lyosha

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Posts posted by lyosha

  3. Ask your canopy coach. If you're thinking crossbraced, you should definitely be working with one. I can see a few things potentially wrong with your plan.

    1. You are jumping from a super docile canopy (spectre) to super aggressive (xb) with no intermediate planforms. Usually people will jump an aggressive elliptical non cross braced such as a katana or crossfire or x-fire for a long time before cross braced.

    2. 1.6 seems too low wing loading for cross braced.

    Go work with a canopy coach, don't ask the Internet for advice.

    • Like 3

  4. On 10/9/2023 at 4:16 AM, the.Legend said:

    Late response, but might be useful to someone: about a week ago I've been to Stockholm's WS tunnel and they still have one or two Low-Ki demo suits to try (don't remember which sizes), as well as ATC (most sizes), and if you ask in advance, Freak 5

    Drop them an email and ask for details

    Do they still run havoks or do they now instruct people in ATCs?

  5. · Edited by lyosha

    10 hours ago, jeanneretjerome said:

    Thanks lyosha.

    You are right, but today in Europe, PG experts and manufacturers are not anymore promoting our well known half pound rule in turbulence.

    The new school in turbulence (for PG) is hands up, dont touch the brake. The reason is the new wing design. All new wings are more stable hands up (no accelerator). A slight amount of accelerator or brake increase the risk of collapse. This is noticeable when flying our new toys like Enzo, Omega or acro wings.

    So for PG, I now agree with this new school, but that was after many discussions/tests with SIV experts, professional pilots, and most important manufacturers/engineers and their computer simulations.

    For skydiving, I am not convinced. Our wings are still basics (even my top swooping machine), and for these, the simple Newton equations demonstrate that brake add stability. 

    So, are you still using the brakes in turbulence? Do we have facts/study supporting the hands up ? 

    Interesting.  I never made it to an Enzo/acro level, but hard for me to imagine flying the punchy, sharp-edged thermals of southern california without active piloting.  But I'm not a top-level PG pilot, so what do I know?

    I go hands up in skydiving.  Try kiting the wing and see how easy/hard it is.  At least the wings I jump which are all the typical semi-eliptical ones most skydivers jump, they're twitchy and the inputs are unbalanced.

    It was very straight forward how to fly my paraglider half-collapsed.  Literally zero effort.  I cannot imagine doing that with my sky wing.  I'm convinced it would fly like dog shit and would be extremely difficult to control.  So I stack the odds in favor of not getting a collapse - I try not to fly in conditions where I'll encounter mechanical turbulence or strong thermals, I fly hands up to maximize airspeed, and check wing surges, but that's about it.  I don't feel confident in what would happen if I tried to actively react to minor deflations.  And we all know to keep the wing flying straight and level as much as possible and flare (or try...) before you hit the ground in the case of a major event.

    Kite your skydiving wing in some turbulence - see if it handles alright.  In my experience most don't because the manufacturers don't care and don't measure.  Their research $$$ is going into maximizing swoop distance, minimizing forward riser pressure, not into making a safer, more predictable and more refined (control-wise) wing.  In skydiving wings, "swoop" sells, "safer" does not.

  6. · Edited by lyosha

    This is a complicated question that you won't find an answer to in a skydiving forum because the paraglider equivalent of an A license obtained in the mountains had spent more time in "turbulence" than almost all skydivers.

    The reality is as skydivers we jump in ideal conditions with virtually no turbulence. And as such do not understand it, do not measure our wing response to it, and have no basis for knowledge on how to react.

    To get a real answer you need to understand the technique.

    Google "active flying". There is a black magic to maintaining the half pound of brake pressure and why it helps manage your wing. 

    But that is for a paraglider. Compared to paragliders, skydiving wings are poorly designed and twitchy.

    Active piloting takes hours of flying in turbulence to get the muscle memory to not over control the wing and do more harm than good on a paraglider. Having kited a sky wing before I was left pretty dejected at the prospects.

    I think stick to plan A: don't fly in turbulence.

    • Like 1

  7. It's a good sentiment but I can also see why piggy backing off of a nationally recognized program for health verification is convenient and severing those ties carries legal and reputational risk.

    For sure TIs have died mid jump due to health reasons. While infrequent how many are actually on the sidelines waiting for medical? As a pilot my sense is most class 3 medical problems are due to chemotherapy or mental illness.

    The FAA is a pain in the ass for sure. But looking around the world I don't see a better system for high tail risk environment.

    Curious to know how you intend to get skydivers to care about USPA and it's mission.

  9. +1 vote for canopy coaching.

    At your experience level you really should be on a 150. If you want to consider a faster progression make sure you are getting tons of coaching and mentorship so you know what you are doing.

    Everyone here has a friend or several that got hurt by downsizing too quickly that looked great until they didn't.

