mathrick

Do you actually have 80 jumps as your profile says? In that case you're already very much on the sporty side. 1.35 WL is very significant at this stage, increasing it further would not be a smart thing to do. You already have all the sportiness you should need for quite a while, now focus on building the skills. You can totally swoop it (and Sabre 2 is not a bad starter for serious CP), so there's no reason to change. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Tunnel. Coach. Punching you in the back until you do it right, then reviewing the video. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Obtaining a TSO requires the country of manufacture to have a permanent FAA representative, in addition to actually passing the TSO testing. I'm not sure what the situation is in Venezuela, but it's the reason the Ukrainian manufacturer SWS doesn't have an FAA TSO (even though their gear does come with an ETSO, the European equivalent). If Venezuela doesn't have an FAA office, then that's the end of it, it's impossible for any company operating there to obtain a TSO. There is a contact listed on FAA's page: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/apl/contact_us/country_contacts/#letterV I'm unsure of their exact status, but I imagine they would be able to answer the question of "does Venezuela have a rep able to process TSO applications?" at least. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

No worries, I was honestly just asking, didn't mean to be accusatory. As much as the implicit US-centrism tends to annoy me in general, in this case it's perfectly justified and understandable; I merely wanted to know what your scope was. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

So I'll risk being the nagging grump, but might as well try to weed it out early: there's no such thing as "chute" other than in "pilot chute". Just "pulling" or "pitching" is enough, or if you really want to be specific, you can add "my main". And to describe the equipment, either "parachute" or "canopy" is appropriate. But talking about "chutes" is the reserve of whuffos, really. And as concerns the altimeter, digital for life for me. There's a school of thinking that analogues are somehow inherently easier to read for all students, which is bullshit. It's easier to read for students who find analogues easier to read, and plenty of people have an easier time reading digital displays, including me. I think in terms of numbers, I talk about numbers, I set my dytter to a specific number, so why the hell should it be easier for me to involve a shaky, imprecise arrow on a crudely marked dial in the process? It's not. I was relieved the day I got to jump my Viso and could finally go straight to numbers, and I suspect you will be too. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

And "we" is defined as...? US only, North America, USPA? We've definitely had several fatal crashes in Europe, in fact one particularly bad one right after I started in the sport (Piper Navajo in Poland). "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

We all do, but the OP didn't, and I explained to them why Caravan was jokingly mentioned in the first reply. But sure, let's not do that, why should they know things if we already do, right? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Because they already provide no information on existing AADs, and everything posted by Airtec so far suggests they have every intention of continuing that. Starting with "so is it ready or not?". "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Except that communication makes the product. "Don't worry your pretty little head, Cypres is the best" is not a useful attitude when the whole problem is that we're bumping against the limitations of the design, the limitations which can very well cost you your life if you end up on the wrong side. An AAD you don't understand thoroughly is testing your luck, and luck is not the right approach to risk management. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I fully agree that they shouldn't, however Airtec has a long history of not actually explaining in any way how their products operate, what changes they made and when, or what limitations the might have, in addition to being wonderfully vague about actual availability of products. It's bullshit enough for ordinary AADs, but becomes completely ridiculous with something as tricky as wingsuiting. Which is why I hope people stop buying into their bullshit and move instead to competition providing better communication. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

It's called marketing. Or are you seriously suggesting Cypres WS is not a commercial endeavour and will be just given away? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Not yet maybe, because they're still in testing, but I heavily doubt Airtec does that for charity with no plans of selling it. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

We don't have to assume anything, there's no reason until Airtec presents any kind of plausible claim that suggests they've done work that would actually make the unit more capable of understanding WS than current AADs. A purple audible is not that. And since it's Cypres, the chances of it happening are close to zero, because Cypres ain't explain shit to the skydiving riff-raff. We're just supposed to pay and ask no questions. IMHO, it's time people stopped going along with that and tacitly permitting this kind of behaviour. If you're going to sell me a device that will be my last chance at not dying, I want to make damn sure I understand exactly what kind of parameters it looks at and the limits it has. You don't get to go "hush now, it's all proprietary secrets y'see" when it's literally my life on the line if I don't understand exactly the limitations of the device. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

It is worth mentioning that the MSW approved by the manufacturer in this case has nothing to do the certification weight. The Speed can handle significantly more than what the MSW states, but paratec advices against that. An excerpt from their manual: I believe (I am not completely sure though) that other manufacturers just list the maximum tested weight and are not that (overly?) cautious Yeah, it is discussed in the big thread Kris mentioned. The value listed as MSW is actually maximum recommended suspended weight, similar to PD's weight/experience charts. The actual MSW is the "certification weight", which is 115kg/254lbs. The recommendations are based only on the worst case scenario considerations; the manufacturer explicitly says in the thread it will fly and land just fine up to certification weight, you might just not want it to under the sort of circumstances reserves are designed for (aka unconscious and injured). The same considerations that'd lead someone to installing a Speed2000 in their tiny pocket rocket rig. All things considered, a Speed2000 120 is very likely significantly better than Optimum 99, although still a foolhardy choice unless you're a tiny 45kg girl. Personally I refuse to consider anything smaller than 150 for my weight, and even then it's pushing it slightly. And since my piloting skills while unconscious are unlikely to improve, I have no intention of ever going lower, regardless of the main I fly. So Speed2000 sounds like just the thing. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Neat, thanks. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Doesn't Burble.me have a DZO module? Granted, I'm not a DZO, so I've never actually used it, but I believe it's one of the features they advertise. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

