Winging it

By Sandy James
Review Staff Writer
Published: March 27, 2008

There’s something different in the air above the Orange County Airport these days.
Local sky-gazers are accustomed to seeing various small planes and colorful parachutes, but now there are people with wings up there.
Brothers, Scott and Chris Gray have made it their mission to introduce others to wingsuit flight. The flyers are called birdmen or wingsuit pilots.
Scott, of Ellicott City, Maryland, is a program director for Lockheed Martin. He has been skydiving for five years and holds several wingsuit instructor ratings.
Chris, of Roanoke, is a home media system consultant for Audiotronics and has been skydiving for five years and also holds several wingsuit instructor ratings.
“Our discipline is relatively immature and much of what we do pushes the edge of what is humanly possible through skill and engineering,” said Scott.
The wingsuits are made of nylon that forms wings beneath the arms and between the legs and weigh in at three to five pounds.  Air pressure fills the wings and creates an airfoil that basically enables humans to fly. Wingsuit pilots can glide more than four miles reaching speeds of 120 miles per hour.
Students are required to have a minimum of 200 parachute jumps behind them before they can participate in wingsuit flying.
Chris said some students may have to invest even more time in training along the way to become a better skydiver before they are ready to attempt flying a wingsuit.
Scott says learning to fly a wingsuit is relatively inexpensive, and can cost as little as $40-$50 per lesson. This covers the cost of the plane ride for the student and instructor and repacking the instructor’s parachute.
Most students already have the basic skydiving equipment and the Brothers Gray have 20 wingsuits of all types and sizes.
Classroom sessions involve physical exercises to hone mental and muscle memory. Training also involves wingsuit history, theory, risks, safety and emergency situations.
The plane ride and jump sounds like a fairly routine parachutist’s trip, if there is such a thing, except for the spreading of wings and flying like a bird part.
The tricky part comes at 6,000 feet, when the student must deploy their main parachute. The wings can cover the deployment handles, and Scott said this can give even experienced skydivers a “significant physical and mental challenge.”
Once the parachute is open the student has to unzip their arms from the wingsuit to be able to steer the parachute to the landing area and they also have to unzip the legwing for mobility to land the chute.
The brothers are in Orange twice a month and have trained 40 students so far, locally and from around the country.
A big event is planned for the Skydive Orange Wingsuit season opener on April 5 and 6, and May 10 and 11 is Wingsuit Weekend at Skydive Orange
Scott says during the April event several of the world’s best wingsuit flyers will join to build complex midair formations, flying in close proximity with speeds of more than 160 miles per hour. The group plans to establish a Virginia state record for the most wingsuit pilots in a single formation during this training event.
Chris says, “Put me out of a plane two miles above the earth with a wingsuit and a parachute and I’m happy!”
For more information on wingsuit flying see: http://www.myspace.com/thebrothersgray