Wingsuit - fly like a bird. Wingsuiting, or why people fly like squirrels What is the name of the sport of flying in a suit

It would be nice for me to become a bird, and turn into a big eagle ... Such a song, performed by the Cruise group, could be heard in the mid-eighties of the last century. There is no such person who has not risen to the sky at least once in a dream. I felt the pleasure of free and easy flight. Dreams Dreams. They devoured the minds of people of all classes and at all times. Starting with fairy tales about carpeted planes and the legends of Daedalus and Icarus, and the first samples of Da Vinci's prototypes and drawings, the desire to fly has gradually entered our lives. And it was not easy to enter, but to bring the idea to life.

Your own glider.
Free floating in the air without additional, bulky devices for a long time remained inaccessible to many inventors. The hang glider and parachute wing no longer met the needs of the people. And so, in 1996, for the first time, man was able to make free planning. And he used only unusual elements of his clothes in this.
This innovator was Patrick de Gaillardon. He demonstrated his first flight in Paris, astounding the worldly-wise public. So, a new sport was founded - wingsuit.
Wing - wing, such a translation has this word from English. Suit completes the general meaning of the expression. Wing-shaped clothing. For those who still have no idea what it is about, it is enough to imagine a flying squirrel or a bat.
The shape of the wingsuit is as follows. If a person spreads his arms to the sides and spreads his legs wider, then these clothes will represent a kind of membranes between the limbs. Once in a strong air current, they begin to work as a kind of wings. At the same time, giving the opportunity to control the flight. Back in the fifties there were attempts to do something similar. But it was De Gaillardon who came up with the idea of ​​using a two-layer fabric in the snout, so that with a completely small area it was possible to create sufficient lift.

And why do they fly?
Wingsuit is one of the types of parachuting. To be more precise, this is a continuation of skydiving. The athlete rises on an airplane to a height of up to 4000 meters and makes a jump. In the air, he unfolds his "wings" and begins to glide through the air. The speed that wingsuit lovers can develop reaches one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour. Moreover, with proper control, and some experience, the horizontal speed will be much greater than the falling speed.
The first experiments with the use of the wing allowed the inventor to fly over the ground a distance equal to the height from which the jump was made. Now the range and style of flights have changed significantly.
In the sky, the design of the suit allows you to perform a wide variety of tricks, sometimes the most incredible. Patrick de Gaillardon once amazed the public by jumping out of an airplane and, flying a long distance, climbed back into it at a lower altitude. At the same time, he easily controlled the position of his body in space.
Wingsuit gives a person much more opportunities for aerial acrobatics. With the help of its technology, it becomes possible to plan and at the same time not use the aircraft to climb to a height. It is enough to choose a gentle slope and, having accelerated, rush towards the air currents that will tear a person off the ground.

Caution - wingsuit.
Landing in this type of skyjumping is done using a conventional parachute. How many attempts have already been made to land only with the help of a suit. Unfortunately, they all failed. Whatever the low vertical speed of the fall, it, in combination with the horizontal, created a deadly situation. During the existence of Wingsuit, only according to official figures, more than seventy people died. And no one even counts how many injuries there were. The inventor himself died performing another trick. Only the American stuntman Harry Connery could successfully land without a parachute. He made a safe landing on an area filled with empty cardboard boxes. This sufficiently softened the impact on the ground and allowed the hero to make his name in the history of aeronautics.
Be that as it may, failure does not make people turn away from wingsuit. On the contrary, more and more air adrenaline seekers join its ranks.

And it's not all that cheap.
But become human. Who is engaged in this sport is not at all easy. One set of costume alone costs five thousand US dollars. Science itself will not come cheap. To begin with, you must have at least 200 parachute jumps behind you. Then hard training begins under the supervision of an experienced instructor. The average cost of the preparatory course ranges from 50,000 rubles. One hour in a wind tunnel is estimated at twenty thousand. And still, no obstacles will stop a true lover of the sky!

You will not experience the joy of birds in flight,

“After all, you live in the prison of your five miserable senses.

William Blake. Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I'm just sure that you can learn to fly.
Of course, flopping to the ground is not sweet,
but it is not necessary to start immediately from a great height.
Astrid Lindgren. Pippi Longstocking

WINGSUIT IS: — TO FLY LIKE A BELKO.
8 LAWS OF FLIGHT

Firework! The week-long run is over. Jump, we fly on the weekend. Along the way, we learn the intricacies of that type of parachuting (yes, yes), which we have repeatedly observed in all sorts of invigorating videos, for example “People are awesome!” .

