Deimian

Don't get me wrong, I think the JFX2 is a nice canopy and definitely an improvement over the original. But I think they left some interesting things on the table. The (probably) most important one is having the chance of having a Schumann planform canopy suitable for people that is jumping cross-braced for the first time. Just my 2 cents.

The same is true for almost all manufacturers. The entry-level cross-braced canopies are all old designs, except the Gangster from Fluid Wings. The JFX2 is a nice refreshment, but looks to me basically like a JFX1 with a couple of small changes, not a completely new canopy. I really would like to see in this category a canopy with inflatable stabilizers, miniribs, and Schumann planform. Maybe these things would drive the manufacturing cost too high for this category? BTW: The Katana also needs an update

That is what skydivers that don't go to tunnels regularly think. Tunnels have evolved pretty much in the same direction than skydiving. To offer a carnival ride kind of experience for people that want to try it once and move on to the next thing. All of the tunnels I know have their main source of income in first timers that will never come back (or at least not regularly). Protecting themselves from bad press or liability when a first timer come with a bad shoulder is just common sense. Now, in this case, this is not a first timer, so they might act differently.

I am not sure that the fact that we have spring loaded PCs for reserves is a good argument for defending them for mains. Reserves are special in a few ways: - AADs need to be able to activate the opening sequence, so you need the spring loaded PC for that, no way around it. - They are most of the time activated after a cutaway, more often than not caused by a spinning main and activated via RSL or MARD, so the large burble created by a wingsuit or a balloon suit are simply not there. - The PC does not stay connected to the canopy. Different use cases and boundary conditions, so different solutions. I am quite sure that if wingsuiters start relying on spring loaded PCs we'd start seeing soon a lot of videos of PCs being sucked in their burble.

I had that a few years ago. I could use my old rig just fine, but my new rig had the BOC too high. My shoulder was messed up back then though. After PT and patience it is not a problem any more. Small javelins are notoriously short, but unless you are abnormally tall, I would suggest to check your shoulder and flexibility.

The Collins lanyard requires a split housing for the riser opposite to the RSL side. You can't do that on the right riser. That's why rigs with the Collins lanyard have the RSL shackle on the right, so the lanyard is attached to the left cutaway cable, and most (all?) other rigs have the shackle on the left. Retrofitting the lanyard in a rig not designed to have it is not a small thing. I doubt many riggers are actually willing to do it, regardless of TSO violations or similar regulations.

Flat tracking is what you should do on separation, absolutely. My point is that almost nobody experienced is doing full flat tracking jumps anymore. The only people that I am aware of that do flat tracking jumps, are new skydivers that can't (and shouldn't) do steeper angles. In this time and age every tracker worth their salt moved into angle flying and steeper angles.

Tracking or angle jumps are always a bit "polemic". In Belgium we put them either first or "last of the fun jumpers" (ie: before the AFF and tandems.). If they go first the can go either right, left, or go in a 180° direction. If they go "last of the fun jumpers" they have to go either 90° right or left, depending on what the winds are doing. Since the opening altitude is very different between trackers and AFF and tandems, in case of mistakes you have at least added vertical separation besides the horizontal separation. Admittedly not ideal for AFF instructors, so I tend to put new trackers first in the load when I am organizing, and make them very very very clear that they should turn at least 90°. New trackers tend to track flat, so that matches also nicely with the fall rate of the belly flyers afterwards. If they are competent, you can put them anywhere. They will track perpendicular to jump run and that's it. But not every one is as competent as they think. Wingsuits should always be last IMO. Due to their fall rate they'll never be close to anybody else (unless they go down jumprun and there is a premature opening), and that has the added benefit of declogging the landing area, as they will land a few minutes after the first group. If you put them first the chances of a mid-air collision is higher, but also you are congesting the landing area.

You have that backwards. Swooping canopies are trimmed nose down. They need that to get the necessary speed for a swoop. Accuracy canopies are trimmed very flat, so they are slow and give the pilot time to correct and hit the target. CRW canopies are something in between.

That's interesting. Naïvely and without giving it much thought, I thought it was the opposite. The Katana, for example, is a notorious steeply trimmed canopy, and the front riser pressure is ridiculously low.

