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urowolf

Different wave off technique

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Clicking one's hills is the industry standard to alert others of you imminent pull. However, it introduces opportunity for instability at pull time for a nervous FFC student or it is physically difficult if not impossible to do in a 'large' suit.
What if we introduce and alternative: flyer gets into a classic pull position (arched, knees bent, arms behind, hand on a hackey) and holds it for a few seconds. May be it could be the same amount of time one would spend clicking their heels. This position is unmistakeable when viewed in the air so no one should be confused about what will happen next. And for students it would teach them a proper, unhurried pull sequence with out unnessesary opportunity for instability.
This could be either/or concept in wing suiting. Both 'wave off' techniques would become universally recognized.

What do you think?

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First, I think this is a very bad idea. Depending on the suit and pilot that "waveoff" you describe which is really just a deliberately prolonged pull causes far, far more unpredictability and instability than current methods do.

Second, making the act of signalling the pull the same as the pull itself is just nuts. If I saw that in the sky after being told "now we signal this way" I wouldn't know if they were just freaking out and pulling in my face unexpectedly, or if they were trying to pull and couldn't find the hackey, or just folding their wings to dive to a lower level, or just signalling, or what? Theres no sequencing or communication of timing with that... all I'd know if I see that is that maybe there will be a pilot chute in my face any second. A heelclick signal unmistakably says "This is stage1 deployment warning. There will be a brief delay and the next act will be a standard deployment initiation."

Nobody does the visibly deliberate double/triple heelclick UNLESS they're about to deploy which is the POINT. People fold their wings and go back to some variant of nonwinged freefall for all KINDS of reasons so making the signal something easily mistaken for a dozen other events or motions makes NO sense at ALL. You come off as if you think the either/or idea makes it a good idea...the whole point of having one universal pull gesture is that it is specific, it and only it says one particular thing, the LAST thing we need is to make it a multiple-choice guessing game! "Is that a maneuver? a pull? a signal? a stuck pilot chute? WTF?"

You want to take a simple, effective, universally known procedure and make it confusing and uncertain and easily mistaken for a double dozen other possible events right at the part of the skydive where we can least afford to introduce any more of such elements already...WHY!?

Third, even the tightest armwings are easily collapsed. The tightest tailwings are not. A normal pull, whether you succeed in totally collapsing the tail or not, is, properly executed, so brief that the movement doesn't trash your flight attitude -too- badly. But there is an almost unavoidable element of imbalance in every pull move because the nature of the act means the armwings are almost always entirely collapsed but the tail is almost always at least partially -NOT- collapsed. Your proposal, combined with the large tails typical of modern suits, would guarantee an amazing epidemic of deployments executed by people entering steep headdown spirals or dives of some sort right at the moment of the throw.

Fourth, if there is any suit in existence capable of pressurizing so hard that waving off with the feet is "impossible to do" I have never heard of it. So far as I am aware there is no such thing and if there were it would be unflyably, uncontrollably rigid because nothing short of absolute body-cast rigidity could make a waveoff "impossible to do". If "difficult to wave off" is an objection to the suit, you have no business flying that suit. You could jam a leaf blower in my Sbird's inlets on the ground with the airlocks closed, inflate the sucker to 25 PSI and you STILL could not prevent me from making enough of an absolutely unmistakable "close/open 3X" movement that anyone seeing it in flight would know in an instant that THAT was an unmistakable imminent pull signal and NOTHING else. Even if I don't squeeze the air out of it, the wing will buckle and fold in half anyway.

I could keep going because there are about 900 other reasons why this may be the worst idea I've heard in years but I'm sure others will pop up to mercy-kill this suggestion far more thoroughly and eloquently than I have. This idea desperately needs to be taken out back and shot. Preferably before it breeds.

Hey, you asked.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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Clicking one's hills is the industry standard to alert others of you imminent pull. However, it introduces opportunity for instability at pull time for a nervous FFC student or it is physically difficult if not impossible to do in a 'large' suit.
What if we introduce and alternative: flyer gets into a classic pull position (arched, knees bent, arms behind, hand on a hackey) and holds it for a few seconds. May be it could be the same amount of time one would spend clicking their heels. This position is unmistakeable when viewed in the air so no one should be confused about what will happen next. And for students it would teach them a proper, unhurried pull sequence with out unnessesary opportunity for instability.
This could be either/or concept in wing suiting. Both 'wave off' techniques would become universally recognized.

What do you think?



First and foremost, changing the ISO isn't necessary. If the large suit means that the pilot can't wave off in the manner expected by everyone else, perhaps he shouldn't be in the large suit.
This method has opportunity to create more instability, IMO.
Instability with waveoff in student suits is incredibly manageable, and part of good training anyway. If the student is really nervous, it usually means they weren't trained properly. "There are very few bad students, but many bad coaches" (in any discipline).

(just read Lurch's response and agree entirely)

Lastly, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.:P

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To be a little nicer about it though, seriously Yan why mess with what works? When I started, I used to fold my wings and plummet for a few seconds trying to get closer to normal freefall in an attempt to avoid unknown uncertainties about how well my rig was going to work at 40mph till I figured out deploying like that causes more problems than it solves. All I can think is that making the signal indistinguishable from the act itself is likely to have unexpected consequences. And, if people already can't fully collapse their tails, you can't expect them to then BE able to do that as part of a long slow shutdown either. As I see it, trying to do it that way just guarantees enough time to pitch almost anybody steeply headdown. I keep my deployment moves and specifically the wings-collapsed portion very quick for just that reason... to get the PC out before my Sbird's huge tail can pitch me over head-low, which it can do easily because collapsed or not, its still dominant over the armwings when both are collapsed at once.
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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Thank you guys for constructive comments. Not to counter argue the idea, I have seen students start to go head down at pull tme and I make it a point to have them bend their knees aggressively while arching and collapsing the leg wing. I encourage them to find balance in this transition and even hold it a while (head up) till they are comfortable. Until they master this, I find their openings can be unpredictable. What say sages?

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Thank you guys for constructive comments. Not to counter argue the idea, I have seen students start to go head down at pull tme and I make it a point to have them bend their knees aggressively while arching and collapsing the leg wing. I encourage them to find balance in this transition and even hold it a while (head up) till they are comfortable. Until they master this, I find their openings can be unpredictable. What say sages?



Head low is usually only a problem if they're not taught to go head-up after waveoff. Even if they fumble for the hackey for a while, the position is *very* stable if they are head-up, bent knees, because this puts them into a stall. This muscle memory is developed on the ground, and should become second nature.
Nearly 400 FFC videos on FB and YouTube from our school. You'll find very, very few that have any head-low problems. Trained properly, students will do well.

This guy somewhat goes unstable, but quickly settles out. https://vimeo.com/39413125
"1,2, 3, head-up, arch, deploy, pray."

Linetwists and hard openings are also rare with this technique.

Notice the stall; https://vimeo.com/37904896

This is how we teach it. https://vimeo.com/29102611

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First, I think this is a very bad idea. Depending on the suit and pilot that "waveoff" you describe which is really just a deliberately prolonged pull causes far, far more unpredictability and instability than current methods do.




This is the plain and simple truth of the matter.
"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

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