Steel

What do you consider a really high wing-loading? On my Vx-70 which was loaded at 3.1 out of 450 jumps I recovered from a premature brake release at least 3 times. On the other hand on my 62 I had one brake release that created a totally hopeless situation in terms of recovery. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

First Jump Manta 288 First owned Robo Z 185 If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

for what can be seen If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Oh come on! You can't just start you swoop with your feet above the ground 150 feet back or whatever necessary with the intention to touch down on a 20 foot slip and slide strip? We are only talking about a 20 foot stopping distance accuracy. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Hi speed stalls can be oh so exciting. (more to watch than to perform ofcourse) Anyway you definately do NOT need rear risers to do them. If your swooping skill is just slightly above the beginner level you just might be able to pull it off. First you need to go big, get your self surfing that turf as fast as you possibly can. Now to keep this as an injury and not fatality make sure make sure that you are no more than 2 feet off the ground when you perform the next step. Bury those toggles, bury them like you never buried them before. And most important make sure there is video of the event to post on the web. Now as you are cruising along the ground with a much higher ground speed than you want to loose total lift at and your canopy still manages to completely drop behind you, you will then know what it means to have a high speed stall. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Facts remain as they are. And one fact is that he has been know to brag about his ectasy experience, people who know him I have no doubt have heard him say it himself. Falsifying numbers can easily be traced and his standing in the Pond swoop nationals 2002 is posted on their website. Another fact is that I don't care who he is what he does. All I want if for him to leave me alone and he can't seem to do that. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I hate to have to reply to people I don't consider worth talking to. But since this forum is open to the public I find myself having to set the record straight. Incase if anybody does not know, this is not just out of the blue. This is responding to Mark/Tree's final post which caused Bill Von to lock the thread on the Injury at SDA on the incidents forum. Who is Mark Kissner / Tree? It took me a while to figure this out but I finally did. Now I don't use offensive adjectives because I can simply rely on the facts, not because I wouldn't like to. Mark/Tree is a big character who looks like a tree and is about as smart as one. The reason I don't give you annecdotes of his landings is not because I don't have any. Instead because I don't need to since there is documented fact to look at. He was kind enough to compete in the pond swoop nationals 2002. So we could track his skill. For those of you who don't know this, it is a competition in which everybody is allowed to compete. Pros, advanced, intermediate, novices and/or anybody who wants to. In this competition of more than 70 competitors he came in third to last place. But wait last place zeroed out so that shouldn't count and the one guy he did "beat" actually hit targets. Fact is he only got mercy points for his splash into the pond, which is apparently all he can do. He missed all the targets completely on every single attempt. Now you think oh he must be a novice in his first year, Not quite. I am not sure how long he has been jumping but I am guessing over 5 years. So then why are his canopy skills so poor? Perhaps its because his interests ly elsewhere, such as having competitions to see who can eat the most ecstasy, falsifying USPA numbers and pissing dropzone management enough to get banned. Thats right Mark/Tree has been permanently banned from Skydive Dallas for being, well for being the Mark / Tree you have seen posting here. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

>several former students of mine who were pressured into >jumping canopies they were afraid of. where in the skydving community does this happen? I have read people make reference to a "cool group" to peer pressure skydivers to downsize. Anyway it doesn't make any sense to me. I have been jumping a little under a decade and I have met skydivers that don't bug saying your canopy is to small and skydivers that do. But I have never ever come across somebody trying to peer pressure somebody else into jumping a smaller parachute than they feel comfortable with. However I have come across a lot of belly fliers who have a tendency to want to break off lower and pull lower and I do have an issue with this. But I guess in the end its their right to say we don't want anybody on this dive to pull higher than 2500 and its my right to make a decision at that point wether or not I wish to go along with that or opt out. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

>The hot canopy pilots that impress me don't jump up and down >yelling "look how good I am, I am a hot canopy pilot". The impressive canopy> pilots are damn good, and humble. They are always self->critiquing, improving. JC springs to mind. >Hook Take somebody like J. C. who knows he has sucessfully swooped over 300 feet and start telling him that he has never swooped over 100 ft. Start making up stories that he is walking around with a limp. Send him to a place where he is to meet a group of people he never knew before. And even though he is trying to mind his own business, people keep coming up to him giving advice he does not care for and never asked for. Have a group of people outright lie about his performance. If at this point he has not just up and left he may just fly his canopy through the course stand up his landings and walk away quietly. Then somebody else that follows might swoop a little further but they go vertical, slamn into the pond or knock down windblades. Then tell him that he is the dangerous one and that for this reason he is not allowed to compete. If you did this I am sure his attitude would change. Look at the whole picture and maybe things will start to make sense. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

I don't know what to tell you dude. In some ways perhaps your right. Me, I did downsize right off student status from a 288 to a Robo Z 185 and I was fine with it, back in 1994. I was a little over 1.1 pounds per square feet with it at the time. Other people may have issues with this. But I have seen people who weigh far less than I did being pressured into a 230 which they then jumped for hundreds of jumps. I think that is the other extreme. If somebody outright asked me for what canopy size is right for them, I would be afraid to answer them because of the risk involved it anything they buy no matter what. But I hold very strong my opinion that the final decision should be theirs. Its just a matter of personal freedom. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

