maretus

ManBird wrote : "if you're leaving the plane with your wings closed, you will lose enough altitude to get under the plane, even if it's for a quarter of a second. " ---------------------- Exactly so. I was quite freaked out about the stabilizer too, but then I jumped with couple of my friends and had couple of jumps on video and there you really see how much you lose altitude if you exit all wings closed. As to the original questions, if you have problems with your exits, ask someone to video them. It really helps to see what is flipping you over! And as a bonus, 2way is much better than going solo. (Yes, in skyflying too... ;) http://www.ufufreefly.com

Congratulations to winners ! What were their choice of canopies and wingloadings ? I'd guess : 1st place: Hans Paulson - ????? 2nd place: T.J. Landgren (Precision Factory Pilot) - Xaos 27 ??? 3rd place: Jay Moledski (P.D. Factory Pilot) - Velocity ?? http://www.ufufreefly.com

Hmm, as previous writer stated, the change in density is quite marginal. You wrote : --------------------------------------------- "I know it wasn't until after my 3rd jump that I had it dialed back in." --------------------------------------------- Not to blame you on anything but could it be that you were just a notch off or having a "bad swoop day". It happens to everyone sometimes and then you just have to accept it and say to yourself : "this is not my day". In those days, I know it, you tend to look harder on other people and concentrate on finding faults in their approaches, just to point out that other people make mistakes too. Human mind is an interesting thing and works in mysteriuos ways... http://www.ufufreefly.com

I wonder wheter Patrick deGayardon would have been among the first who made succesful wingsuit BASE-jumps ? http://www.ufufreefly.com

Yep, exactly my experience too. I used to own Javelin DOM 95 or 96 and it had similar reserve flap. I practised sitflying, standup and some headdown with it and never had any problems with the reserve flap. The main flap did open occasionally though. http://www.ufufreefly.com

If you already are a experienced wingsuit pilot and experienced freefall photographer then of course it's a good idea. You might get some tips from example Vesa who hangs around here by the name of vesatoro. He was a wingsuit videoman in Hercules Boogie 2002 and knows quite a bit about fliying wingsuits and using camera with them. http://www.ufufreefly.com

Jussi, it's never too cold to jump a birdman suit. We made a nice 3-way in Utti last weekend, it was "only" -25 C in exit altitude (4000m). :) But it was well worth it... http://www.ufufreefly.com

(Disclaimer : I only have one CRW jump in my logbook, so what do I know, but anyway...) This is an issue I've thought about often and also discussed with some local CRW-jumpers. Despite all the reasoning and explanations I still can't see why not to use cypres in CRW. It certainly will not fire in downplane or any other kind of situation when there is canopy above you. DJL quoted : "CRWdogs don't die because of too little out, we diec because we have tons of shit out." That is partially true, but also CRW fatalities occur where jumper spends too much time to try to work out a wrap and has no time to activaty the reserve. Would cypres help on these occasions ? Altitude awareness is crucial thing on these situations and especially for a low-time jumper thing happen fast. I understand that if you are serious about CRW and experienced in it, you might make a choice to jump without AAD and even feel more safer doing so, but would it be ok for a beginning crewdog or a low-time jumper to have just that amount of extra backup of and AAD? http://www.ufufreefly.com

Uh ? I've always thought that stiletto has a tapered leading edge ? Look any picture of a stiletto and it doesn't look too straight in my opinion. And to the original question : The stiletto is the sweetest opening canopy I've ever jumped. It is true that it is prone to start spinning if line twists occur but there's nothing one couldn't handle. http://www.ufufreefly.com

I don't know if you ment the SkyRay or the proto that guys in Perris have flown but I don't think that the skyray needs to be ditched before deployment. For example see http://www.skyray.de/manual.html. There is a picture with guy clearly flying his canopy with skyray attached to his back so he must have deployed without ditching the wing. http://www.ufufreefly.com

Also if you plan to do wingsuit flying in future, then the bungee pilot chute is a big no-no. Get a collapsible PC. http://www.ufufreefly.com