1. Where do wings grow from?

The principle of operation of a wingsuit (translated from English as “wing suit”) was spied on by a man from flying squirrels. Rodents plan from tree to tree with the help of a membrane that stretches along their body when they spread their paws.

The first wingsuit was invented in the 30s of the last century. However, it took another 60 years to bring its design to perfection. Firstly, a parachute (necessary for landing) had to be integrated into the suit so that it would not interfere with gliding. Secondly, for a long time it was not possible to make membrane-wings that would allow predictable control of the wingsuit.

2. French ribs

Modern wingsuit appeared only in the late 90s. In this suit, two membranes stretched when the parachutist spread his arms to the side, and the third when his legs. All three wings consisted of two layers of matter, upper and lower, and inflated when air entered them through the air intakes located in the front of the suit. In addition, stiffening ribs were sewn into the membranes, which helped the wings retain their shape and change aerodynamic characteristics when a person began to move his limbs. This suit was invented by the Frenchman, enthusiastic skydiver and inventor Patrick de Gaillardon. Since then, all wingsuits have been sewn according to these principles, although the design is constantly being finalized.

3. Under the wing of the aircraft

The webs actually turn the entire suit into a wing. For it to start working, an oncoming air flow is needed. In aircraft, this flow is created by the engine, pushing the fuselage forward. When a skydiver in a wingsuit jumps out of a flying plane, he immediately begins to glide in the horizontal plane, since he already has a high initial speed.

This is the simplest type of wingsuit flying and is usually where training begins. True, in a normal parachute school, you will first have to prove that you have made at least 200 jumps with an ordinary parachute-wing. This experience is needed in order to jump out of the plane without problems and to take the only correct position for the regular opening of the canopy upon landing.

4. Off the cliff

The speed required for horizontal flight (60-90 km / h) can be gained in a few seconds of vertical fall, under the influence of gravity. To do this, you need to climb a high mountain or, for example, a building and jump down. The higher the starting point, the longer the accelerating part of the fall, the faster and further you will fly along the horizon. And you can also plan, clinging to the side of the mountain - this is called "proximity", and here you need a refined wingsuit control technique. These are the most risky jumps, but also the most interesting and spectacular. By and large, everyone wants to jump only in the mountains.

5. Fly down

In a wingsuit, you can not gain height, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe wings is too small. But for the feeling of flight, it is enough that a good skydiver in a good suit flies on average 2-2.5 m horizontally for each lost meter of height. It is quite achievable to overcome 10-20 km in this mode, jumping from an airplane.

Wingsuit flying is a weather-dependent sport, but the wind can interfere only at the moment of launch from a fixed starting point. For example, he simply will not allow you to fly off the cliff. In flight, there are no problems due to turbulence. At the speed of gliding in a wingsuit, you simply pierce through any air currents.

6. Fear

Wingsuit jumping, unlike regular skydiving, is hard to get used to. It's always scary. It's just that the fear is different. Gradually you begin to understand that it has a lot of gradations, you learn to manage it. In fact, you need to do very simple, in terms of motor skills, movements, but in a state of severe stress. It is trained only by constant jumps. It is always better to jump a little, but regularly, than a lot, but drunkenly. So that the psyche does not wean.

7. Risk

Tells Valery Rozov two-time world champion in parachuting, multiple Russian champion in parachuting, X-Games champion in skysurfing (1998)

He is always present. But there are regular conditions, and there are those that go beyond the usual framework. In the second case, you analyze the situation and figure out what's what. If we are talking about a regular training jump (the third one of the day, I have already jumped from this place 50 times), and I don’t like something, then I will go down on foot. But if I have been planning an expedition to this point for 1.5 months and there will be no other chance to jump, then I am ready to take a big risk.

When I jumped from Mont Blanc in the summer of 2011, there was a gusty wind.
But, having thought over where I would land if something went wrong, I decided to act. The flight did not really go according to plan, I did not reach the foot of the mountain, but I landed safely on the reserve site on the Brenva Glacier. And, for example, a year ago, on the top of Mount Shivling in the Himalayas (6420 m), I had to spend several days waiting for the right weather. Result: I walked more than 4 km horizontally at a speed of about 200 km / h, the elevation difference was about 2200 meters.

8. Wingsuit and sports

Wingsuit flying is already recognized as a sport by the International Aeronautics Federation. True, so far it is possible to compete only in the group construction of figures in the air - roughly speaking, who has more participants grappling in flight. In addition, there are many amateur unofficial wingsuit flying competitions in the mountains. Basically, these are jumps with a GPS sensor that takes data on speed, range and flight quality. For example, I accelerated to 200 km / h, and the speed record is 363 km / h.

