genoyamamoto

I use large black ralphie sky bands. Double stow on the bag, single stow thru the grommets. The sky bands work great with HMA, they last forever. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

I won't do that. The details do not need to be discussed on a public forum. Suffice it to say that the aircraft owner made the best decision he could for his business - likely any of us would have made the same decision if they were him. I will not badmouth him here or anyplace else. Am I happy about this situation? Not even close to happy, but again, I'll get over it. Am I a bit upset with the people who won't be coming simply because there won't be a turbine available for the entire event? Yeah, I am, but I'll get over that too. Am I going to let that all that keep me from having a kick ass time this weekend? Absolutely not. I really hope others feel the same way... I thought DZ.com was censoring my post. The best decision would be to honor your commitments.I'm sure people know where the plane was supposed to come from.I think in the long run this decision will cost him money and I hope it does.He didn't hust break a commitment with you but will all that are planning to attend.I guess I'm so irked because I know how much work goes into an evenet like this and I have been where you are. . errr... no, where was the PAC comin' from? I can only think of one dz on the west coast that has a PAC 750 to lend out. But perhaps the plane was coming out from the east coast? I would assume the ferry price would be significantly higher if they leased a plane from the east coast. We all need to accept the consequences of our actions. Therefore I think it's ok should Lisa decide to tell us what happened, afterall, it was the DZO's decision and he/she needs to live by it and should not be asahamed of his/her actions. Nobody put a gun to the DZO's head and told him/her to do what they did, just like nobody forces us to get on the plane to go skydiving. It's Lisa's choice either way, however, and I respect her decision either way. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

I do not expect the boundary layer to extend very far at all. I think you can get an order of magnitude estimate for boundary layer thickness from the rules of thumb used to describe the turbulent area above objects during windy days (i.e. x2 height of feature, this in my mind would be the worst case scenario for air flow perturbation). Most common feature on the ground lets say is grass or rocks, a few inches high so take x2 of a few inches, which is probably going to be no more than a foot or so. I don't know anything about paragliding nor the conditions/environment where you witnessed people falling out of the sky but I would venture to make an uneducated guess that they are hitting rotors off of obstacles upwind on a windy day and landing hard. If you are up to it, find a very tall antenna in your neighborhood, take an anemometer with you and measure the wind speed as a function of height on a windy day. This should give you some idea of the magnitude of the velocity gradient. I'd be curious to see what you find out! Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Have you guys ever thought about this: If the wind really does "push" the top of your canopy what SHOULD happen? 1) Since we are more massive than the canopy, we have inertia, so we shouldn't get blown around as much by the wind. 2) The canopy would get blown more by the wind, thus pushing the canopy towards us in a diving turn that puts the canopy between us and the wind. 3) If the wind is strong enough, then the canopy should get blown right into pilot. It probably doesn't have to be that windy. Think of how far a canopy can get blown around by a few mph wind on the ground. Does this ever happen? I've never seen or felt it happen, and i've landed in some high winds. In fact, i'm sure if this were really the case, we would see lines becoming unloaded and people pounding in all the time because the wind pushed their canopies into them. Edit: Sorry, I just realized someone else alluded to this effect. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

I remember overhearing the opposite at a dropzone not too long ago: people were saying that you have to hook it lower in higher winds because your recovery arc is shorter not longer. WTF. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

I'm not surprised based on your responses to the arguments made against your hypothesis. well... yes :) if you can get the canopy to open in the first place :)) (hey, what kind of answer did you expect with a question like that?) let's just say 20 mph. I think it will add speed to the way the canopy will dive in the first second or two of the turn. Often times in science and other disciplines based on reason and logic, one tests a hypothesis by taking the results at the extreme limits and seeing how the solution behaves. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Yes. In this case the system is the train and the person moving relative to the ground. Yes, in this case, the system is the AIR (train) plus the canopy+pilot (person) moving relative to the ground. If you drop something in a train moving at 100mph, does it fall any faster than something dropped when u are standing on the ground? Likewise, in the air + canopy pilot system do you expect your turn to be any bigger whether the system is moving or not? Again, the moving system here is the Air (train) around the canopy and pilot (person). Wind in this case is a translation of the system (air + canopy and pilot) across the ground. Take the limits of your argument that wind affets the canopy. Lets say you are hooking it into a 1000 mph headwind. Does this mean that as soon as you start your turn you will pound into the ground? How about hooking it into a tailwind of 1000 mph? Does this mean that if you dive with a tailwind that you will never reach the ground? Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

