Wingsuit flying (or wingsuiting) is the sport of flying through the air using a wingsuit, which adds surface area to the human body to enable a significant increase in lift. The modern wingsuit, first developed in the late 1990s, creates a surface area with fabric between the legs and under the arms. Wingsuits are sometimes referred to as “birdman suits” (after the makers of the first commercially available wingsuit), “flying squirrel suits” (due to their resemblance to the animal), and “bat suits” (due to their vague resemblance to the animal or perhaps the superhero).
A wingsuit flight normally ends by deploying a parachute, and so a wingsuit can be safely flown from any point that provides sufficient altitude for flight and parachute deployment?normally a skydiving drop aircraft, or BASE-jump exit point .Read more at Wikipedia
Wingsuit-flying
This results in long freefall times, but the performance in terms of distance quite suffers in this mode of flying. A normal skydive falls at around 200 km/h (120 mph). In a wingsuit we can easily slow this down to about 65 km/h (40 mph).
Wingsuit legend says that from around 1930 ? 1960 72 men died trying to fly these suits. The modern wingsuit is attributed to French skydiving legend Patrick de Gayardon who invented and flew a suit that worked. Patrick died in a tragic skydiving accident in 1998.
Wingsuits are slowly becoming more main stream. The Redbull Air Force have an excellent team and are doing a lot for the sport. It’s however still a very dangerous sport and requires a lot of skill and practice. If anyone interested in learning more about the sport then have a look at https://www.dropzone.com/wingsuit-skydiving . The page has a lot of information on the sport as well as links to forum discussions.