Westerly

Yea you can refuse a test, but in some states refusing the test is an automatic revocation of your drivers license. It's burred in the terms and conditions when you receive your license. When I got my drivers license I remember signing a document that says I agree to any police issued field sobriety tests and that if I refuse I agree to a revocation of my license for not less than one year.

Doubt it. A judge and jury probably wont believe your story. Even if they did, the police would probably just charge you with public drunkenness or something of the sort. Also, in some states it's considered DUI if you're drunk and in immediate control of a vehicle. As in, if you're sitting next to your car with your keys in pocket leaning against the hood and you're drunk. That can still be a DUI. Also, most states have laws against open containers or transportation of alcohol in a manner that it can be reached by the driver. In other words, if the beer can be accessed by the driver while driving, that's illegal in some states. Open containers anywhere in the vehicle except the trunk is also illegal in some states. You'd be better off taking responsibility for the DUI and consider yourself lucky you dont live in another country which will revoke your license for life and throw you in jail if you get a DUI. The USA is way too leanent on DUIs as it is. It should be that if you're drunk off your ass driving, your license is gone for 5 years first offense and 90 days jail time minimal. Second offense, you never drive again and minimum six months in jail.

Maybe so, but where's the data? Unless one has high speed video of the opening, one often has no clue what happened. If you have a slammer, do you blame the canopy or blame your packing? Even if you're not sure you did anything wrong? Not saying you are wrong. Maybe sometimes the spreading forces just happen to be higher than usual, given the way the bottom skin & nose inflates, and pushes the slider down suddenly despite the upward forces on the slider. Maybe it would make no difference if the slider slipped down 1" vs. being physically restrained all the way up by some mechanical connection with light force. Or would it? I've noticed that wind and turbulence may have an effect on the opening. I've never had a true slammer, but I've had a few harder openings that left me dropping the F word a few times. The canopy sniveled for maybe 1-2 seconds and then the slider magically popped all the way down the lines. Anyway, one thing I noticed is that the few I had occurred in windy or turbulent conditions. As in, as soon as the canopy opened fully it was immediately turbulent and windy.

You would need to count direct and indirect. If you open hard enough to knock you out, you break a riser and then you plummet to the earth unconscious and unable to cut away, do we really need to argue schematics over whether that was a broken riser that caused the death or a hard opening? btw. that was a real fatality not that long ago. So if you use that as the standard, than I think hard openings are responsible for many deaths, at least a few last year alone. Several of the fatality reports I've read from the last few years have mentioned hard openings. Not necessarily killed on opening, but disabled or otherwise affected enough that the hard opening ended in death. Almost everyone I know who has at least 1000 jumps has mentioned having at least one hard opening that was hard enough to cause injury (ranging from moderate to serious). So I think hard openings are far more common than they should be.

Also worth noting is if you over-stuff your rig it's going to be uncomfortable on your back (it wont sit flat), it will look like crap (it will be rounded out and look pregnant) and the container may stretch permanently and you'll forever distort the intended shape of the container. The best idea is to just get the correct rig for the sizes you intend to fly. If you think you're going to downsize quickly, maybe it's better to just keep using the rentals for a tad longer until you're ready to move into a size that's more long term.

John LeBlanc specifically addresses this in the video below. It forgot where he talks about it, but he brings up a few points specific to that type of line stowing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-mUyy1fhjE

Curious what everyone makes of this video. It's not exactly clear what happened other than the pilot chute looks like it did not have enough drag to extract the reserve freebag. Why is unclear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaYQ6iP8zlg

I looked at my reserve PC today and noticed to my surprise there are no limiter tapes in it like the main PC has. I am curious why. I know the spring helps kind of act like a limiter, but I can easily stretch the spring to full length without that much effort (far less force than a fully inflated reserve PC at 120 MPH would produce). I noticed that when I collapse the PC to the point that the mesh is the only thing holding it's shape, the PC diameter in essence goes from 30" or so to about 15". Thus I would imagine when the reserve PC inflates, as it extracts the bag and there is a load on the PC, the PC in essence kind of collapses partly because there are no limiter tapes which would reduce its diameter and the amount of force it can produce.

I noticed that some manufacturers have an improper pin to pin-tab relationship by recommendation. For example, my Aerodyne rig shows the pin routed with a smiley face in the manual. However, when pining the rig closed that way, the PC would rotate the pin down into the container before pulling it open due to how the pin tab is sewn on the bridle. I am curious why a manufacturer would recommend that when it seems obvious it's a wrong relationship.

Exactly. That would be more of a poised exit. You said Mr. 15K jumps didn't explain why. That makes me think he doesn't have a good reason. All the advice I dispense comes with the reasons why it's "good advice". he said because it was faster to get down to the formation. He mentioned that if you do a tail exit there is a higher chance of messing it up and getting flipped around since it's a more difficult exit. He mentioned it's typically faster to exit facing the nose and turn 180 on the hill as it's a more stable exit and you're less likely to get flipped or fly off heading.

The manual shows you can change the dive mode. "Explanation The Dive Type mode can be used to change parameters when the VISO II detects freefall exit and canopy deployment. 0 = ---- (blank, factory default parameters) 1 = SLO (Slow) * 2 = STU (Student) ** * Dive Type, 1: SLO (Slow) In SLO the exit fall rate and deployment calculation parameters are changed to fit very slow falling types of dives, like wing suit dives, etc. ** Dive Type, 2: STU (Student) In STU the descent rate parameters are changed to allow detection of short freefalls, (2 sec)" https://www.lbwebstore.com/skin/frontend/tm_themes/lbwebstore/images/media/manuals/Viso2/VISOII_Manual_040909.pdf Does anyone know what changing the mode will actually do? Does it detect your opening faster/ slower?

