mathrick

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Everything posted by mathrick

  1. It is true that for line stows only, it's comparing apples to oranges. The confusion comes from the fact that stows have a double role on traditional d-bags: Staging line releaseKeeping canopy in the bag In a (semi-)stowless bag, the first one is handled by the line pouch. Since the line pouch encloses all line and is pressed against by the bulk of the canopy to keep it tight, it has no trouble accelerating all the line material off the jumpers back, without spilling it. Only once line stretch is reached, does the line get pulled out of the pouch, maintaining the tension throughout. The danger that exists in line stows, ie. that the line in the bight is too heavy to be lifted by the rubber bands and falls out as the bag is accelerated by the PC, does not exist in the same form in a properly sized (semi-)stowless bag. However, the other role, of keeping the canopy in the bag until all the line is at stretch, is now delegated to some other mechanism. In semi-stowless bags, this continues to be the locking stows, and thus all the wisdom of conventional d-bags applies. In a fully stowless bag, you need to invent another method of keeping the canopy in the bag through the peak force caused by the acceleration of the bag. If you don't, your risk the canopy spilling out, at which point the lines are no longer contained and also spill out, and you end up with the shitshow experienced by the OP. The danger of a fully magnetic solution is that magnets are OK for a regular deployment, but cannot sustain the higher peak forces generated in an abnormal one, and amplify the problems by turning an already bad high-speed deployment into a high-speed line dump. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  2. AFAIK, when Skyhook first came out (before OPT was on the market), UPT's testing showed that Skyhook deployments are less likely to develop line twists than either a plain RSL or manual activation (assuming the jumper did not wait around forever to "get stable"). Whether OPT changes that, and/or whether OPT is inherently more likely to develop line twists, I don't know. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  3. Been done before, by some Finnish madmen. The guy's comment afterwards was "that was the stupidest I've ever done". "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  4. It is Racer-specific, and related to dual RSL :). It applies if and only if you're jumping dual RSL setup, in which case you must do it or you risk your bad canopy taking your last good canopy with it. If you jump a Racer without RSL or with single-side RSL, the procedure does not apply. I believe this is regardless of whether it's a factory-fitted single-side RSL (these arguably exist), or a cross-connector connected on both sides to the same riser (which is an authorised method of connecting the dual RSL). My understanding is that either gives you an effectively single-side RSL that is not liable to choke off your reserve. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  5. Unless you're jumping a Racer. In that case, you do disconnect the RSL, unless you like having the main choke your reserve (or are very confident that you accounted for the exact order they opened in). "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  6. Given that OP has 14 jumps, I don't think that's gonna happen. OP: You might know this already, but please don't strap a camera to yourself before you hit 200 jumps. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  7. That'd be "Cookie Roller mount". There's clearly something about "Cookie Revolve", it's the second time you've made up that name. You should probably ask Cookie to make an actual product with that name :) "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  8. Been that way for half a year at least. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  9. If they start selling their SkyEyes goggles again, I'd seriously like some. They fit over my glasses without being ridiculously bulging like OTG goggles are, and I haven't yet found another brand where that's true. But nobody sells them anymore :( "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  10. I've seen a VK tension knot cutaway a couple weekends back, however when reviewing the video, the jumper specifically commented on how you need to work fronts on VK to tension the slacked lines and prevent knots from forming. Wouldn't that be a part of the issue here? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  11. Magnetic covers are better because it's much easier to get them tight enough (== resilient to opening in freefall) without introducing the danger of them not opening on deployment, which is a potentially deadly situation. And if they do come open, they have a decent chance of just closing again on their own. They also don't wear out, so they won't get looser over time and difficult to keep closed. Lastly, on rigs with double riser covers for tuck tabs (the ones that have "Place main risers on top of this label" printed), these are absent with magnetic closure, meaning there's one less thing for the inattentive / unfamiliar packer to misrig. I'm really not a fan of these, anything that can be misrigged on every single repack is bad design. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  12. This is just a spambot scrape of PIA forum and does not have the manual in question (or any other actual content). Are you sure this is the link you wanted to post? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  13. Right, I didn't take "around the sport" to mean before you started jumping. My bad. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  14. You also said you were 54. Early dementia? :P "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  15. I see, thanks. It's a shame, but it's good to know things are going well for you. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  16. If you can regularly jump 1-2 weekends a month, that should be fine for maintaining currency. It will be more limiting for you as a student however, because students are more susceptible to weather holds. You will definitely want to go for both days though and grab their bunkhouse / other accommodations; a jump day mius 5h just for transport does not leave enough for you to get any useful number of jumps done. Jumping when tired is a safety issue, just as any other diminished mental capacity factor. You can generally feel whether it's safe or not though, and as long as you're not pushing yourself unreasonably, it's not uncommon to be a little worn out. Regular jump adrenaline can help in the short term, a power nap can help otherwise. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  17. They might have much more stringent standards for reserves than mains. After all, that tiny 113 thing sometimes has an unconscious freeflyer landing downwind after AAD fire under it... "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  18. And in automatic washer? I think I don't believe that. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  19. Whoever did it did a good job though. I have no idea how to dye individual panels of an assembled product. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  20. Am I understanding correctly that they grounded the rig because someone at some point dyed it on their own, after manufacture? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  21. Also known as "rigger I can trust" :). Reserves are thankfully not phones yet, they won't sound an alarm if a person other than the manufacturer looks at them. Of course it means you get to pick someone with a clue to touch it, but the same goes for packing, so hopefully you have one already. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  22. Hey, I've done that a couple times on my old rig! Which actually reminds me, I need to buy some food grade silicone before the next repack (still a couple months away, thanks to a recent cutaway). I pulled the cutaway cables on my brand-new, freshly assembled rig during the initial inspection because I didn't like the (lack of) give they had, only to discover that: 1) nobody at the DZ had any silicone on them 2) I'm an idiot and forgot it's got Collins lanyard, so the left cable housing is split and it becomes very hard to re-route with the reserve fully packed. Since the I've learnt that it's not so much the cables being hard to move, as the different geometry of split vs. continuous housing making the travel of the long cable different during inspection. I still want to lubricate it though. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  23. I've no experience with either, but there have been threads in here where riggers reported Speed packing smaller than Optimum one size down. Clearly there are differing opinions and experiences with it. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4800325 "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  24. Also Speed's weight chart needs to be read in context, since when they specify "maximum weight" that means "maximum WL exceeding which is not recommended", not "maximum design weight past which the reserve blows up on opening" PD and others usually mean. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."
  25. I believe it's ultimately due to the pin being there and keeping it all tensioned. If you pull the pin, the loop is suddenly free on one end, and while it might probably introduce a slight delay, it's going to loosen fast enough for the deployment to happen more or less normally. At least I haven't heard of it happening without the pin being still in place. This issue was the subject of Mirage SB advising the change of cutter placement, but it's in no way specific to Mirage. Any enclosed PC container can be misrigged that way, as demonstrated by the linked thread video on a Micron. Pop-tops and semi-pop-tops aren't susceptible to my knowledge, as there the pilot is held in place by the loop directly, rather than flaps. One more reason to prefer semi-poptops, aside from superior aesthetics :) "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."