...in the US. Elsewhere with less of a monopolistic market, it's half to 2/3rds of a deposit :) And that's for centrally situated European countries; if you're in Russia, you get really good tunnel for like 30% of the US price. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Yeah, and Sunpath also considers it unsafe. Which is why I think jumpers have the right to know the manufacturer who knowingly uses class 1A. I'm not advocating lynching Paragear for selling in good faith what was delivered to them as class 1, because mistakes happen, but that's different from deliberately prioritising speed of delivery over most suitable selection of materials. It's not the choice I'd want in my rig. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Interesting, are there any unusual limitations on MSW / deployment speed? Are they still in production? "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I probably misunderstood something, but isn't unravelling completely with just a nick on the edge pretty much a total failure for a sport jumper? It won't fail during a jump, so at least it's not deadly, but it still grounds the rig and incurs major to total repair depending on the exact location of the failed webbing. It's bit like making a car that has the same crumpling zones as others, except all the paint will fall off if you ever scratch it. You'd have a hard time convincing the affected users that it's not made using substandard materials if it happens to them (and unlike the rig, the car at least would still drive for a bit... until it rusts through). And I'd be very pissed off if the manufacturer knowingly did that and neglected to mention it before taking my money. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_208_Caravan "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

I believe the question was for Deyan. If the manufacturer knowingly uses substandard components, then IMHO being nice no longer applies. I care more about being nice to the jumpers who have the right to know that their rig is potentially made of webbing vulnerable to total failure. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Because the US legal system is incredibly skewed towards setting out of court, and because the patent system is broken, and because US courts have historically been much more likely to uphold bad[*] patents than throw them out, a trend that has only strengthened after all patent matter appeals were consolidated into a single court, so with a sufficiently big fuck up on the USPTO part, the ISG lawyers might've rightly (or wrongly, see above!) concluded it was cheaper to settle than to fight it out. It usually is cheaper at some point to settle for one of the sides, even after the case has gone to court, because the US system is built in a way that makes cases seeing conclusion a very rare thing, so a side settling is no news. This, however, proves absolutely nothing about whether ISG was right, not even from patent perspective, to say nothing about actual common sense. The case was not heard by a judge, therefore there's no legal decision (which is sometimes the reason to drop out, because fighting out a bad case might be more harmful than pulling out and letting a better case build. A court decision creates a precedent, a settlement does not, and being right is only very loosely related to a side's ability to win a case, so giving up may often increase the overall chances of winning in the future). All it proves is that ISG no longer felt they could afford to continue. And lastly, tunnel time in the US is expensive as fuck, and this has nothing to do with quality or safety, and a lot with iFly being a monopoly built on patents. There are plenty of tunnels with facilities matching or better than those of iFly's, built for much less. That's what having functioning competition does. [*] All patents are bad. Patents are a fundamentally broken system that benefits only patent lawyers, and are based on handwavy assumptions and no evidence whatsoever. But some patents are bad even compared to that baseline. And no, this has nothing to do with protecting the inventors, which isn't even established that we should be doing in the first place. Patents are all about protecting patent lawyers from having to have real jobs and big companies from having competition. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

Statistically? No. BPA for instance publishes no current fatality rate for tandems because they haven't had any tandem deaths for 20 years. And the concept of a "competent solo skydiver" is ill-defined and nobody collects any demographics numbers on which to base things. The closest thing we have to such demographics is the observation that the chance that a fatality will be a very experienced jumper has gone up, a lot. Ie. it used to be the case that students died more often than pros, nowadays their proportional share has gone down sharply, whilst the proportion of very experienced skydivers (1-2k jumps or more) has gone sharply up. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."

1. You need to tell what the container brand is if you want anything more than just guesswork. They're not all sized the same. 2. You can and should mail the manufacturer and ask about the specific reserves you are considering and the AAD you want to put in. They will most likely know whether it fits. You can also mail the manufacturers of the canopies and ask about the container. 3. If you have a current rig you like and use, you might want to buy a second rig, rather than replace it. I know it doesn't solve the fundamental question here, but it might give you a bit more flexibility in the choice of components at the cost of higher spending. "Skydivers are highly emotional people. They get all excited about their magical black box full of mysterious life saving forces."