FrogNog

I'm saying I consider "click here to make things better!" campaigns a waste of time because the time spent organizing, thinking about, educating / communicating, and clicking would be more effectively spent doing _anything_ else to solve the problem. Clicking a link to change the price someone pays for their ads by a tenth of a cent, or moving someone's Google results ranking by one thousandth of a position for a month until Google makes their next change to their ranking rules is pathetic. Yes, if ten thousand people pitch in there will be a difference. But I'd rather spend my time telling random people I meet who are interested in skydiving that they should call the local DZ, how much it costs, and give them the phone number. And I appreciate not being threatened in a forum reply that Skyride is going to bankrupt my dropzone. As much as I dislike Skyride's actions, I find this concept highly unlikely. I accept that clicking a link or two "may" make a difference in something. Anything "may" be possible. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Another reason to wear them outside the suit is if you wear them inside or clipped to your rig. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

My life is too short to try and change the world by clicking on links. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Who are these people and why do they yell? I hate yellers, that's the time to be quiet and listen. It could be the pilots yelling curses followed by instructions. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I have at least 200 jumps on my Hornet 190; I got it when it was "new", although I'm pretty sure it was manufactured a long time ago. When first brand new mine opened like a snail. Then after a dozen jumps it started to be normal, and that sometimes included some painful openings. Eventually I figured out that ensuring the slider was hard against the stops was the key. I don't bother rolling the nose. I make sure to pull the slider out in front and to the sides. I have folded the coccoon and stuffed it in the bag many different ways and except for the one time I reverse psycho-rolled it and it didn't start opening for about three long seconds, none of this folding or stuffing ever affected the hardness of the opening. (These things just affected how badly off-heading it opened. ) I'd love to jump your Hornet 190 to see if it's genuinely different but I'm up in Washington state. I guess you could try to get a master magical packer at your DZ to pack it for you and see if it still opens the same. My personal bottom line is that I won't buy a canopy that beats the hell out of me - even if it's "my fault". -=-=-=-=- Pull.

The poster's question was not about running with the wind, it was about fighting it to get upwind. Using brakes or holding rear risers can help the canopy fly with less or more descent per horizontal unit of air covered, but descend less per unit of time covered. When you are upwind of the target, "flying flatter" or "descending slower" or a combination of both helps you get back by keeping you in the air longer; if the new, longer time you spend in the air multiplied by your new groundspeed is larger than the time you would have spent in the air and your old groundspeed, you will fly further. In any wind, brakes keep you in the air longer but they reduce your forward airspeed. When you are downwind of the target, your groundspeed is low because it is your airspeed minus the wind speed. If you use brakes you will stay in the air longer but your already low groundspeed will become lower or even go negative. Whether this means you will end up landing closer to or further from the target has to do with the ratio of the ratio [sic] of your original groundspeed to your new groundspeed and your original time in the air to your new time in the air. You could draw some pictures and do some algebra with some theoretical numbers (even if they don't match a real canopy, if they are within a theoretically realistic envelope they should give you meaningful theoretical results), or you can experiment on your own once you know how to tell where you "were going to land", or you can listen to people like Billvon who have a hojillion jumps and some other things to recommend them and their advice. With the ratio math I could probably come up with a rule of thumb for whether you should use some brakes to try and fly upwind to the landing area, but it would require you to accurately know forward airspeed and descent speeds for your canopy in at least two brake settings (e.g. no brakes and 1/4 brakes) and accurately know the wind speed. I would call that practically impossible and therefore useless. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Is your question just about which one will reach full inflation quicker, or is it also about which one will decelerate the jumper to a survivable descent rate quicker, too? (Just asking.)

This description matches my Infinity risers. What I have taken to doing is s-folding the excess brake loop three times and tucking that into the binding tape. When I put three s-folds into the brake line loop, it gets fat enough that 9 out of 10 openings both brake lines are still held in place. (My Infinity's riser covers never come open before deployment; on a rig where the risers do blow open in freefall, I would probably see a lot more than one loose brake line excess per 10 jumps.) The order I do things in to make it easiest on myself is: 1. route brake line (top to bottom) from inside to outside and stick the top of the toggle through the line split and into the top keeper. 2. stick the bottom of the toggle into bottom keeper. 3. tug canopy end of brake line. 4. flip riser over and pull brake loop taught up to the excess keeper binding tape. 5. s-fold brake line on top of the tape three times and stick it in; resultant s-folded wad barely sticks out of the tape. The drawing attached to Hookitt's post is a decent diagram of how I fold the line up (except I never roll-fold any lines or webbing on my rig, I always s-fold). Elastic holds tighter but I'm getting sufficient performance from the binding tape and the tape is very long-wearing. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Three cheers for Moley!

