Di0

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Everything posted by Di0

  1. It doesn't look a "Schuemann" to me, but honestly it's really hard to say just from a picture without inspecting the canopy.
  2. Packers are very busy, most of the times. I don't think they shut you down for fear of losing income, they know everybody who wants will learn how to pack eventually, and they know they'll still have more work on a good day that they want to do, most of the times. It's that during a busy day they really can't help you. I'd say, try asking again on a weather hold, they'll be bored and probably very happy to help you. At least that's how I am, I'm not a packer but if I'm on a weather hold, I'll be happy to chew your ear off talking about parachutes and packing, whereas if that means not jumping on the few days of the week I can jump... Well, I'll still do it, and try my best, but I'll probably be a lot less patient. If you live close to another jumper, go to his place when you guys are not jumping and bring beer to "pay" for the packing classes, that's all.
  3. As far as online resources go, Brian's material is some of the best you can find. I would put it together with the manufacturer's material on their official channels and the one that major teams often do. With the usual disclaimers and blahblahblah I think it's great to get inspirations from his videos. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  4. I think very rarely I have seen a more well thought explanation about the reasoning that pushed someone into skydiving. Kudos. The way I see it, first and foremost you have to understand: you did it, you proved to the world that you can do it, now you don't own to continue to anyone else, not even your wife. If you don't enjoy it, stop it. Skydiving is expensive, tiring, dangerous, monopolizing: if the idea that you have skydived the last weekend and that you will do it again the next, doesn't help you feel better, more relaxed, more accomplished during the week, then seriously: fuck that. You can support your wife's passion in other ways. That said, you also have options if you love the canopy flight, you could try the tunnel and become a hop-and-pop-only jumper. That's what I do, not because I don't like freefall, but because I love training and perfecting my canopy flight and, given the limited amount of time and resources, I chose to focus on just that when I am at the DZ. Just know that should you decide to quit (and yes, if you stop now and given what you've been going through, I'd say that a stop of any kind right now means a permanent quit, more likely than not) , there should be no sense of shaming, or failure. You tried. You succeeded. But it didn't resonate with you, that's all. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  5. Agree on everything else said, but I personally find the "slow-flight modes" on the VK about the only thing I don't like. It just feels very twitchy to the point of being "uncomfortable", so to speak. It's the only small complain I'd have with the VK (and I'm sure it's really just the nature of the beast, you can't really have a canopy that rolls so well and easily but doesn't get twitchy if flown in brakes). Funnily enough, it's really only an issue if I have to land straight in for whatever reason, the wing feels rock solid on anything including even just 90s and above. But it could also be that I downsized concurrently to me moving to TX, so there was an unnoticed shift in wingloading, we'll call it that, more than I thought, I was thinking I was around 2.3/2.4 then one day I weighted in manifest and I was like "uuuuuh great, 2.7, pushing 2.8, that explains it". Love the flying, but should probably hit the gym more regularly, regardless, and stick to weightbelts. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  6. Was this a typo? My understanding is that wing loading is based on mass, not weight, and so manoeuvres such as spiralling increase your suspended weight but not technically your wing loading. The assumption is correct, spiraling, by increasing the G-Number, will in fact increase the wing loading experienced by the canopy for the duration of the maneuver. That said, yes, "spiraling down" because of turbulence is probably the worst decision you can take, not only because you increase the chance of a collision (let's assume you cleared your airspace alright) but because by perturbing the canopy and changing its flight modes you actually make it a lot more susceptible to turbulence and possibly collapses. The best course of action is to let the canopy fly in whatever state you enter the turbulence (ideally, full flight), and personally I like to keep just enough pressure on the toggles that I feel the lines being in tension (think basically removing the slack, but no more): having had a few collapses due to turbulence during high performance approaches, I like to "feel" the canopy when going through turbulence and hopefully I won't affect it too much by doing that, although, I'll add, that's debatable to whether it's the right thing to do or not. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  7. For what is worth, after a couple hundred jumps on the KA97, I'm also now happily flying a VE84. Great canopy to fly, once it opens, it certainly has a lot more "flexibility" in terms of flying range than the KA. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  8. Di0

