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billvon

Proposal for wing loading limits

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Low turns are dangerous. Swooping is dangerous. Usually the advice given is not to turn low and not to go swooping without many hundreds of jumps and some good quality canopy coaching. And here we are discussing mandated low turn, HP landings and down winders for 100 jump noobs. Do you really think someone with 100 jumps is going to have enough experience to nail a 50ft flat 90deg turn, a 90 front riser hook, a 45 degree carve and a down wind landing given the current levels of canopy training given?

And why the hell are you concentrating on get-you-out-of-the-shit maneuvers and totally ignoring all the shit-avoidance maneuvers? The superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that require him to demonstrate his superior skill. Good choices above 1000ft will go a long way to making sure you don't need to get yourself out of the shit at 50ft. Totally ignored.

If you want to make people do this stuff you need to implement a solid training program to teach them how to do it without becoming one of the statistics you're trying to reduce. Even then, 100 jumps just isn't enough experience for the drills you're asking for. It would be reckless to try.

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^ it screws light weight jumpers then. They could be forced under 1.0 until 500 jumps!



Not at all. See note d regarding training when exceeding the recommendations.


If I'm reading correctly then you cannot get a sub 150 before D license, right? Then what about 100lb girls? Are they supposed to fly .6-.7 WL until they have 500 jumps? I could see that seriously being annoying as I fly 1.1 WL and sometimes have to fight with stronger winds and getting penetration into it.

If somebody has 300 jumps they should be able to fly a 1.3 (or whatever) WL so that they can penetrate winds regardless of whether thats a 135 or a 190 or whatever.

I think its all a pretty pointless conversation though, as far as I see the vast majority of fatalities lately have been experienced skydivers outside the boundaries of these charts (>500 jumps). Its quite the red herring being thrown around here.

I'd always err on the side of less rules and leave it up to personal responsibility (education at the dropzone by your mentors/friends).

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Maybe there should also be some penalty for major mistakes (Cypress fire, hitting an obstacle, unsafe pattern flights, etc). There always has to be some teeth to back up and regulations to make them work.
The brave may not live forever, but the timid never live at all.

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as far as I see the vast majority of fatalities lately have been experienced skydivers outside the boundaries of these charts (>500 jumps). Its quite the red herring being thrown around here.

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...It will take a bit of time for the slowed progression/differently trained jumpers to move down stream and change 'those' statics.

Look at it this way, WOULD different and more conservative training for those 500 jump and up fatalities earlier in their career had a positive effect?

Well there no real way to tell...so lets try it for a decade and then look at the numbers, because as you show the WAY we do and DID it ~ doesn't seem work.











~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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^ it screws light weight jumpers then. They could be forced under 1.0 until 500 jumps!



Not at all. See note d regarding training when exceeding the recommendations.


If I'm reading correctly then you cannot get a sub 150 before D license, right? Then what about 100lb girls? Are they supposed to fly .6-.7 WL until they have 500 jumps? I could see that seriously being annoying as I fly 1.1 WL and sometimes have to fight with stronger winds and getting penetration into it.

If somebody has 300 jumps they should be able to fly a 1.3 (or whatever) WL so that they can penetrate winds regardless of whether thats a 135 or a 190 or whatever.

I think its all a pretty pointless conversation though, as far as I see the vast majority of fatalities lately have been experienced skydivers outside the boundaries of these charts (>500 jumps). Its quite the red herring being thrown around here.

I'd always err on the side of less rules and leave it up to personal responsibility (education at the dropzone by your mentors/friends).


if you were reading it correctly you would have noticed
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c. D license 1.4 psf maximum until demonstrated proficiency under canopy.


You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

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I still maintain that my life is mine and if I wish to loose it I should be free to due so,



That is one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard. When you are playing in someone else’s crib you are not free to do as you please. If you feel the need to do stupid things do them at home not at the DZ.

