jonathan_k

Yeah, i went for toggles. That's what i was taught and felt comfortable with. I also think this has to do with the learning environment in Oz (others might not agree), where your first x number of jumps are sub-200ft PCA's, i had developed a riser response while skydiving but forgot about that on my first jumps as you've gotta be on toggles pretty quickly to land. Saying that, i will definitely go for risers in the future. You can see in the video that i had a fair bit of horizontal distance to use, which i ate up by not responding appropriately (turning left first). I think if i left the brakes stowed and went for risers i would have had enough horizontal distance for the second response.

Here's the video of my cliff strike from a previous discussion: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1390780;#1390780 It was shown at the ABA video night last weekend so i've posted it on skydivingmovies.com for general consumption. Enjoy! http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2138

Better Apply Skillful Expertise ...Efficiency ...Effort

Yeah i climbed down about 50 feet then there was another 50 feet of unclimbable rock down to a ledge that was accessible from the landing area. I sat there for 3 hours while the guy i was jumping with organised some ropes and stuff to get down with (thanks ben!). I was stuck on the face for 4 1/2 hours all up. It ended up being quite fun, after a failed attempt to throw up a rock with some fishing line tied to it, i had to make a rope out of my clothes which came up short, so i made the rest with some bark from a small shrub on the ledge i was on. How not to BASE jump macguyver style...

At one point i stalled the canopy and i thought i might have had a chance to turn it but i'm glad i didn't as i might have ended up in more trouble if i snagged an end cell or something. There was a reasonable amount of height so someone with more canopy skill might have been able to pull it off. I'm a very inexperienced jumper and it was bad body position compounded by me thinking "$#^&, this body position sucks, i'm gonna have an off heading over there ----->", looking that way made it ten times worse. I didn't lose it at any time, pretty much the only thing going through my mind was taking the hits with my legs (like sacrificial lambs) and just trying to keep away from the cliff, it wasn't till halfway down that i thought "hey, this is probably keeping my canopy inflated". The upside-down pic i posted before is towards the bottom when i really started picking up speed and i thought i was probably going in if i didn't grab on soon, luckily there was a ledge there to do so. To contribute to the original question, i did and would again in the future always try and turn the canopy around, there are just too many variables to deal with in an object strike. I mean i could have gotten my leg stuck in a crack trying to push off and it would have been torn clean off. At least in a boulder field, if you're wearing the right equipment you're probably not going to die. My incident could just as easily have been a fatality and i think that's where the luck that leroy mentioned comes in. I've witnessed another object strike that seemed trivial but ended in severe brain trauma. I think of the whole experience like a house of cards, i walked away with barely a scratch and ya can't really ask for a better outcome than that.

I had a sore ass for a couple of days .

I had a head-on cliff strike last week which ended up with me eating about 150 feet of cliff. My canopy stayed inflated for most of the ride and at the point where it deflated i managed to grab onto a ledge and avoid another ~150 foot fall, probably with no canopy out. On the first strike i flared into the cliff and took the hit with my legs, i had 4 impacts in total (not including grabbing on for dear life), all of them were feet first and trying to "spring" off the face, which i feel contributed to the canopy staying inflated. Here's a couple of interesting grabs from the ride down...

It's called a self-referencing paradox, like "This statement is false". Here's an old but sobering image for everyone. Mr. Aiello should make a new thread and mark it sticky because it always seems relevant, but i think he might be too politically correct for that .

Are you sure that's a PCA? If you look at the pictures you can see lines running from the jumper to the basket and the pilot chute hanging from there also so unless it's some kind of m.c. escher photo, that puts the canopy at the basket too . I guess johnny utah is the man with all the answers.

I think that Ronald would be talking about a bagged jump where the canopy is stowed in a D-Bag which is held by someone at the top. The canopy is pulled to line stretch straight away and the canopy inflates fairly quickly. There's a sequence of it being done from an 80ft ladder over water on Johnny Utah's site. By the look of it there's enough time for a riser flare. http://www.johnnyutah.com/9lives.html

Thanks for all the info guys

Is there any indication of price yet?

Inspired by the new phoenix fly wingsuit, which is looking at around a 3:1 glide ratio for good flyers i am curious to find out what the glide ratio of my canopy is. I had a look around once before and the closest thing i could find was an approximation of 3:1 for a skydiving canopy (the same as the wingsuit, which is what interested me). I understand that there are many variables in effect but is there any way to work out an approximate glide ratio of a canopy?