sheeks

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Everything posted by sheeks

  1. I think the Mill-Spec version of the alliance rubber bands should be fine, i haven't been able to test with a fish scale yet but it's looking good
  2. It appears the mill-spec bands despite being stretchier than i'm used to, don't seem to break as easy as the others i've ordered a fish scale and if it takes the required 8-12 pounds to undo the stows then i will jump them and see how well they hold up compared to the others
  3. Do you double-wrap your tube stows? Some say not too, but it seems the lines can roll out easily otherwise
  4. I've ordered the mill-spec ones too, and they stretch an insane amount and then remain stretched out rather than returning to their original size. Not good either so i guess we're all just kinda fucked then? Lol
  5. Ever since the global working shortage it seems all the rubber bands from chutingstar arrive somewhat, with no powder, and break super easy. This has been consistant among multiple shipments obviously this isn't ideal i was wondering if anyone knew of any companies selling good, legit, fresh rubber banda?
  6. It’s in my experience that Skydive Danielson is the type of place that creates memories that you’ll likely be thinking about for decades down the line. People travel from hours in every direction - driving past other DZ’s, to come get some jumps, have some laughs, and eat some food on the grill with the warm & inviting company that inhabits this dropzone. It’s big enough to accomodate anybody who wants to jump, but small enough to keep a proper mom-and-pop sort of vibe that ensures everybody is taken care of. I don’t know how the DZ is located in a place where it seems like every sunset somehow has radiangly pink clouds, and every night bright full of stars, but it makes the hour & 20 minute drive for me feel a lot closer 30 seconds.
  7. That’s usually what I do, but it seems the fabric starts to drape over all the sides of my hand I have on the roll under the canopy
  8. I’ve noticed that when packing, when I go to set the canopy down it tends to get pretty sloppy and distorted. Sort of just drapes all over my arm during the setting process and I feel like the lines get a bit moved around and the fabric unflaked Obviously it’s not the end of the world but it would be nice to be able to neaten up that part of packing I try to keep forward tension on the fabric while doing it but doesn’t seem to be enough to keep the canopy shape in place Do you guys have any tips on keeping the flaked shape the same when setting it down?
  9. I’ve never been able to find a record of someone dying of a hard opening while using dacron lines, altho u can obviously still get slammed also, you would need a huge drogue to slow you down to 75mph from terminal, a size that would be extraordinarily obstructive to fit on a sport rig
  10. sfzombie i really respect and appreciative the innovation behind this idea, but it just overall doesn’t come across as very practical. i can think of many jumps i’ve done where an extra few seconds of having to tinker around with a drogue system would’ve likely caused trouble in some way or another. a lot of times when it’s time to pull, it’s simply time to pull. there’s a reason why you need 500 jumps to fly near a tandem pair in the sky there’s things like slider snaps, proper packing and slowing your body down during opening that are just much more practical to deal with. you’d be suprised with how slow you could make your body by dearching and widening up alone, it’s what i do for deployment time you also don’t want to be too too slow at pull time either or you could get all sorts of twisted up i know plenty of people with hundreds of jumps including myself who’ve never had a proper hard opening. if you don’t have dacron lines on that raven, that’s more of a life-saver than a drogue would be maybe spend some time in the tunnel working on your arching j dearching just seeing how high and floaty you can get. when i deploy i pretend i’m in the tunnel trying to go upwards, and i swear sometime it’s like i almost don’t even feel the first few seconds of opening
  11. sfzombie13, you’re like me. i’ve thought about stuff like this before too when i first started jumping, but it’s really just not practical. when i started jumping, like you, i read stuff online about hard openings and it scared me, but spending your skydiving career in fear of a hard opening isn’t a practical way to embrace the sport The idea you’re proposing would not only add a lot of extra trouble, but it would hinder you from being able to easily skydive with your friends and celebrate the sky properly i’ve only been jumping for a few years, but let me fill you in on a little secret: Most people don’t know shit about their equipment, most people don’t listen to the manufacturers recommendations on packing, and most people are in on the long-running joke of packing their parachutes as half-assedly as possible and saying “i hope this one opens good!”, and 99.9% of the time it manages to work out for them if you don’t want to die of a hard opening, just pack nicely, fly a parachute that opens softly, de-arch before opening to slow down, keep your eyes on the horizon during deployment, and use dacron lines. hell, maybe even get a slightly domed slider to help ensure it catches air properly. double stow your locking stows, replace them if worn, and make sure they have a solid 2.5 to 3 inches of line bite size. flat track away from formations, and stop forward speed before opening. a lot of people stack all the odds against themselves. they fly steeply away from a track, single-stow their locking stows with a one inch bite, trash pack parachutes that are known to open quickly, use no-stretch lines, and somehow miraclously manage to only have a slammer once every season or two i’ve found using a “pack monkey” bought online helps with slider control during the S-folds a spectre with dacron lines does me wonders, a pilot with dacron lines works wonders for others. not sure why you’re using a raven as a main, but who knows if it opens well for you then so be it there are tons of videos and articles online you can read and watch about hard openings, some of jon leblancs stuff is informative. they’re not just a mystery occurance, it’s pretty well known these days the reasons behind them
  12. like a few weeks or a month
  13. If your locking stows are loose and the canopy comes out of the bag early, the slider won't be able to do it's job properly. Use fresh rubber bands and double stow the locking stows. Also, the safire2 doesn't allow dacron lines. Use dacron lines, and maybe even a slightly domed slider if you wanted to be extra certain. Like the same length and width as the regular slider for the canopy size, but in my personal experience just 2 inches of dome doesn't really increase the opening time much but does increase the reliability of openings. Make sure when quartering the slider that the fabric is as deep in the canopy as possible. I got my dome slider at paraconcepts.com A spectre or pilot with dacron lines, with tight locking stows, are about some of the most reliable openings you can get. The hybrid pilot would soften the openings even farther.
  14. I got a reserve canopy from him that came from Russia too, it came in just fine. Russia actually has really great skydiving deals, I also got my main and AAD from Russia as well (not from Jeff though)
  15. I thought I edited my post after I looked it up Now that you mention it, I actually remember now when he died, I was at Wormtown festival an word of his death spread rapidly. I had just seen him live a few months prior at Peach festival
  16. Lot of allman brothers members been dying the past few years, glad he’s still alive
  17. I think there’s three practical things people can do to help prevent hard openings 1. Tight locking stows, with high quality rubber bands or stows. If you’re using regular rubber bands, DOUBLE STOW THEM. If your locking stows release early, the opening can be very hard. I use fresh rubber bands for my middle two stows every jump, maybe excessive though. 2. Dacron lines, as everyone knows for several reasons. 3. A slightly domed slider. It will be a lot harder for the slider to come down the lines unevenly allowing wind to go past it, if it’s domed. I used a standard 23 x 31 size slider on my canopy, except with 2 inches of dome to it. The openings take the same amount of time as a regular 23 x 31 slider, but the way the slider inflates in the middle gives me peace of mind in knowing that it’s far less likely to slide down prematurely compared to one that’s just purely flat when it’s fully stretched out. Think about it, what catches air better, a bowl or a flat plate?
  18. Someone at my dropzone has an old hornet and it’s the easiest thing to pack in the world, and suprisingly enough after much research it’s actually made out of ZP and was known for how easy to pack it was, even knew. Were there any specific disadvantages to this type of ZP coating compared to the more popular kind today?
  19. Ahh thanks man, those videos were really informative and pretty much filled me in on all the questions I had. It looks like i’ll be pulling the kill line farther in to extend tmy PC life and make sure things are functioning as they should
  20. I only have a handful of jumps on my new PC but in my few jumps I’ve had the following happen: 1. After landing, it was so far collapsed that the hackey had gone through the bottom square hole in the mesh 2. On another jump, the bridle was really twisted up It deployed just fine, but I could’ve sworn reading somewhere once that these could be problems indicative of a kill line that’s setup too short or something? I notice there’s some slack in the kill like in my D-bag even after cocking it, but I’m able to get blue in the window, and it catches air on the ground reasonably fine. So maybe i’m just overthinking things, considering I can get blue in the window? What’s your 2 cents
  21. sheeks

