Talk:Vertical wind tunnel

Shocked this wasn't made earlier
I'm shocked this wasn't made earlier. *applauds* Vitriol 17:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Falling out of the airstream?
"Outdoor vertical wind tunnels may also have walls around the wind column, to keep flyers from falling out of the wind."

I heard (not sure) that the "flyers" are actually held in the middle of the wind column (maybe by the Bernoulli Principle?), thus there would be no danger of them falling out. Does anyone have any information on this? I'll come back if I learn anything. Thanks. Kudos on an excellent article! :-)  --64.110.250.80 03:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Not really. You can "bodyfly" your way out of any vertical wind tunnel airstream. So that's why there are cushions or netting around any open-air windtunnel. You still need to have some bodyflight techniques to keep yourself centered in a vertical wind tunnel. Some of them even have laminar airflow so the speed is the same almost all the way to the edges of the airstream.

To illustrate the proof that a human can easily out-bodyfly the Bernoulli Principle.... As a novice skydiver myself (CSPA B-5386), I should add professional skydivers can accelerate up to approximately 100mph of horizontal motion in a "tracking" manoever, to make them look like they are falling at a 45 degree angle (Falling 100mph while moving horizontally 100mph, for example... This requires a trained body position: body acting as a very crude glider airfoil shape). Tracking is a manoevere that is also demonstrated in videos in the 400-way formation skydive at. Near the end of the skydive in the video, people start to rapidly accelerate horizontally at breakneck speeds away from the falling formation to gain airspace to safely open their parachutes (canopies). As you can see in the videos, the human body can still massively out-bodyfly insignificant forces like Bernoulli Principle. Mdrejhon 17:21, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Neat-o! That's pretty cool. As asker of the above question, thanks a million for the answer. (I searched all over and couldn't find anything.) A friend and I were wondering after we saw the Olympics performance. Thanks again for such a great answer! (These talk pages are just as useful as the actual article!) All the best in your future skydiving adventures. --Sboots 00:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit uncertain about this as well. From the physics point-of-view (I performed research in fluid dynamics about one and a half years ago) I'd also say that the airstream should have a paraboloid velocity profile across the tunnel cross section and that, according to Bernoulli's principle, pressure should be lowest in the center of the column, where air speed is highest, thus sucking the participant in. However, from personal experience, I can tell you that it is actually quite hard to get into the airstream of a running wind tunnel. Check out this video, from 7:20 till 8:30, where you can easily see how the flyer is struggling to get into the air column of a running vertical wind tunnel. I don't know what kind of physical principle is at work here, but it might have to do with the irregular shape of a human body compared to the regular (spherical) shape of a ball in an airstream or it might have to do with the airstream in a wind tunnel not being truly laminar. 84.159.195.87 (talk) 23:38, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Please keep this article encyclopedia-like
Someone made several helpful corrections, while adding a lot of other errors. However, it forced me to have about 30+ minutes of corrections since run-on sentences, grammar errors, and some slang (exclamation marks, fully-capitalized words) which were were added. Can we please make this more of an encyclopedia entry and less of a marketing article. I moved the safety/marketing notes to a separate paragraph, since they seem relevant to the article. I've fixed all the problems that I know of. Thanks. Mdrejhon 17:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Edit Wars to add commercial windtunnel links
I have talked to a Wiki volunteer and we agreed to leave out all the commercial links and just list the Bodyflight directory. I think it's consensus that a directory serves the purpose. Mdrejhon 2006

Addendum: Wind tunnel employees have started abusing this article again by tooting their tunnel. Sigh. Time to prune the "External Links" section yet again. On the other hand, SkyVenture probably merits its own link due to their leadership (i.e. they are the Microsoft of indoor skydiving right now -- biggest market share), but individual franchaises of SkyVenture should be deleted since they are multiplying like rabbits over the last few years. Mdrejhon 18:46, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

With the removal of the commercial links the article looks quite a bit cleaner. I support the idea and want to thank you for your leadership on the edit. If a SkyVenture page is created, I could envision it bearing a tabled list of locations. This would be similiar to an article on Martello Towers listing locations of the old forts around the world. Skydive23 (talk) 22:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

How about information about custom suits, skill levels?
I'm interested in finding out information about custom suits for indoor vertical wind tunnel. Also about skill levels.