Also harder and faster are not the same. "Hard" depends on time to decelerate and the speed difference (freefall vs under canopy). "Fast" depends on time to inflate. It is a subtle difference, but an important one. A grocery bag can open much faster than a Sabre 1, but for sure it won't slam you.

That would be my guess. Dacron is far more bulky and less slippery than spectra, so I can image it is more prone to tension knots. But is is just speculation on my end.

I had a Lotus Max 136. I was quite happy with the way it flew. For some time I had shitty openings, but I tracked that down to a fully magnetic bag that was a tad too small or whose magnets were not strong enough for that canopy. Once I replaced the bag with a normal bag the openings were fine. It is comparable to a Sabre 2. But honestly I am not sure the airlocks make a big difference. A bit for sure, but if the airlocks are deciding factor between jumping or staying on the ground, then you should stay on the ground regardless of the airlocks.

That is a 360 camera, and the video is also 360. You can turn the POV in every direction by dragging with your mouse. I suspect you just played it and looked at the video. I am not sure if you can turn it on a phone, but I would assume you can. Regarding the twists, it looks to me like you pulled on your left risers and that induced the twists. I flew X-Fires 124, 113 and 102, and in 400 jumps with them I had twists twice (once with a 113, once with a 102). At least one of these twists was self induced (pulled half in a track and with a shoulder definitely lower than the other one). X-Fires open remarkably well. Honestly I doubt that at 340 jumps you are ready for that canopy. An X-Fire 124, at 1.57 is nothing to mess with. Most people recommend that at about 2x your experience. I think that that inexperience played a role in your twists. Be careful, I knew people with more experience, a less aggressive wing and less wingload, that crashed and died in otherwise perfect conditions.

I think it is a "philosophical" question. Some people consider them a gimmick and unnecessary or even bad. I guess the people at UPT are some of those. The only clear advantage I see for the chest articulation, is how much easier it becomes to do MLW shortening/lengthening/replacement. On the flip side, you have more "flexibility" in an area that probably should not be that flexible (the harness could move around more, and it would be easier for it to slide down your shoulders when you are in head down-ish) I think they can be a great thing to have if you buy second hand and you are not sure of the fit of the harness on your body, but I would avoid them when buying a new harness.

That's very good info, I didn't know that! The volume chart website does not mention it at all: https://rigginginnovations.com/skydiving-containers/curv

Of course, we can agree on that. But comfort is subjective and varies from person to person. The points I made regarding taller folks are irrelevant if you are flexible enough to reach further up (I had a shoulder injury that kept on the ground for a few months because I couldn't reach my PC, so I have that more present than most) or if your disciplines do not involve using a lot the hip articulation. At the end of the day, YMMV.

You said that your curv is the most comfortable rig you've ever had. I never contradicted that statement. I am not sure what your point is. If you think my reasoning is wrong, and have the time, please correct it.

Just to clarify my previous statement: I am not saying Curvs aren't good for taller folks, just that IMO, at least on paper, they are not catered to these jumpers. To elaborate a bit more: - The lack of long version of the containers means that -unless it is compensated somehow*- the PC will sit higher on the back. If you are flexible enough that is not an issue, but that's something that everyone needs to evaluate for themselves. Wingsuiters, specially the ones with big suits and long bodies, tend to want long versions, to reach the PC easier and to minimize the chances of the wingsuit fabric getting on the way. - The hip ring junction is far higher than on vectors or javelins. Depending on the length of your body, it means that this will be more or less aligned with your hip articulation. The design of the curv (or unisys harness in mirage, or Infinity) probably helps in keeping the leg straps more "in check" and prevents them from moving too far down the legs, and it is probably pretty comfortable, but there is a limit as to how aligned it can be with your hip articulation, since the lateral will be much higher on taller folks than on shorter ones, and that limit can impact flexibility a little bit. You can check, with your rig on, if when you move your leg up or sit in your harness, the leg straps slide on the ring or of the whole webbing moves and there is no slide on the ring. This might not be enough to be uncomfortable, but it is there. I think this is one of the reasons why Mirage offers both style of hip junctions on their G4s. * This "compensation", if it exists, would need to lower the container without putting the 3 rings too far high, so it needs to be longer on the shoulder area, which will mean longer riser covers, which I guess could look awkward or be more prone to problems. The container would also look awkward hanging so much down the back. This is just speculation on my end, I have never seen a curv done for a tall guy, side by side with a curv for a regular guy, so I can't really make a statement out of this.

