chachi

the reality of pond swooping is that to do it right you may end up short on distance sometimes and not making it out of the water. or, you develop the sense that you can make the gates with a proper setup and slide out the side bank if you don't have the distance. what you CAN NOT DO is setup tight to the gates. you WILL smack the pond if you try this too many times by diving at the gates too much. swooping the pond is about everything being right from your setup in both height and distance, to your turn rate and dive, to your roll out and recovery, to placing your foot on the water. it looks easy when done right but to not make all of those steps perfectly and expect to have the same results is not reality. expect to get wet sometimes, it's fun and no big deal.

some people in this post are making references to your reflection and ripples to deal with your actual height and i want to say i think those are dangerous references. you should be knowing how high you are above the water by looking far ahead like we teach students. you are going to fly where you look.

i would almost bet that this person was looking at the spot on the water where he wanted to put his foot down and flew right into it. the very first time i came in for waht would have been a pond clearing toe drag i ended up doing just that and getting too low catching my knee and smashing into the pond. you MUST look at where you are flying and not where you want to touch the water. the first practice runs should be proximity vs. going big. once you fly straight and level over the water you want to PLACE your foot on the pond and not drive it in. sorry about your friend.

i bought the cheap ones from ebay @ like 8 bucks each for the "canon" release and cut them off.

buy a bonehead FTP and be done with it. service is unreal. product is beyond amazing. i probably have 600 jumps on my FTP and it looks as if i bought it yesterday.

after 10 dislocations i took about 4 months off to strictly work out. i think i was in some of the best shape of my life. i went out to the dz to pick up my weight belt as we were heading to california to train for a week and decided to jump on a load. got out, pulled, sublocated my shoulder and finally realized surgery was the solution. i had surgery and 6 weeks later i was doing hop 'n pops. 8 weeks later i was skydiving. almost one year later i can tell you that my shoulder is soooo strong. surgery was the best thing i decided to do and you will be happy once it's done. good luck. :)

the fatality list is exactly like the incident forum. meant to be a reminder and learned from. if you don't like it don't read it. if you read through these forums you would think this was the sport of arguements. fuck base jumpers whine a lot.

i think the xfire gls xf would be a good canopy to step into if you were looking to get more performance without going xbraced. check it out http://www.nzaerosports.com/GLSXF.htm

thanks Tom. $1500 it is; I have no patience for this sort of thing.

yes; vtech with 5th brake line

i have a flik w/o multi (100 jumps approx) and an odyssey velcro rig. can anyone help me out with approximate used market value.

you are clearly not ready for a x-brace canopy. in fact, your questions even show a lack of understanding. speed will accentuate your mistakes. mistakes and speed will break you. you MUST be able to land any canopy with a straight in approach in case of emergency and if you can not land the canopy straight in you have no business swooping it. take a few steps back. the crossfire is a killer platform to get good under. if the 139 was too big step down to the 129/119 and spend a few hundred jumps perfecting your technique before you get yourself under a canopy that you can't handle. get coaching!

absolutely. worth repeating. absolutely the only thought in your head in any out of control maneuver is to keep flying the brakes until you are at a dead stop. hoefully you are not dead, just your speed. even if you strike something and pop up keep flying the canopies brakes. rear risers are NEVER the option for low turns. check out superstu's carnage video on skydiving movies. there is a good scene where luke smoked the water and flipped through his canopy but he totally continued his flare and it definitely eased the second impact.

apparently you have just been registered; jim noted it in the post.

precisely.