pr0ject42

I went from a Samurai 105 to a Velocity 96. I put about 300ish jumps on the Sam 105 (3 different ones). I really liked the glide, the dive and the deep flare of the Sam, but openings for me were inconsistent on the 105 (not my experience with the 136 and the 120 Sam). Sometimes they would be brisk, but ok, other times the slider would break the sound barrier coming down. I can only blame my own body position on deployment so much. So, moving into a new season, and after an accidental (really it was) ride on a Velocity 79, I decided that it would be worth the try to get a 96. I put about 40 jumps on it before selling any of my Sams, but I had already bought a backup 96 before I had sold the Sams. The comparison for me was that the Velocity had just that little bit extra on the bottom end of the flare if I didn't get to build up much speed for my landing, where the Sam seemed to fizzle out and give me a more F-111 feel on the flare. I know I didn't explain that bit well. Regardless, the openings, while the seeking thing was a new adventure, were much better on the body. I found I could get this thing to glide and dive much more effectively than the Sams, but at the higher wingloading (2.1ish) the Velo falls out of the sky much more quickly. I thought the front riser pressure was nice and the buildup was much more handleable. So I made that switch at 900ish jumps, I've put about 150 jumps on my Velocities and while I respect this canopy and what it can do to me, I also love what it does for me. This message was not paid for by PD. Also let me add that I think the Samurai was an excellent canopy to build up good discipline in canopy control before going to the Velocity. Long dives, deep flares and good glide characteristics really helped me make the step into the crossbraced world without too much irrational fear. Keep in mind I just enjoy flying and landing my canopies, I don't have competitive swooping goals and my primary function is to get to the ground safely first and secondarily, if an option, get a nice swoop.

Its somewhat of an off season for competitve FS. Right now people are working out schedules for the year, doing their first camps or already quitting their teams. Besides, skyleage hasn't been providing much fodder to gossip about yet.

Yup, only planning on putting it on one rig and doing quite a few hop n pops before putting it on both. I'm also thinking about just putting a stow on my reserve flap (again) just in case I'm backing up loads or something else is going on that won't give me enough time to deal with disconnecting and stowing the slider. Do you guys leave your RDS on your "work" rigs when you aren't out just to swoop? Obviously I don't plan on hooking up my d-bag and all of that stuff, I'm not that serious about it, but is it practical to just leave an RDS slider on at all times? What safety concerns are there, other than making sure the release cables are still sufficently seated before repacking it?

Thanks to Rusty for organizing it. I know a lot more people went into making it happen (I could rattle off everyone's name on staff) but it was cool to see everyone being able to demonstrate their skill. I enjoyed it and I was only watching. Certainly thanks to SVCO for hosting it and providing food for all and some pretty sweet prizes. Looking forward to the next one!

I just got mine in the mail, and while it is my first experience with an RDS, I can tell you this thing is phat. It looks just a touch larger than my stock PD slider (velocity 96). It seems to be very well made. The rings are plenty large and certainly are beef. I've got a question for you RDS guys out there, do you pull the rings down over your risers or just leave them sitting where they settled on deployment when you decide to remove it? What about after you remove the slider?

Good for her, I met her a couple of months ago at the Colorado tunnel and she told me that she was working on that. As for Elise (formerly Airkix) and Bodyflight Storm, I wish them both good luck on whuping up on the boys in the UK!

Hey Ben, do you think the onslaught of tunnels have had anything to do with the recent rather dramatic rise in RW and freefall skill in general? I agree though, a positive environment is much more beneficial to improvement, but that goes back to basic child psychology and positive vs. negative reinforcement.

Well, this is a slight bit off topic, but between my two velocity 96s, one being HMA about half way through its life and the other being fresh vectran from the factory, here are the differences I've noticed which have been confirmed by an employee of PD and the former owner of the HMA canopy: 1) slightly faster opening with the HMA. Not slamming, just a bit more brisk (at terminal anyway). Of course the slider looks like it has seen better days... 2) a seemingly shorter recovery arc on the HMA. 3) front riser pressure builds up more quickly on HMA in a dive Both of these canopies were used when I got them, but the HMA one certainly had more jumps and ostensibly had led a harder life. Both had inspections from the factory but as stated before the vectran lines were fresh when I got it. Also have it be known that I've only put about 100 jumps on each of these canopies, so while I think I have enough experience under them have some scientific backing, I certainly have not jumped them to their very limits to see for certain that these traits I've numbered out are absolute truths. Beware what you read on the internet. So while this doesn't answer your question, it is more information to further muddy the waters.

While this certainly isn't scientific and I bet will chap some peoples butts around here, a good easy way to start getting in the right body position for side-sliding is think about pushing off with your leg and arm from the side you are going away from. Think about when you're in a pool next to the side and you go underwater and push off. Well it is somewhat the same idea in the air. If you want to go forward, extend (push off of the wall) your legs. Same deal if you want to go backwards or side sliding. Another way to think about it is to think about "digging in" the side of your body that will be leading the slide, in effect pitching your body and spilling air off of your trailing side. I'd say get in the tunnel. That is the fastest and cheapest way to learn the basics.

A dog and pony show.

