mathrick

And yet, there still has been no SB, nor any other form of communication on that matter that I know of, no materials for the riggers that I've seen mention that, nor does the spare parts catalogue make any mention of that (and what the compatibility between the new/old rigs and RPCs might be). I don't think advertising the RPC of all things as a "rigging breakthrough" on their product page counts, especially since the RPC is widely recognised to be one of the worst in the industry (at least before the redesign, so at best your headline boils down to "not quite as shitty anymore"). All I've ever heard about the redesign is unsourced hearsay here on DZ.com that differs from poster to poster. They also don't seem to have changed the ridiculously large and heavy cap I think? Which has a significant effect on the system's performance, so there's that. And yes, the corners are ridiculous and stupid (and really don't look like they're gonna be harmless if your position is not ideal) and so is the reserve flap design which is simultaneously a needless PITA to rig and inspect for the jumper AND somehow more likely to come open in freefall. Just about the only thing that I can think of that they actually fixed is the "thread the RSL/ripcord under the cutaway housing" thing, which in fairness wasn't super difficult to follow, but hey, one more thing someone somewhere won't misrig. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

The wingsuit I did my FJC in had its arm zipper fail during the time I was using it. I intentionally did one jump after it did (knowing full well I'd have to use the cutaway), but with slightly different timing it could very well have happened during a jump. I won't refuse to jump a suit without arm cutaways, but I want mine to have them. Less so for leg cutaways, these seem fairly useless (save perhaps for the very big suits with leg wings extending well pas the feet, but I've not jumped anything so big and won't for a good while still). "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Are you really sure about Bay Area Skydiving? Them having a Skyvan would be huge news, last week they were using a Caravan. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

So in other words, just a regular CRW packjob? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

You seem to be confused about what skydiving entails. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

That's a fair point. Paragliders have that amusing thing where you can get a reserve packing video which pretty much says "considering getting a, y'know, qualified rigger to do this for you, but if you really insist, here's a video on how to pack the reserve you just bought". "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Here's the thing: we live at a time where most rigs are roughly comparable and there aren't really any death rigs being sold out there (save for one or two exceptions, but even those have people swearing by them). By and large, whatever you get is going to be a fine product. Your choice is really going to be based on multiple small nudges rather than one huge deal breaker. And if I can't see what I'll be getting and can't have a decent, easy to use and find explanation of all the features and options of the product on their website, then who's to say the manufacturer has stayed up to date on all the other important pieces of tech that have advanced massively since the 1990s? It's still important to get with a good dealer, especially since many manufacturers will more or less refuse to sell directly, and it's fine to do it that way, but the only reason to be buying something that's got a shit web presence is because either it's a local one-person enterprise and you know the manufacturer personally, or know a dealer who can make up for the manufacturer's online deficiencies. For people who don't have the access to either, not having a sensible website in 2018 is kind of a really fucking huge deal, and rightly so. Why should I be dropping 3 grand on something where the order form is a badly scanned photocopy of a form printed out once in the 1995, and fret over whether I got any of the 23 colour boxes wrong, if I can go elsewhere and have a nice mockup that shows me exactly what it's gonna look like and ensure every single one of these 23 boxes is what I intended it to be? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I wasn't implying anything about your ability, just the legal ability of someone to get you if you happen to be unlucky and they're determined. I do understand that manuals are written by people who packed a new product without a manual :) "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

It's a complex topic with too many factors going into the "which ones would I even consider?" part I feel, but for me the questions of comfort, safety, and customer service (fun fact: I chose my container because there was a high-profile massive recall and their response was exemplary) happened to converge with the questions of looks, price and web presence. Ultimately I chose what I chose out of my final two choices because of my preference for semi-exposed over enclosed design, MARD availability, better price and a nicer colour scheme, but I'd be totally comfortable jumping and recommending the other one as well. In fact, if I were to get an enclosed design, that's what I'd get, Sandy really knows his stuff. And I don't say that just because the rigger I trained under happens to be a fanboy of his :) "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Does this satisfy the requirement of "with access to and in accordance with manufacturer's instructions"? Does Canada have an equivalent of that FAR requirement? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

If I'm the last canopy (and I often am, given that I WS), and I can't be sure what pattern the canopies in front of me are building and whether they're aware of me, I will sometimes do an early, very short base leg or a straight up 180 turn and land a bit long (ie. further away from the hangar) to make sure I'm not cutting anyone off. This way I turn the distance I was trailing the other canopies by into the distance I'm leading them by. This way I can entirely remove "how will they fly?" from my consideration by adopting a slightly suboptimal pattern. I'd rather walk more than risk invading anyone's personal space before we're on safely on the ground. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I've been considering intentionally packing myself a toggle fire (on a dedicated jump with nothing else going on, of course). Has anyone tried this? Will I regret it deeply? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

It seems to be sized somewhat similarly to my first rig, which was a 170 main and a 147 reserve. I got that combination on the advice of a master rigger, who was confident that if I could jump the 170 main safely, I could also handle the reserve. Not saying that you "should" be doing it this way, but it doesn't seem very uncommon to have a smaller reserve for medium-build rigs with large mains. I also seem to recall the bit of old-time logic that the reserve should be a bit smaller (on the assumption that it would have shorter lines), so that it can settle into a stable biplane in a two-out situation. Which is a bit less relevant these days, with radically different main and reserve designs and high main WLs. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

