WV177RG

This one? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x6tgZVoZc7g Stall break occurs ca. 2:38.

As an older jumper, I was looking for a conservative, soft opening canopy with a flat glide to maximize landing options at our home dz surrounded by woods and housing developments. Demoed a Pilot 210 at 1.1:1 WL for 15 jumps with temps in the low 90's, mostly no wind. The Pilot flew exactly as advertised: significantly lighter on the controls (30-40%) and more responsive to control inputs, flatter glide and more powerful flare than my Sabre 1 210 with dual steering lines. Flying in deep brakes on the edge of a stall for a minute or so on several jumps, the canopy remained docile until I forced the stall break. Recovery was quick and easily controllable. Landing approach speeds seemed higher, possibly due to higher than normal density altitude for our location. The landing flare sweet spot is definitely lower in the stroke than my Sabre 1, as described by other reviewers. Flowering the slider, then exposing the slider nose an extra 1-2", yielded soft but positive openings. After additional input from several Pilot owners with 3,000 to 12,500 jumps (the latter owns two Pilots), I ordered a new 210 from Aerodyne in standard ZeroP with 725 Spectra lines. It arrived two weeks earlier than promised. Quality control was excellent. Dyes are extremely bright, and should enhance in-air visibility and collision avoidance. Despite being brand new, the canopy folded into my Javelin D-bag first try. To date, Aerodyne's ZeroP fabric has definitely allowed controllable new canopy pack jobs. My new Pilot flies and lands sweet. Thank you for an excellent parachute, Aerodyne. (And, thanks to all who posted here and in the forums.)

Dear David, Eight years today and we still miss you so very much. Driving thru the night, remembering that night and thinking of you with love and affection. Marianne and Jim

"Not all DZs (or countries) mandate AADs." True. "Having one [installed] that is turned off, effectively is the same as not having one [installed] at all." Not really. The AAD is still installed in your rig. For skydiving under US regulations, Chuck is right. Installing an AAD not maintained i/a/w manufacturer instructions for that device would violate FAR 105.43(c). Seems clear for operations in the US.

Thanks for this thread. We've always packed for ourselves. My wife subbed for local LO yesterday and requested help from DZ packer to keep her on schedule. Had I not come across this info on Friday, we wouldn't have known to ask if the packer preferred to receive the rig with the brakes stowed. Sure enough, she said yes, and appreciated the courtesy of the question. (My wife gave her a 100% tip for fitting her in on a busy day.)

My wife replaced hers last year. Tag says: The Hat Shoppe Moab, UT (Purchased at Don's Parachute Shop, Skydive Pepperell, MA.) She's very happy with the fit and comfort.

OP: Take the advice regarding safety, legality and resale value to heart. Mr. Rickerby was a local legend when I started jumping up here in '93. I'm sorry I never had the privilege of meeting him in person, but I got to admire several rigs, primarily Racers, enhanced by his creativity. Words can't describe his extraordinary vision and execution. http://www.davidrickerbyart.com/c/ra.html http://www.dropzone.com/forum/Community_C7/Blue_Skies_-_In_Memory_Of_F48/David_Rickerby_P3388802

Congratulations on getting your licenses! Learning together is a great adventure. Especially in the beginning, a good coach will establish a stable fall rate, give you a reliable target, analyze your performance and offer concrete suggestions for improvement. Experience and proper jumpsuit design/fit will help you achieve a compatible fall rate. My wife's 5'3", about 130 with gear, sometimes wears 4 lbs of weights. I'm 6'4", 230 with gear. She got me back into skydiving and, from our first exit together, she's always been "right there," floating beside me. It's magic...helps that she kisses me in freefall practically every jump. :-) (Respect breakoff and pull altitudes.) Have fun, be safe! Note: 2-way tunnel time/coaching can help. We discovered our local tunnel dials the windspeed down until they know flyers are reliable and safe together. First session with her, I was stretched out flat trying to stay off the grate, leaving little room for her to fly. Once they dialed the windspeed to 110-120 mph we flew fine. (Remember your survival skills when you get back in the air.)

Windline Lake Wales, FL

Kevin Walsh, inspired by Larry Walters' story, made a similar flight in Massachusetts in 1984. Details toward the end of this Snopes article on Walters: http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/walters.asp

Cloggy is right. Wagner based his opera The Flying Dutchman upon the legend of Captain Hendrick van der Decken and his ghost ship/crew. OP: if you do exist, consider Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries as accompaniment to your spectacular video that lies ahead: Apocalypse Now version at 3:20 on timeline: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gcz4hdLA8 Berlin Philharmonic in concert: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P73Z6291Pt8

Dear David, You are remembered with love and admiration. Your gang gathered at Symphony Hall again last month. Wish we could have seen your smile when we discovered TFC's "purple chorus" (dressed in black) was assigned to that night, the stage crew wore black suits with purple ties, the Principal Bass wore a purple bowtie with his black tux, and the stage was awash in purple light most of the evening. Your presence was deeply felt by all of us. Miss you so much. Howard, too. Xxxooo, Marianne and Jim

