Kenzdik96

It is a cool technique to know, and very useful for making field repairs where I don't have access to a sewing machine. When I am at my loft though, I seldom use it because sewing is rather fast, and I don't have to explain to people who don't know how it's done why the bartack is missing...

Billvon is right, it is about skills and not the numbers. You might have been fine with that wl 50 jumps ago, or you might not be fine for another 200. Btw, is the Sabre in question a 1, 2, or a 3? If it is a 1, I would recommend staying clear of it in favour of some more modern design....

Yes, exactly as described in that video, squeeze risers together and attempt to bring the linetwist as low as possible. That will help keep the canopy level, and once the line twist gets low enough, enable you to have some control of the parachute even before the line twist is fully resolved. This is the second best method of dealing with linetwists on all parachutes (square, elliptical, crossbraced), where the best method is, of course, preventing them in the first place. As for prevention methods, semi stowless bags help somewhat, so does packing technique (on some canopies), and having your gear sized properly and suited to the activity you are doing (wingsuit options for your rig if you are flying a wingsuit etc). But by far the best prevention method is having a proper body position on opening. A 360 camera can be a very useful tool when investigating body position errors. A useful anti-line twist tip (although I am not sure how applicable it is to wingsuit) is to keep your hands on your chest and rest your chin on your fists immediately after throwing your PC, while simultaneously getting your legs together and touching your knees and ankles together. This does several things: makes sure your body is as symmetrical as possible, keeps your hands away from grabbing the risers prematurely (preventing your hand or finger from being caught in a line twist, can lead to broken bones), and as your chin is resting on your fists it forces you to look at the horizon instead of at your deploying canopy, which in term boosts your situational awareness and gives you proper warning when your canopy is beginning to turn during the opening and enables you to correct the turn with your harness before a violent line twist fully develops.

I would recommend using regular rubber bands and double stowing everything, and not worrying about the pull force that much. Hear me out. Single stowing can produce sufficient force on majority of the lines, but (speaking about locking stows) the line that sits on the bottom touching the grommet isn't as tensioned as the rest of them, nor does it have sufficient friction and can fall out much easier. If it falls out, it can wrap around something and cause a bag lock. As for the non locking stows, they are touching the rubber all around, but if you are using the same rubber bands for everything, they are going to be too loose to single stow for the non locking ones. You could use smaller rubber bands and single stow for the non locking stows, but that means keeping spares of both sizes, and that sucks. The most important thing is that your lines disconnect from the stows in the correct order. Bag locks aren't fun, line dumps even less so. Pull force is secondary to that. I would also recommend getting a semi stowless. Much easier to pack, better openings, less chance of a bag lock. If they are good enough for your reserve, they should be good enough for your main.

I don't have the numbers but the thing about skyhook is that even though it was designed to disconnect based on force (ie is the RPC or the cutaway main pulling stronger) it actually disconnects based on pulling angle (ie which direction is the cutaway main pulling). Even though skyhook was the first available MARD, it isn't really the best one around. Therr are systems out there that work based on force, and are agnostic of pulling direction. I am hoping UPT will update the skyhook some time in the future to address this.

While their perspective does take some getting used to, 360 cameras are great for showing your body position during track/deployment, not to mention for wingsuiting, but positioning one for best footage usually makes it stand out not really flush with your helmet. They can cause a very good snag point both with your own and someone else's gear, and you can easily hit them on the aircraft or on someone else during an exit. Not something I would recommend for newer jumpers.

Even though in theory there is a miniscule chance that it could cause an opening delay or a horseshoe, I believe that in real life a properly made magnetic slider keeper (like the ones you can get at any major skydiving gear store) will not cause any issues, as the slider is loading the magnet in shear direction, and that is the way magnets release the easiest. Force of an inflated main being cut away is fairly large. I did see some homemade designs which incorporated magnets but had inadequate fabric length and construction which could possibly tie into a knot behind your head and cause the magnet not to release. Fortunately, the fabric quality on those was sufficiently poor that they would probably rip before causing a horseshoe. As for your original question, I believe that most modern AAD designs are fairly well protected against ESD or magnetic interference (at least in the order of magnitude that a small slider keeper magnet can produce).

In what time period did the person in question make the 30 skydives? There is difference in getting recurrent after 40 days for someone with 30 skydives all made in 2 months and 30 skydives made over 3 years.

