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Skydivesg

Z1 used in the Olympics

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I know this probabaly doesn't belong here but I just watched an American woman using a Z1 on a Skeleton run.

Her name is Noelle Picus Pace. It looks nice and is clearly a Z1.

As she was lining up for her run she had the lens up and then put it down just seconds before her run. Just like an exit.

http://www.theolympian.com/winterolympics/story/1144707.html
Be the canopy pilot you want that other guy to be.

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Not too surprised. I wore my Factory Diver helmet, sans face shield, with my skiing goggles fitted perfectly in the face opening, for my last weekend of alpine skiing, at Kirkwood, CA about 10 years ago. Kept my head toasty warm too. B|

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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Skydiving helmets in general are not a good choice for real head protection. I'm surprised to see them in the olympics.



That really shocks me as they have NO concussion padding or protection at all?
Life is all about ass....either you're kicking it, kissing it, working it off, or trying to get a piece of it.
Muff Brother #4382 Dudeist Skydiver #000
www.fundraiseadventure.com

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Purpose of a skydiving helmet is more to keep your hair in place than to cushion your melon from a high speed impact.

Door burn? Yeah.
Boot to the head on exit? Sure.
Random foot in the face during four-way? Yep.

But protection against high-energy impact (60-80mph) on ice? I guess its better than nothing.
NIN
D-19617, AFF-I '19

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Purpose of a skydiving helmet is more to keep your hair in place than to cushion your melon from a high speed impact.

Door burn? Yeah.
Boot to the head on exit? Sure.
Random foot in the face during four-way? Yep.

But protection against high-energy impact (60-80mph) on ice? I guess its better than nothing.




That is why it shocks me that they are using a Z1? I don't really understand why the helmets are not upgraded in skydiving though. They would probably double in price though. [:/]
Life is all about ass....either you're kicking it, kissing it, working it off, or trying to get a piece of it.
Muff Brother #4382 Dudeist Skydiver #000
www.fundraiseadventure.com

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I don't really understand why the helmets are not upgraded in skydiving though. They would probably double in price though.



Upgraded to what? Unless you can build a helmet that will withstand going in clean, you're always going to have a skydiving helmet that will come up short in the worst case scenario.

There's nothing out there that can really protect you, so you might as well go with light and comfortable with just enough protection to save you from 'inconvieniences' like a black eye or a bloody lip. If you have an incident that can cause real injuries, you're going to be injured no matter what.

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Yeah, thats more or less my point.

Helmets are built as a compromise to their ability to not injure the users thru their presence in their everyday use and a certain amount of protection as a percentile of anticipated need.

As an example: You could build a helmet for motorcycle riding that would keep your head in pristine shape while you slam it into a brick wall at 100mph. That helmet would probably weigh more than you'd ever want it to and make 99 1/2% of all your motorcycle riding disgustingly cumbersome for that < .0001% chance that you'd encounter a brick wall with your head travelling 100mph.

Never mind that in the kind of accident sequence your day-to-day bike rider would be far more likely to encounter (getting hit by a car, flipping off your bike, laying it down, whatever), that helmet would probably have so much mass that a "minor" accident would likely snap your neck. :) (but, hey, they could still have an open casket, right?)

Same thing with skydiving. 100% of the time you're wearing a helmet while skydiving, you're deploying a parachute (a fairly "high G" maneuver), where a "robust" (read as "heavy") helmet capable of keeping your melon intact during a high-speed contact with the ground will cause you a major neck problem really quickly.

So you trade off the "worst case scenario" to improve the "everyday scenario" (door rash, boot to the head, a freefall collision with low comparative velocities). And realize that "hey, if shit's that bad, the helmet ain't doing much for me in any event.." (I have this conversation with whuffos all the time when I explain to them that if I hit the ground at terminal, the helmet is merely ensuring that my family can more easily ID my remains..)