So sorry for your loss, OWB. We didn't know. She must have been special to have chosen you. May time ease your sorrow, leaving beautiful memories of the life and love you shared. Deepest condolences, M+J

Fly free, Pat. Thanks for inspiring us. You'll never know how many lives you touched. ----------------------------------------- "Someone suggested Bob Hoover was but he don't Skydive!!!" Bob Hoover may not have been a skydiver, but he earned his parachute wings the hard way, at least twice: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j4CYjNQJli4 "Hoover felt severe pain shoot through his lower body as another FW-190 closed in on him...(he) shot a burst of gunfire, but seconds later, the Spitfire’s engine exploded, and a ball of flames engulfed the aircraft’s nose...He opened the cockpit, released his shoulder and seat straps, rolled the plane and pulled his parachute’s ripcord. The parachute didn’t open until three or four hundred feet above the water. His life vest, riddled with shrapnel, wouldn’t inflate, and when he hit the cold water, he felt immense pain in his lower body." RIP gentlemen. Thank you both.

Thanks for the reminder, Pat. Illusions, Jonathan Living Seagull+, stand next to your books and St. Exupery's on our bookshelf. At the dz yesterday, perfect fall day in New England. Chatting with kids who came to make their first skydive. One, too scared to jump, watched as his friends boarded the plane. Asked me what it felt like. Something resonated; his fear evaporated. He said, "It sounds like zen." Million watt smile. I thought of you. Said he'll be back on Saturday to experience it for himself. Thanks for inspiring us. You'll never know how many lives you've touched.

Pat Works : SCS #1 Honor the pioneers. They risked everything and taught us how to fly. Few experiences more enlightening or enjoyable than listening to D-69 share his stories of the early days. (He qualified for his D license with that first group of single digit jumpers from Orange /PI...preferred the designation "69.")

Excellent--thanks. Sounds well worth the investment. Any maintenance issues?

Gentlemen (that's bound to offend someone)--risking one last off topic post: I'm an older guy with little internet forum experience, trying to learn the guidelines for posting. I PM'd dzswoop717 with an apology for missing the mark with my post. I didn't realize there are now several years' worth of skydiving operational experience with this particular mod that would be far more relevant at this time. (The only reason I mentioned some of my flying experience is that I see guys get flamed here all the time for not offering the background information that helps forum readers evaluate the validity of a post.) He replied with a more than adequate apology in return. Looking forward to reviews from folks who've flown one.

"what does anything you said have to do with the Supervan 900 mod?" A number of posts addressed the issue of PT-6 vs. TPE-331 mechanical reliability (spinskier+.) We operated a mixed fleet of 20 aircraft using variants of both engines. Respecting manufacturer procedures and limitations, mechanical reliability between the two engine types was pretty much equal. Some folks wrote they'd had bad experiences with one type or the other. Another post addressed engine maintenance. Our mechanics preferred the Pratt and Whitneys over the Garretts. Might matter to some operators. Someone else addressed the issue of power response. PT-6's lag on power-up due to the free turbine design. Garretts have much smoother, more immediate response to power lever input. The difference between the engines' power response might save your life--or your pilot's life, if you care--and your aircraft the day a truck rolls onto the runway or a skydiver overshoots the LZ and lands on the runway as your aircraft is taking off or landing (happened at our DZ this past weekend), the aircraft hits windshear/downdrafts approaching the treeline heavily loaded on takeoff or landing (an issue at our DZ), or performs takeoffs/landings on contaminated runways. Garrets had better power response in high density altitude conditions in our experience. Rotational direction of the engine/prop? Might've gone a bit too far with that one. I've seen inexperienced pilots roaring toward the weeds because they failed to compensate correctly for the torque, p-factor and spiral slipstream of a "backward turning" engine. Send me a note when you're going to ride in the back with a green pilot in gusty crosswind conditions. I'll buy the marshmallows. The Supervan 900 looks like a ballsy airplane. As much as the climb rate of a raped ape and ability to haul a zillion and one asses off high density altitude runways may be great selling points, some folks expressed interest in other factors, too. No, I haven't flown one in skydiving operations...yet. Off your meds today?

I flew PT-6's and TPE-331's Part 135 for close to 5,000 hours in the 90's. Operational reliability was pretty much equal for our regional airline. Zero engine failures and no inflight precautionary shutdowns that I'm aware of during my six years. (There were a couple of shutdowns that were the result of false warnings/indications, not actual ENGINE problems.) Both great, safe engines. Mechanics preferred servicing the Pratt and Whitneys. I preferred flying the Garretts because of their direct-drive, smooth and predictable power response. P+W free turbines would spool up at different rates on go-arounds, missed approaches, etc. Extra caution required employing beta/reverse thrust on ice/snow/standing water contaminated runways in New England and Quebec, especially with strong crosswind/tailwind components. Garretts were much less squirrelly. Probably not an issue if you're only looking at single-engine aircraft. One quirk of our Dornier 228 Garretts: engines/props turned counter-clockwise resulting in LEFT rudder input required during takeoffs, go arounds, etc. Also moved the "critical engine" to the other side during emergency/single-engine operations. Easily mastered in training, but something to be aware of and anticipated in advance of an emergency. Again, less of an issue for single-engine aircraft. (I don't recall if all Garretts turned "backward," or if this was just a design spec of our German aircraft manufacturer. MU-2 pilots might be able to address this question.)