I know an LO at a very large DZ that has had 4th stage cancer for several years. He still jumps every week. I think he had to take some time off during the treatments, but afterwards he was back jumping again.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the US Constitution covers property rights. That's a big part of the problem. This isn't a criminal procedure, it's civil. It is criminal when you're the victim of a crime. The police cant just take your crap without cause for no reason whatsoever. That's illegal and it is specifically unconstitutional. Having some cash in your pocket is not and has never been probable cause for anything. There is no legal limit to how much cash you can carry on your person.

I've had bands break after just one jump. After some more research I determined that I accidentally wrapped it wrong which caused it to be much harder to release. As far as replacing them after 4-5 jumps, that's similar to my experience as well. Occasionally I'll get them to last longer, but I normally replace them after 5 jumps or so. However, I do NOT wait until they fail outright. If they are broken more than 30% of the way through, I trash them. You should be replacing the bands when they are worn, not when they are broke. I'm not a fan of the bungee cords myself. They are a lot stronger than rubber bands which is not necessarily a good thing. Sure, it's good for durability but if the lines wrap around a stow and wont release, the locking stow is going to need to fail otherwise you'll have a bag lock. A rubber band will fail under the drag of a PC at terminal if the lines get hung up on the stows, but I am less sure about a bungee. I havent seen any testing so I cant say, but they are stronger and so in theory they would be far less likely to fail when you need them to.

If you're using small bands and they provide adequate stow tension. But often times they dont because people use the large bands and the lines basically just fall out. There are videos on YouTube showing what happens when the locking stows come off early. The results are very serious and can be lethal. People have died from hard openings and I've met more than one person who broke their neck or suffered some other form of serious injury from a hard opening. Here is a video of what happens when the locking stows come off too early (bag strip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdR47kcMRz8 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=134145;t=search_engine

I think we found the problem to your very hard openings right here.

I got the link wrong. Here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20160329231946/https://parachutistonline.com/safety_training/ask_a_rigger/double-wrap-stow-bands Regarding the Javelin, here is the current manual: https://www.sunpath.com/_docs/manual/spp_manual_print_rev1.pdf Page 80, Fig 114 shows double wrapped line stows. I cant tell if the locking stows are single or double wrapped, but the line stows are double wrapped.

Mirage, Aerodyne, Rigging Innovations (Curv semi-stowless packing manual) and Sunpath/ Javelin have photos in their manual showing bags with double wrapped stows. It's a bit hard to tell, but it appears that the photos in UTP's user manual show the bag as double wrapped on the locking stows as well. Icarus does not mention double stowing in their manual that I can see, but I found at least one Icarus related reference that claims they recommend double stowing here: https://parachutistonline.com/safety_training/ask_a_rigger/double-wrap-stow-bands

Aerodyne says this: "Double stow the center closing stow. " In the instructions for closing their semi-stowless bag. https://www.flyaerodyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IconManual052017_online.pdf Also, while some companies dont explicitly recommend one way or another, I noticed the photos in the instruction manual for most rigs show the bag double stowed.

But who wants to take a chance on a used camera with a non replaceable battery?Tons of people? I bought a used Session. It's great. The thing is barely used but much less than a brand new one. plus they go for about $100 used. That's nothing in the world of skydiving. You can spend that in one morning just on jump tickets.

Depends on what you are looking for in skydiving. That's like asking if you should buy a car or an SUV while not providing a single detail about what you intend to use the vehicle for.

How is that way too complicated? I literally used that technique on my very first line twist in AFF Cat B. It was my second jump ever and it worked fine. It's pretty easy to do. I literally watched this video a few nights before, I got linetwists and decided to try what I saw in the video and it worked fine despite having zero experience with line twists at the time.

I have the FF ProFly jumpsuit. It's great. I've done about 75 jumps in it and it's holding up fine so far. Admittedly, it's not quite as nice as what you would get spending $500 on a US brand, but for the price it's a much better bargain. Jumpsuits in the USA are hugely overpriced and there are several companies overseas that offer much better value. ProFly shipped my suit out pretty quickly too. From order time to arrival was about three weeks. Another company to look into is Vertex Sky Sports. I got a Vertex RW suit from them for much less than what I would pay in the USA and the quality was fairly good. Even a bit better than ProFly and about on par with most US brands except for half the cost.

It will be a long time before they are 'gone'. You sill still be able to find them on your local classifieds site for a long time.

It's not that critical honestly. When you splat the packjob down on the ground it's going to shift anyway. Moreover, when it comes out of the bag in the air, it's 'really' going to shift. Ever seen what a canopy looks like just after it's out of the D bag but before it inflates? Here is a still I took from a video I shot yesterday. I looked perfectly fine going into the bag. Not so much when it comes out at 125 MPH. https://ibb.co/hK8w1T The things you really want to focus on are: 1. Cock pilot chute well. 2. use adequate stow tension and line bight length, especially on the locking stows (12 lbs+ is what most say). 3. Route the bridle through container correctly and make sure the closing loop is not wrapped around any lines or the bridle. 4. Clear the slider stops from lines before bagging the canopy. 5. make sure all four slider grommets are against the slider stops both while packing and before closing the bag, and make sure the slider is quartered. 6. conduct a line walkdown check and ensure the toggles are set correctly. There are other things, but that's the most of it. The rest is mostly opening quality. Try to keep the lines to the center and the fabric to the outside, but honestly it's going to move around once it hits the air anyway as the photo demonstrates.