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Closer to Human Flight
negativeblue writes "Dropzone.com has (had) a story about the preparation of a man (Jeb Corliss) who prepares to land a wingsuit without a parachute. If you don't know the current abilities of parachutes, now-a-day, you should do your research. Basically airfoils, they can perform close to an airplane wing (high performance turns and lift)."
...that this guy is more likely going to win a Darwin Award than survive his fall.
Oh well, I guess something's got to thin the herd...
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I sure hope he hasn't used wax and feathers as the material for his incredible man flying machine.
...from the Addams Family. Every time he did a jump, he used a smaller parachute. By his theory, eventually he would not need any paracute at all.
And of course, he was correct. Eventually, he would have no need for a paracute...
Not strictly true - the following is one of several true stories of WW2 bomber crew jumping without chutes and surviving.. in this case because he landed on a glass-roofed railwsy station and was slowed by successive levels of shattering glass
Man Survived 22,000-Foot Fall Out of Bomber
Also:
"The greatest fall without "riding" a piece of wreckage goes to Russian Lt. I.M. Chisov, who bailed out of his Ilyushin 4 bomber at 22,000 feet in January 1942, after being attacked by German fighters. His plan was to free-fall to 1,000 feet before opening his parachute, thus limiting his exposure to enemy fire while still in the air. Unfortunately he lost consciousness on the way down, and never opened his parachute. Like Vulovic, he landed in snow and survived, returning to duty three months later". - link
There was also a British gunner from a Lancaster bomber who fell from his aircraft during an attack and was saved by fir trees and deep snow.
That said, I still think this guy's a loon. Nobody ever volunteered to jump without a parachute before.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Be a real downer if it doesn't work. He'll probably be in a big depression.
rewriting history since 2109
I don't think most people know the abilities of modern day parachutes. It has been a few years ago when I left the skydive scene, but at that time huge progress was made using new materials and designs. Modern parachutes might look like ordinary square parachutes, but there are some important differences: so-called 'zero-porosity' fabrics and high-tensile fibers, combined with elliptical shaped canopies result in very efficient parachutes. Some of those can be made *extremely* small (like the Icarus mentioned in the article). Smaller canopies result in higher speeds, but also in higher descent rates. Some of those canopies cannot be landed safely without diving for speed first (using so-called 'hook-turns' or 'front-riser' turns). Seeing somebody land a high-performance parachute is rather spectacular because of the speeds involved. The gap between flying the smallest of those high-performance parachutes (and the technique needed to safely land them) and flying a wing-suite is not that big anymore, and that is what the poster meant to say.
Most flares result in touchdown before a stall occurs, though at least in light planes a stalled landing is considered a good one. It requires keeping the airplane inches above the ground while the Angle of Attack increases to the stall point and drops the airplane gently on the runway.
The term "Angle of Attack" is defined as the angle between the chord line of the wing (a line drawn from the leading edge to the trailing edge) and the relative wind, which is essentially your direction of travel through the air. So for instance, during the landing flare the wing's chord line is pointed up with the rest of the plane but the airplane continues a slight descent, making the angle between the two very large compared to cruise flight where they're both pointed more toward what land-lubbers would call level.
The trick is that as the Angle of Attack increases so does lift... to a point. Every airfoil has a critical angle of attack beyond which airflow separates, lift is destroyed, and the airfoil ceases to work aerodynamically and becomes simply an object sticking out into the wind.
I would imagine that this guy will have to build a great deal of forward speed which will give him a flatter trajectory and therefore a lower angle of attack. He'll then need to raise his angle of attack at the right moment and flare without exceeding that critical angle, which may or may not be anything the engineers who built the suit ever determined. He definety does not want to stall the wingsuit. His life depends on its lift.
I know this guy is doing a lot of testing using gps data, etc. to figure all of this out; but it is exceedingly risky.
I predict this will end bad, though I really hope I'm wrong.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!