Have you asked directly from sunrise rigging ? In their sizing charts disclaimer it says "When ordering your custom Wings please indicate on the order form exactly which main and reserve canopies you intend to use in your new rig so that we may build you the most suitable container." From that I'd get the impression that they are able to do just the right sized container for your combo. Just another thing, what's your exit weight ? Assume that you load your reserve a moderate 1.1 -> 155 * 1.1 = 170.5 lbs so you would be loading your 88 1.93 and later that 78 nearly 2.2. What kind of non crossbraced main you are thinking about loading that high ? Cobalt perphaps ? Just curious... http://www.ufufreefly.com

Yep, totally agreed. I pack my Stiletto 120 - wings W5 gromet up every time, wheter it's wingsuit jump or not. To me packing gromet up it just makes sense, since when the pin is pulled and container opened the bridle is pulling straight upwards so if you pack "regularly" gromet facing reserve, the D-bag will turn 90 degreed before coming out of container. If you pack gromet up, the D-bag will leave the container straight and requires no turns. http://www.ufufreefly.com

AggieDave wrote : (current setup: Bonehead mindwarp, no helmet). --------- Uh ? You propably meant Bonehead mindwarp, no camera ? http://www.ufufreefly.com

The (downwards) speed of the skysurfer in standup(obviously) depends highly from the board. Bigger board -> slower speed, smaller board -> faster speed. I know couple of friends who regularly jump their normal ellipticals at 120 range in skysurfing jumps also. I've always thought that skysurfers have fairly slow downwards speed, due to the fairly large amount of drag created by board. http://www.ufufreefly.com

As was stated earlier, the major difference between Classic I & II is in the zippers. Front zipper in Classic II is double zipper as in I it is single zipper. Also leg zippers in Classic II are longer so legs open up higher. As Chuck wrote, it's just question of ease getting in and out. http://www.ufufreefly.com

I'd like to see on extra field in peoples profiles for additional qualifications, for example Bird-Man Instructor, AD, AD ballmaster, etc... That would provide an interesting new dimension to searching when one could for example search for all AD licensed skydivers nearby. http://www.ufufreefly.com

I don't think that cocking the pilot chute is not so big deal either. You should learn a standard procedure that you do every time and it will be no problem. For example, as I come from jump and lay my canopy down i always cock the pilot chute immediately and after that go take bite, have something to drink, look the video etc. And as phreezone pointed out it is good policy to cock the pilot chute if you are not packing it yourself. http://www.ufufreefly.com

(1) Stiletto 120 (2) 1.5 (3) In general, very nice. Normal Stiletto openings, it likes to search for heading and turn slightly but overall very manageable. Only had linetwists couple of times and had no problems with them. http://www.ufufreefly.com

Dan wrote : "i will put money on the fact that we hold the highest tollerences in the industry. (btw we purchased a laser cutter beginning of this season, pd is the only other parachute co. we know of that owns a laser cutter. precision, icarus, aerodyne, strong, simula, bigair, paraflite, pioneer, etc all use hot knife.) " --------------------------- Don't know about your cutting tolerances but icarus says in their website : "At Icarus, we computer cut 100% of our canopies with a CAD/CAM (computer aided design/computer aided manufacture) system." and "The computer cutter - marks, labels, then cuts and seals each panel at a tolerance of +/-0.2mm, as well as calculating and generating line lengths." (http://www.icaruscanopies.com/techno.htm) That souds pretty good tolerance to me. http://www.ufufreefly.com

If you would compare Crossfire2 with similarly sized (and loaded) vengeance, what would the differences be ? Let's say the loading being 1.8-1.9 for example. Is there somebody who has actual experience on this kind of comparison ? http://www.ufufreefly.com

They are in correct order, Doug did indeed fly back into the plane. What a great stunt. http://www.ufufreefly.com

Macaulay made an important point there : "at least not with any wingsuit that currently exists. " I believe that landing with current suits is nearly impossible but what will there be in future ? If the suits continue to improve like they've improved over the last, say, 2 years, who'll know what will happen. Imho I'm quite sure that someone will try to land a wingsuit one day. http://www.ufufreefly.com

There are couple of Sparks in finland and even couple in our dropzone. What i've heard from people (never tried one myself) is that the openings can be quite painful. I heard from one Spark owner that he had to install pocket slider into that before the openings calmed down. Of course, openings can be user/canopy individual specific. http://www.ufufreefly.com

Was he wearing RSL or just had phenomenally fast hands ? If he was RSL equipped then that's a strong statement for wearing one. Good to hear he landed ok. http://www.ufufreefly.com