I wouldn't bother with creating a "one size fits all people and all cameras" kind of rule, as neither people nor cameras are one size fits all. The primary consideration for me would be the type of camera setup and the likelihood of such setups causing issues with any of the phases of flight. While I would be comfortable giving the integrated camera glasses to any licensed jumper, I would expect someone to demonstrate adequate body stability during opening in all circumstances (opening in track, in a turn, and similar) before having a foot or a helmet mounted camera. There are trainings and examinations for many aspects of our life, you don't just get to drive a forklift after 50 hours of driving your car. Why can't we start teaching people stuff and making skill based decisions instead of limiting people from doing things based on arbitrary experience conditions just to cover our own asses? Exactly this! The video many are using to advocate against flying camera is just an example of people trying to link up without sufficient skill to do so, getting too invested in the process, and loosing altitude awareness. The only difference the camera makes in this particular example is that we know about it because they were wearing cameras. Otherwise this would have been covered up, as for some weird reason we still have a stigma against AAD fires compared to other malfunctions. I am fairly confident that examples like these happen somewhat often but we just don't know about it. While the benefits of AAD are numerous and they are one of the greatest skydiving inventions since the 3-ring, the drawback is that many things that would have been over in the incidents forum remain unknown. And this is exactly the kind of thinking that holds back progress. We have been doing it like this since forever so just keep doing it like this regardless of it being bullshit or not. Many years back, there was a requirement of having 100 jumps on a round before being permitted to jump a square. Some Lord might have kept that regulations under the same logic "we've been doing it like that".

There is no better learning option than analyzing camera footage after the jump, as I find that jump detail recollection of even very experienced jumpers is usually rather poor. These things can help enable people with jump video without presenting a snag hazard on the exterior of the helmet, making weak spots on helmet surface caused by drilling, and without endangering people on the ground by falling externally mounted cameras. Therefore, I would absolutely recommend these as a good learning tool to licensed jumpers. Image quality will not be the greatest (especially with a full face camera visor over them), but going back to the situation OP described, very few people under 200 jumps are on a high enough flying level to be concerned with jump video quality. By the way, even though OP said that these looked like somewhat bulkier sunglasses (and I remember them looking like that some years back when they first appeared on the market), a quick google search reveals that todays models look like ordinary sport sunglasses, or even like ordinary thicker framed eyeglasses. Even though there are still some recommendations that say your safe camera flying abilities miraculously appear on jump #201, the reality is that in the 21st century, people who want to mount a hidden camera will go out and do it, as the camera technology is sufficiently advanced to allow it. I would much rather have low experience people wear a snag free camera, show their videos to more experienced people, and having an option of someone telling them what they are doing wrong than forcing them to wear the camera in secret and teach themselves from the footage.

There is an app called spot assist that is advertised (among other things) to help find cutaway canopies and freebags.

You might want to head over here and ask the camera people :)

Over here, they are somewhat popular, maybe a third of the jumpers use them. Openings are rather good, as they help reduce the linetwists, as the bag is.more stable when leaving the rig. Improvement in speed of deployment is marginal, and so is the improvement in speed of packing. My primary reason for using them is less line twists, and fewer rubber bands to change out.

Yeah, if you decide on modifying the rig yourself I would recommend talking to a professional about it (if you are not one yourself), or if you are inclined to perform some DIY rigging, at least doing way more research than the person who did the modification in the picture above. I would for start look into military tandem systems, NAA makes some that are (probably) legal to jump in the USA, but I don't know if they will sell them to civilians. If that fails (or if legal to jump in the USA is not a requirement for you), you can find expired Strong tandems relatively cheap and use those, or alternatively, there are some non TSOd manufacturers in Russia / Eastern Europe who will happily sell you a military (or regular) tandem for not that much money (although some are of dubious quality), and equally happily sew you any kind of "passenger" harness you ask for.

I stand corrected, I haven't seen any Icarus or Parachute Systems reserves, I have checked the Icarus (NZ) reserve manual and the Icarus (World) manuals, they both have the checkboxes, couldn't find a manual for the decelerator. People around here mostly jump Smart, Techno, and PD stuff, so I didn't really have that much contact with Icarus reserves. You learn something every day :)