Understanding suit models, and which is right for you, at what stage…
Wingsuits, to the untrained eye, all look pretty similar. They’ve got arm wings, a leg wing, and they inflate into a wing-shape.
Piece of cake.
To a slightly more informed jumper, the difference between a “big” suit and a “small” suit, are apparent – simply put, some wingsuits have bigger wings than others and most experienced skydivers will understand that the bigger the suit is, the more experienced the pilot should be to fly it. That “big / little” distinction is referred to as Surface Area, and while it’s definitely a lot more complicated than that, surface area explains a lot about wingsuit design and is the most obvious place to start.
Surface Area
Surface area is measured in square centimeters and varies primarily with suit model and pilot size. A beginner wingsuit will have low surface area, aka small wings. The reason for this is not that small wings are easier to control (in fact the opposite is true), but because small wings are easier to control when you are out of control. When you exit the aircraft on your first jump and begin to tumble, it’s much easier to regain control of a small-winged wingsuit, than a large-winged wingsuit.
Think of your wingsuit as an air mattress floating in the ocean. A large air mattress will be comfortable, stable, and easy to lay on. But if it starts to get pushed around, then it’s a lot of mattress to try and maintain control of. A very small air mattress, in contrast, is less stable, harder to lay on comfortably, but you’ll be able to control it a little better as it gets pushed around. Similarly, a big wingsuit is easier to lay on and fly in a straight line, but good luck regaining control of a large, advanced wingsuit on your first jump.
Photo : Amber Forte and Espen Fadnes, by Andreas Hemli
So, to bring this back to beginner suits, the reason they are small is because it is expected that a beginner will lose control of it and we want you to be able to regain control easily. Piloting that small surface area suit makes for excellent training, and once you’ve dialed in the control inputs needed to keep a small wingsuit stable on all axes (pitch, roll, yaw), then moving up to the next size will be more enjoyable.
In the SQRL range, the smallest suit we offer is the Sprint. It’s ideal for your first few jumps – maybe just your first 1-2 jumps, and is the suit we recommend First Flight Course instructors to use in their schools. It’s not the suit we recommend that you buy… for that, we generally recommend the Swift. The Swift is slightly larger in surface area and offers a lot more performance and range, it’s perfect for your first year of flying and will allow you to fly with a lot of different beginner-intermediate wingsuits out there.
Suit Strengths
Apart from surface area, there is the type of flying that each wingsuit is designed for. Freestyle, Performance, and BASE, would be the three major categories that we identify. Inside each category there are options depending on your skill, experience, and goals.
A wingsuit with back inlets is clearly designed for back-flying. Hey, you don’t need back inlets for back-flying, but they sure do help a lot. Conversely, those back inlets add drag, so you won’t find them on a suit that is designed for performance flying.
A suit with a large amount of surface area is not going to be as agile as a suit with less – it will likely feel more powerful, but surface area is a fact of physics and more of it means more suit to wrestle. So, the biggest suit in the range is not going to be the best for freestyle flying.
Suit strengths line up into categories of surface area, speed range, and agility.
Photo: C-Race wingsuits pilots at the Red Bull Aces competition, Red Bull Content Pool
Difficulty
Like the tools from many other sports we enjoy, there is generally a trade-off between performance and ease of use. The biggest suits in our range will not be the easiest to control (even if they are the easiest to lay on, and fly in a straight line). But the biggest suits will offer the most performance – by which we mean, the shortest starts in BASE jumping, the most glide performance in a competition, and the most power for freestyle flying. So, generally speaking, bigger = more complicated and thus a higher skill level is required.
WS CATEGORIES
!! Disclosure Alert !!
I started a wingsuit company in 2012 and in this article I only refer to the suits my company makes. There are a lot of great options out there that you will find many opinions on. I’m only going to speak about what I know best, which is SQRL wingsuits.
First Flight Course
Easy choice, pick a Sprint if it’s available for your first couple of jumps. A Swift is also perfectly acceptable, particularly if you have a strong skydiving background (ie, more than the bare minimum 200 jumps).
Beginner
The Swift is the perfect first wingsuit. It serves most jumpers well for at least their first year of wingsuit skydiving. If you can put 75-100 jumps on one before moving up, do it! As wingsuits go, it’s the most “all-around” design that we know of. It has excellent performance, a great speed range (meaning that it flies fast, but also has a low stall speed), and is relatively easy to transition and back fly.
Intermediate
Now you’re at a crossroads. The next higher category of suits includes two great options: the ATC, and Low-Ki series. The ATC has become a very popular second suit option, and is a natural stepping stone to the Freak series which is the most popular advanced category suit in our range. The Low-Ki series has been gaining in popularity though due to its slightly easier character and surprisingly good performance. If you are edging towards freestyle, the Low-Ki is a good option. If your focus is more on performance, then consider the ATC.
The good news here is that you can’t really make a mistake. Both suits are fun, and both suits provide a solid transition to higher performance models. So don’t overthink it — buy what you think will fly best with your friends at your home DZ, and get some jumps in.
Both models, and the ATC in particular, will introduce you to the mid-chord surface area increase that all modern advanced wingsuits feature – this is the extra surface area on the arm wing that is concentrated around your hips, which extends in a straight line (parallel to chord) down to your ankles. It took many years of wingsuit design to arrive at this planform concept. It was first introduced by Tony Suits in 2008 with the release of their “Bird” series, which kick-started a new generation of higher performing wingsuits.
Photo by Puro Skydive
Advanced
Talk about choices. At this point, you could be heading in any direction, but all of the advanced / expert wingsuit pilots we know, want a Freak or similar suit in their arsenal. It’s the go-to suit for daily dropzone use. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s agile, and it opens up a huge number of possibilities in freestyle flying and also in BASE. It is our primary Advanced – Freestyle design, and we think it’s without question the best all-around suit in this category.
Photo by Rachel Bakin
Advanced – BASE
Most of the suits in our advanced category are appropriate for advanced BASE use. The Freak series is a popular choice. By the time you get to this phase of your wingsuit flying career, you’ll already have strong opinions about brands and models and who am I to tell you what to do at that point… but to point out what you already know, most people choose between the Aura and Colugo series. If you’re still keen on freestyle flying even in the BASE environment, the Creature series is a fun option as it has more surface area than the Freak and therefore a shorter start arc and more glide potential.
Advanced – Performance
If you have your eye on performance competitions, then the C-Race and CR+ are the two suits to choose from. The CR+ has become the most popular suit in wingsuit performance competitions by a wide margin, and nearly all of the World Championship, World Cup, and National podiums around the world since 2015 have been won by CR+ pilots.
What WS is Right for You?
This is a high-level, overview article for information and understanding. There is a lot more detail about each of our suits on our website… scroll down, there is tons of info. For personal advice, talk to your WS instructor or local expert, or contact us. Other manufacturers have similar pages with their recommendations.