    Spectre

    I’ve got a 2003 Spectre 170 with dacron lines and slightly domed slider, 23 x 31 standard L x W with a slight 2” inches of dome. I got this setup because I was looking for soft openings, and they are soft, but there’s no obnoxiously long snivel like I was expecting. From the time I pitch it takes a standard 700-1,000’ish feet to have a canopy over my head, and so far every jump it has opened perfectly symmetrically and on heading, with the slider slowly coming down the lines but not hanging up. I’ve never had a canopy open so reliably before, without even a hint of line twists. It flies great, and it flares perfectly fine. I was afraid it was going to come in steeply with a shoddy flare based on what some people say about the spectre, but maybe they’re on crack because I’m able to get perfect soft landings with the PD standard stock brake settings. Overall, it’s obviously not going to zip around & make adrenaline course through your body, but it opens, flies, and lands perfectly gently with no problems, which is exactly what I was looking for. I give it an A+ standard for a nice, steady ride.
  22. Oh dope, thanks man. Yeah I know they’d all be down now, I was just thinking more long term because I was thinking of possibly moving to the Netherlands a few years down the line. I think I was just confused because some placers do tandems lower, but looks like fun jumpers get the 13k standard everywhere. Dopesauce
  23. The dropzones I can find there only do 9,000-10,000 foot jumps, are there any that i’m missing?