Sparky
My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

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If I'm reading correctly then you cannot get a sub 150 before D license, right? Then what about 100lb girls? Are they supposed to fly .6-.7 WL until they have 500 jumps? I could see that seriously being annoying as I fly 1.1 WL and sometimes have to fight with stronger winds and getting penetration into it.



EIFF claims a 22 MPH forward speed at .7 pounds per square foot for their classic accuracy canopy. Having jumped such a canopy in winds where they were using tandem catchers that seems about right (flying the entire landing pattern facing into the wind seemed the thing to do though).

Paraflite claims 26 MPH forward speed for their Intruder 360 with a more modern shape at 200 pounds and 34 MPH at 300 pounds but neglects to specify whether those are all-up weights.

That's enough.

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If somebody has 300 jumps they should be able to fly a 1.3 (or whatever) WL so that they can penetrate winds regardless of whether thats a 135 or a 190 or whatever.



A 1.3 wing loading should be 14% faster than 1.0 pounds per square foot which isn't much.

We did just fine when technology limited us to a pound per square foot. People under like sized modern gear will be OK too as long as they learn to spot better and exit far enough up-wind from the DZ.

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>Low turns are dangerous. Swooping is dangerous. Usually the advice given is not to
>turn low and not to go swooping without many hundreds of jumps and some good
>quality canopy coaching. And here we are discussing mandated low turn, HP landings
>and down winders for 100 jump noobs. Do you really think someone with 100 jumps is
>going to have enough experience to nail a 50ft flat 90deg turn, a 90 front riser hook, a
>45 degree carve and a down wind landing given the current levels of canopy training
>given?

Not at first, no. They are skills that are critical to learn before you downsize, though.

>And why the hell are you concentrating on get-you-out-of-the-shit maneuvers and
>totally ignoring all the shit-avoidance maneuvers?

I'm not. There's already a good amount of defensive flying (flying patterns, stacking approaches, turn right to avoid collisions, tricks for extending glide) in the SIM, specifically the ISP. These additional skills are intended to go beyond those important basic skills into ways to get you "out of the shit" as you put it.

The reason I think they're important is because the lack of these skills (specifically the lack of the skill to flat turn low and land crosswind/downwind) leads to a significant number of fatalities. So it seems like just telling people "don't turn low" doesn't work.

>If you want to make people do this stuff you need to implement a solid training
>program to teach them how to do it without becoming one of the statistics you're trying
>to reduce.

Definitely agreed there. The canopy coach portion of this will be critical.

>Even then, 100 jumps just isn't enough experience for the drills you're asking for. It
>would be reckless to try.

I think that a jumper at 100 jumps, loading his canopy under 1:1, is a pretty good time to start trying to learn these skills. At that loading his odds of injury are greatly reduced, and at that experience level he is past the "oh god oh god I'm gonna hit!" phase. Keep in mind that at 200 jumps we are telling them they are ready to do _demos._

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Not sure how accurate it is, but my Neptune shows me flying an average of 17 MPH forward speed under my Safire 189 loaded about 1.3. It shows me at 36 MPH under my Vengeance 170 loaded at 1.4.
For whatever thats worth...

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD...

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The canopy coach portion of this will be critical



And there's the crux of the matter. Without mandating coaching, and good coaching at that (of which there is not enough), all you've done is set some dangerous hurdles to negotiate. There are enough people that don't get coaching and fly like shit as it is, if you force those hurdles onto people with insufficient experience and poor skills you would be rewarding the survival of some risky maneuvers with increased wing loading, and punishing failures with broken bones.

I think a better bet would be to only allow the 100 jump downsize after the successful completion of a recognized canopy control course to be signed off by an appropriate instructor. Rather than simply setting a bunch of high risk examination drills and expecting people to seek out coaching if they think they need it.

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Not sure how accurate it is, but my Neptune shows me flying an average of 17 MPH forward speed under my Safire 189 loaded about 1.3. It shows me at 36 MPH under my Vengeance 170 loaded at 1.4.
For whatever thats worth...



