jacco

MBailey already stated in his post that he has a coach, I am not sure why there is a discussion about different coaches. For all we know he's already following the courses from either Flight 1 or Ater Ego, nobody asked or took an interest in this aspect of his progression even though this imho is beside the point. This is just a generic answer without any regard to the question. MBailey didn't ask for advice, however you are giving it which, again imho, is not helpful. His question is simple: comparing fronts to harness what are your digitally measured results. Personally, I'm quite interested and hope that some people will have more knowledge to share. J

Hi Dries, One thing you forgot was the weight of your gear which can easily add up to 15 kg. When added into the equation it means an exit weight of 122 + 10 + 33 (body + lead + gear) = 165 pounds. This means that with a 150 sqft canopy you would be at a wingload of 1.1. With your jumpnumbers this is already a relatively big step considering the size of the canopy. A 135 would put you over 1.2 with a very twitchy wing (short suspension lines). Since you are already under a pilot, my advise would be that when you downsize it would be on the same canopy before you try other types. This helps you to be safe and an extra benefit is that the pilot already has a comparatively flat glide. Blues

Very nice vid, hilarious

Like the previous poster I'm not qualified to make any serious comments about his approach or his landings. But often enough people in this forum will say "post the video". This guy has and I am really curious what the experienced swoopers have to say about the footage. J

Oops, my bad. Interpreted your post incorrect, am not a native speaker. Now reading your post again you gave the right advise. J.

I think this is very poor advise. When somebody is too low it could hurt or be leathal. When learning to swoop you should take every step carefully and the biggest problem is snapturns. When you do a snapturn, as is clearly visible in the video, you have no alternate plans. It's hook and pray. So dharma, unless I interpreted your post incorrect, be careful in your advise, especially when it’s with somebody you don’t know. So please CKSKUBA take your turns higher so you have outs. Take coaching and be careful, your video really scarred me. J.

My apologies for not answering to your original question, I can't for I haven't flown a NEOS, but I do have one observation. When you do a 180 from 350 and a 270 from 450 it sounds to me that you are quit low and are doing your front riser turns too quick (snapturns). I jump a XF2 @ 1.8 and when I do a 180 I loose about 550 ft in altitude, doing a slow carving turn, building up as much speed as possible (I don’t do 270 yet btw). This gives me more time to evaluate my approach and gives more power thus a better swoop. As always just my humble opinion, I hope somebody else with more experience in swooping can validate this. J.

The reserve opens and the RSL is left dangling on your back. Just take a look at the setup of your Javelin, imagine pulling the reserve and you'll see what I mean. J.

Then you should consider that you will have to go to a rigger to do some modifications. My first rig was a Vector 2 with velcro. I went to my rigger and he replaced the velcro on the risercovers with tuck tabs. He did a good job, they always remaind closed. He also added some velcro on the inside of the reserve flap to keep it closed better. I had it replaced with every repack (180 days over here). After opening and closing the flap to check the pins, the velcro would wear out and on certain transitions (headdown to sit) the flap would open once in a while. J.

I have made about 150 jumps on a safire II 159. Although I would advice anyone to use the manufacturers recommended packing method, I didn’t and propacked it. I didn’t want to switch to psychopacking simply because I’m quicker at propacking. My openings were constant and on heading taking between 500 and 700 feet. This scenario happened with nice packjobs (10-12 minutes), when in a hurry, 5 minute packjobs, I would have off heading openings, 90 degrees either way. So on my canopy the opening was a direct result of my packing. The way your canopy will open has to be tried. If you experience looooong openings, you could leave the centre cell more exposed, I had to do this on a Sabre 2 I jumped and sometimes would take 1200 ft to open. On that one I did a standard propack and before I put the tail around I would put the left and right 4 cells to either side and open the centre cell this helped a lot. As for your canopy, first jump it, some hop ‘n pops from as high as possible, preferably packed as Icarus recommends, and if you experience any problems with openings or flight ask again on your dropzone or in these forums. But do post to tell if you like it. J.

Almost, but where I live the weather sucks ass!!!