If it allows you to sit up in the harness, it will also allow it to ride up in sit-fly, which defeats the point of having a bungee in the first place. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I initially got a length of regular bungee cord from a home improvement store for my Vortex to deal with the short one they supply, but then I gave it up entirely, since I tried and I just can't make myself slip through the legstraps on my custom-sized V4. I don't do really freefly, so that's of course another reason not to bother with the bungee, but even when I attempted a bit of sit-fly in the sky, it was fine. The bungee OTOH prevents me from being able to sit in the harness, which is a detriment to canopy piloting. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I'm well aware that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but I kinda wonder if the prevalence of videos of Optimums snivelling and the prevalence of videos of them spiralling are related. As wingsuiters found out, the more time your canopy spends opening, especially in suboptimal conditions, the more time it has to go pear-shaped... "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

And if you read the SB with any level of comprehension, it's mandatory for the affected firmware versions. My Vigil II for example is at version 2.50 and thus does not need to be serviced before its battery is due for a replacement. In other words, Deyan is complaining that the units specifically identified and affected by an unanticipated issue need maintenance in a very wide time window to fix that issue. Which is not news to anyone with any idea about how the world operates, because the "does not require mandatory maintenance" selling point for Vigil isn't that it will never, ever need any care whatsoever, but that it doesn't threaten to become not airworthy every four years unless you spend the time and money to send it to the factory, thus giving the jumper more flexibility in when, how, and how often to do it. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I have something like 15 jumps on a demo P7 167 Ultra-LPV. All belly stuff. I had consistent unpleasantly hard openings, very different from what Aerodyne's materials say ("...and great for older jumpers who want the safety of consistently great openings"). It was just short of being too hard to continue jumping, and it made me dread pitching the PC, which is not something you want, really. I have now seen enough other people report the same to believe that I wasn't just a freak -- it seems that while it's not guaranteed to slam you, there's a higher than expected chance of having a P7 that opens consistently hard on you. As for the flight characteristics, they were excellent. Just as much power as a Sabre2 of a similar size, excellent flare (although deeper in the brakes, it is a 7-cell after all), similar glide ratio to Sabre2 with just as much ability to flatten it out when needed, and much better than the lawn dart also known as Storm. I got the Storm when I knew I wanted to get into WS, and am now a happy owner of a Winx 150 :) "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I have a ride on my Decelerator 150; it was boring. Way, way more docile than the Sabre2 170 I jumped at the time, made me think of student canopies. I can't speak of 135, which is their smallest size, but I suspect that anything at all will be surprisingly responsive to harness input at size 126. You just can't have it both ways. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Maybe it's as great as it claims to be, but I sure won't be dropping 450 USD on a "smart" device fresh to the market without hearing what gripes people have with it first. The "smarter" the device is, the greater the potential for overpromising, underdelivering, bugs, weird crashes, confusing UI, lack of updates and questionable "cloud" integrations you can't get out of. Not buying anything that I haven't seen at least one critical review of; anything before that is just hype. Like the ION, which looked good from initial reviews, but is the worst altimeter I've ever owned, seen, or used. What made it to the market is an early beta version at best, and the promised updates never materialised, with the company folding not long after. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Right, and I didn't think it was just the question of beefing up the PC, I was just saying that I've seen this brushed off with "oh that's not a problem anymore, they changed the RPC to add more drag". I for one don't think it's possible to add enough drag to rotate the jumper from any inopportune orientation (such as say on the back, head down, with the RPC and bridle between the jumper's legs) into one in which the enclosed tray allows freebag extraction, and would require a design change to the reserve tray. Of course, having the reserve deploy with the lines going between their legs is a problem in its own right, but one that is presumably preferable to impacting at line stretch after AAD fire. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I've seen multiple references to Sunrise having supposedly redesigned the PC for more drag to address this, but given that I've not seen an SB or any other first-party notification of any such change occurring, I'm pretty sceptical of the validity of those claims. And if they did redesign it and just didn't say anything, that's also very damning, since "we know our PC might fail to extract the freebag" is a pretty damn big deal and something you'd want to ensure gets fixed in the field as soon as possible. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Certainly having proper line stows and deployment sequence is important and I do double stow my lines. But it's also by far the most controversial aspect of packing, and neither side seems to have so many more malfunctions as to be clearly wrong. To be clear, I'm in the "make sure you stow your lines properly" camp, but I'm more yielding and less religious about variations there than about sliders. Re: tuck tabs, I know that, but if you watch his video, you will hear his argument, including the fact that hard openings were not really a thing before tuck tabs, and canopies back in the day opened way faster than the namby-pamby stuff we use today :). The argument isn't that having tuck tabs will certainly give you a hard opening, it's that when hard openings happen, tuck tabs seem to be the culprit in a lot of cases. That tuck tabs can be too stiff is absolutely a fact. I can't find it now, but I've read a post by someone who had the riser covers not release on one side. There are also incidents of people landing with their riser covers still closed. Which is terrifying, because in that case you might not be able to cut away, especially in a high-speed, low-drag malfunction. Brakes are very important, since pretty much all canopies (with NZ Aero ones being the notable exception) are designed to open in half-brakes, and not setting them leads to a massive surge on opening, dramatically increasing the likelihood of malfunctions. Setting them badly also increases the chance of potentially serious issues like a brake fire, or toggles whipping around and entangling with stuff. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Fairly long, as designed for that rig :). It's the Vector-style flap order, where the grommets are not intended to overlap with the correct length of closing loop. Instead, the stitching on the side flaps lining up with the pin protector pocket is a rough guide. I know it looks excessive, but the pin really has enough tension in there. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

The thing is, there isn't a real agreement about whether line dumps even exist / are a problem. There are no stows when you freepack, and it was apparently OK for years. If you watch John LeBlanc's talk (youtube), you'll see that while he does mention stows and stow tension, he points to other things as much more correlated to actual incidence of hard opening. Such as tuck tabs on riser covers. Stow tension is on the "nice to have if you like your fabric unburnt" list, not "need to have or else" one. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."