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MattMazzocco

Looking for gear

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Last week i completed my 36th jump and i am looking to buy my own gear, student gear is getting old. I havent had the time to do any research on gear, and dont feel that i know enough about parachutes to try to wing it. I am 6'4" and weigh in at 220. Im currently jumping a 210, and moving down to a 200 this weekend. I will be ready to buy my gear in about a month, so i am looking for suggestions for what kind of gear i should be looking at. My budgeting for this is between 2500-3500 as of now. Any help is appreciated.

Matt

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there's lots of info in the articles section on here about buying gear. plus there's a wealth of info you can get from the instructors, rigger(s), STA, and experienced jumpers at your DZ just by asking.

best of luck on your gear search and blue skies!
diamonds are a dawgs best friend

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since nobody said this, I will, in fact, I will just cut and paste the facts that YOU presented :

36th jumps
220lbs + gear
jumping a 210 (assuming body + gear that's a 1.19 WL)
want to downsize to a 200 (assuming body + gear that's a 1.25 WL)


And here's the question : ARE YOU IN A RUSH TO GET TITANIUM ?

I have refused to sell canopies of that size to people of your experience, numerous times. I hope you will get the same advice from people you trust.

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I downsized after 2 weeks of my instructors telling me i was ready to move into the 210. I have been jumping it for the last month un-eventfully, and with great precision. I am by no means an expert on canopy control, but i do know what i am capable of, and i have had nothing but stand up landings since i switched chutes. I appreciate the concern, but i am a cautious jumper, and i wouldnt fly it if i didnt feel safe. Not everyone moves at the same speed
Matt

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MattMazzocco and hudsonderek :

YEARS AND YEARS of broken bones and limping jumpers can't be wrong - not many people are as good as they think they are. It's not how we fly our canopies when we are in control - it's how well we can manage them when that control is taken away from us. Look at the accident at Perris recently - the facts are ~~ 200 jumps and 1.4something WL - everything else short of the fact that he got hurt is speculation, but **I PERSONALLY** will speculate that a light WL would have resulted in less serious injuries, or perhaps even just a set of wet pants and dirty legstraps...

Don't end up a statistic, jump hard, but jump SMART. The smaller canopies are not going anywhere, but unfortunately neither will the titanium in your body.

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I live to die another day. No titanium today. 210 is a great chute and i could handle faster. Say what you want to say but i am comfortable flying that chute, malfunction or not. This isnt touch football, its sky diving. I realize you experienced jumpers have seen green jumpers make ridiculous mistakes in the past that jade your view of all new jumpers, but i have taken the time to ask questions, and learn as much about canopy control as i can. Im jumping out of a plane. Believe me, my dz is very safety concious, and would not let me fly a chute i was not ready for. Again thanks for the concern but i really was just looking for leads on gear.

Matt

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Lol. Thanks but my health is insured by blue cross blue shield, and yes they cover skydiving accidents. I think its awesome that there are people out there who care enough about new jumpers to voice their opinions, but i also think you arent understanding that this canopy is still a slow canopy. Its not that i dont listen, or want to hurt myself. I have spoken with my instructors about this and they all feel that i am ready for this chute and they have seen me fly it. Once again, thanks for looking out but im good at jumping this chute and really just came for advice on good gear.


BTW the incident you are refering to at perris was a jumper who attempted a swoop and botched it. I dont swoop, nor will i try to till i have thousands of jumps. I watched a good friend of mine bounce w/o incident fortunately, and a very seasoned instructor break the shit out of his ankle swooping. I hate to say it, but when your flying at the ground that fast, WL wont make too much diff.

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I dont swoop, nor will i try to till i have thousands of jumps.



And that is a very big problem right there. If you don't know how to handle the speed your canopy is capable of, you will run into problems when (note, not if) you get cut off on final, land out and have to dodge an obstacle, try to land into the wind too late, something like that happens and you'll react the only way you know how, and you'll run a very good chance of hitting the ground at high speed. If you learn the total performance envelope of your canopy you'll be much better able to avoid getting into a situation like that and should you anyway you'll be much better able to get out of it in one piece. Plenty of people get hurt every year, a lot of which fall into the "conservative flyer, never swooped" category.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

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I live to die another day. No titanium today. 210 is a great chute and i could handle faster.



Sure, provided that everything always goes well and you land straight in on a nice level field.

You haven't made a lot of 90 degree turns below 50', down-wind landings, out landings in tight areas like fenced back yards, and successfully dealt with a few indcidents in which you've needed to change directions at the last second.

Without that you don't have the information needed to declare you can "handle faster" when things aren't going well. If you've had enough of those events, your history of poor judgement also suggests not down sizing.

At trim speed, velocity increases with the square root of wing loading. A 200 is only 7% faster than 230 or 20% faster than a 288 square foot student canopy. That's not a big deal provided that a mild tail wind won't have you going too fast to run.

Things don't get interesting until you start turning, where a smaller canopy will be more sensitive to control input, start turning quicker, accelerate quicker, and dive longer leading to much more speed. While you can choose not to turn near the ground when things are going well, it becomes unavoidable when some one flies in front of you, the winds change so you're going to overshoot into an obstacle, you land out and don't see a farmer's fence until you're very low, etc. The same canopy which was a few sizes bigger than you could handle sudenly becomes a few sizes too small.

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Say what you want to say but i am comfortable flying that chute, malfunction or not. This isnt touch football, its sky diving. I realize you experienced jumpers have seen green jumpers make ridiculous mistakes in the past



Anecdotally, I think about 1 in 4 guys who exceed Brian Germain's WNE chart join the titanium club. Heavy guys do worse. Your canopies aren't as sensitive to control input at a given wingloading but you have more kinetic energy and your bones aren't proportionally stronger.

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that jade your view of all new jumpers, but i have taken the time to ask questions, and learn as much about canopy control as i can. Im jumping out of a plane. Believe me, my dz is very safety concious, and would not let me fly a chute i was not ready for.



They'll tell you what they think is safe which isn't the same thing. Relativism and a limited sample size means there's a reasonable chance they're wrong. Not owning a skydiving main bigger than a 135 in the last decade doesn't make 170s any slower than when that was considered small. Most drop zones don't have enough jumps happening to draw statistical conclusions about what's actually happening - with less than a fatality a year and only a handful of broken bones random variation of just an event or two per year will swamp out the trends. This is especially true for jumpers at either size extreme - at my reasonable sized home DZ (Otter and King Air in the air at the same time on busy days)
there were only a couple of guys your size ("Big" Benny and "Big" Al). While a 200 or 230 sounds real big to most jumpers when you're not doing classic accuracy it does get some one weighing 250 pounds without gear a healthy wingloading.

People with much more experience than your instructors and local S&TAs have seen more and have better ideas. Brian Germain has over 13,000 jumps, designs and builds parachutes, and teaches canopy flight at drop zones around the world. He recommends a 230 for you downsizing to a 200 by the time you get 200 jumps.

http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf


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Again thanks for the concern but i really was just looking for leads on gear.
Matt



Buy yourself a 230 for a good price. Put 100 jumps on it with a reasonable exploration of the flight envelope out it for no more than $100 less than you paid. Do the same with a 190.

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