unkulunkulu

Quote

THIS one?

Yes, that's it, thank you! I thought it was a separate thread for some reason.

I remember reading a compelling story by mister NickD about that infamous jump, but couldn't find it with help of search engines, can anyone help me?

It's not this http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1609006#1609006
As I remember there was a separate thread by NickDG and the story was about the load he was on and how much easier it might be to lutz a jump than one might expect or something like that.

Any other good read suggestions are welcome too :)

Don't know about booking in advance, but a friend of mine did jump 3 tandem jumps the first day she visited the DZ

One thing I came to believe when it comes to learning in the tunnel is that not only pure flying time matters, but also thinking and visualizing, so it's not that important to spend too much time too quickly. You can occasionally go to wt say 15 minutes twice or even once a month. Surely you will not learn as quickly per wall clock time, but you will make progress. I met a lot of fellows that fly less frequently than I do but started sooner and did that consisntenly and they're decent flyers. This is the way we go with my gf right now, per unit of flying time she must be progressing faster than me.

tl;dr buy a rig, try to fly a little, but give priority to the skydiving development, that's my opinion fwiw

Also, never met a person who would say freeflying is anything short of extremely hard, you will have more rewards from skydiving initially, much more time and effort is required to really enjoy freeflying.

Quote

the softest, most forgiving hazard to hit.

worth repeating that this is never the earth (see "wing level" priority)

Very interesting topic, I have recently been unable to find my freebag while I have seen my main land and found the cutaway handle while looking for the freebag. Will be unable to attend the talk in person obviously but is there any chance of a video being recorded, uploaded and posted in this thread? Would be invaluable I think, thank you!

Pit76

ow
Glad that we don't have that here in Belgium; or at least I think si. I should ask this at my DZ.

oh you do, the air is not as uniform as it looks at first. Not all the time anyway.

gowlerk

Quote

That's pretty funny because I asked one of their reps a similar question, he looked at me like I had 10 heads.

But on the same note it's also synonymous with pushing the boundaries and human flight.

I guess not everyone knows or remembers the origin of the name.

I guess this distancing ourselves as skydivers from the mythological Icarus is lying to ourselves. Reread it, remember the legend was probably told to you by a whuffo.

Quote

One last thing: if you're the last jumper of the first group, it is perfectly acceptable to look out and say "f* this, I'll be the first jumper of the second group"

I don't think this is always realistic. If you're put last out from small altitude in the first group this is probably according to opening altitudes/wing loading/planned actions during descent. So one would need to properly blend with the next group and possibly be the last one out also. Not that this should stop one from considering all the options, just a little nitpick from me.

jclalor

***Why did you land in the corn field and not on the edge or in a different place?

Did you not read the first four words of his post? still a valid question to ask oneself to learn and turn experience into skill

headcase

Packing

oh, forget what i just said. This ^^

Your profile shows russian flag. There's this thing called parachute-athletic triathlon or something. But it's a bit old fashioned i would say, gets accuracy from skydiving. I can say that vfs can get quite demanding physically.. But that's mostly training/technique issue, gets better over time.
Freeflying in general gives a strong incentive to stay in shape including stretching.

First jump with a round at 17, second at 20. Went for aff and started jumping actively at 24

If we're talking Flystation in St.Petersburg vs Freezone in Moscow.
In Flystation you have a single wind tunnel, in freezone there're two windtunnels at the same facility, one a little bit smaller than flystation the other one is a little bit bigger (you can find the exact spec on the internet I guess). Both flystation and the big tunnel at freezone fit well for dynamic flying coaching. You can save a bit of money if you need static flying in the smaller wind tunnel. If you want to go crazy cheap on basic static flying you can find even smaller tunnel is Moscow with decent quality airflow (Aerodinamica is the newest one, located just outside the city)
As of present moment accommodation is more convenient at Flystation: they have a mini hotel just outside the facility. Freezone have started building a mini hotel, but I'm not sure it will be finished by January. Otherwise you'll have to stay in small local town 10-20 km away or in Moscow (50-60 km away).