No.

Your Neptune measures descent rate.

Glide ratios are typically somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1 with the later at lower wing loadings, bigger canopies, or at braked flight (a big guy's drag from his frontal area becomes an increasing part of the total as his wing shrinks, smaller peoples' cross-sectional density is lower than big peoples', and while things like lines get shorter under smaller canopies they don't get thinner so their share of drag goes up without adding lift) which would yield at least 34 MPH of forward speed under the Safire. Some canopies are better due to aerodynamics or trim (Paraflite gets 4:1 from their Intruder military canopy), some are worse due to trim (even a F111 seven cell with a tall airfoil will do 2:1 in full flight).

The Vengence is probably trimmed steeper like most swooping canopies following the Stiletto.

You'd need to take a GPS unit up with you, measure your ground track in two directions 180 degrees apart, and do the arithmetic to come up with the forward component of your airspeed vector.

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>There are enough people that don't get coaching and fly like shit as it is, if you force
>those hurdles onto people with insufficient experience and poor skills you would be
>rewarding the survival of some risky maneuvers with increased wing loading, and
>punishing failures with broken bones.

They should not be forced onto people with insufficient experience and poor skills. The "insufficient experience" is enforced by not letting people 'test out' until they have 100 (or 500, or 1000) jumps. The "poor skills" is covered by canopy coaching, which is the reason that requirement is here in the first place.

Currently we don't require canopy coaching as part of a C license, yet we require 25 jumps within 2 meters of a target. How does someone with absolutely no training on accuracy do that?

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Currently we don't require canopy coaching as part of a C license, yet we require 25 jumps within 2 meters of a target. How does someone with absolutely no training on accuracy do that?



That hurdle is forced on people, just like your proposal would force 50ft flat turns on people. And again there are the mad skillz brigade who don't want or get coaching. Unless you force them, they still won't get coaching.

The difference is you can practice accuracy by trial and error and stand a good chance of surviving a mistake. A flat turn at 50ft leaves very little room for error and mistakes could very well prove painful.

You've obviously made up your mind and nothing I say will change it so I'm done.

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I do know last year 45% was 2000 plus jumps and this proposal would do nothing for them. Just sayin!



and how many if you limit it to only 1000 jumps? this is a fact i've pointed out several times, but the argument is likely to be completely ignored..
“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

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>Unless you force them, they still won't get coaching.

I would tend to agree. That probably has to be part of the proposal.

>A flat turn at 50ft leaves very little room for error and mistakes could very well prove painful.

I'd disagree there. Almost anyone can do a 5 degree flat turn at 50 feet without trouble, and work up from there.

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>Unless you force them, they still won't get coaching.

I would tend to agree. That probably has to be part of the proposal.



why dont you propose a mandatory canopy-course at each license-level, say from a B-license on? or within a certain amout of time after a downsize?
“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

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>I do know last year 45% was 2000 plus jumps and this proposal would do nothing
>for them. Just sayin!

You don't think that requiring them to demonstrate flat turns, flare turns etc would have helped them? There is a thread just below this one entitled "How a flat turn probably saved my life" - I think there is indeed some value in learning to do them.



I teach my students how to flat turn before they get their A. So yes I think it important. The problem is after their A they didn't have to learn anything else if they didn't want to. Just hit the pees a few times. The facts are how much do they retain in those 25 jumps is not much. I think now that you as a skydive having to take a course t after getting your A to get your B is perfect. They will retain so much more cause its the only thing they are fouced on. You don't see that yourself?
Never give the gates up and always trust your rears!

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Thanks Drew. Yeah, the Vengeance is trimmed super steep - I believe the Katana is a bit steeper but at the time it was made it was the steepest trim of any canopy available (or so I was told). In fact, I put it up for that very reason - I never had any problems landing it (even landing out) but I always felt like I was behind the curve. Maybe I will be ready for it in another couple hundred jumps. Until then it resides in my locker....