Can you use a wingsuit in a vertical wind tunnel? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsuit_flying[]

What do you think? Would it be appropriate to add a section that talks about these things?

Raymm (talk) 20:30, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think it would be cool. A uses section could be created and this info could be added there.Beefcake6412 (talk) 20:40, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I don't think you can fly a wingsuit inside a vertical wind tunnel. A wingsuit is designed to create massive forward speed (up to three times the downward speed). In a wind tunnel, you have very limited space, so I think that, if you were to use a wingsuit in a wind tunnel, all that's gonna happen is that it will smash you right into the wall head-forward. Unfortunately, that is. Flying a wingsuit has been my biggest dream for years, but the 200 jumps limit (varies, but in most European countries it's 200 jumps) is keeping me off. 200 jumps is a lot, time-wise, money-wise (about 50 EUR per jump in Europe after you got your skydiving license, so 10k EUR for 200 jumps if you use leased equipment or about 30 EUR per jump, so 6k EUR plus cost for own equipment, which ranges somewhere between 2k EUR for used and 5k EUR for new takes you to 8k to 11k at minimum - add to that insurance costs, repairs, etc.) and risk-wise (1 in 50k jumps fatal means about a 1 in 250 chance of dying in 200 successive jumps - just calculate the exponential regression - chances of injury are much higher). I'd give anything if I could try this out without getting through this massive "barrier" first. I'm pretty sure this ain't possible though. Correct me if I'm wrong, get me a facility in Europe where you can do it and I'm gonna consult them asap. ;-) 84.159.195.87 (talk) 00:17, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

external links pruned
At the moment, back to the two that are mentioned specifically by name or by picture in the article. You can make your case for including others here if you feel it is warranted by the article text. Syrthiss (talk) 12:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Reorganisation
Reorganised layout of article, because-perhaps because of the input of commercial interests- in my opinion the article as it stood conflated three things-vertical wind tunnels, recreational wind tunnels and bodyflight. Not all vertical wind tunnels are recreational, and the recreational tunnels only replicate the experience of body flight.--KTo288 (talk) 16:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

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"Sensation is extremely similar"?
The article currently just says (without source) that the sensation is "extremely similar" to skydiving. It would be interesting and informative if someone had a source that explained one difference that I assume must exist: the "butterflies in the stomach" effect of one's internal organs no longer being able to feel the pull of gravity.

If it's noticeable in a rapidly descending elevator, then it must be noticeable jumping out of a plane. I'm not certain, but part of the feeling of falling might also be generated by the vestibular organ in the inner ear.

I assume this sensation slowly dissipates once you near terminal velocity (as the air begins to "pushes back" on you just as hard as the ground does), but for those first 5-10 seconds falling out of an airplane it should feel a lot more intense (even with closed eyes) because of that internal "loss of gravity" feeling.

In a vertical wind tunnel, there is no actual freefalling involved. So I don't see how this "sensation of falling" could be generated. The force of gravity should be felt normally on all of one's internal organs from the very beginning, except for more briefly and probably more mildly as one descends the shaft by changing body position (or if the fan is shut off.)

If you've ever experienced a rapidly dropping elevator, you know how noticeable this feeling can be. It's a major aspect of many amusement park rides. I suppose some users of vertical wind tunnels might write off the different feeling to there being less danger or no visual stimulus, but there's actually a simple physical reason why "falling" in a vertical wind tunnel should feel much different than falling out of an airplane. (For the first 5-10 seconds.)

Does anyone know of any sources that comment on this difference? 184.89.67.120 (talk) 17:02, 17 September 2018 (UTC)