There’s a concept in flying wingsuits known as the Dihedral and Anhedral angle of the wings. Much of the science behind wingsuits is derived from aviation because the same forces come into play.

We here at WSL want to make this simple for everyone to understand, and so we can understand the differences in wing positioning, the effects it will have on our flight, and how changing that angle affects our flight. In wingsuiting, our wings are our arms.

If you have a big head, the concept is very simply put:

This simplified concept does not change when flying on our backs or on our bellies. When you’re on your belly it would be arms back, behind us. When flying on our backs, it would be arms forward, in front of us.

Whether we’re flying on our belly or back: Dihedral gives us more stability, and it helps keep us from flopping all over the sky.

Anhedral is also called “Negative Dihedral.” They refer to the exact same thing when used in regular speech. The angle is technically the “Dihedral Angle,” and that angle can be positive or negative; “Anhedral” is the latin term that’s opposite of “Dihedral” (don’t think about that too much, it’s not too important to know the exact science or terminology). Just wait ’til we get to “Longitudinal Dihedral.” The science is strong in this one.

In full disclosure, I am not an aviation engineer (nor do I actually know the word for the science guys that figure this out). This is simplified drastically because we, as wingsuit pilots, don’t need to know all this to fly. Just like a pilot doesn’t need to know all this to fly an airplane. Did you think that drunk airline pilot is an expert in the forces acting upon the plane?

I’m going to work on changing the angle of one wing to induce roll to one side. Once I started to study the science behind this, I began thinking we could transition (roll over) by merely changing this factor. I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

If anybody has experience with changing the dihedral angle of one wing to transition, please chime in here. I’m still going to learn it myself, but I’d love to hear the experience of others.

Keep it simple: arms to the sky is more stable than arms to the ground.

Fly stable my bird friends!

Blue Skies,

-WSL