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD...

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>why dont you propose a mandatory canopy-course at each license-level, say from a
>B-license on?

I think that will have to be part of the proposal.



I think USPA is working toward that, but wants to see how it works for the B license first.

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From the other thread in General. Lots of people said "I want to see the restrictions before I'd agree to anything" so here's my first proposal on that:

Create four classes of canopy pilots. You could tie them to licenses or let them stand on their own. The list below assumes they stand on their own.

1) Novice.
Can jump up to the following limits (exit weight/size):
110-165/170 176/178 187/189 198/200 209/211 220/222 232/230

2) Beginner.
Requires 100 jumps and demonstration of the following skills under a canopy between 0 and 2 sizes above their loading limit:
-flat turn 90 degrees at 50 feet
-flare turn at least 45 degrees
-land crosswind and in no wind
-land reliably within a 10 meter circle
-initiate a high performance landing with double front risers or front riser turn to landing
-land with rear risers
Beginners can jump up to the following limits (exit weight/size):
110-143/135 154/150 165/150 176/158 187/168 198/178 209/188 220/198 232/208 243/217 254/227 265/230

3) Intermediate. Requires 500 jumps and demonstration of the following skills under a canopy between 0 and 2 sizes above their loading limit:.
-flat turn 90 degrees at 50 feet
-flare turn at least 45 degrees
-land crosswind and in no wind
-land reliably within a 10 meter circle
-initiate a high performance landing with double front risers or front riser turn to landing
-land with rear risers
Intermediates can jump up to the following limits (exit weight/size): 110-198/120 209/126 220/132 232/139 243/145 254/152 265/159

4) Advanced. Requires 1000 jumps and demonstration of the following skills under a canopy between 0 and 2 sizes above their loading limit:
-flat turn 90 degrees at 50 feet
-flare turn at least 45 degrees
-land crosswind and in no wind
-land reliably within a 10 meter circle
-initiate a high performance landing with double front risers or front riser turn to landing
-land with rear risers
Advanced has no loading limits.



AS usual, the most important element is overlooked: AERODYNAMICS KNOWLEDGE.

The FIRST thing all of these approaches need is the equivalent of a private pilot ground school, which is a training curriculum independent of and separate from flight training (although the two training paths are often done concurrently).

You can make all the wing loading-to-exit weight divided by chord times span calculations, rules and restrictions you want, but until the training system teaches to parachutists the same level of basic aerodynamics that private pilots receive, it's all just peeing in the wind.

Literally nothing you listed above makes any sense whatever if the person executing the list items has no clear how it all works in terms of basic aerodynamics.

I personally saved myself several times when I was learning how to swoop because, as a pilot, I understood what was happening to my wing before the sight picture told me -- thus I was already taking action before the sight picture resolved into usable data, which would have been too late.

And in just the last couple of years, there was a great wingsuit video of a guy in Norway setting up to buzz the switchback road and when he made his left approach turn from his launch point, he turned too sharply and gave himself an accelerated stall -- and before he actually started falling from the sky he pitched his pilot chute and opened about five FEET above the rocks (and then outflew the slope under canopy with no problem). In so doing, he demonstrated, as I did, that knowing the aerodynamics involved gives you an edge that can save your life because,as I did, he KNEW he had made a mistake and that the consequences would be fatal and thus he was able to take action before the sight picture told him, which, as in my case, would have been too late.

It mystifies me that someone with your experience, knowledge and generally sound judgment would be so incredibly off-base about the most fundamental thing we need to do differently -- and that is to teach people how to fly their wings as if they were actually pilots. I mean, really, what good is knowing what your wing loading can be for your experience/weight/canopy when you have no clue as to WHY?

It's all the fashion now to call ourselves canopy pilots, but you know, calling yourself a pilot doesn't mean you really are one.

You gotta put in the time, both in the cockpit and IN THE CLASSROOM.

Try again, guys.

