benlangfeld

I haven’t stated an opinion on whether that data should or should not be collected yet. I think it probably should, but used cautiously. I was just elaborating on the earlier post that stated the aggregate data would only tell you about fashion.

It’s probably useful for better understanding of individual incidents. It’s not useful (indeed it’s possibly dangerous) for the purpose of spotting patterns.

I think the point is that this data would not be statistically significant without being normalised to the prevalence of each piece of equipment on all jumps. Just because every incident involves a G3 does not tell you that the G3 is causal. It tells you simply that it’s highly likely that a person having an accident is wearing a G3, simply because it’s highly likely that a person leaving an aircraft at 12,000ft is wearing a G3. Unless you can say that the G3 accounts for 50% of all jumps but 70% of all incidents, the latter number doesn’t give you any useful information.

Is the FlySight known to be much more accurate than typical altimeters in the vertical plane? I had always assumed direct pressure measurements would be more accurate and GPS was only necessary for the horizontal plane.

By that do you mean you’ve never been forced to in order to jump, or you’ve never been unfortunate enough to need to use insurance? Were you not required to pay for temporary BPA etc membership to jump there? Most of those countries say that’s a requirement, just like in the US. Is that just not enforced?

Don’t order big ticket items directly from the site. If it’s ChutingStar, call and talk to Laura, she’s awesome and will hook you up. She had the patience to sit with me for a full 3 hours and go through every little detail until my order was perfect; I not only made a purchase but learned a lot.

I’m referring to ChutingStar, not anything specific to Brazil. I asked Laura “can we space payments rather than all up front?” and she said “sure!”. My suits are from a local vendor, but I just asked informally to do 50% up-front and 50% on delivery and got the same answer. Again, nothing to do with Brazil’s custom of payment plans on credit cards.

I paid for my rig in three equal instalments during the 3 month waiting period. It’s just about to be delivered soon. I pay for my suits in two installments, top and tail of the order, and they take about 4-6 weeks. Is this the norm?

Indeed, I'm now more confused than I was at the beginning, and even made the mistake of switching N and kg in my last post. I absolutely regret having said anything!

I am pretty sure that this is wrong. If you want to define wingloading as "weight devided by surface area", the resulting unit has to be something like N/m^2 (or the equivalent imperial units like lbf/ft^2 ??) You cannot redefine the formula without redefining the units. You broke wikipedia ;-) Pounds are a measure of weight (the US/Imperial measure of mass being slugs - seriously). We talk about wing loading in units of lbs/ft^2. That's consistent with the edit. N/m^2 would be consistent with the apparently erroneous original definition involving mass.

Thank you for that detail, Peter. I genuinely do appreciate it, because I like to be sure I've really understood. I hope I didn't upset anyone with my questioning.

Indeed. Maybe a moderator could split the thread? Apologies for going off-topic! For what it's worth, I'm convinced, and have edited the wikipedia definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wing_loading&oldid=836065606

That's exactly my point. Wing loading as strictly defined (at least the definition I see, which apparently is not the common usage) doesn't change, because it's defined as a function of mass. A manoeuvre introduces a component of acceleration, which does not alter mass, but does alter weight. It therefore does not alter wing loading per the strict definition. If your argument is that the definition on wikipedia is wrong, then I'll propose a fix to it and correct my understanding. Indeed John LeBlanc states the definition as a function of weight. Which is correct? If it's that the existing definition is indeed correct for aerodynamics in general but not useful to parachuting, then that's cool, but maybe we should have a distinct term with a different definition to avoid confusion. It may seem pedantic, but bad things happen when we think we're talking about the same thing but we're actually not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure.

Coming from a background in Physics, this makes me squirm. So, I think the conclusion is that when we say “wing loading”, we might actually mean wing loading, or we might mean the combination of wing loading and load factor. Fair enough.

So do you suggest Wikipedia be corrected? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_loading I believe I’m still correct in that the wing loading is not changed, being defined as a function of mass. One’s load factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_factor_(aeronautics)) changes, and the impact on fight characteristics might be the same as an increased wing loading, but going full pedant, the two are not the same.

Was this a typo? My understanding is that wing loading is based on mass, not weight, and so manoeuvres such as spiralling increase your suspended weight but not technically your wing loading.

It’s not. I tried both the G3 and KISS, the latter of which feels far more spacious.

The packers at my home DZ apparently normally single-stow. I was having “brisk” (as in “woah wtf was that?!”) openings until today, when my rig was packed double-stowed, and my openings were smooth as butter. It’s a Silhouette, so still not slow, but a whole lot more comfortable. Give me double stows or give me death! (not actually unlikely)

The first place is the first link, yes, and they fly a Caravan (PT-OGX). I've never seen the 185 there, the listing must be old. The second link is actually the same dropzone (though the banner photo was taken above the city of Rio). Skydive Resende has several schools who all list themselves online as if they were separate dropzones, but there's one aircraft, one landing area and one manifest. Several of those schools used to jump from Jacarepaguá airport (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroporto_de_Jacarepagu%C3%A1) actually in the city of Rio, and I believe have used 182/185s from there, but that's apparently rare these days and they've basically moved out to Resende. The other dropzone I referenced is in Búzios, and they don't have a website, but do have Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skybuziosparaquedismo/. I was wrong, they're actually flying a Cessna 210 (PR-SVT). They opened last month and I havn't actually been there yet.

It's easily reached for a day's jumping. Obviously out of range if you just want to get one in before breakfast, but do keep it in mind, there's some nice scenery :)

Skydive Resende is my home DZ and is a 2.5 hour drive from Rio. It's open at the weekends and occasionally on a Friday. It's perhaps a little less organised than some of the big US DZs, but this is South America after all Another DZ has recently opened around the same distance in the opposite direction out of Rio, but they fly a Cessna 172 and it's jump tickets are quite a lot more expensive. Let me know if you'd like any other info or help while you're here.

You really should as best as possible. It's the first thing I was taught when learning to drive also. Assume everyone else in the sky (on the road) is a homicidal maniac and fly (drive) to avoid them. If you don't do this, you're handing off control of your survival to people with potentially unknown skill. There's a very small group of people I don't look at with suspicion when I'm under canopy; many with significantly more experience than me are not included.

I’m not sure. Also, I just noticed the “pre-“ in the thread title; I’m not sure if the serial numbers always worked like that. Either way, a quick call to Aerodyne and you’ll have all the info you could possibly want. They are very helpful and attentive.

In Brazil or elsewhere?

Are you looking for harness sizing or pack volume? If the latter, the size is in the serial number and you can find a guide at http://atools.flyaerodyne.com/download/IconSizingChart.pdf