Westerly

This whole USPA witch hunt is getting really old. You realize the USA is possibly the last remaining major skydiving country in the world that allows AADs to be optional? Nearly every other major country that has a footprint in skydiving requires all jumpers to have AADs. They are not optional. It's good to see the USPA trying to keep us at a proper standard. Having to fill out a form after nearly dying is not a big deal.

I think that's the point. For profit prisons dont make much money without customers.

State law is completely meaningless in federal court and the feds operate under federal jurisdiction enforcing federal laws (hints the name). In theory, if the FBI or DEA found out that people are selling, smoking and otherwise possessing weed on a federal airport (or a state, county or private airport for that matter), there is jack shit the state could do to stop them from coming in, arresting everyone and charging them with federal drug related crimes and send them to a federal court for dispossession. Would that happen? Not super likely, but for example the DEA and FBI has and continue to conduct drug raids in 100% weed-'legal' states like Colorado. They are not really out busting people for possession, but they do on a regular basis arrest people for growing without a license in conjunction with other crimes regardless of what the state law says. So can the DZO be arrested? Absolutely. The police can arrest you for just about anything they want. https://www.denverpost.com/2018/08/09/denver-marijuana-grow-raids-dea-fbi/

Just another reason why I bought a MARS unit. 15 years zero maintenance or other BS. Just jump.

How is it even remotely appropriate for an instructor to have multiple AAD fires? It used to be that an AAD was your 2nd, 3rd and 4th chance all at once. If you have an AAD fire, congrats a computer saved your life and now you take up golf and quit skydiving. Now it's, 'shit I just had an AAD fire, I better get my rig packed ASAP so I can get on the next load". That's crap.

Name one person who was killed because they did a high hook and their canopy collapsed specifically because of it. Provide me the URL to the USPA fatality report.

hmmm, according to their site they seem to imply the NexGen did not come out until May 2017. They have two manuals differentiating between the two. The first says "Icon Manual May 2017 (neXgen)" https://www.flyaerodyne.com/support/ Anyway, I have an I5 Nex Gen (2018) and I have a 175 Smart LPV in there. It fits well and the rigger said that there would be room to go up one size if I wanted, which is what the manual also says. You said your Optimum 160 was a medium-tight fit and implied a 176 would be too large. Well my 175 Smart LPV fits fine in my I5. It's not overstuffed at all. A 160 LPV would probably be a bit lose.

I heard a pro wingsuiter state that he thinks there are about 5,000 active wingsuiters worldwide (BASE and skydive). Does that sound about right?

I assume your I5 and I3 are pre-next gen? The older models are basically a size smaller compared to a next-gen Icon. So stuffing a 150 LPV into an older I3 would be well outside what the container is designed to hold.

I know a guy that has a Vortex rig with thousands of jumps on it. He says he loves it. From what I've gathered, they are solid rigs. I havent spoken to anyone who said they did not like theirs. The mark-up in skydiving gear is solid and so there is room to lower the price if any lesser-known manufacturer wanted to in order to compete on price. I think $4000 for a brand new custom container, main and reserve is is a really solid deal. I've bought mid-level containers from top brands and paid $3000 just for the container alone.

The issue has been well covered already. Well discussed, but not well concluded I think. Bill mentions that spring loaded PC reserves are an issue on wingsuits, but of course there are many examples of AAD fires and people going straight to their reserve on wingsuits. How many fatalities have resulted from PC hesitations on the reserve with a wingsuit? Possibly one in Perris last year. Unconscious AAD fire. You're talking about the one in Jan? I was not there so I dont know anything other than what the reports say, but the USPA fatality report indicated his reserve deployed and inflated fully after the AAD activated.

Student mode on the Mars is insanely low. It's something like 29 MPH. Standard student mode on most devices is 45 MPH. Setting the Mars to intermediate mode is probably safer (45 MPH).

I know a Ti who has had three over the course of his career. I was on a load with a Ti this year who had a riser failure on his RSL side and it deployed his reserve (Strong rig). I agree with the need for a Collins lanyard. Every RSL and MARD should have one. With the patent expired, there is no reason not to include one.

The issue has been well covered already. Well discussed, but not well concluded I think. Bill mentions that spring loaded PC reserves are an issue on wingsuits, but of course there are many examples of AAD fires and people going straight to their reserve on wingsuits. How many fatalities have resulted from PC hesitations on the reserve with a wingsuit?

Bump for an update.