If you set it up with a second camera on the other side of the course like the following (i took your diagram and modified it), you can take the average of the two times and this average value will correct for the swooper not entering the course dead center, thus addressing raymod2's concerns about people gaming the system by hugging the side of the swoop lane nearest to the camera. x (camera 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . --------------------------------------> o . . . . . . . . . "o" = dummy gate strictly for setup x (camera 1) Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Don't feed them and they will die, in the parks. Like this, VERY graphic but illustrates the consequences of inhumanity: Pics More here And here There are more, I just got sick of looking up this stupid, pointless suffering and death. I wonder what those families will say when they find dead homeless people on their nice Las Vegas lawns. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Determining your landing pattern should begin in the loading area before you step onto the aircraft, but definitely before you exit the plane. I always look at the following: 1) Who are the "factors" on the load, who spirals down, s-turns on final or swoops. Also visitors to the dz are factors. 2) Are there instructors/video flyers on the load? 3) How many groups are there? 4) What types of groups are they and how big are they? 5) Jump run: what are the uppers and which way is jump run oriented w.r.t. the landing pattern? 6) Any high performance canopies (high performance = higher performance than mine). Take a look at the size of people's rigs if you don't know them well, or ask them what they are jumping. 7)What do the landing areas look like/where are people going to land (swoop vs. main or student area). Items 1 & 2 addresses the probable behavior of the pilot. Instructors/video flyers are often coming back from long spots and/or trying to get down fast enough so that they have enough time to do their thing on the ground. BTW, if you don't see any "factors" on the load, you are the factor for the load. Items 3, 4 & 5 give an idea of how dense the landing pattern will be, both due to the spread in groups (for small groups vs. a large group) and also the possibility of multiple passes. Item 6 considers the different glide ratios of canopies and not only how they fly in the pattern but thru the pattern. Where to land (item 7) is determined by the previous 6 factors. No skydive should ever be a "surprise", unfortunately they often are because nothing ever goes as planned or predicted. It's also very difficult to really understand the landing pattern for a dz if you are new to the dz: I have found that each dz has a unique balance of these 7 items to take into consideration. I also think this is why people view boogies as "sketchy". as there is a huge influx of new people all applying their home dz landing pattern to a completely different situation without understanding and respecting the additional hazards posed by massive numbers of skydivers unfamiliar with the boogie dz. While it would be nice for everyone to fly similar canopies and similar patterns, this is unrealistic, for reasons that may not be clear to us while we are trying to land amongst others. Ultimately the predictability of a situation depends on the observer's understanding of the situation. edited to correct typo. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

The sum of the pressure on all four risers is equal to your body weight. How would canopy size change that??? You are correct that it doesn't. But the response of a smaller canopy to a change in the weight distribution amongst the risers, for example, can differ. That's why you can do pull ups on a navigator 260's front risers and not change a damn thing while doing the same will produce a noticable effect on a canopy 100 sq. ft. smaller. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Jeez... Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

I see in 4D. x,y,z,t.

Dunno! Apparently for 18% of the people even a 10 incher isn't enough! Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

So I take it you like bottled soda over canned soda? Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

It's out of respect for all of our fellow non-american skydivers. So what does 10 inches equal? 25.4cm. Looks like a very demanding crowd here! Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

It's out of respect for all of our fellow non-american skydivers. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

So I hear! Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Hypothetical question ... errrr... What number would be small enough that you would laugh out loud? Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

I just got back this weekend from jumping a Katana 170, loaded at 1.53:1. I currently own an Aerodyne Pilot 168 (~400 jumps). The following is my impression of the Katana 170. KA170 in flight: The terminal openings were ok, a lot of hunting. The openings overall are very comparable to the Pilot. I found the canopy's response to toggle and harness input very similar to the Pilot. The initial front riser pressure was higher than the Pilot, but did not build up and was very easy to keep in a dive. Response to rear riser input was also comparable to the Pilot. The canopy is very ground hungry in full flight and overall felt faster than the pilot. Overall, however, I found very little difference in the response of the KA170 and the Pilot 168. Landing the KA170: The landings on the Katana are faster than the Pilot. I did nothing more than 90's on landings (initiated at ~400 ft). The brake lines were very long, with no real response to toggle input until about shoulder level. The canopy, however, did shut down nicely at full extension. The canopy dives extremely well and responds very nicely to rear riser input on landing. I found my best landings involved at least some rear riser input to plane the canopy out as opposed to toggles. I found the Katana much easier to fly thru the landing on rears than the Pilot. I think this in part to the very long recovery arc for the Katana, which gave much more time to fine tune the landing. In this sense I think the Pilot is much less forgiving, as there is very little time to fine tune a landing on the Pilot. Overall I found the Katana easier to swoop than the Pilot because of its desire to stay in a dive with front riser input, allowing one to set up much higher, and the subsequent additional time to fine tune the swoop with additional input. Conclusions: The Katana was a fun canopy to land, but just ok to fly. While this may be due to my wingloading, I was somewhat disappointed that the response and overall twitchiness for the Katana is so similar to the Pilot. I found myself wondering whether large canopies (> 150 sq ft) are inherently similar due to the physical size of the canopy. I categorize the KA170 as a high performance canopy, however, because it is so ground hungry and likes to dive, which could get people into trouble in no time. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Albatross... What happens at the albatross, stays at the albatross... Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

Here you go. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

log2(n) = ln(n)/ln(2) then plug and chug. Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here

c b a b d b c b b d Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me Feel the hate... Photos here