What kind of flying/amount of time are you planning to do?

Are you going with a coach or are you planning to find a local coach?

Pros and cons of russian wind tunnels in general or between moscow and st. Petersburg?

CrashProne

Uh, important to note that I said "loosen" the chest strap, not "undo" the chest strap.

Oh snap, my bad that's me being sloppy with language. Completely undoing the chest strap is of course a bag idea.

Hi. Although you have good intentions and are trying to help your fellow jumper, it may be quite dangerous to give such instruction via internet as well as in person. For example you never mention when to undo the chest strap, before or after unstowing toggles and if before then what is the plan in case of stuck toggle or other problems when unstowing toggles in case you have to cutaway. I heard that rehearsing leaning forward at altitude might be dangerous too if done incorrectly. Performance instruction is best left to instructors and often the best advice is "talk about this with your instructor". Or at least leave disclaimers such as "make sure to ask your instructor how to actually do it".

That's totally true, working on that. But I imagine that even with a very good coach a nice demonstration would only improve everyone's understating of the process. I just want to see this clear as day!

I was only thinking about using it for debriefs with outside video, not live during the jump. Right now the only way to judge presentation to the relative wind of the whole group is by "majority vote" so to speak, i.e. pointing to the jumper who differs from the rest the most, which lead to a debate a couple of times. I thought it would be interesting to see the reality. Especially interesting to really see the yaw angle, does presenting too much "away" from the airplane cause instability later on on the hill. We do have an experienced 4way vfs jumper on the team, but I imagined that clarity provided by a streamer would be really great for understanding of what really goes on.

We have just started jumping our 4way vfs team out of the airplane.

An idea quickly came to my mind that knowing the relative wind direction during the exit/hill phase would help with our exits. I know from my limited experience that too small pullup-cord-like stripes will jitter too much and be quite bad indicators for such a task. On the other hand those really long stripes used on bigway jumps in base hinder performance too much I guess.

Maybe someone has experience/ideas of how to approach this problem of creating a balanced solution and also safe for vfs setting (I guess a breakable connection point is a must, but is it enough?). Maybe just the whole idea is bogus and we should concentrate on smth different?

We estimate a lot of things logarithmically even on biological level, think bell sound scale. For jump numbers it makes sense: 200 jumps vs 100 is more significant than 1100 vs 1000. Choosing a "round" number close to a desired estimation is just trying to convey information efficiently using given system, with fewer digits.
So the roundness of the numbers shouldn't be there sign of arbitrariness.

SethInMI

Now that sammielu edited his post, yours is really confusing now. :)

sorry, can't edit or remove it anymore

tkhayes

PD and Flight-1 talk about that. with the wind at your back - or the wind in your face, rear risers work better that toggles in one of those situations, I cannot remember which is which but I want to add it to my presentation as well.

In tailwinds the minimum sink configuration must be best (probably achieved by quite deep toggles). In no wind you have to get best glide. In headwind it obviously depends on wind speed, in strong winds you might have to apply fronts.

The"depending on the canopy part" reflects a statement I'be been told and looks like unconsciously believed that my Sabre II should achieve best glide on toggles. Now that I think of it they must have meant the particular situation with tailwind and I should remove dependence on the canopy from that logic (although I believe there might be canopies like that).

Quote

If you landed short, you need to conserve altitude and distance during your pattern. Tools to use: <...> make your body bigger during flight.

If you landed long, you need to burn altitude during your pattern. Tools to use: <...> make your body smaller during flight.

I always thought it was the other way around. For example, when getting back from a long spot I usually use rear risers/toggles depending on the canopy and make my body as small and compact as possible to reduce drag. Is this line of thinking incorrect?

Quote

Should I not of done some braking during the last 250 ft to slow speed?

Square parachutes land softer because they can generate lift. Lift is generated only by wings having airspeed. Less speed = less flare. So no, giving up speed early for nothing is not a good idea if what you need is softer flare.