But people, by and large, jump not for sporting achievements, but for the feeling of flying. A person can imagine what mountaineering is without ever having been in the mountains. With a backpack you go uphill - there is enough imagination for this. And what I feel when I move freely in three-dimensional space, I cannot tell you. But this is worth the risk.

A few years ago, fascinating videos began to appear on the Internet in which people were planning from a great height in special suits, most of all similar to huge webs between the limbs of a flying squirrel. This suit is called wingsuit, and the extreme sport itself is called wingsuiting. In terms of word formation, everything is extremely simple here. Wing - wing, suit - suit.

A wingsuit is a special wingsuit that allows you to fill the “webs” between the legs, arms and torso of the pilot with an oncoming air flow, as a result of which it becomes possible to carry out gliding flights. Such wings, of course, are not suitable for landing. For this reason, the pilot has an ordinary parachute behind his back, in connection with which wingsuit is considered a type of parachuting.

The emergence and development of wingsuiting

When describing the history of the wingsuit, the Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt is usually remembered first, who in 1912 invented his own. 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 dolls in costumes from the fifth floor. The inventor asked the authorities to allow him to conduct an 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 height of 60 meters. A significant indentation was left in the frozen ground from a blow to the head.

The pilots did not need raincoats, because by the time Reichelt jumped, Gleb Kotelnikov had already invented a parachute-pack, and successful tests of canopy parachutes were underway in the USA.

Development returned in 1930, when 19-year-old Rex Finney from Los Angeles decided to use a wing to increase horizontal movement and maneuverability when parachuting. Wood, steel, whalebone, silk and canvas were used to make this device. The wings were not reliable, although some aeronauts told that the suits allowed them to cover several miles.

Mortality among paratroopers who wanted to expand their capabilities with the help of a wingsuit was extremely high. For this reason, in the 1950s, the United States Parachuting Federation (USPA) banned any testing of such equipment. The ban lasted until the late 1980s.

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 that is inflated by an oncoming flow (ram-air).

Patrick died in 1998 in Hawaii due to the failure of the main parachute, which he, like a real inventor, tried to improve through his own modifications. By that time, the skysurfer had more than 12,000 parachute jumps.

The case of de Gaillardon was continued to develop by other enthusiasts, and in 2015 the International Aviation Federation supplemented its list of air sports with two positions:

• wingsuit piloting (pilots compete for time, range and flight speed);
• wingsuit acrobatics.

In 2017, the same disciplines, at the initiative of the Parachuting Federation of the Russian Federation, appeared in the All-Russian Register of Sports.

Wingsuit 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 own training programs for those who want to practice this discipline as an instructor or a simple skydiver.

Flying in a wingsuit is most similar to the flight of birds. 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 Bosphorus and the Strait of Gibraltar wingsuit fans have already flown.

The modern wingsuit allows the skydiver to control the flight in a predictable manner. Two membranes stretch when he spreads his arms to the sides, the third - when he spreads his legs.

Proximity flights

Extremals managed to connect wingsuiting with base jumping, as a result of which a separate discipline called “proximity flights” (from the English proximity - proximity) appeared. It involves jumping off cliffs while flying along a slope a few meters away. For "proximity" the pilot needs to have a well-honed wingsuit control technique.

There is always fear and risk in wingsuiting. Regular jumping is the best way to overcome both. Professionals recommend jumping a little and constantly, and not a lot and drinking binges, since the psyche should not wean.

Wingsuiting continues to develop actively, and extreme sportsmen who practice it take new incredible heights every year. For example, there are already at least two successful landing attempts with a wingsuit without a parachute. Both belong to British stuntman Gary Connery, who first landed safely on a huge pile of stacked cardboard boxes, and then on the water of Italy's Lake Garda.

In August 2017, an extreme in a wingsuit flew through a waterfall in the mountains of Norway. 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.

Why don't people fly like birds?! But people have learned to fly flying squirrels in wingsuit suits. 🙂

Wingsuit, not literally of course, means flying squirrel, bat or wingsuit. And people who are engaged in such a beautiful and incredible flight, although not quite like birds, can compete with flying squirrels in terms of flight range.

The idea of ​​free flight using only non-powered wing, has long been of interest to man. And he is getting closer and closer to being able to build something similar so that he can conquer the airspace without any technical equipment.

The prototype of the suit used by modern flying people or wingsuit athletes, invented by Frenchman Patrick de Gaillardon in the mid-1990s. It consists of three two-layer wings, which are inflated by the oncoming air flow.

