New FAI Distance Record in Colorado

[Hooknswoop 19]

15.65-mph = 7m/s

OK, you are not standing it up w/ that tail wind. Newer jumpers aren't going to see it that way. They'll just see that downwinding the landing and cratering is the way to do it because that is how the pros do it.

If you didn't stand it up, you were in over your head and it doesn't count.

I'm not saying these guys are not awesome canopy pilots, they are, the very best. But it would level the field if they were required to stand up the landing.

Cratering the landing is not progress, it is regressing.

Rounds= crater.

Squares = flare to a stand-up landing- made skydiving safer and easier on the body.

Swooping= OK to crater.

That is regressing.

Derek

[diablopilot 2]

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Why are you so against stand-up landings?

And why are you so for them? Should we encourage our AFF students to only try for standups?


Of course not. We even avaoid the subject and sugest PLF's as the first option.


Jay could probably try for a stand up, and loose a couple of feet on the record attempt, but instead opts for the SAFER slide in landing.

The sport of canopy piloting is reaching an evolution where more control is both respected and rewarded. Point deductions in freestyle and zone accuracy are representing that.

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If the pros go downwind and crater

I rarely see pros "crater", and when they don't make a stand up the instead opt for the controled slide. I would sugest a pro has put more effort into learning how to properly PLF than an "A" licenced jumper.

Pushing the edge requires such things.

While I agree it looks better to have standups and that can also mean a better example is set for other less experienced jumpers, it's not (until recently) a requrement of competition, nor is it what you're being judged on.

The Current carving speed competition is about just that. Speed through a measured course. No requirement on equipment, aproach, or landing, just speed. Should we require all those competeing in 4way FS to stand up their landings for the skydive to be judged?

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[Hooknswoop 19]

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And why are you so for them?

Because they don't hurt. They don't damage the gear. They aren't hard on the body. They demonstrate control and skill.

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Should we encourage our AFF students to only try for standups?

We should train them so that they make injury-fee stand-up landings, yes. That is much better than hammering in. Every student I trained wanted to stand up the landing. The PLR was in the event that that their landing was not of stand-up quality.

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Jay could probably try for a stand up, and loose a couple of feet on the record attempt, but instead opts for the SAFER slide in landing.

I stood up 99% of my landings (not couting tandems). It was a rare event for me to not stand up. I never got hurt. I disagree that standing a landing up is not as safe as sliding in. Maybe if you are going too fast down-wind or wearing too much weight. But then weights and tailwinds are not skill and you were in over your head.

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While I agree it looks better to have standups and that can also mean a better example is set for other less experienced jumpers, it's not (until recently) a requrement of competition, nor is it what you're being judged on.

You guys keep dancing around it. Not standing up the landings sets a bad example. Not maybe or can set a bad example. It does. Newer jumpers see the pros go downwind, so they go downwind. They get hurt. There should be a cutoff that prevents anything other than skill from getting the pilot points. That should be a stand up landing. What extra skill does it take to go downwind as opposed to into the wind? None. It just looks better because of the higher ground speed.

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While I agree it looks better to have standups and that can also mean a better example is set for other less experienced jumpers, it's not (until recently) a requrement of competition, nor is it what you're being judged on.

It looks better. It sets a better example. It also prevents someone from taking a 16-mph down-wind landing and beating canopy pilots that have more skill but are smart enough not to down-wind it in those conditions.

What does requiring a stand up landing take away from the competition? What would it do to its image? What would it do to the example that is set to newer swoopers? What would it add to the competetion?

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The Current carving speed competition is about just that. Speed through a measured course. No requirement on equipment, aproach, or landing, just speed.

So being out of control is OK, as long as you go fast. And we wonder why landing injuries are becoming more and more common.

It is a matter of time before the rules will be changed to require a stand up landing. That will be a good thing for competetion and the sport as a whole.

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Should we require all those competeing in 4way FS to stand up their landings for the skydive to be judged?

4-way is about the free-fall, not about the landing. Swooping is the landing.

Currently, someone that is a better pilot can get beat by someone that cares less about being in one piece. Take two identically skilled jumpers. One has a down-wind limit of 5-mph. The other has a down-wind limit of 15-mph. The wind are blowing 15-mph. The jumper that is willing to take the 15-mph tailwind and not stand up the landing is going to win. Not because he hs more skill, but because he is willing to not stand up the landing. Requiring stand-up landings for the run to count will decrease the abuse taken by competetors, allowing them to compete longer. It won't just be a young man's game.

If you have to sacrafice that last 5 feet in order to stand it up, you lose 5 feet. But the same rules apply to the next guy. He can't sacrafice the landing for an extra 5 feet.