    The Earth is FLAT

    I mean, for all practical purposes of a home-made rocket flying at 1800ft, earth IS flat. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  9. And if you've been to Z-Hills at least once, then you've heard the stories. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  10. I use Optima 2 and Protrack 2. The Quattro has canopy alarms but not the decreasing interval leadup to the final beep that the other two do. Yeah, I figured that was the main difference between OPT2 and Quattro, otherwise there would be no reason to offer both of them at the same price, whereas the Protrack2 is basically an OPT2 with logging features (and for ~$50 more compared to the other two). Although, according to L&B website, the "swoop guide" is only mentioned for their Optima 2: https://www.lbwebstore.com/consumer/optima-ii.html https://www.lbwebstore.com/consumer/protrack-ii.html I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  11. I think if you say "geared toward swooping" the answer is the Optima 2, since it has the "swoop guide" - a serie of pulsating tones leading to your last alarm in the pattern, to help you with the timing. I never used it (I have an N3 that I use to set up my swoops), but a few of my swooper friends swear by it. For what is worth, sometimes I feel like I would have benefited from this extra help, especially when setting up on unfamiliar landing areas or with thermaly situations. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  12. There is no "one answer fixes all" here. Although, sure, a good flaring technique will probably work OK in all cases, better in others, but generally speaking at least get you to the ground safe in most if not all situations... anyway: It depends. The first big discriminant is 7-cell vs 9-cell, generally speaking the flare characteristic is very different. But even there, because of construction choices, materials being the most important one but not the only one, there could be a 9-cell that behaves more like a 7-cell and the other way around. Secondly, there are at least 3 different flare techniques I can think of, one-stroke, two-stroke, dynamic. Each one of those works best with certain canopies/situations and worse with others. Sometimes you might be "force" into using one vs the other. For each one of these technique, your ideal sequence might be different (from "quick then smooth", to "smooth overall", to "smooth then quick", which is the less common one so I'd take this one with a grain of salt, I'd say this is really used only in a couple of circumstances to savage other errors in your setup, but not generally what you should be shooting for). tl;dr: canopy classes, canopy classes, canopy classses :D I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  13. If people don't expect a 180, it's an unpredictable turn. Also, it puts you facing directly into your biggest blind spot (behind you), and it might put you facing directly at the guy lower and behind you, that you didn't see and that isn't expecting you to pull a 180 into the pattern. The 'base' leg is very useful in making sure that my final is clear before I turn into it, since it's much easier to look left/right than it is to look behind. It can be done safely? Yes. But we've all seen the consequences of people doing 180s in tight busy corners (see Eloy's streak of canopy collisions and near miss in the past couple of years), so I don't think it's generally the advice I'd personally give to people if they have problems fixing their square pattern. "Eh. Just do a 180 when you're aligned with you target and fuck it, really". I know that's not what you said and that's even farther from what you meant, but it can be read that way and people have done that in the past. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  14. I 100% agree with everything else you said, those were going to be my two points as well (change altitudes, change degrees of turn, even change the orientation of you downwind leg and make it also upwind if necessary, square patterns are indeed just "conventions") but, generally speaking, I would strongly advise against this. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  15. Di0

    Dolphin rig?