    If you are worried about the state of your canopy, get another used 135.

    • Like 1

  10. · Edited by lyosha

    So first off, the first and absolutely best piece of advise with regards to anything related to any embassy ever is to avoid any interaction if at all possible.  Every embassy for every country I have ever dealt with was bad, arbitrary, illogical, self serving, for every country.  A couple of times for a couple of first world countries I was flat out told they don't care what the laws of the country they represent actually are.

    If at all possible, find a travel agent that has experience with the embassy and contract the interaction out to them.  Travel agents will know what to put on the forms to not create any suspicion.  The embassy knows who the travel agents are and ask fewer questions.  The travel agents typically know someone in the embassy in case things get dicey in the process (ask me for some horror stories over beer...)

    But if you still decide to forge ahead on your own, dealing with visas in my experience less is more. Pretend you are a generic tourist.

    Purpose: tourism. Going on a backpacking trip. Going to try to spend as much time with the locals as possible.

    Create yourself an itinerary. Hotels can be cancelled for free.

    Typically what they'll care about with tourism is that you have an exit ticket booked, a place to stay booked for the first couple of nights, and have enough ties to your current country that you won't want to overstay your visit.

     

    • Like 3

  11. On 12/27/2022 at 9:26 PM, chuckakers said:

    Not replying to the Monkey as much as posting for the benefit of those who are here to learn...

    As I stated in a previous post, skydivers in clouds - whether in freefall or under canopy - can't see or avoid aircraft (or other jumpers for that matter). If the clouds are below the exit altitude but above the deployment altitude, jumpers are forced to freefall through them.

    As for the assumption that any of this has to do with egos, no one needs to come to terms with anything. The FAA has rules in place for a reason. We follow them for a reason. Pretty simple concept.

    It's usually a good idea to pick your battles wisely.

    There's another angle to this too. The VFR cloud clearance exists to separate VFR and IFR traffic, not just to ensure visibility. There might be planes in those clouds talking to a different air traffic controller who may not know that the plane flying 10000 feet above them is dropping skydivers.

    • Like 1

  12. 12 hours ago, base615 said:

    At our DZ, a lot. Any DZ with a swoop pond which are more and more common would have a lot too. Anyone who wants to go down that path in the future would do well to consider it, particularly since the cost of both are comparable.

    I would hope by the time people are trying to swoop ponds they are not seeking altimeter advice from an Internet forum :rofl:

    • Like 1

  13. On 1/18/2023 at 10:44 PM, base615 said:

    My experience of swimming in the pond with a Viso and my Alti-2 equivalents beg to differ. My L&B altimeters (Viso and Optima) both went FUBAR and needed to be replaced. My Atlas's have been underwater repeatedly with zero issues. If you aren't a swooper then choose either but, if you are a swooper and like your altimeters to be disposable, then go L&B by all means. If, like me, you hate spending hundreds of dollars on gear you have to throw away and replace with another one after a few jumps then go Alti-2.

    How many people go swimming in their skydiving gear? You might be one of the exceptions. I sure hope an AFF student isn’t thinking about how waterproof their first gear is…

  14. I’ve owned a viso2, optima2, N2, currently have an N3 and aon pebble and Aon X2 and Galaxy for good measure.

    They were all fine. Here are my notes.

    There is barely any difference between Neptune series and Viso series. You are fooling yourself if you think there is. Neptune has a slightly bigger screen which didn’t make a difference. Viso has a jump replay mode that I used once to debrief a cutaway. If you are choosing between those two pick the one that is cheaper or that you can find used.

    X2 I’m a big fan of. It’s the first altimeter in a while that adds value with GPS and distance/direction to DZ (super useful on moving jumps, especially if you go on your back or into a cloud or 5000 feet of cloud). But it costs more and it’s harder to get one.

    For audible I use a pebble after my optima died. Again - for most people whatever is cheapest will be best. I had the pebble laying around and it’s been great. Optima was great too. Just cost 3x as much.

  15. On 11/11/2022 at 5:34 AM, RMK said:

    For the US during the winter months, I'd second the recommendations of 

    • Perris and/or Elsinore on West Coast and:
    • Zephyrhills on East Coast

    I love Zephyrhills; that's such a pleasant/fun place to jump.  Other DZ's should take note.

    Taft claims to have the most jumpable days a year. When we lived in LA it was the more fun DZ to be at.

  16. On 12/14/2022 at 12:44 AM, serzkawpoije said:

    I’m new here and don’t really have a dog in this fight. But the data behind the calculator had me curious. 

    So I scraped the dataset from USPA’s incident reports for canopy related incidents, that the calculator is presumably pulling from. It’s pretty terrible as a dataset to make any sort of reliable assessments of risk from. 

