Wingsuit Flying - Anyone interested?

That's a lot of jumps to get in. Think you may have to change your timeline.

If you have your heart set on doing AFF.I would skip doing the tandem & go straight to doing the level 1 of the AFF.That way you will know if you like it or not & you would have your first level completed:)

No i'm not a member of the IPC my husband is.He is also one of the wingsuit coaches:)

Good luck with your tandem & AFF.They are all a nice bunch of people up at the club.

Seriously man, get yourself very experienced in skydiving before you look to do the wingsuit stuff. You've set yourself a very high standard. It's tough to do that in Ireland if only for the weather.

Tandem is nothing, most wingsuiters are at the high end of the experience levels.

You will have to go to France or Spain or the US to get your experience level up to standard.

If you seriously want to do this you need to forget the rest of your life. I know a lot of skydivers. They have no life outside their obsession.

I've watched a wingsuiter leave my aircraft. it's amazing to watch. You can wave to them as they formate with you for a moment.

Hey, I would agree with Celtic-Chick, and not go with the tandum. With the tandum you wont be controlling anything.. just sitting there. Its grand if you just want to get used to the feel of free-fall but after that.. it wont do anything for your planned learning curve.

Just finished my Level 1 over the weekend and was a blast.. 1 days training then you get to jump. Weather will be your biggest problem. (if you have the funds)

Am interested in doing something like what you are planning but ill be taking a bit longer to do it.

Best of luck with it.. might see you out in the DZ

*tracking - skydiving that's going places

Declan, the requirement is 200 jumps.

Celtic-Chick, who is your husband? Can I assume it's Liam?

Rane, I am a skydiver, wingsuiter and a member of the IPC. I am not a FFC or PF coach.
I did my first wingsuit jump 9 months after my first skydive and have done quite a few since. ( Here's my first wingsuit jump, a little boring to look at, just doing exercises to pass the course https://vimeo.com/29118931 )

My advice.

1) Become a very competent skydiver and canopy pilot. I spent a LOT of money doing canopy courses and learning everything I could about actually flying.

2) Learn as much as you can about your gear. I have a wingsuit modification to my rig and wore my wingsuit around the DZ for a while. I also had my first cutaway on jump 73 which scared me enough to want to learn more about my gear and emergency procedures. Wingsuiting is a different animal and is subject to different malfunctions.

3) Go somewhere that's not Ireland. I travel around the world going to different DZs. Chasing the weather Most of my jumps were done in Florida.

4) Get wingsuiting out of your mind for now. There's a LOT to learn about skydiving before you are going to be ready. It's going to take time. If you do it in Ireland, it's going to take a LOT of time. I've dropped wingsuiting for a bit while I learn more about different styles of flying. All of which will help my wingsuiting.

5) Join the IPC and speak to the coaches there. They know everything there is to know about wingsuiting and can give you better advice on a progression path than you'll get here on the internet.

6) If you have a wife or kids, forget it. If you PLAN on having a wife or kids with someone outside of the skydiving world, forget it. The biggest surprise to me when I started was how close the skydiving community is around the world. LITERALLY, everyone knows everyone. It's very easy to get COMPLETELY sucked in.

7) Most skydivers try wingsuiting when they are ready. MANY realize that it's not for them. MANY find it boring (I can SOMEWHAT relate).


Finally, those videos are wingsuit proximty flying. A variation of base jumping. Don't mean to burst your bubble but you will NOT be proxiimity flying after anywhere NEAR 200 jumps!

I love your attitude Rane , you will fit in well in the IPC . Im an AFF instructor so im sure ill bump into you down there .

My advice for you when you have such definite goals is skip the tandem and go straight to AFF . I think the next AFF course is April 14th .If you call the IPC they can hook you up . Once you have done the 7 levels you can jump solo , then learn to do formation dives with friends . Dont get too caught up in clocking up jump numbers fast , rather learn everything you can . There are a lot of world class coaches in the IPC who are willing to pass on their knowledge to anyone who wants it .

There are lots of different disciplines in skydiving , if you dont get distracted by them and still want to fly wingsuits , I would recommend a tracking suit after 100 jumps or so . They feel like and perform like early wingsuits but dont restrict your arms and legs so dont compromise your safety , and they are a BLAST to fly .

As others have mentioned , Ireland is cursed by weather so its difficult to jump as much as you want , however you can visit dropzones in sunnier countries and do 50 - 100 jumps in a week . Members of the IPC regularly organise such trips so im sure you will hear about em once you make a load of friends there .

also FYI there is a bunk house on the dropzone so you can stay for the weekend , from now on we jump from sun up to sun down so all the adrenalin addicts stay there rather than loose precious minutes driving home and back ;p

Hi Rane, just checking how you got on? You've the same interest as myself (never did any jumps though) regarding this and wing-suit jumping...but for now for many reasons i can't pursue it but interested in how you're doing?

hey man, read your post about looking to learn wingsuit flying, well what im doing at the moment is for charity, And I've set up a project called project 25 and its for the share a dream foundation here in ireland, and one thing im doing is 25 skydives in one week, its all for charity too so its for a good cause, but afterwards I'll be looking to get into wingsuit flying.

miker1983 wrote: »

Are you doing 25 tandems or solos? How much is it costing?

Hey man, Because its all for charity and im trying to prove the point that I can put myself through an activity that wil be quite demanding, same as the families that im raising the money for, im doing my first practice jump in about 2 weeks which will be a tandem, then when the challenge starts ill be doing them all solo, your talking 5 jumps a day over five days, first 2 out of this challenge will be tandem, about 4 of em will be static line and the rest all solo.

if you wanna know more about it, facebook it, project 25, 25 skydives.

also my contact details are on it if you would like to talk with me personally on the matter.

take it easy bud.