    I'm sure there is at least one person in this world that has had a "just fine" reserve deployment on a Wings. Therefore I don't think there can be any problem whatsoever with reserve deployments on Wings either. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  16. No, he doesn't. If he bought it new and the defect is indeed with the canopy, PD will fix it or replace it. That's the difference between the customer service of PD versus whoever-makes-or-made-the-maverick. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  17. I mean, for sure you didn't do the single worst mistake that people can do in that case, and to which we have lost many jumpers: a "panic" toggle whip to turn. You landed with a leveled wing and you managed to flare, in a dangerous and tight situation. Good job for that! Rear-Risers flares are viable, but also an advanced technique that has a few serious potential drawbacks, so be careful with that. Generally speaking, I'd suggest to not try that unless you've talked about it with an experienced canopy coach and practiced a few times up high. But as to whether you could have done anything better, beside that: it's really hard for me to understand exactly what happened from the story and your recollection, I back whoever says to ask to the instructors who were there and so the event unfold before their eyes, it's hard to do an armchair debrief in these cases. One thing though, if you were aware of him for a while, you knew he was below you at 50ft of distance, then a little bit of brakes during the pattern would have helped increase that distance. Remember that the sooner you take a corrective action, the "less" of this action is required, so if you identify a potential problem sooner rather than later (i.e. a jumper close to you and below you), you can take safe corrective actions as soon as you see that, rather than waiting for shit like this to happen, after which all bets are off: you can do all the "right things" and still end up injured or worse. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  18. When I went there, I had also about 200 jumps and I was alone. Your best bet is to ask manifest for the "daily organizers" (or they have boards with them too) and talk to them about your experience. They have a few organizers for about anything, from beginner/intermediate RW to freefly. You don't have to be shy because it's their job to be there and help you get in the air with some successful skydives, but you'll also learn a lot and you have to be a little serious about it so you don't waste other people's time. I loved my trip to Eloy and I made so many friends and experiences that way. Too bad it's on the other side of the country from where I am. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  19. I'm usually in "charge" of the door. Around here we like to open it, this means it stays closed during take off and up until the seatbelts off altitude (this varies, 1500 or 2000, depending on which DZ I'm at). I always try to make sure that I get a "thumbs up" from the AFFIs and the TIs in the plane before I open it, in the first case it's more of a "courtesy" but in the second case it's to make sure they hooked up their attachment points to their passengers, switching from seatbelts to harness, before we open a fucking door with people that are neither fastened to an aircraft NOR a parachute. This sometimes means that wingsuiters will complain because they are hot and they can't wait the extra 20-30 seconds it might take me to make sure everything is in order before I open the door, poor babies are sweaty. It's one of the few cases I'll rudely tell fellow jumpers to fuck off in front of everybody, it pisses me off beyond measure if they can't wait a few extra seconds to make sure a passenger is properly secured before I open a door in an aircraft (and most people agree with the fuck off sentiment). I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  20. some variations of that happen to me relatively often (I mean, like once or twice per season), given that I mostly do hop and pops I am the last one boarding the plane, even if I try to be there as early as possible, and I normally volunteer to be taken off the load because, with the engine running, it's simply the easiest thing to do, rather than taking someone off the back of the plane. That being said: I am not going to pay for the slot I can't use, since it's not my fault if someone else boarded the plane improperly and now there is no seat belt for me. I'll let them figure out what happened exactly and who to charge for it, not my business, but it's not going to be me: this is not in question, this much is *expected*. But, generally speaking, the DZ managers who see this happening are extremely appreciative of my understanding, and throw something in there for me as a thank you, I've been offered a free jump on next load etc, sometimes I accept, sometimes I say the gesture is enough. Taking the solo jumper off, charging the fourth person for the slot, and remanifesting him on next load, maybe for free if it's a super busy day with many tandems and manifest can be "generous", is the most efficient thing to do. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  21. Are you positive the line setup is exactly the same? I've often heard people saying that relining a VE as a VC is "no big deal, the lineset is really the only difference" (that's not true, as far as I know, the tail design also changed, but you hear this comment often). If the older one was relined as a VC, that could explain the difference in riser pressure. I know (or rather, I should say, I've "heard", since my velos are all old ones) that the fabric material somewhat changed over the years, the old ones have a "reputation" of being done with "thicker" material, but again it's all grapevine talk really, but I don't know about specific design choices. Just brainstorming, of course. But a "revised" lineset, whether a new version for VE done by PD, or a VC lineset installed at some point, that I don't know, would be my first guess. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  22. And even though I really can't say I tried a Velo at 1:1 (I doubt they make Velo 180 LoL), and that's indeed the minimum WL on the chart, I have a feeling that a VE (or any other HP canopy in that category) loaded at 1:1: would be somewhat "weirdly" flying, even though it's probably OK since the manufacturer says so in the chart. But I'd be very curious to know if people have experiences in merit. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  23. Let's say, the only canopies I'd feel somewhat comfortable attempting such a maneuver, are the canopies I also wouldn't mind landing with a flip in the risers. LoL I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  24. While that might be a more realistic assessment, I still sustain that it has nothing to do with the OP's capabilities of landing a parachute in a crowded area, or handle the mental workload required for a demo. Beside we skydive - we can control ourselves around tandems but outside of that, we're all awkward a.f. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.
  25. Seriously, the guy is literally looking for ideas with a "Do It Yourself" project. How can you infer anything about his skydiving or mental skills, that's beyond me, sometimes you gotta love these forums. I'm standing on the edge With a vision in my head My body screams release me My dreams they must be fed... You're in flight.