. After some hesitation, Franz jumped, but the parachute did not open, and he died, falling from a 60-meter height.

Wingsuit Flying Guide for Beginners: Flying Like Squirrels

To start flying in a wingsuit, you must first make at least two hundred parachute jumps. Unlike skydiving, the movement is not down, but forward, resembling the flight of a bird. Wingsuit control occurs by changing the angle of incidence or body position. The picture that opens up to the eyes of a wingsuiter is worth hundreds of preliminary parachute jumps.

During one jump, the pilot flies about 2.5 kilometers across the horizon for one kilometer of altitude. It’s just hard to believe that in a couple of minutes a person flies up to five kilometers.

You can get several times more adrenaline if you make wingsuit jumps from a steep mountainside, flying just a couple of meters from the cliff. The structure of the suit and the implementation of the flight in the direction of the traverse of the slope allows the pilot to follow the mountainous terrain as much as possible, perform various maneuvers, adjust the height above the slope, and rather quickly move to a safe distance from the rock to open the parachute.

To carry out the jump, the pilot rises to a height of about four kilometers. The initial flight speed is about 180 kilometers per hour. Despite the high cost of equipment (approx. 5 thousand dollars) and strict conditions for admission to flights, the number of fans of this aerial extravaganza is steadily growing every day.

The Courageous Patrick de Gaillardon

In the mid-1990s, French skydiver Patrick de Gaillardon invented the modern wingsuit with the following features:

• instead of two wings, they became three;
• wings began to be made of a two-layer material, which is inflated by the oncoming flow.

To simulate a wingsuit, the author studied the flight technique of flying squirrels for many years. As a result, having improved the flying suit, Patrick achieved the almost impossible. He jumped out of the plane, caught up with him a few kilometers below, and climbed back! The total number of his parachute jumps exceeded 12,000. Eight years after the first test of the wingsuit, de Gaillardon died tragically due to the failure of the main parachute during one of the jumps.

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Wingsuit Flying Guide for Beginners: Rules

Due to the special riskiness, only experienced skydivers are allowed to jump with a wingsuit. The main formal requirement here is at least 200 parachute jumps. Wingsuit manufacturers have their training programs for those who want to practice this discipline as an instructor or a skydiver. ​​Flying in a wingsuit is most similar to the flight of birds. The wingsuit allows the skydiver to fly forward rather than down. 

The best pilots are capable of flying 1 kilometer of altitude using a tailwind horizontally of 3.5 kilometers. When putting on a wingsuit, the vertical fall speed decreases from 200-270 kilometers per hour to 35-70 kilometers per hour, and the horizontal flight speed increases from zero to 250 kilometers per hour. The modern wingsuit allows the skydiver to control the flight predictably. Two membranes stretch when he spreads his arms to the sides, the third – when he spreads his legs. 

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Wingsuit Flying Records

Landing a wingsuit is almost impossible without a parachute. To reduce the falling speed and increase the lifting force, it is necessary to increase the area of ​​the wings. It is impossible due to the limited capabilities of the human body. The only possible option is to use a rigid wing frame. The only person in the world to land without a parachute in one suit is stuntman Gary Connery. He jumped from a height of just over 700 meters and landed like an airplane on a runway made of cardboard boxes. A dubious pleasure, to be honest. At the end of November 2017, two wingsuiters from France jumped from a mountain, after which they were able to fly into an overflying plane. They dedicated this trick to Patrick de Gaillardon.

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A breathtaking sight is a flight in a large group – in a flock. Remarkably, during the flights, it is quite possible to talk to each other to coordinate joint actions. A suit equipped with a jet engine is at the testing stage. It is hard to imagine what opportunities will open up for wingsuiters with such equipment! The greatest difficulty is the calculation of the flight route and compliance with it. At the endpoint of the pilot, an accompanying group is always waiting, which, in case of emergency, will be able to provide medical assistance. But, despite the huge risk and high cost of training, flying in a flying squirrel costume is worth it.