If you are all about the zipper and getting a mirror, or double slot switcher, you could quite simply have a zipper-zipper, similar to a 5 move. Lets face it though, block 5 and 17 are really fast, whereas block 12 (both zipper star and bundy bundy) are slower more technical blocks that only switch the front half. I think in sticking with the spirit of the 12, it would need to remain a switcher for the front half that is a small move for the back half and much potential for disaster in the front half. I personally would be happy to get rid of the bundy exit.

Well if you're going to go down, might as well do it in flames. Serves me right for not even looking at the draw. I will stand behind the notion that it is lame to pass judgement on anyone else's performance other than your own, at least in a public yet somewhat anonymous forum.

Hey douchebag go read the rules. Its NOT 10 way speed star, like that movie with Wesly Snipes. It is 10 way speed and has various formations to build. If you examine the results you'll see that even Airspeed had a rough round 1 and took almost 30 seconds to build the formation. As an FYI, I was not in 10 way, nor have I ever competed in it. I just think it is wack that some person rolls up in here and starts passing judgement about the one event in my mind is truely just a fun, blow off steam event. Hey dood, how many 10-way competitions have you partaken in? Do you know any of the rules?

Todd is already commited to a different 4-way team, otherwise I'm sure he would have been with Airspeed.

Sue me for not updating my profile, Steve. I started jumping in 2001, before you, at mile hi. I've got over 1000 jumps and about 600 of those are on a Samurai of one size or another. Good god folks, I wasn't trying to give any swooping advice here, just how to survive openings. Edited to add that I am very aware that 1000 jumps really isn't a lot either. Its a drop in the bucket, but I talk with and jump with some rather experienced folks and I learn from them and respect their opinions and advice. So don't take it as "I've got 1000 jumps and I am the master", this is not what I'm saying, I've just gotten three comments now on my jump numbers. It gets a little old. Last time I checked, homes, when you're jumping a small velo loaded up, harness input, especially when it is still inflating, really does do a lot. I would think grabbing and yanking on a riser would be a bad thing to do. If you're opening up close enough to other people that you would need to take such drastic measures, maybe you should work on your tracking skills. Vertical separation doesn't count either! So again, I don't claim to be an swooping prophet, and I wasn't giving advice that way. I've just noticed that when I stopped tweaking on openings and just chilling out, I had much more predictable openings. This doesn't mean I'm not really to take action when sh-t hits the fan, it just means I don't make things worse by pulling on things and wiggling around in the harness trying to fly it out. I've gotten that advice from others that have a ton more experience than me (and you, Steve) and I thought it might be nice to pass it on. I personally think the velocity is an awesome canopy, it can be as chill or as scary as you make it be. I think the openings are fantastic compared to canopies I used to jump and I would like to see the guy who originally asked the question work through some of his issues before sh-t canning a good canopy and dropping major dime on the latest and greatest when his problem could be fixed on the cheap to free tip. Please let me know if what I offered up was out of line, I'm glad this community is so well patrolled.

Hey dood, I've noticed with my velos that the more I try to do on opening, the worse things get. The most recent thing I've realized is that if I reached up and grabbed my risers, it *seemed* to make the slider hang out longer and give me really surgy openings. I just grab the three rings now just to give my hands something to do and it seemed to open more predictably. The experiment was conducted with the same packer (not me) and was only over 20ish jumps. So take it for what its worth (almost nothing).

Sweet dood! Props to the AZ crew, they are all really cool folks! So where is the video? I need eye candy!

I've got the big air sportz variety on one of my sets of risers and like them a lot. They are simple, work well and don't take any thought to deal with, as opposed to having the velcro thingy on your reserve flap or your jumpsuit. I never liked those systems, always were a pain in the butt, in my opinion.

When I was watching some of your video from the last comp it looks like you guys had some room for doing slot switchers. Block 2 was what piqued my interest and made me go look it up in the dive pool. Blocks 5 and 6 look like good candidates for either a mirrored situation or double slot switchers, depending on how you want to do your continuity.

Those look like factory divers to me. Of couse the skysystems logo on the back on their helmets kinda gave it away too...

That is awesome! I've been keeping my eye open for Mandarin since someone posted something about them here about a year ago. Incredible. There is going to be VRW at nationals this year, right? Is Kurt keeping tabs on this on the NSL site?

What "announcement"?

Stretch. A few thousand jumps and assloads of tunnel time help as well. But you have to stretch most importantly. Twice a day would be most effective.

Well homes, since you were asking about something as simple as changing the data output, I figured you were also commenting on the output of the total score for the jump being over the entire duration of the jump, instead of qualitatively commenting on knowing your score from any given jump while training. Having said that, I wrote a hack that takes Jan's .csvs and puts them up into a mysql database. Here is the code to create the necessary tables in mysql, you'll need to add a username and password that has at least select, insert and update privs to the tables created, then update the perl script with that username and password appropriately. From there on out, the power of your statistic parusal is only limited by your imagination and SQL skillz. For example, here is a query to show you all of your exits, ordered by the fastest exit time. SELECT transitions.date, camp, day, jumpNum, transition, time FROM transitions, camps where transitions.date = camps.date and transition like "Exit%" group by transition order by time; Obviously my sql isn't great, and there are most likely bugs, but it is something until Jan puts out a full production product. I release this crap with no warranty, support or even good intentions. Use it at your own risk. I hate to say that, but it seems necessary in this day and age.

To get the actual score, all you have to do is look at the time column while your program is parsing through and at the first time your time colum is > 35, your point score is one less than the point count of that column. Yay, your 35 second score.