    Of the 164 IRs since 2008 relating to canopy incidents, I had to remove 41 for garbage data. Things like listing 0 total jumps when the description lists the jumper having 1000 plus jumps, or weird discrepancies with more jumps in the last 12 months than they have total jumps. Lots of missing information overall that makes the IR meaningless for wingload vs experience discussions  

    But even once you clean out the egregious stuff I can’t see any statistical significance that shows higher wing loadings are more likely to cause incidents with lower jump numbers. Mostly because there aren’t many incidents of it. I could only find one incident report that you could reliably say the jumper had less than 100 jumps and a wing loading over 1.1.

    Anecdotally, as a new jumper in the two large DZs I’ve been to that have a significant high performance canopy culture and on the common internet groups I’ve only ever felt pressure to avoid downsizing until I’ve mastered the canopy size I’m on. So overall this feels kind of like a solution without a problem. Almost all high wingload IRs come from jumpers the proposed BSRs would exempt. 

    I've attached the raw data I pulled, cause it's very possible I messed up the scrape or misinterpreted the data. 

    canopy_incidents.csvUnavailable

    Do yourself a favor and never look up the statistics for cameras. You will instantly be shunned in this place as a heretic.

  17. 7 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

    No doubt close mentorship works. That’s what we’ve been doing for more than 30 years. It’s not consistent or scalable across 400 affiliates and hasn’t addressed the deeply ingrained culture of new jumpers being encouraged to buy and fly canopies that the Canopy Risk Quotient Profile would consider high risk.

    Here’s how some jumpers reacted to the tool in the Reddit Skydiving forum.

    Here’s my favorite response, “Lol, This is utter garbage. The ones making this type of trash are old belly flyers. You can tell it was made by someone that can’t fly a small wing.”

    Not super Impressed with that particular tool either. It seems to say I'm in more risk by upsizing because my canopy courses and familiarization with canopy mechanics were with previous, smaller size. And 1.3 WL is the same as 1.7.

    There is no semi elliptical category of canopy (the one most jumpers are in). That alone will turn newer jumpers off and make it seem like the test was created to intimidate newer jumpers, not educate them.

     

  18. 7 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

    So, other than implementing a USPA restriction, what are some ways to change the culture?

    The only thing I've seen actually work is close mentorship by an experienced local canopy coach.

    I've long since stopped telling people what they should and should not do and instead encouraged people to get good mentorship from a local expert.

    People who want to rush into things unfortunately need to a higher frequency of feedback on their shortcomings from someone who paints them as areas of improvement towards a grand goal.

    This is not exclusive to CP. Whoever suggested a system of endorsements, I support the idea. Seems to work for the FAA with pilot licenses. And we already have one in the B license canopy course which is effectively an endorsement.

    • Like 1

  19. · Edited by lyosha

    11 hours ago, BMAC615 said:

    Again, that’s not how this works. Either provide evidence of incidents and details of your “plenty of friends” that were injured as a result of “under loading a canopy” or admit you are just perpetuating a myth that has no basis in fact.

    With all due respect, who appointed you czar of how all things work?

    My answer, as well as the other topics from the realm of canopy selection, is thoroughly covered by any canopy course worth their salt - mandatory for a B license these days (in my opinion a good thing).  Not sure whether you got your B license already, but if you can't think of a reason someone would want to increase their wingloading as a safety measure, it's time to re-up.

    In the mean time, if you have gaps in your understanding of fundamental mechanics of ram air canopies, I humbly request you remove yourself from a conversation about shoving "safety" down people's throats with regards to that topic.

    Wendy, BASE jumpers are dropping like flies.  The topic of wingloading, it's effects, and what the "appropriate" wingloading is are areas of robust discussion in that community.  There are various arguments that can point someone towards one hazard or another.  You should talk to someone that runs BASE courses or a gear manufacturer about it if interested.  I only understand the high level points, and probably not all of them, but enough to understand that it's a fluid decision and not my place to tell someone what their wingloading should be.  I'm not sure what your point there was :-/

  20. 30 minutes ago, BMAC615 said:

    That’s not how this works. You claim to have direct knowledge of incidents resulting in people being injured for “under loading a canopy.” You either provide evidence or admit you do not have any direct knowledge of such incidents.

    ?

    I'm not the one trying to force my personal view of safety and danger onto someone.

    If I answer your question, will you never again suggest wingloading be regulated? The bargain should go both ways.

  22. Good thing I got my D license already. What a mess this would make...

    Lots of high and mighty going on here. What works at your DZ may not work at others. I have plenty of friends who broke themselves underloading a canopy.

    There's already enough people on here screaming a GoPro under 200 jumps will kill you because USPA says so. I don't think further undermining credibility of USPA recommendations with this idea is necessary.

    • Like 1