Bird Brains and Wing Suits

I made 5 flights in my new wingsuit last weekend. I had average fall rates between 76 and 71 mph, and got down as slow as 62 on the second half of one dive. The forward speed is breathtaking. I'm not even coming close to tapping into the performance that this suit has to offer.

I was exiting just above 10k AGL and pulling around 5k, so I only had 5,000 feet to play. I still got between 53 and 60 seconds of airtime on each flight.

In a weird way wing suiting combines my two favorite ways to fly - hang gliding and paragliding. Flying the suit feels very much like being inside a tiny little hang glider. And, of course the parachute part of the flight is very much like paragliding. Hey, you even get an airplane ride out of the deal - wing suit flying rocks!