- Get a Vector because they have higher resale value - Get a Vector because they have a MARD with Collins lanyard - Get a Vector if you are fairly tall guy (hip rings on the laterals make the hip junction on the Curv too high IMO if you are on the tall end, and Curv does not have long versions of their containers) - Get a Curv because they are IMO the top container innovators in the last 10-15 years (nobody else introduced anything new in a long long time -MARDs aside-) - Get a Curv because of the slimmer profile (due to the superior closing tabs) and naturally tighter fit (due to the bio curv) - Get a Curv if you like it more and the lack of collins lanyard does not bother you

I think you should give a shit about what people think. And why they think it. If someone with more experience tells you that you are not fit for a given jump, maybe they have a reason for it. If their reason is that they are assholes with an ego too inflated, well, then you would be right in not giving a shit. But if their reason is that you are way above your head, and that the plan they are planning to do is too much for you to handle at your experience, then you should be humble, patient and learn step by step. If your profile is right, you should understand that your experience is quite low, and there a lot of jumps that are not for you right now. Even world class athletes were babies once. Your time will come if you are serious about the sport, and you keep jumping, improving and being safe. Those are the only things that matter at this moment in your skydiving career.

I do ask that sometimes if I am jumping with people I don't know. I don't want to go on a super steep angle, a complex jump or a jump with too many people, if this people can't handle it safely. If I don't know them, the quickest way to estimate it is asking that question. Jump numbers are just a partial answer of course, but a good and quick indicator. For me it is a safety question, as well as a planning question. I ask also if I see someone with a questionable canopy choice (read it as in "too small") for someone with low experience. Again, that is for me a safety question (in this case not mine, but I don't want to see anybody hurt, had my share of it already)

Thanks for your input Jim and Jerry. You are way more knowledgeable than me, so I don't want to contradict you and I agree that the time to fill a larger canopy is necessarily longer than the time to fill a smaller canopy for a given airspeed. Also larger canopies tend to be "higher" (have more distance between both skins), so the volume increases significantly more than the surface. From that point of view, I totally understand that smaller canopies might have higher loads on deployment than larger ones, under normal circumstances. But I meant a catastrophic opening scenario, where inner inflation might play a secondary role. Simply the drag of the bottom skin when spread. Imagine a slider-off deployment with a single skin canopy. The drag from a fully spread bottom skin on a large canopy is much larger than the drag from small one, so the deceleration is also larger. That was the scenario I was talking about. Fully spreading a large canopy takes longer than a smaller one, but I expect that the additional time needed to spread a larger canopy does not offset the much larger drag a large canopy can create. That was my way of thinking to explain the trend that most folks incapacitated on catastrophic openings, had those openings on large canopies. Maybe there is something else to consider, and my reasoning is totally off.

I don't have any specifics. But that has been the fix for some canopies well known for opening hard (ie: Sabre 1). But there are two things to consider: - It is a delicate balance. If the slider is too big the opening might take too long, or never happen (the slider might hangup all the way up) - The reason catastrophic openings happen is because the slider comes down prematurely (which could be due to a variety of reasons). A larger slider does not guarantee a proper deployment either. I can imagine it could help, but I wonder if the help is marginal

From what I recall, normally the brutal openings happened with large canopies. I haven't seen or read about a brutal opening in a small one. Makes sense also, for 2 reasons I think. 1. Many large canopies have the same slider size than medium sized canopies. The storm for instance has the same slider all the way from 97 sqft to 230 sqft. Others make 2 sizes or styles (normal slider vs domed slider), making often the cut at 170 sqft. This is despite the fact that the distance between line groups is larger on big canopies. In other words, you have the same force pushing on the slider from bottom to top, but more force spreading the lines and therefore pushing the slider down, so the slider will come down quicker and potentially make the opening harder. 2. Large canopies have simply more surface, so they can cause more drag. That means larger deceleration on opening. On a windy day, holding a tiny canopy is easier than holding a massive one. Same thing on opening, a small canopy can slow you down just so much, but a big one will slow you down much more. My point is that jumping larger canopies does not protect you from hard openings. If something, that's the opposite.