Deimian

Thank you! I won't be able to do it until Saturday/Sunday. I'll report back then :-)

Thank you! Any tip in how to measure for those?

Thank you, but how can I correlate to a height and weight? I guess I can just measure the rig and tell the measurements, so the potential buyers can decide for themselves if they are too off the size of the harness. I am having a hard time selling it anyway, oldish (not too old, 2001) rig, without shinny stainless steel hardware, not FF friendly without a couple of modifications, and with an old and wear out canopy... I guess my best option is separate the parts.

Thanks for the help! It is 43 cm. BTW: The rig is Basik .

As long as you are 110% sure that you are not tracking into anybody else... tracking off at 5500 gives you a lot of time to crash into somebody if you go up or down in the jump run.

Question for all the great riggers out there: I have a rig that I want to sell. It is second hand. I know it fits me well, but frequently I'm asked for what size it has being built. Truth is that I don't know. I've send an email to the manufacturer a couple of weeks ago, asking for this information with the serial number, but I've received no reply. Is there any reliable way to measure the harness and being able to get a reasonable height and weight for what it has been built (and how much up/down it can go)? Regards, Damian

Agreed. A friend of mine and I were chatting one day about this. He set his to 8k (half way through (no idea why)), 4.5k (breakoff), and 3k (pull). We discussed that this might be a bit silly as one of the benefits was the hard deck warning. He proceeded to change it to 4.5k, 3k, 1.5k. That is similar to what I do (6000, 4000 and 3300). I first one is a wake up call ("hey, break off is coming, you should already know that, but just in case I'm telling you"). Then break off and "stop tracking, box position and pull". Realizing this I bought another audible for "pull now asshole", "get rid of that malfunctioning canopy right now" and "get out as much nylon as possible". Also for a peace of mind in case of the "main" audible does not work for whatever reason. Besides that (and I think this is very important), I am planning on training more my eyes for the upcoming season, I am getting more afraid of not knowing which alarm I am hearing.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but most of the AAD activations have been due to loss of altitude awareness, not due to being unconscious. All of them thought that they would never ever lose altitude awareness. It is way more probable that you f*ck up dealing with a mal too long, or just enjoying your skydive, filming your buddies from below, etc, than that you get unconscious. I am a newbie with around 100 jumps, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt, but my conclusion after reading a lot around here, watching a bunch of videos, and observation at the DZ, is that it is more likely that you (or me) will need an AAD due to lost of altitude awareness than anything else. In fact, I know 0 AAD activations due to unconsciousness (out of........ I don't know, 25? AAD activations that I know).

Just a quick note: It is not the same a cutter in the bottom of the container on a Javelin (for instance) than on a Teardrop. The reserve pin in the former is at the top, meaning that a cutter at the bottom of the tray that fails to cut the loop and pinches it instead won't interfere with the manual activation. The reserve pin of the Teardrop is against the back of the jumper, and a cutter in that position does interfere in case of failure. And I guess that this was the reason for the question.

The first point is a matter of partly exposed reserve PC vs completely covered. You can argue that a partly exposed reserve PC has less flaps to clear. But as you said, this is a matter of preference. The reserve bridle is pretty well protected on Wings, or in any rig that I know of. I've never seen any reserve bridle exposed. The second point: How is that? I mean, you can't even lift the reserve pin cover flap completely on Wings, how can it be worse protected? Because the bottom end is more flexible? It is, but you can't lift the flap, which on my opinion makes it pretty difficult to expose the reserve pin, it can't snag on anything (as opposed to the vector reserve pin flap) Fair points, specially the second one on my opinion Addressed already by skydiverek. Wings have all that.

First off, thank you for your in depth reply. It is quite informative. What about these guys? http://sws.aero/en/products/fire/features/drd/ You beat me to it

That is true for the US, but not worldwide: http://sws.aero/en/products/fire/features/drd/ I really like the idea of the Collins Lanyard. The skyhook is a nice device, but the idea of having a hook floating around during reserve deployment does not entirely convince me. The reserve boost or RAX system look to me slightly less trouble prone. To me, the SWS Fire container looks like a very serious rig on that regard, having RAX and Collins Lanyard.... it is a pitty that they are not too popular, to check them more in detail. As the others have said, I wouldn't consider a rig just because it has a MARD. But if the rig that you like can have it, I can't think of any reason to don't get it, at least at my level of experience right now. Note: I jump a Wings with a Reserve Boost.

Why not implementing this system like in an AAD with double cutter? Having one "cutter" cutting the loop, and the other "cutter" pulling the pin.