He may be referring to safety statistics after engine failure in flight (excluding transport category aircraft.) Pilots of single engine airplanes experiencing engine failure, when unable ro restore power, prepare for a controlled forced landing. Pilots of light twins have a higher fatal accident rate after engine failure due to lack of understanding of their aircraft's greatly reduced capabilities when flying on the remaining engine, and poor flying technique and/or judgment. Typically higher V speeds and higher weights lead to greater energy that needs to be dissipated on landing. Loss of drag when a windmilling prop is feathered contributes to overshoot/overrun accidents. Just a few contributing factors.

Anyone you know or anyone here members of the Cessna Pilots Association? They can probably steer you toward far more cost effective solutions. (We've turned to the Cardinal Flyers Online for part sources for our 177RG.) Trade-a-Plane, aircraft salvage yards that part out unflyable aircraft, auctions are some of the sources we've accessed over the years. Is there a forum for DZOs? IIRC you're north of us. Try USPA, AOPA and their Canadian counterparts. Good luck. (For 37k they should loan you a Citation X while your 205 is in the shop.)

Our DZ has patches of dense forest including tall pine nearby. We've recovered a number of canopies with my Citabria and C-177RG. When I can't find them flying solo, I take a spotter on the second attempt. Directly overhead the equipment, we create a lat/long waypoint using my Ipad's Foreflight Mobile GPS tracking function or yoke mounted Garmin GPS unit. We radio the coordinates back to manifest; they relay that info to a jumper with a handheld GPS. Canopy is usually recovered within an hour. (Helps to have DZ family members with professional tree service experience.)

Simplified version: in general, the higher the ground elevation of your DZ, the hotter the temperature, the faster you land. The higher you go--ground elevation or airborne--the farther apart the molecules of air will be. (Folks refer to that as the air getting "thinner" with increasing elevation. Starting at sea level, imagine driving up a 10,000 ft. mountain or climbing from the ground to 10,000 ft. in an airplane. The air will be MUCH thinner up high than where you started.) The farther apart those molecules of air, the faster you have to go across the ground to fly the distance between them in a given amount of time to bump those molecules and create the same air pressure/performance for a given "airspeed," like your canopy's full flight trim speed to land. So your canopy's high altitude speed over the ground, your "groundspeed," is much faster than its low altitude groundspeed for the same given airspeed.* Usually, the higher the ground elevation at your DZ, the faster your landing approach groundspeed will be. You'll land much faster at a 5000' elevation DZ in Colorado than a sea level DZ in Massachusetts, assuming comparable conditions. "Flatlanders" sometimes crash and burn their landings at higher altitude DZs because they fail to compensate for the typically higher landing speeds. (Switching to a larger canopy is one way to compensate.) High temperature further "thins" the air by spreading out those molecules. Your landing speed will be MUCH higher at a summertime hot, high-desert DZ than a cooler fall/winter, low altitude one. The previous posters were evaluating the difference between your home DZ and the ones you were considering visiting to determine if extra caution might be advised due to significant differences between elevations and general weather. Skydivers set altimeters to "0" before takeoff (assuming we're landing at or near our departure airport) to give us quick reference to the distance between us and Mother Earth at the DZ. AGL is correct: the altimeter now measures altitude Above Ground Level at our departure field. Ask your jump pilot to show you his aircraft altimeter, adjusted for current barometric pressure, when the plane's not flying. Instead of zero, it should read the actual elevation of your airport "MSL" (Mean Sea Level.) According to gowlerk's airport information, the jump plane altimeter at Lake Elsinore should read approximately 1296 ft.; Perris Valley 1414 ft. (Eloy 1511' according to the FAA AF/D) when sitting on the ground and current barometric pressure setting dialed in. Hope this helps. (Easier to explain in person.) Have fun! *Ignoring headwind, tailwind, temperature, pressure, humidity.

We have this one, thanks. (American Airlines 4-engine pax jet.) Yes, Bealio, USA. The one I referenced earlier is probably F-15 or F-18. Video is shot from POV inside aircraft looking out...jet goes whizzing by open door. (Had my own close call breaking off from a four-way years ago when a Cherokee 6 flew directly overhead Skydive Pepperell. Saw the a/c closing from ahead and slightly below me just as I reached for pilot chute handle. Forced myself to stop deployment until I passed his altitude. He passed 4 or 5 hundred feet overhead after I deployed. Folks on the ground said it looked like he cranked that boat on its side trying to get away after he saw me go by. We'd checked for traffic before climbing out; pilot had received no traffic alerts from Manchester--now Boston--Approach.)