So, why are you so against stand-up landings?

Derek

[ccowden 0]

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If you want to see stand up landings, go to a stand up landing competition. This was a swooping competition. Just as with an accuracy comp, stand ups are not the goal.

You are wrong. In zone accuracy and freestyle stand up landings are the goal. Most people took a 10 point penalty in zone accuracy for failing to stand them up.

Nope, I am not wrong. I was referring to classic accuracy not zone accuracy. My point is, if you told Jay or any other Pro swooper to do 100 standups in a row, they would probably give you 100 standups. When the goal is distance or something else where standing up is not the goal, then they will often choose to slide it in.

[Hooknswoop 19]

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When the goal is distance or something else where standing up is not the goal, then they will often choose to slide it in.

Why? Why not stand it up anyway?

If everyone has to for the run to count, then the small distance that would have been gained by sliding it in is lost to everyone, not just those that were willing to slide it in. It levels the playing field. No advantage for sliding it in. Stand-ups look better. They don't hurt. It would allow people to compete longer and allow more people to compete.

I don't see a downside, but lots of up-sides.

Derek

[Hooknswoop 19]

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In zone accuracy and freestyle stand up landings are the goal. Most people took a 10 point penalty in zone accuracy for failing to stand them up.

Why did they change the rules to penalize non-stand-up landings?

Derek

[diablopilot 2]

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But then weights and tailwinds are not skill and you were in over your head.

I would argue that it takes quite alot of skill to safely negotiate a 5 foot entry gate while wearing 50+lbs of lead following a 600+ degree turn on a sub 100 square foot canopy.

If it didn't, I'd be trying it.

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So, why are you so against stand-up landings?

I'm not, I'm pointing out your obsession with them can be counter productive to safe canopy piloting. Knowing when to fall down, and how to do it can be just as important to standing up, and penalizing someones score for not landing a stand up could encourage an unsafe act.

Edit: Mary says stop PWing and enjoy your damn vacation.

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[diablopilot 2]

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Why did they change the rules to penalize non-stand-up landings?

Public image when relating to wuffos.

Encouraging the evolution of canopy piloting.

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[Hooknswoop 19]

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I would argue that it takes quite alot of skill to safely negotiate a 5 foot entry gate while wearing 50+lbs of lead following a 600+ degree turn on a sub 100 square foot canopy.

You seemed to have read over the tailwind part.

Of course it takes skill, but it takes skill to safely negotiate a 5 foot entry gate following a 600+ degree turn on a sub 100 square foot canopy. Adding 50-lbs of lead is not a skill.

Landing down-wind is not a skill.

Hitting home runs is a skill. Hitting home run with a corked bat is a skill too, but not as skillful as using a regulation bat. That is why corked bats are not allowed in baseball. Same goes for steriods. How is it fair that the top home run hitter gets beat because the other guy was willing to use steriods?

Make the playing field even. Stand up the landing. If you can't, then you were in over your head.

Derek

[Hooknswoop 19]

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Public image when relating to wuffos.

Encouraging the evolution of canopy piloting.

Don't those apply to distance and speed as well?

Derek

[diablopilot 2]

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Adding 50-lbs of lead is not a skill.

Agreed. Flying it is.

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Landing down-wind is not a skill.

Again, agreed. Sucessfuly negotiating a course in a downwind condition is.

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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

[flyangel2 2]

you guys are cracking me up.

Aren't you on vacation?

JP has a great excuse for sitting here and PW with you, he's waiting for me to get my shit together to get him to DIA.

Steve has a great excuse, his butt hurts (I offered to kiss it and make it better)

Derek, go outside and enjoy that wonderful Calif. weather

IMO I want to see all the swoopers landing on their butts. Gives me a great excuse to ask them if I can rub their boo boos and make them feel better.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey

[Hooknswoop 19]

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Adding 50-lbs of lead is not a skill.

Agreed. Flying it is.

No, flying it well and still standing up the landing is a skill.

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Sucessfuly negotiating a course in a downwind condition is.

And still standing up the landing is a skill. Otherwise your arms were writing checks your legs can't cash.

Derek

[Hooknswoop 19]

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Aren't you on vacation?

Ya, I needed a vacation from the vacation though.

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IMO I want to see all the swoopers landing on their butts. Gives me a great excuse to ask them if I can rub their boo boos and make them feel better.

LOL!

Derek

[ccowden 0]

BECAUSE THAT IS NOT THE GOAL!

Dude, highjumpers have a goal to jump over the greatest height they can. How do they do it? By using a technique where they end up on their backs. Longjumpers have a goal of covering the greatest distance across the ground they can. How do they do it? By using a techinique where they sacrafice the landing to go the furthest they can. Should we limit them to only stand ups?