I've seen some places where on the student/rental gear, the RSL is connected to the riser's RSL ring with a rapide link. (I assume the link was tightened, but I didn't check. The DZ I'm thinking of is not within a mile of any water that I can recall.) At the time I thought the rapide link seemed like overkill. Now I'm seeing a benefit. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

That way I see it, one thing FARs and BSRs can do - regardless of whether they are obeyed - is say "enough people have been killed or maimed where _this_ was a significant contributing factor that we thought we should write a rule about it." I admit that doesn't mean every reduceable cause should be written into a rule. But my position is that something that has been a contributing factor to a large number of deaths is a worthwhile candidate for a rule intended to reduce the number of deaths deriving from that factor. And right now a disturbingly large number (that's a perceptive term, not a statistical term) of people are killing or maiming themselves in situations or by conducting actions that we think should only be seriously inuring, lightly injuring, or embarrassing them, and a frequent contributing factor is the design and loading characteristics of their canopies. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I agree. Disconnecting my RSL helped me when I encountered a gust front. The weather was not supposed to come near us - and the rain and clouds didn't. But the ground winds went from "fine" to higher than I'd ever jumped (or ever want to jump) while we were in the plane. (And to top it off, we were landing somewhere other than where we took off.) I popped my swiss connector at 100 feet and chopped as soon as I touched down. I was already halfway to my back. My canopy stopped after it finally collapsed, about 30 yards. (Good thing it wasn't airlocked. ) I didn't jump again that day, not even after the winds returned to "normal". I was too skeerd. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Is there any clear wingloading cluster on the good-canopy fatalities? Inside a year, I wonder if it's tight. Year-to-year, I wonder if it's going up.

Intentional cutaway canopies?

I recall someone asking a similar question to this a while back (same place, possible demo jump IIRC), and there was one response that stuck out in my mind but I can't find now. The response was that all applicable insurance tends to be void if they find an accident was caused by wreckless or grossly negligent behavior, or something like that, and that hypotehtically a final FAA/NTSB report on a plane that crashed due to someone intentionally skydiving from it with regular doors attached would include exactly these sorts of buzzwords. I'm so sorry I can't find the post; having to say "I think I read..." and badly paraphrasing someone else's "I am not a lawyer, but..." post is really weak. But maybe you or someone could think in that direction: what would happen if the jump went wrong and the plane went splat? We hope this is unlikely - but we change out the doors on our planes (among other preparations and procedures) to try and make it unlikely. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

You'd tell a guy you dont know with 130 jumps that loading a canopy at 1.4 would be perfect? Technically, he wrote that a canopy from 1:1 down to 1:4 would be fine; 1:4 on a 190 sf canopy is 47.5 pounds of weight. So I guess he's saying that if the jumper loses enough weight that he's 48 pounds out the door, he'll have good landings. But I agree that I think he meant to write something more like "1.0:1 to 1.4:1", which on its face is concerning. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Why do planes that have nothing to do with skydiving land and take off while canopies are in the air? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I believe everything I read in Wired. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Either is better than neither.

Does anybody have info on what a big vs. small round is? Lots of us know what the square footage sizes on squares will mean but I for one have no idea what the diameter and model names on rounds mean in terms of maximum intelligent weight. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I trust he taught you to steer away from water first, right? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

A sterling plan as long as there actually is a loading order. I waited in a cluster of people so long once that the plane stank of jet fuel until jump run (at 9k). We had all gotten out to the plane before it landed, but nobody considered order until it was time to talk it over with a running P&W joining in the conversation. Next time I'll just get in right after the birdmen, do a solo freefly or whatever the load order eventually decides needs to be at that seat, get out last and pull high so I can make it back. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

What do you mean you think you would have walked away? Did you walk away or not? Do you think you would have walked away from some situation if something had happened differently? What situation was this? I'm sure what you wrote is crystal clear to you but I wasn't there and I'd like to know if you just hop-and-popped a round, landed in the peas, and busted your ankle! -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Did the Caravan affect you less than the Twin Otter? And how long do you typically stand in line in the hot exhaust of the twin otter waiting for people to figure out what order they're supposed to load the plane? (I hate that. ) It is my understanding that jet exhaust at idle contains some nasty stuff that some people could be sensitive to. You could use a filter mask for loading and takeoff and see if that helps. Or, you could go to the DZ one day and stand around in the exhaust for a dozen loads but never actually get on the plane and see if that still hurts. Finally, does it happen with piston engine planes, or not? I know when I get a sore throat from skydiving, it's because I've been yelling - either at someone in freefall, or at someone under canopy, or my anxiety-releasing "Yee-haw" (serious line twists, turbulence, cutaway, etc. ). -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Can you confirm that your message says that Bill Booth designed the Parachutes de France LOR system's RSL system? That's what I thought I read. -=-=-=-=- Pull.