Skydive through clouds in my wingsuit

basejumper (62)in #skydive • 7 years ago (edited)

Wingsuiting is fun, we know that.

But wingsuiting through gaps in the clouds is on another level. Something good about UK jumping is we have lots of cloud, but we just need it up high enough as most of the time it sits too low, usually around pull height, which is no good.

On this jump I believe the cloud was between 6000ft and 5000ft ish.

I took my planned path and found a hole I wanted to fit through, it was so cool.

In sky diving you will here things around the drop zone like:

"wingsuiting is fun for a bit then gets boring"
"wingsuiting is for old people"
"why do I want to hang around up there for 2 - 3 minutes"

All I can say is I have been doing it for a few years now and I am still not bored of it, and certainly when you get blessed with blankets of cloud like this!

One of the best places to cloud carve is Zhills in Florida 'Skydive City', as the clouds there hang around 5000ft - 8000ft mark, so you can literally carve around, through, in and out of them.

This is a POV before charging through the cloud.

Skydivers love cloud also, as it gives you a point of reference, you can see how fast you are falling when you see the clouds whizz past. In sky diving you need to be able to see the DZ before you exit the plane, its a rule, but its a rule that just about everyone breaks, provided the cloud was above pull height on the way up.

Thats my judgement call anyway as I don't want to be pulling in a cloud. I have done it before and its not ideal as you have no idea if there are other jumpers in the cloud coming towards you or vice versa. I did it early on into my sky diving career, around 50 jumps and I couldn't even see my alti, it was at this point I bought an Audible.

I wouldn't wingsuit without and audible altimeter, but I also wouldn't wingsuit without an analog alti, I like to have an Alti 2 Galaxy on my chest, as oppose to on my wrist when wingsuiting, followed by my audible alarm as a backup.

I do skydive with an audible but I have to remember to change the altitude alarm settings as I pull at 3,500ft when skydiving, and I pull at 5,000ft when wingsuiting.