Bill Booth answered this very question in the thread below: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4839903;search_string=skyhook%20wingsuit%20bill;#4839903

I agree that it seems to be more a matter of riser symmetry and canopy planform than WL. I cutaway an otherwise standard semi-elliptical canopy loaded 1.05 to 1 because I opened with some bodytwists and it started to spiral down fast enough that my leg wing reinflated and I was spinning on my back. While a higher WL wouldn't have been great, I suspect the only thing that would have made it better (gear wise) would have been a different canopy more resistant to spiraling around. I ended up trying a P7 and found the openings to be great. Really soft and on-heading. However, to my surprise the planform is still elliptical enough that I can turn fairly sharply. The turns are actually more aggressive than the same-size Sabre 2 I had flow in the past. I am not sure this is a good thing though. As a wingsuit canopy I kind of expect the flight would be quite boring and sluggish (like the PD Horizon) in order to reduce the seriousness of it spiraling down. I suspect Aerodyne added some level of elliptical-ness to the planform to appease to those who wanted a canopy that will open well, but still retain some level of fun in flight. To my surprise, they dub the Pilot 7's 'planform factor' higher than the nine cell Pilot which kind of seems like they were going in the wrong direction with that one. I am curious if this canopy will spiral down and put you on your back if you open in twists.

I had an issue with this a few days ago as well. Tons of pop-ups on my phone making it impossible to use the site.

Maybe because dishonestly doesent come off as natural to everyone? The camera did not malfunction. It worked perfectly fine and the student did pay for a video. If anything, I'd give the TI props for releasing a video that he knows he will take on a shit load of heat for, as opposed to trying his best to cover it up like nothing happened. He may have messed up big time, but if he is willing to release to the public a video showing his mistakes and he is willing to admit his mistakes, that puts him higher on the list than a lot of people I've met in my life.

You are not going to get an answer here, because incidents that almost happend don't get a lot of publicity. You could instead ask: do we know of any fatalities where the person died because it took too much time for help to get to them? Because nobody went looking for them, since they weren't missed (yet)? I would think that there must have been incidents like that, but to be honest I don't remember any so I could be wrong. But besides avoiding fatalities, how do we feel about dead skydivers lying in a field for 9 days without anybody missing them? We had such an incident here in 2012. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=nl&sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.omroepbrabant.nl%2Fnieuws%2F150954%2FParachutist-uit-Schijndel-ligt-negen-dagen-dood-in-weiland-Teuge The DZO decided they did not like that, and implemented a check-in system. Another one followed a few years later when they changed from a C206 to a C208. In the end the decision is about cost versus benefit. Cost in this case is not just money (almost nothing) but also the added hassle to skydivers and DZO. I agree that the benefit is small.... but so is the cost, so why not? It would have been really bad to have a fairly simple landing issue (break an ankle in a hole) turn into something much more serious because there was nobody there to help. One person waited until I landed. She was actually sitting in her car, and pulled out the minute I gave her an "OK" wave after I landed. Maybe bring a cell phone? Lots of skydivers carry them for landing out or getting injured.

It also depends on whether you do HP landings on your canopy. If you dont swoop or do anything radical below 1500', you can just set your AAD to student / intermediate (Mars) mode and get the same lower activation speed benefits.

Not sure about the market in the EU, but in the USA that rig would be overpriced. I'd offer 'maybe' 2500 euros, and even at that I am not sure that's a reasonable deal without seeing it.

Anyone know of any skydiving gear deals going on over the weekend? Aerodyne is offering a sizable discount on purchase of a new container and reserve. That's the only one I've seen so far.

Because in climbing they actually take the "hard lessons," and make changes. Really good points IMO! And of course the masses will shortly chime in about needing to rapidly get rid of your harness if you have some kind of emergency. They have a point. But in making their point they fail to keep perspective about the other issues too loose nylon has caused many times in the past. and after all not everyone can afford new gear or to send harness back to the manufacturer to say what the F is this???? Actually, in climbing they ended up going the exact opposite way of what the dude you quoted said. Double-backed harnesses are dinosaurs. Almost no manufacturers make them anymore. Now they all use friction adapters which the climbing industry calls quick buckles, which are not double-backed. The only harnesses that are double-backed anymore are very cheap, bottom-of-the-barrel value harnesses and harnesses for special applications. The rest all use friction adapters like parachuting harnesses have. However, the friction adapters used in climbing are much smaller and possibly more effective than the ones used in parachute applications as gear weight is a major consideration in climbing. No harness used in climbing is specifically intended for you to bail out out of as quick as possible any more than parachuting harnesses are. I dont know where you pulled that BS from. If you cant afford to send your rig in after experiencing a major malfunction of the harness, then you cant afford skydiving--period. That's ridiculous. Where do you come up with this shit?

I think that AADs are quite reliable. They have saved thousands of lives so far between the three major brands. I can only think of one instance where an AAD failed to activate when the speed and altitude parameters were met. In every other case I've heard of the AAD activated as designed. There have been a few instances where the reserve did not open in time, but that could be possibly mitigated with a higher activation altitude setting.