Agree. Why this information is not public? Related to the discussion: What are the thoughts about a design like the one of the Basik Advance OUT or the Advance Seven? In those rigs there are no lateral flaps. The Cordura or Parapack material that you see around the PC is the freebag (it has a liner of F111 or some similar fabric). In theory, not having lateral flaps means that once the pilot chute is out the freebag doesn't have to clear any flap to come out (besides some small "retainers" in the corners that are there to keep the corners of the freebag from being exposed). I had a repack last week and I mentioned to my rigger that my next rig (hopefully not before 2 or 3 years, or even more) might be an Advance. He was not very enthusiastic about my idea (but he had nothing against it either), and he had pack those rigs before.

Depends on what you are looking for. ProTrack sure is a good audible, but it doesn't have canopy alarms, and the volume settings are quite limited (hi/lo). Besides that it is bigger. It will fit in most helmets, but some "audible windows" that let you read and manipulate the audible are just suitable for Solo I/II, Optima I/II and Quattro. Between Optima and Quattro, I think there is no reason to go for Optima if you buy new. However, if you find an Optima for a good price in the used market I also think there is no reason to go for a new Quattro. If you are interested in data logging then ProTrack is the only option (in the L&B catalog), but if you end up buying a digital altimeter then you'll have some data logging functions overlapped (Both Viso and Neptune have some data logging capabilities, and I think Parasport's Altitron too). Used vs. new.... I don't see the point of buying it new if you can find audibles in good condition with a good discount in the used market. Especially with the extremely good customer service of L&B, that will cover any defect for a very reasonable price.

How do you know you are not going to need it? What if an ass collides with your canopy, breaking some lines and collapsing the main, and leave you unconscious at the same time? What if you are not unconscious and cutaway but you are too low and do not react as fast as you should? Chances are that you won't need the AAD after you have a functioning main, but why on earth would you like to turn it off? Unless you are doing mad swoops that can trigger your swoop friendly AAD (highly unlikely), I don't see the point.

I think the "ball" comes from the early stages of freefly. If you get unstable in freefly you can't go to your belly, to avoid corking, so the "ball" can help there. Of course going to your back in a controlled way (exposing little surface to avoid corking and give input with your limbs to counter the spin) is better. But if you can do that in a controlled way most probably you wouldn't get unstable. I think this is the origin of the "ball", but I don't think it is the best way of coming out of instabilities for belly fliers or students.

If can pack 25 people in there, and make 20 flights per day, you need 2000 days. That is about 8-10 years. Just to pay the aircraft. To also cover maintenance, fuel and salaries the jumptickets would have to be significantly more expensive. And forget about making group exits of more than 2 people, meaning that lots of people would refuse to use that aircraft. I don't think that could work, but if somebody wants to give it a try I would love to have one single jump out of it.

A little bit offtopic, but shouldn't the cameraman there track away (at least on the first jump, I didn't see the others) just like the AFFI? If the student cuts away for whatever reason he would fall right on top of him.

In my DZ they put the radios inside the jumpsuit and hanging from the neck by a strap, with radio earbuds, this kind that holds in place by wrapping around the ear pavilion. I am not aware of an problem with that.

The 618, 619 and 620 are suits from Tonfly, not Tonysuit.

It won't happen again. Once you got it, you got it. Also careful with opening too high unplanned, don't do it if it is not necessary. It is good to stick to the plan in case somebody f*ck up and end up above you (it shouldn't happen, but why take the risk?). Plan the dive, dive the plan!

That was my guess. Even though I can't say that any of the cutaways were not necessary. I don't think so. Particularly on the tandems I think the reason for the cutaway was always twists (except one that was a drogue in tow, I am not sure about the reason behind), mixed with relatively long spots and the wind blowing them away from the DZ.

I've been there too a year ago :-P. My 3rd or 4th hop and pop. I've been taught a technique for stable exits, so I could pull almost immediately. Worked fine the first couple of times. Then I overrelaxed, jump and pull. I was just starting to fall. I tumbled and the bridle came between my legs while I was falling on my back. I pulled the bridle at the same time as I flipped over to be on my belly. Turned out ok. But I was very lucky, I could have been in your situation or worse. Lesson: don't hurry up so much in hop-n-pops!

Just to clarify, in these two days the mix of jumpers was not at all more aggressive than usual. It included tandems, students, weekend warriors and staff on fun jumps, neither of them particularly aggressive. The number of jumps per day was also not larger than usual. In fact last Sunday it was just half of the day, in the morning it was cloudy and rainy, so no jumping before 1 or 2 PM. Also a significant number of those cutaways were tandems (3 or 4 in the two days), and packers have packed the mains in 4-5 of the cutaways. But at peaks of more than 100 tandems per day I am not surprised of that, I think last Sunday there were more tandem jumps than any other kind, so statically makes sense, even though tandems tend to have less cutaways than other kind of jumps.