>A canopy is a mechanical device. It can fail. It has >no intelligence and no cell regeneration. It requires >a good pilot, good maintenance, and a good deal >of respect. In that way it is very much like an >airplane. I have no response for this because it really does not negate anything I have said. It just addresses different angles and makes a different statement. >Hmm. I've never done that, but then again I've >never turned the yoke right when I wanted to turn >left and I never turned my car's steering wheel >right when I wanted to turn left. However, it is true >that some people have made similar mistakes >(i.e. pressing on the gas pedal instead of the brake) >so I will concede that operators can make mistakes. turning to a steering wheel to the left is intuitive just as turning a yoke to the right to bank right is also intuitive. This is why I mentioned something that would be totally taught to a new pilot. Knowing that pushing the yoke foward will in turn swing the elevator down giving off more the the Bernoulli's principal effect on the vertical stablilizer, causing it to rise up and therefore lessening the angle of attack or increaseing the angle of descent, is not in anyway intuitive. And I don't believe any pilot who swears that when they were first learning how to fly that they never got confused with this. I don't mean that they got into an accident because of it. I just mean that they were flying around with their instructor and suddenly their instructor noticed that they lost or gained too much altitude and told them to check their altitiude and at that point they initally responded incorrectly and worsened the situation. >Similarly, a jumper who survives 100 landings >under a tiny canopy may not know a damn thing >about flying it. He may be too afraid to even try >anything unusual; after all, everyone's telling him >he's going to die! He's not going to touch the >toggles near the ground until flare time. And that >can work until someone cuts him off, or his canopy >hits a wake, or he has to avoid a 5 year old in the >landing area. And then, since he can't fly his >canopy at that altitude, he will become injured or dead. I don't know anybody who fits this description. The toggle reference suggests you are talking about me. But since I have over 800 jumps on my little canopies, have practiced accuracy to the point of kicking a cone with them, have practiced carving over a lane of cones four feet wide at an angle larger than that of the one on the prospeed carving course, have performed 180s, 270s, 360s, 720s, and 1080s with them, have altered brake settings for flying as well as stowings for openings, have swooped ponds with them and successsfully remained in a lane 4 feet wide, have practiced rear riser landings, intentionally landed downwind with them and have participated in 26-way formations with them. So I guess you couldn't possibly be referring to me. A skydiver on the otherhand, whether he wants to or not, learns from > every jump he makes. >So (potentially) does an aircraft pilot. so we agree here If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

>But if he has done it safely for hundreds of jumps he must be doing >something right. >I once jumped at a DZ that used unqualified pilots >and really cruddy aircraft. We made hundreds of >flights that way without incident. Then he had a >minor problem, crashed, killed himself, paralyzed >a JM and seriously messed up two students. Were >we "doing something right?" Or were we just lucky >for a long time? At first I thought I would just leave this alone to avoid stirring the pot too much but then I thought if I don't respond it will appear as if I am wrong. And if I am proven wrong I will be the first to admit it but here I am not. So here goes. First of all you can't compare an aircraft to skydivers because an aircraft is a mechanical device which has no intelligence and no cell regeneration. By that I mean an aircraft can only get worse it can not get better. In order for it to get better a third party (an airplane mechanic or something) must change or tweak something. A skydiver on the otherhand, whether he wants to or not, learns from every jump he makes. Even if nothing different happens in the jump he re-enforces muscle memory in a way that simply can not be taught by anything other than experience. Any pilot (who is not lying to you) will tell you that at one point when he was learning to fly that once he pulled the yoke back when they meant to push it foward. (Near the ground this can very easily cause a serious accident). You can be sure that the instructor had covered that before they got in the cockpit. But everytime that happened it re-enforced to them what they happens when you push it foward and what happens when you pull it back until it became seond nature to them. So my point is if they made hundreds of flights without incident then yes the pilot's chances of surviving a stressful situation was improving by each flight but no the airplane's chances were not improving. If the accident you are referring to was pilot error, the fact remains sh*@ happens even to the best. So a simple annecdote of something going wrong is really not grounding breaking information. If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

