The name of this super extreme sport is wingsyutting. The idea to fly in special suits was borrowed from flying squirrels. For a long time attempts to design a suit for flying ended tragically. It was only about twenty years ago that a modern, reliable form of wingsuit was developed. The suit was equipped with three wings (instead of two as in earlier versions), fitted with two layers of fabric capable of being filled by the surging air current.

Getting the ability to plan above the ground is not available to everyone. In order to start flying in a wingsuit, it is necessary to make at least two hundred parachute jumps beforehand.

Unlike skydiving, the movement is not downward, but forward, reminiscent of the flight of a bird. The wingsuit is controlled by changing the angle of fall or body position.

The picture that opens to the eyes of a wingsuiter is worth hundreds of preliminary skydives. 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 a person flies up to five kilometers in a couple of minutes.

Several times more adrenaline can be obtained if you make jumps in a wingsuit from a steep mountainside, flying literally a couple of meters from the cliff. The structure of the suit and the flight in the direction of the slope traverse allow the pilot to follow the mountain terrain as much as possible, perform various maneuvers, adjusting the height above the slope and quite quickly get to a safe distance from the cliff to open the parachute.

To perform a jump, the pilot climbs to an altitude of about four kilometers. The initial flight speed is about 180 kilometers per hour.

The author of the modern version of the suit is the French designer Patrick de Guairdon. In order to model a wingsuit, the author studied the flight technique of flying squirrels for many years.

As a result, having improved the flying suit, Patrick achieved almost impossible – he made a jump from the plane, a few kilometers below caught up with him and climbed back! His total number of parachute jumps exceeded 12,000. Eight years after the first wingsuit test, de Gairdon tragically died due to the failure of the main parachute during one of his jumps.

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Perhaps the most accessible discipline in all of skydiving to the spectator is swooping. Swooping involves the skydiver performing a series of turns that increase the speed of the parachute as it approaches the ground. They then straighten their parachute to glide along the ground at around 70 miles per hour!

The raid is judged on a variety of categories, including speed, distance, and accuracy. Like other skydiving competitions, swooping also includes a freestyle category. In freestyle, swoopers will perform a series of tricks while flying over a body of water or land before touching down.

Pilots also have their own version of skydiving in formation. This discipline is known as canopy work, or CRW (pronounced “crew”), and involves a group of two to four parachutes coming together to form shapes in the sky. CRW skydivers will connect with each other using the legs and lines of the canopy to create formations that resemble diamonds, stacks, or almost any shape they can imagine!

Canopy piloting actually boasts the oldest form of skydiving competition in the sport. Canopy precision involves landing a single jumper or a group of four as close to the target as possible. For professionals, the target is about a penny, and the difference between 1st and 2nd place can come down to mere millimeters!

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HOW DID SKYSURFING START?

French skydivers Dominique Jacquet and Jean-Pascal Oron are the original inventors of skysurfing. They noticed how boards were used to ride water waves and wondered if it was possible to do the same with air during freefall. It turned out that it was, and in 1986, skysurfing was born!

Slowly but surely, the discipline of skysurfing began to gain momentum. Interest in and participation in the sport peaked in the late 90s, mainly due to its presence in the media and its inclusion in the ESPN X Games in 1995-2000.

Since then, viewers’ enthusiasm for skysurfing has remained vibrant and has even been spurred on by movies such as Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”. Some high-profile stunts, such as the one that took place at the 2015 NASCAR Coke 600 at Lowes Motor Speedway, have also helped keep it in the spotlight. Nevertheless, the number of practicing skysurfers has decreased over the years and is currently relatively small.

Part of the reason for the sharp decline in the number of skysurfers is the steep learning curve and high skill level associated with the discipline. Skysurfing itself is a high-speed sport with significant risks: you fall to the ground at speeds of over 120 mph, and your feet are tightly anchored in a fixed position on a relatively large solid object.

The progression of learning to skysurf is not easy either: a jumper must acquire an advanced set of freefall skills before attempting their first skysurf. Beginner skysurfers should be able to fly in different orientations, both head up and head down (in a sitting position or with their head literally pointing to the ground). Mastering these skills takes a lot of time, training, and physical fitness.

There is also progress in the discipline of skysurfing. Beginner skysurfers will use a smaller surfboard with a smaller surface area. As they increase their skill and comfort with the sport and equipment, they “upgrade” to longer boards.

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There are two main stages during a skydive: the freefall part and the parachute part. Within these stages there are several different skydiving disciplines. Some of the most popular freefall disciplines are formation skydiving, freefly, angled flight, and wingsuit (also known as wingsuit):

Known as “belly flying”, wingsuit jumping is usually the first way people learn to skydive. Not only is arching your back and falling on your stomach to the ground the most natural way to fall, it’s also a basic skill you start developing from your very first tandem.
Freefly skydiving is a type of fall when you are in an upright position, usually with your head up or down.
Angled flight is a forward movement where jumpers position their bodies so that they are at an angle, moving quickly and horizontally in the air.
Wing Suit flying (also known as wingsuiting) also refers to forward motion and involves wearing a suit that has material between your legs and from your arms to your hips (known to non-parachutists as a squirrel suit).

Freefly and bellyflight are both types of skydiving where you fall straight down, as opposed to moving through the sky, except that freeflight is much faster.

While the free fall speed for belly flying ranges from 120 mph to 140 mph, the speed at which you fall during free flight ranges from 150 mph to 170 mph. The reason that free flight is much faster than belly-flying is that the mass of the person remains the same, but the surface area presented during the fall is much smaller vertically than horizontally. As the speed increases, small movements have a bigger effect and everything happens much faster.

Free-flying can be free and improvised without a plan, which means friends fall vertically toward each other, flip, turn, and dock (touching or holding the other person), or whatever they decide to do during free-fall. Free-float jumps can also be organized, meaning that the jumpers plan in advance what they want to do, talk about it, physically go through the plan on the ground, and then try to execute the plan in the sky. There is also competitive freeflight, which is strictly planned, practiced, and evaluated.

To start freeflighting, you must be a licensed skydiver (not a tandem student) and have equipment that is appropriate for the orientation and speed that accompanies freeflighting, including a suitable parachute canister and jumpsuit.

Freeflight is generally not for beginners and you should have at least an intermediate level of understanding of body movements, abdominal skills, and skydiving safety before adding additional speed and more erratic orientation. When learning to freefly, it usually feels like you are falling straight down, but you are actually moving horizontally across the sky. Without realizing it, this can be dangerous as you could potentially move under another group of skydivers. The way you move relative to others in the sky is critical, and this is one of the reasons why you should jump with an experienced freeflyer (preferably a coach) when learning to freefly. Wind tunnel training, or indoor skydiving, is a great way to learn free flight quickly and safely without having to worry about anything but learning to fly (and it’s super fun).

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