44
B|
SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.)

"The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

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Some people just aren't going to have enough strength to do it, it's just a genetics thing and nothing physically can change that.



I lack upper body strength and I jump a canopy loaded about 1.0. There are things I can do to reduce the front riser pressure to a point at which I can easily pull them down (holding them down is another story). Being weak isn't a good excuse for not learning to use all available control inputs.



I also lack the upper body strength I would like, but could use front risers reasonably well for turns and dives at 1 to 1 wingloading. Before that I did pull-ups or just didn't get much in the way of results even when the risers had some give. The issue is that this chart does not have small people even close to a 1 to 1 wingloading when they are to perform these actions or stay on the same canopy forever. The low end of the chart has a 55 pound range.

Broken record: Why can't there be a couple more columns to the left for light folks rather than lumping the 85 lb people with the 140 lb people? Or if we get research to say that smaller canopies are a so much more aggressive even at a light wingloading that we need that massive range, why can't we also understand that there are some things like front risers or landing with almost no forward speed on an 8mph wind day that are going to be more difficult by making this restriction?

We need input from small experienced jumpers to make the lower end of this chart. Having larger jumpers guess based on what has been done in the past without ever having to experience it or without putting the research into it is not reasonable. Slowing/stopping the progress of smaller jumpers by only considering the cherry-picked pieces of the puzzle doesn't seem at all fair.

That being said, I do appreciate the effort being put into the chart. It needs some work on the low end, but is a big improvement on the SIM.

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>The problem is after their A they didn't have to learn anything else if they didn't want to.

Agreed; that's the biggest problem.

>I think now that you as a skydive having to take a course t after getting your A to get
> your B is perfect. They will retain so much more cause its the only thing they are
>fouced on. You don't see that yourself?

?? That's what I am proposing. The requirements are just a way to get people to take a course that's not just "watch me land a few times and I'll sign you off."

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I know of multiple 1000 plus jump number people who never learned to do all the basic stuff they should have learned when they jumped more docile canopies. I can think of 2-3 fatalities in the past few years when an extremely experienced person was having to land off airport on a small canopy in a tight area, and rather than doing a traditional approach or a braked approach, they did swoops instead,, and landing off airport in a small area they tried to do the same swoop they always did and it killed them. And I truly believe if those people have practiced more traditional landings on their small canopies, they wouldn't have felt the need to try to swoop into a tiny landing area.

If you swoop 2000 jumps in a row and never a 'slow' landing, when shit is happening, you resort to what you know. Everyone needs to practice slow landings - because if all you ever do is a 270, and it's been a thousand jumps since you practiced all that basic stuff you learned when you were a rookie, someone with 100 jumps who practices it every load may be more likely to survive.

Quiz the radical dudes at your dz and ask them when they last did a straight in landing. I bet a large percentage of them won't be able to remember and even say it's impossible on their current canopy which is bullshit. But if you never learned to do it on slow canopies, it's impossible to learn on fast ones.

And it really seems we have a generation of fast canopies pilots who only know how to go fast and never learned all of the other aspects of flight.

If we start requiring the next generation to go slower and take the time and really learn to fly their canopies, I truly believe the next generation of fast pilots will be a million times safer

Heck - I've been told by someone who teaches canopy courses than any brakes increases glide - and even though I do it on 80 percent of my jumps and have tons of video to prove how easy it to go straight down or back up in brakes as need be in the wind - I've been told its impossible. And in all honesty all my AFF students know how because they watch me do it all the time, but this person with thousands of jumps who downsized quickly, doesn't even believe its possibly when in reality it's pretty dang trivial to do.

There are a lot of people who have thousands of jumps on tiny canopies who never learned the basics. Requiring proof that they mastered the basics on each canopy before they downsize will make the nex generation of canopy pilots the best that have ever existed. Far too many of our current generation never learned the basics - and if you never mastered them on a 190 or the 170 or the 150 - it's hard to learn on the 99.

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