First lets clear one thing. In the end the only thing that matters is density altitude. However Density altitude is determined by temperature, humidity and elevation. Whether you are aware of this or not if you do a hop and pop from 13,500 (full altitude) and fly your canopy around to get used to your flight characteristics you are actually not experienceing the same flight characteristics of your canopy all the way down. As a matter of fact even if you were on a day at standard temperature (59 F or 15 C) and with standard barometric pressure (29.92 inches of mercury or 1013 milibars), if you did a hop and pop from altitude the difference in the flight characteristics from opening to landing would be far more than the possible difference of density altitude could ever be on the ground. Now if your looking at a manual for a specific aircraft it will tell you how much runway is needed for landing in a day with standard temperature, plus 10 or 20 degrees, on and airport at sea level or with some elevation and so on. You can look at this and make determinations for what is required for your flight plan. Such data is not available for skydivers for various reasons. For one thing most skydivers don't even understand density altitude. But even if they did there are no real standard aproaches for experienced skydivers, specially swoopers. Some do 180 degree turns to final, some 270, some even 360 and ofcourse different wingloading and different airfoils will be affected differently. Even the speed at which these turns are made are different, that is not everybody banks at the same angle on there approach and therefore not everybody looses the same altitude on a turn even if the both turn the same amount of degrees. So now that I have said all the reasons for which you can not find this answer I will say the one answer that you can have. That answer is you can know what the density altitude was where you jumped previously and you can know what the density altitude is where you intend to jump. There are sites on the interenet (made for pilots) where you can plug in temperature, elevation, and humidity and it will return density altitude. If the density altitude is higher then you can be sure that your parachute will have less lift on flare, will have a faster foward speed and will loose more altitude with the same turn on approach to final. Once you know this you can expect that you need to be more conservative on you first couple of jumps at a new dropzone until you adjust your swoop so that you know at which altitude to start your final turn. Blue Skies, Psycho Bruno out If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Now this is a competition I would like but unfortunately I have never been around a radar gun to offer numbers. I have considered buying one but haven't quite convinced myself to spend the money on it. I can only say it would be awesome if somebody could show up at Skydive Dallas with one. For a long time I have wondered at what speed I do come in at. Psycho Bruno out If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Ok I am not going to say that experience is meaningless here because obviously people get better with experience. But I definitely know that it is unfair to judge somebody based strictly on their jump numbers. I know people with two times as many jumps as me who I can swoop faster, further, and more accurate than. Hell I know people with 2 times as many jumps who weigh less than me and could not stand up a landing on my canopy even with a 20 mile and hour headwind. The bottom line is people improve at different rates. And when skill levels are being judged a tremendous amount of politics and egoes are factored into skill assessment. For this reason believe any policy of this nature would be bad. But not for this reason alone. I have a strong belief in the need for personal freedom. For instance in Texas there is no helmet law for motorcycles and I commend this. I have a Ninga Zx-9 and you would never catch me out riding without my helmet but I am extremely opposed to any implimentation of a helmet law for Texas. And I do know friends who have died because of riding without a helmet but still don't believe we should ever mess with personal freedom. Blue Skies! Psycho Bruno out If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.

Ok I have read about as much as I can read before getting annoyed about what this Listo character is posting here. First of all how long has Listo been jumping? I read in his profile that he has just over 600 jumps. I have been jumping for 9 years and did more jumps that that in 2001 alone. I guess the reason I make that comparison is because the crap he is talking is stuff that would be pointed directly at someone like me. See when I first started in 1994 my first canopy was a Robo 185 loaded at about 1.2. And I heard many people echoeing the crap that he has posted here. People were making bets on how long it would be before I broke a leg. Well less than 60 jumps later I was on a saber 150 loaded at about 1.4 and now people were really sure that it was a matter of time before I broke something. Well again they were wrong. I jumped that for years without incident and then I got a saber 120 in 1999, loaded at 1.8. Now I heard the same bogus over again. The standard responses, "oh you can jump that on a good day but what if the spot is off what if you have to put in a tight spot what if somebody cuts you off", and again I went through without incident and proved the overwelming majority wrong. Then I got a stilleto 120. Oh no nw he has an eliptical now everybody knew for sure it was a matter of time. Well they were wrong again. Then I wanted to go small and wasn't sure exactly how small so I started borrow different gear and jumped a velocity 103 for some 30 or so jumps and heard all the standard negative responses. (what if you have to land it in a tight spot what if you get cut off, etc, etc) Then I jumped a velocity 96, 90, a vx 90, and FX 88, 84,79. By the time I got to the FX 79 I was loading it over 2.9. I put over 350 jumps on that FX 79 with no incidents and with over a 99% standup rate. I started doing 45 degree turns on approach to landing and finished doing 720s. And as time went on people like Listo still would not admit they were wrong or even just shut up. Well after that I got a VX-70 loaded at 3.1 and put four hundred or so jumps on that but the results were the same. This Listo's still felt the need to talk crap. Hell, even top ten pro circuit canopy pilots felt the need to voice their predictions on my future injuries and interestingly enough, literally, exactly what was predicted would happen to me, happened to the person making the prediction within 2 days. I saw the same person who said to me, with authority, that it was just a matter of time before I bust my ankle bust his ankle instead and limp around the dropzone. Recently I got a VX 62 loaded that at 3.4. I even put 24 pounds of weight on and loaded it at 3.8. I will say the responses have gotten a little better but there are still a significant number of Listo's out there that I really wish would shut up and mind there own business. To have an opinion is fine but to advocate passing policies that will infringe on the rights of others is something that really makes me mad. And I think it is obvious that if we allowed popular opinion to determine what is safe enough that our entire sport would eventually be banned. Just think about what "whuffo" stands for. The vast majority of people ask, "why would somebody jump out of a perfectly good airplane?". Why would somebody load a parachute heavier? Why would somebody not land their parachute straight in. Hell why even jump? After all we would all be safer on the ground. Blue SKies! Pyscho Bruno out If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass. Can't think of anything I need No cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no sound. Nothing to eat, no books to read.