There was this old movie from the 1980s with Fred Ward called "Timerider" where he plays a modern motocross racer who winds up in the 1800s Old West. At one point, one of the Marshals asks him if his helmet will "stop a slug." He says "Jeez, I dunno. I mean, it'll survive a major get-off, but I don't think its built for that.."

And thats pretty much the point.

Back to the Olympians: I was just now watching skeleton and it seems to me that with the kinds of G-forces involved while these guys are whipping around the track, they need a fairly lightweight helmet, and that their "90th percentile" protection relates to getting off the sled at 80-90mph in the ice trench and not waiting to skid their face / head along the ice at that speed. (the Georgian luge guy's death aside, as that was a freak "escaped the course and whacked into a pole" situation) Likely they're not going to hit anything really "head on," so its going to be "ice rash" and "sled recontact" that are probably the main threats.
Otherwise, I bet most of these guys wouldn't think twice about going sans helmet...

I do like those Uvex luge helmets that have the large one-piece face piece. You can't seem to locate those on the Internet _at_all_. They might have a little better wind-blast protection than, say, one of those Gath helmets with the big scoop visor.
NIN
D-19617, AFF-I '19

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Skydiving helmets in general are not a good choice for real head protection. I'm surprised to see them in the olympics.



I didn't use my FD helmet for real head protection on the slopes. Until that last outing, I'd gone skiing without ANY head protection. I don't ski like the pros do and am cautious for the most part. What I did like about it was that it kept my head toasty warm, and if I fell down and slid down the slope a bit, it'd keep me from getting ice burn or scrapes.

No, it's not going to really protect me if I slam into a pole or tree. Then again, I'm not hauling ass down the slopes at breakneck speeds. :)
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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D3O which is now being put into Cookie helmets is the only CF helmet that's rated to any level of impact absorption. The only other I'm aware of is the Protek.

I'm not sure why but it seems like every time the subject of head protection comes up on DZ.com people talk about minor free fall impacts or going in. Most helmets will protect you from the former and nothing will protect you from the latter. There is a whole lot more in between those possibilities. I want a helmet that's rated for the chance of having a rough landing under a reserve while incapacitated or unconscious. Or, just a bad landing under canopy, that's the much more likely scenario than going in and what people never seem to mention when discussing helmets in skydiving.

As far as motorcycle helmets go, keep in mind that you may protect your head but at a certain level, you're going to tear an aorta (or whatever) and it won't matter what helmet you're wearing.

It does seem a little weird that they'd wear Z1s but they could well be retrofitting them with something like D3O to have some impact absorption over the (close to useless) foam in most helmets. The Cookie GAS is a full face with D3O but it's not flip up so may not work for their needs. However, having said that, with recent events aside, it may be that most of the impacts in skeleton/luge/etc are at a low angle of impact and heavy duty protection may not be required. Different requirements suit different applications.

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I'm not sure why but it seems like every time the subject of head protection comes up on DZ.com people talk about minor free fall impacts or going in. Most helmets will protect you from the former and nothing will protect you from the latter. There is a whole lot more in between those possibilities.



That's the whole point. If the helmet is only good up to a certain point, and that point is short of the maximum impact you could experiecne, then whatever point you choose the helmet to protect you to is just arbitrary. Whatever you go with, there will always be the argument, "But what if you hit harder than that helmet can take....".

Realizing this, people assume the best, and get a helmet that's light and comfortable, and good for fending off the bumps and scrapes your nugget could pick up while skydiving. If you're facing a more significant injury, they just take their chances and let the cards fall where they may.

Besides, if you're going to bulk up your lid to protect your head in more severe impacts, you should really protect your bady to match. How about armor and padding built into your jumpsuit like motorcycle racers, or a HANS device ala Nascar? Where does it end?

It ends with what we have now. Light, comfortable helmets with good visibility, and un padded jumpsuit (except for kneepads, but those are to protect old men who have to kneel in the plane, not protection from impact).

