Buy an old PF Havok?

5 hours ago, frontloop33 said:

Well, I don't mean to step up right now.

It's more a general question, if I ever should step up with only 20 flights a year.

Until you have fun no reason to change. Anyway, the havok is super easy and you shouldn t have any trouble  even with 20 jumps a year

1 hour ago, alygator said:

Until you have fun no reason to change. Anyway, the havok is super easy and you shouldn t have any trouble  even with 20 jumps a year

+1 

Also, wingsuits cost money. No need to buy another if you're having enough fun on your current suit.

At those numbers I’d buy one of the newer beginner/intermediate suits that have a surprising amount of performance and just learn to rock it. Swift 4 or Magister aren’t too big but they are slightly larger than the smallest suits offered by the company. With one of those and some practice you should be able to fly with Havok/Funk/etc. suits. Even ATCs and Strix if they fly a little dirty for you. 

I'm currently at 4500 Wingsuit Jumps and skydiving doing around 3/4 of my jumps in a Havok. An intermediate suit is never a bad thing to have, and will always be a fun thing to fly for either acro or learning purposes. Even when owning a bigger suit, a lot of things like backflying, transitions etc are easier mastered in a small suit with correct technique, to then apply to your larger wings with more ease.

A lot of people seem to only measure glide as a thing that matters, where agility and ease of flight are also huge factors to take into account, especially when linked to currency and experience.

On 6/11/2020 at 1:04 PM, skydave89 said:

At those numbers I’d buy one of the newer beginner/intermediate suits that have a surprising amount of performance and just learn to rock it. Swift 4 or Magister aren’t too big but they are slightly larger than the smallest suits offered by the company. With one of those and some practice you should be able to fly with Havok/Funk/etc. suits. Even ATCs and Strix if they fly a little dirty for you. 

I've flown a CR+ with a Swift 3 before and I regularly jump my Freak 3 with them. The Swift3/4 is one of the fastest beginner suits on the market. It's a fantastic suit and while the larger suits will have to shut down a bit, if the Swift pilot is rocking it they can still fly reasonably fast.

On 6/10/2020 at 9:58 AM, frontloop33 said:

well. 

I decided to skip this "opportunity". 

I'm still not sure what wingsuit to buy. 

I'm only doing about 20 - 30 WS flights per year (40 - 50 skydives total including these flights).

So I'm not sure if suits like Havok or Funk/ATC are and always will be too challenging for me, even if I have 100 WS jumps (total) in 3 to 4 years. 
Should I just stick with entry-suits (swift/Phantom/magister)?

Or can I step up to intermediate suits? 

This is a bit of late reply, but for whatever it is worth. When I started wingsuiting the Havok was new. I did a lot of jumps on a S-Bird but wanted to back fly, so I found a used Havok. I also jumped a Swift, Funk, XBird, X2, Aura, Colugo and a few others over the years. What I found was that as "performance" increases, so to generally does pressure and sensitivity. That can lead to a lot of stress while you're jumping, esp if you're only doing around 20 a year. If you're big (like me) getting left behind is super annoying, so there is a lot of internal pressure to upsize, I get it.

So as you go about making your decision. If you're light-ish i.e. <170lbs/80kg then smaller will serve you longer. It also depends on who you're jumping with, if everyone is in the Colugo/Jedei/Strix range, then you're going to have a hard time keeping up no matter what. If it is a mix of suits then you'll be in a better position. That said, if fast is something you HAVE to do, there is only one way to do that, and it is big suits. If it isn't, then you have a lot more options.

Jumping as little as you do (not an insult, I have been for most of my skydiving a 200/yr jumper), something more forgiving is probably going to be more fun, and safer. If you need to go big, then something like the ATC is probably your best bet, if not, then something like a Havok or a Funk. An ATC or a Freak are likely to be your reasonable limits at 20-30 WS flights a year. I've seen a number of people upsize too quick and spend 50 jumps just getting where they had enough control to fly in a group, not to mention some butt puckering flights in the process. I don't think you need to stick with entry level stuff though, the learning return on investment (and fun) diminishes for most people after 20-30 jumps on them. But if you're super light, I've seen someone XRW in a Swift (~130lbs/60kg), so it depends a lot on you. 

Hope that helped some.