Brothers Gray Wingsuit Academy colors the skies above Orange

ORANGE — With parachutes strapped to their backs, a handful of people piled into the Twin Otter plane one by one. The weather was holding up at Skydive Orange, and the parachuters were looking forward to another successful skydive.
The twin-engine plane took off, buzzing the whole way as it rose miles above the drop zone. Obscured by cloud cover, the jumpers leapt from the plane’s belly to begin their fall back to Earth.
However, the experience was slightly different for a few of the parachuters. Some wore bat-like suits that connected their arms and legs with a piece of fabric. These wingsuits allowed their pilots to glide around in the clouds, giving them a very different experience than their skydiving peers.
“There is a peace and a calmness to it,” Scott Gray said. “When you’re doing it by yourself, and there are clouds you fly around, you almost get into this Zen zone of absolute tranquility. It is you in the sky, in the clouds.”
Gray and his brother, Chris Gray, started The Brothers Gray Wingsuit Academy last spring.
The wingsuit school, which shares a space with Skydive Orange, is one of fewer than 10 wingsuit academies in the United States.
Scott Gray said the sport has seen significant growth in the last year because of increased safety measures and more exposure in pop culture.
“In my experience,” he said, “in every drop zone we’ve been in, there are probably three or four people who say, ‘You know, I’d like to try it.’”
Human flight
Wingsuits trace back to the 1920s and 1930s, when “bat men” tried to fly using suits made of canvas, whalebone and wood. Scott Gray said only 90 people in the early part of the 20th century were documented as having tried to fly, and it cost more than 70 their lives.
“The materials and how they were made were very archaic and didn’t fly well,” Gray said.
Wingsuit construction became safer in the 1990s, and the sport gained a better reputation in the early 2000s. Today, several companies manufacture wingsuits for beginners and the more experienced.
Newer wingsuit pilots wear suits with less material between their legs and arms. As they progress, they can use suits with more and more material until they truly start to look like bats or flying squirrels.
“A normal jumpsuit is mainly for comfort,” Chris Gray said, turning toward a wingsuit made for an experienced wingsuit pilot. “A large suit like this in the wrong hands could be very scary. It introduces the possibility of you going out of control because the suit is so large.”
Wingsuit pilots need to have extensive parachuting experience. At The Brothers Gray, people need at least 200 skydives and a current skydiving license to try a wingsuit. Scott Gray said some people with more than 500 skydives are legally allowed to don a wingsuit and jump without instruction, but it isn’t recommended because the suits require more skills to fly.
After jumping out of the plane, wingsuit pilots spread their arms and legs at a certain time and immediately begin to fly. As they float around, several altimeters keep them aware of how close they are to the ground. The level of a wingsuit pilot’s license determines how low they can go before deploying the parachute, although pilots must unzip their wings first.
The Brothers Gray Wingsuit Academy has pilots with experience from a few wingsuit jumps to more than 1,000 jumps. Although the owners have traveled elsewhere to teach new pilots how to fly, they call Orange their home base. The location is central to Scott’s home in Ellicott City, Md., and Chris’ home in Roanoke.
“This is the best drop zone because they’ve got the best aircraft used in skydiving,” Chris Gray said.
Twin Otter planes are considered desirable for skydiving because the light craft can take jumpers to full altitude in about 10 minutes.
Falling for flying
Scott Gray, 42, is a former member of the U.S. Army’s airborne division. He started parachuting for the military in 1984.
“It was a very different parachuting experience,” he said. “In the military, the parachute is deployed for you. But I got the bug then.”
After taking a break from the sport, Gray got back into it and brought his brother with him. Chris Gray, 27, got his brother interested in wingsuits after a positive experience in Puerto Rico.
“Ever since then, I’ve done it exclusively,” Chris said. “It’s so much better than a regular skydive to me.”
Wingsuits often are the next step for parachuters, who can experience the same excitement they felt after their first skydive, Scott said. The brothers decided to open up their own school after doing about 30 wingsuit jumps. Scott said they noticed there weren’t many wingsuit pilots in Virginia or Maryland, and decided opening a school was the best way for them to create that community.
Both the parachuters and wingsuit pilots at Skydive Orange have a certain colorful energy and sense of humor. Ray “Stoney” Stone, 61, a West Palm Beach, Fla., resident who visited the wingsuit school this month, is the first modern wingsuit pilot he knows of to land without a parachute.
“I went to the helicopter, and the guy goes, ‘I’ll take you up to 12 feet,’” Stone recalled. “I was thinking one foot. He takes me to five or six feet. I jumped and smashed my face and kind of broke my nose.”
Stone touched his face.
“My nose still clicks,” he said.
His feat was filmed and put online, where pilots from other countries started talking about how he could possibly make a jump without a parachute. The secret — that he jumped from only a few feet off the ground — eventually was revealed.
Other wingsuit pilots, such as Woodbridge resident Brian Barnhart, prefer to keep their flights simple. Barnhart, 41, has done a few dozen jumps and is working toward a more advanced license.
“There are people who ask why you would want to do this, but I can’t really answer that,” Barnhart said.
Stone can.
“I have lost people,” Stone said. “This life is to be lived.”
Setting a record
The Grays’ wingsuit school operates every other weekend, and the brothers travel to other drop zones when they can. Scott Gray said he is part of a group of wingsuit pilots who are going to try for a new world record. The attempt, which will happen this November in California, will involve 71 pilots — two more than the last world record.
As some of the wingsuit pilots landed from a flight earlier this month, they started talking about the possibility that they just set a state record for the largest number of wingsuit pilots in flight. The discussion continued as they picked up their parachutes, still billowing with air, and carried them back to the large metal barn to do it again.