Like wings for a hang glider, wingsuit wing sewn from a special fabric, inside of which ribs or simply membranes are inserted, like a bat or a flying squirrel, in order to create a streamlined wing of the required rigidity during flight. Wingsuit suit slows down the skydiver's fall and increases the horizontal speed of movement.

The range and quality of the flight depends not only on the professionalism of the athlete, but also on the aerodynamic properties of the wing. Frenchman Patrick de Gaillardon made his first successful wing in 1996 by jumping down from an airplane. Gaillardon constantly improved both his aerobatic technique and his invention, the flight suit.

He learned to fly not just down, but forward, which is the basis of modern wingsuit flight. Unfortunately, Gaillardon failed to live a long sports life; he died after another experiment with the parachute system.

After all, pilots fight not in the air, but on the ground. The parachute, which the athlete used to land, did not work after the next improvements. In order to become wingsuit athlete you must first have the experience of a skydiver and at least 200 jumps behind you.

Modern wingsuit suits have many technical improvements, are equipped with quick release mechanisms. This helps athletes choose the best flight mode. The most skilled wingsuit pilots can stay in flight for up to 2 minutes. For a free landing, a detachable membrane is used between the legs.

Recently, jumping has become popular. dressed as a flying squirrel from high rocks. Here the ability to jump is important so as to fly at a safe distance from the rock and, following the relief of the mountains, open the parachute in time and land successfully.

In conclusion, I want to offer you to watch two videos about this beautiful sport - wingsuit.

In the first video, I was struck by an athlete girl with her pre-flight calmness. It seems that she treats her hobby as an easy pleasure trip. Before jumping from a high cliff, she preens, paints her lips and, as if nothing had happened, steps into the abyss.

The second video shows a super-extreme, daring person in close proximity to the rocks, and even with elements of acrobatics in the air. Such control of your body even flying squirrel didn't dream.

Athletes flying in wingsuit look like supermen from Hollywood movies. But these are quite real people who, using special suits and having appropriate physical training, have mastered flying in the sky, albeit not over long distances, but without special flying mechanisms.

Wingsuit (from the English wingsuit - “wing suit”), this special jumpsuit is used in the latest and extreme discipline of parachuting, which finally took shape in the 1990s, when the mass parachuting passion led to the emergence of various directions within it and to the creation unique costume. The creator of this miracle was the Frenchman Patrick de Gaillardon, and the ideological inspirers were flying squirrels.

The flight characteristics of a wingsuit are mainly determined by the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "wings". The shape and dimensions of the wings depend on the model of the suit, but the general principles of their operation are identical. There are models in which the wings are attached to the arms and body and connect the legs. They have a relatively small area and create the silhouette of a bird. And there are those that connect the arms and legs, as well as the legs to each other - they form a quadrangle and have the largest area. The larger the "wings", the more professional the wingsuit is considered, and the more expensive it will cost.

Wingsuit allows the athlete to control the flight. The special two-layer material is inflated by upward airflows through the air intakes, which creates lift for movement. High pressure in the wings creates a lack of rigidity, due to which they are easily held by hands. All three fabric wings have ribs inside (an element of the transverse power set of the wing frame, plumage and other parts of the aircraft or vessel, designed to give them a profile shape), inflated by the oncoming flow through the air intakes. When the athlete is flying forward, they create lift. All wingsuit models are equipped with a special quick-release mechanism that gives the athlete the opportunity to choose an arbitrary flight mode. The membranes located between the legs are also detachable, which ensures the freedom of movement of the athlete at the time of landing and movement directly on the ground.

Thanks to the wingsuit, you can reduce the vertical speed to 35-40 km / h and increase the horizontal flight speed relative to the ground to 350 km / h (and even more). In this case, the range of horizontal flight can exceed 10-15 km. And the world record for flight range, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, is 30 kilometers 400 meters.

In the past few years, proxy flights have gained particular popularity, when a skydiver flies a few meters along the side of the mountains. Usually the flight is carried out in the direction of the traverse of the slope, as if "going around" the mountain. This helps the skydiver to follow the terrain of the mountain, easily control the height above the slope by turning left or right, and quickly move to a safe distance from the mountain to deploy the parachute. All this allows you to achieve almost complete resemblance to the flight of a bird and get an unforgettable experience!

Despite the apparent simplicity and ease of flight, the wingsuit is intended only for very experienced skydivers who have at least 200 parachute jumps under their belts and thorough training for flights. But it's so exciting that more and more people around the world are joining this amazing skydiving sport. After all, such a flight is very reminiscent of the flight of birds, which mankind has been striving for so long.