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As someone mentioned earlier, it's a question of likelihood. What's the likelihood of something and what's the acceptable risk that people are willing to take. That's fine, I'm not trying to make choices for people, I'm saying that there's an alternative that raises the bar without being obtrusive. I'm also saying that people generally seem to draw the line of likelihood pretty low. Ignoring the chance of being injured on landing which I would have thought is higher than being injured in free fall given. I feel like your argument, taken to it's logical conclusion (if it can't protect from the maximum, wear something light & comfy) is not to wear a helmet at all. I'm sure you don't think that not wearing a helmet is a great idea but I don't believe that line of reasoning is valid (even if it exists).

As far as motorcycle armor goes, I'd be more than happy to wear armor. I'm planning on buying new armor for my bike shortly that I'd be comfortable jumping in which is rated at the highest standards generally used in motorcycling gear. If I get more seriously into swooping, I was actually planning on wearing it. Will it save my life in a serious impact, no but it'll raise the bar a little on my bike and under canopy.

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i saw one dude in tullahoma years ago pull a downwind crash and burn on the asphalt taxiway. that shredded his jumpsuit. tore a fist sized hole in his reserve container that you could see his reserve d-bag thru. and the scuff mark on his z1 let me know that if he hadn't had it on . minimum ambulance ride and head trama. he had some nasty road rash. but got up and walked back to the packing area. it looked bad enough that as a health care professional. I had my hand on my cuttaway pillow and was moments from cutting away my main and running over there to help. i'm just saying.
i have on occasion been accused of pulling low . My response. Naw I wasn't low I'm just such a big guy I look closer than I really am .


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In the Skelaton in Whistler they are pulling over 5G on the last corner (so I read), and they are laying down and lifting their head up. Do you really want to have a big heavy helmet on with that G loading? it would probably do more harm than good. Also, if they came off it would not be a direct 90mph impact with the ice (in which case it wouldn't matter what helmet you had), rather it would be one at an acute angle.

There is also no reason to think that the Olympic athletes are any less vain than Skydivers - and the Z1 looks the best and is one of the most aerodynamic of the available helmet IMO.

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*deletes longwinded reply that missed the point. :S

You're right, it's likely that the foam liner of a Z1 is better than a motorcycle style liner that packs down on first impact. The lightness is definitely a factor. I'd still be going with the GAS with D3O if it were my head *for skydiving*.

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*deletes longwinded reply that missed the point. :S

You're right, it's likely that the foam liner of a Z1 is better than a motorcycle style liner that packs down on first impact. The lightness is definitely a factor. I'd still be going with the GAS with D3O if it were my head *for skydiving*.



I would urge you to research what level of impact bike helmets are designed and tested to take.
Remster

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I have. I've also read extensively about the differences between ECE/SNELL/DOT etc.

The difference here is that most skydiving helmets have soft foam in them that compresses and then rebounds. Most motorcycle helmets have a soft foam liner that's quite thin and a formed hard polystyrene (style) liner and then the shell. The stiffness of the shell affects how much energy is transferred to the hard liner which actually packs out when impacted. The soft foam liner is there just for comfort. The differences in tests applied by each standard affects the construction of the shell and the hard liner. The main gist of what I was getting at was that the hard foam liner in a motorcycle helmet is meant to compress to absorb the energy of an impact but it does not reform and hence why most manufacturers say you should replace your helmet after even a minor get off. The advantage of the D3O material is that it's capable of absorbing an impact and then reforming.

Here's the article I was talking about: http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/gearbox/motorcycle_helmet_review/index.html

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*deletes longwinded reply that missed the point. :S

You're right, it's likely that the foam liner of a Z1 is better than a motorcycle style liner that packs down on first impact. The lightness is definitely a factor. I'd still be going with the GAS with D3O if it were my head *for skydiving*.



I was pretty keen on getting a gas until I noticed that the 3d0 was only on the top of the helmet. It seems like that offers a limited amount of additional protection; not quite enough to justify switching just yet.
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