When the goal is to simply cover as much horizontal distance under a canopy as you can, you sacrafice the landing. It is really simple, and I cannot believe that this thread has gotten so carried away with this.

Big deal if it doesn't look as pretty. Big deal about public image. If there is a competition to go the furthest distance under a canopy, THAT is what you do. To accomplish this, you stay off the ground as long a possible and get every ounce of lift and distance you can from your canopy. It is really simple.

[Hooknswoop 19]

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Dude, highjumpers have a goal to jump over the greatest height they can. How do they do it?

Jumping over a pole and landing on a big pad so they don't get hurt. Want to compare injury rates between pro swoopers and pro high jumpers?

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Should we limit them to only stand ups?

No, should we require pro swoopers to land on a big thick pad?

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When the goal is to simply cover as much horizontal distance under a canopy as you can, you sacrafice the landing. It is really simple, and I cannot believe that this thread has gotten so carried away with this.

If the zone accuracy rules were changed to improve the image and progress the sport, then not standing up the landings in distance and speed is hurting the image not not progressing the sport.

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Big deal if it doesn't look as pretty. Big deal about public image. If there is a competition to go the furthest distance under a canopy, THAT is what you do. To accomplish this, you stay off the ground as long a possible and get every ounce of lift and distance you can from your canopy. It is really simple.

If stand up landings were required, you could still go as far as possible, but it would require that much more skill to stand it up at the end. Sliding in doesn't require any skill, standing up does. Swoop 650 feet and stand up the landing. Now that would be impressive. Using a tailwind to get the extra distance, sacraficing the ability to stand up the landing doesn't require any extra skill.

Derek

[brokky 4]

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Wow, very few stand up landings. Want to impress me, stand up the landing.

Derek

Why don´t you just go out and compete, hit the 5 foot gates in any wind condition ,including crosswind and downwind and then show us your stand up skills....
you are just confusing "cratering" with controlled slides...And for swooping accuracy,sometimes you have to pull up the canopy to stop covering distance,and the safest way to absorb the landing is not to try to stand up ..

wuk??

http://www.brunobrokken.com

[raymod2 1]

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Why did they change the rules to penalize non-stand-up landings?

Public image when relating to wuffos.

This is not the reason I remember Jim Slaton giving us during the briefing. He said it was to encourage safer landings because too many people were getting injured in zone accuracy. Also, we were warned not to stall our canopies in an effort to salvage a bad run. A red card was given when one competitor did this.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Not every dropzone has the luxury of a golf course green like landing area where the canopy pilot surfs their landing suspending their weight by continuing to fly their canopy until the last possible split second when lift is lost and they finish the run out. If you try this techinique at most DZs (or the current landing area of Mile-Hi's new pond) you risk face planting. So the preferred technique is to butt slide it when your ground speed is too fast (and the pros told me how to properly do this and I can't wait to get some practice at it once I'm healed up).

Prior to this summer I always prided myself with my stand up landings after my swoops. So what changed? Well I bought Grant's old 103 from him with his ultra long brake settings and my survival technique while training here at altitude all summer long was to butt slide my landing. Did it beat me and add wear to my gear? Yes ... and in retrospective I probably was pushing certain aspects of my swoop instead of concentrating on others. My 103 will need a reline soon and you better believe that the brake settings will be shorter than what they are right now. But I enjoyed the performance I was getting from Grant's canopy, so I continued to jump it as is.