The problem that you are facing, is that you don't want to hurt each in a collision, which is good. This happens in RW as well as FF. It’s tends to be easy to cover a large distance but as soon as you get close your mind starts to think about the “what ifs”, collisions, funnels, etc. This generally starts interfering with clean flight. The other problem you describe is the stretching of your legs and going either too fast or low. By the time you get close you don’t need that much input. There’s a whole range of input between sitting using just a little bit of the lower legs forward / arms a bit backward and an almost stand fully arched. Instead of doing a standup with forward movement, try doing it in a more “sit position” with less forward movement. The problem that arises is that if you don’t give enough input, it will go too slow. If that’s the case you’ll need too increase the input, but in order not to start floating start to go a standing position with your upper legs, but only for 20 percent (for example, whatever works for you), this will compensate the vertical speed. If you overdo it you’ll go low, too little and you’ll float. All this should be done carefully, slow in the beginning, and you’ll start to get a feeling for the whole range at your disposal. At a certain point it will become second nature and your docks will be set up quicker. When you are not proficient at docking and you are doing 3ways, you are creating another problem. It would be much easier to do 2ways, let one be base and let the other close the gap and make the dock. With closing the gap I mean the last 6 ft, if you’re 100 ft apart after the exit close it together off course. Make sure that first you get level and then start closing the gap, making sure that you don’t collide vertically. The easiest and safest way too dock in the beginning, is to do a double foot dock. That way you’ll maintain eye contact, don’t start looking at your feet using your head, keep eye contact, use peripheral vision and if you can’t resist looking when you made your dock, do it with your eyes. This is all intended to keep your flight as clean as possible. Start looking, you’ll alter your body position and you’ll break the dock. Next step will be docks on the knees, be careful with noses, hand-hand docks and hand-foot docks. Hope this helps. J.

I have put 150 jumps on a sabre2 170 and the same amount on a pilot 168 both loaded @ 1.3 Openings: The Sabre would hunt and generally open offheading even if I packed it using an iron and really focused on body position during openings. Most of the times it would open within 600 – 700 ft. I had one slammer and 2 openings that were 1000+ ft, those long openings were due to packing. The pilot opens very consistently, snatch, snivel, open in about 600 ft and on heading every time. It didn’t matter how I packed it, nice concentrated packjobs or “You got 5 minutes to get on the sunset load” packjobs. The biggest surprise would be a 30 degree offheading once in 50 openings. Flight: The Sabre flies at a steeper angle than the Pilot does. The pilot has a flatter trim and will get you back from a long spot easier. The turns on a Pilot a more docile and will level quickly once you let up. Landings: In a straight in landings the Pilot was easier to get to a complete stop than the Sabre. This could be a result of my skills under canopy but somehow my arms didn’t seem long enough to get everything out of the Sabre. With frontriser approaches the Sabre builds up more speed and loses more altitude than the Pilot. At that time my swoops were crappy to say the least, but I’m sure by now I’d get better and longer swoops on the Sabre. This was not your question but I also jumped a Safire 2 and liked it better than the Sabre2 and the Pilot. Somehow this is an invitation to not say anything about your wingload, but I can’t resist. For somebody who has made 50 jumps per year, my opinion is that you are choosing at least one size too small. If you were to choose a 210 your WL would still be at 1.24. Like everything in this post, it’s just my opinion, so here’s another one: don’t choose a canopy solely because it is cheap. Choose the canopy that will get you back on the ground safely in all circumstances, once you know which one, then get a good deal.

I was wondering, it's obvious from this post that there's a lanc connection on the 350. However when I look at the website from sony, I don't see the lanc connection metioned in the specs. http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=DCRPC350&Dept=dcc_DICamcorders&CategoryName=dcc_DICamcorders_MiniDVHandycamCamcorders#specs The lanc is mentioned with other camcorders like the 109. Question: is it standard on the camcorder and is it just an ommission in the specs on the Sony website or is it an extra option somehow? J.

I couldn't find the article on the Sunpath website, could you post a link? There is an article about excess steering line on PD's website. One excerpt from the introduction: "leaving the excess steering line unstowed may cause a control system malfunction". I'm not sure if this is the same article as Sunpath's (see first question