Like I said, I knew going into the CPC Championships that I wouldn't be one of the big distance guys. So I concentrated on making the gates, scored my personal best competition distance result and finished 12th pretty much where I expected to be if I ran clean. Going into zone accuracy my goal was to hit the gates, drag my feet through the water for bonus points, avoid no mans land and land in a positive scoring zone. Standups were a bonus, but were only 10% of my total score. So should I have neglected the remaining 90% only to stand up my landing? Hell no. I finish 5th in zone accuracy and I'm really proud of myself for my performance on this event (I kind of view zone acc as my current specialty and I can't wait to try the carving zone accuracy course the pros do ... it looks fun). Where I fucked myself in this CPC competition was in the speed event. We had difficult downwind conditions to negotiate and my mistake was thinking that this is a speed course and that I needed to run it fast. I got behind the power curve, confused ground speed with airspeed, thought I could negotiate the course on my rears, rear riser stalled the canopy (which is very violent under a cross-braced canopy) and hurt my back (fortunately not seriously) and had to pull myself from the competition before it had even completed. Had I just run the carving speed course making a nice controlled turn and dealt with the downwind ground speed, I likely would have run clean, had respectable runs, finished in the top 10 overall and would now be training for the pro qualifier. But I fucked up and you better believe that this was a lesson I will learn from (I love lessons you can hobble away from) plus I learned that while I am a good amateur high performance canopy pilot, I am not ready yet to be competiting against the pros. Why do I say all of this ... because competitive swooping is so much more than just the actual touch down portion of the landing. The competitive swooper must read the weather, fly themselves to their setup, initiate their turn, dive their canopy, align themselves with the entry gates, choose the right time to get off of the risers, make the gates, negotiate the course doing whatever it is they are supposed to do in the course and then land their canopy to score points (yes standups are preferred but walking away to make the next load is better). There is a whole lot of skill going on there, not just worrying about the landing. If I can walk away from my swoop and make the next load, then I am a happy swooper. But sometimes swoopers do get hurt. It's a physical sport. What we need to do is get people to stop being in the corner (I can't remember the last time I was in the corner, but that doesn't mean I couldn't find myself there on my next jump). I would like to see the aspiring swoopers (not the ones already competiting at the Pro and/or top CPC level) not worry about being the fastest and farthest swooper on the block, but instead learn how to dive their canopy, get off of the risers and let the canopy recover by itself. But to do this, the wannabe swooper must know how to find the performance envelope of their canopy by dedicated jumps to learning it up high before they ever induce speed low to the ground.

I will say one thing though (for all the wannabe swoopers out there), listen to the experienced swoopers around you and seek qualified coaching when possible. The experienced people really do know what they are talking about when they want people to slow down. I did listen to them when I was a wannabe ... but the right messages never did always get through. I made hundreds and hundreds of jumps living in the corner (not the dangerous side of the corner, but the corner nonetheless). If I had only known then what I know now, I can only imagine how further ahead of the game I could have been.

Let's be smart out there folks. Swooping rocks but it is very unforgiving of the errors that we make. If you want to be a swooper, put your pride aside, listen to others more experienced than you and dedicate jumps to canopy control. Swooping will be there for us tomorrow if we're smart today.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[brokky 4]

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I expect people to stand up almost every landing

ok,but what really impresses most of the people is Jay´s landing and not you trying to emulate Carl Lewis..(I mean on the 100meter dash,not on the long jump:he normally falls down then.....)

wuk??

http://www.brunobrokken.com

[Rookie120 0]

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I stood up 99% of my landings (not couting tandems). It was a rare event for me to not stand up. I never got hurt. I disagree that standing a landing up is not as safe as sliding in. Maybe if you are going too fast down-wind or wearing too much weight. But then weights and tailwinds are not skill and you were in over your head.

So next swoop comp up at Mile-Hi why dont you go up there and show Jay and JC how it should be done. From the sound of it you have the skill.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[f94sbu 0]

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Should we require all those competeing in 4way FS to stand up their landings for the skydive to be judged?

If you finish a block without control and continue to the next point you will get an OC and zero point for that block. You got to show control to the judges even though technically there is a freeze frame where everything looks neat.

[Hooknswoop 19]

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Not every dropzone has the luxury of a golf course green like landing area where the canopy pilot surfs their landing suspending their weight by continuing to fly their canopy until the last possible split second when lift is lost and they finish the run out.

Aside from some of the tandems, I stood up every landing at MH.

If the landing area wasn't suitable for a stand up landing, I didn't land there.

I see advantages to requiring a stand up landing. I don't see any downsides.

As for me competeting, I don't jump anymore. I would have competed when I was jumping, but didn't want to sacrifice a nice stand up landing or have to go down-wind when I knew I wouldn't be able to run it out to win. If they would have required stand up landings, I would have competed. I was very consistant.

Why go down wind and not stand up when you could go cross wind or into the wind and stand up the landing? I haven't heard a good reason not to require stand up landings yet. I have heard some good reasons to require it though.

Derek

[crewkeith 0]

so maybe you shouldnt get paid for a tandem if you dont stand it up?? you telling me that would be good for the sport?? true it would look better and demonstrate a better perception of control but how many students would get surfed?? come on man i drove the van at mile hi and saw you crash a few times. it is safer to control the landing and slide than go tumbling across the landing area. like steve said come on out and compete.... oh wait you dont jump any more. so if you dont jump and dont compete why is it such a big deal to you?

.

The skies are no longer safe

I'm back

[Hooknswoop 19]

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So next swoop comp up at Mile-Hi why dont you go up there and show Jay and JC how it should be done. From the sound of it you have the skill. ***

Have you seen the pounding those guys take? I'm not getting any younger and don't like to get hurt if I can help it.

Derek