plastic

Hi Graham, Nice to see you are still about, are you jumping with andre at the world meet? plastic

Hi Andre, Not too sorry about the retirement, i did it once before but must have got it wrong. Maybe we should just forget the parachuting thing and get a reunion going in las vegas! Plastic

Hi Andre, Not me, i retired from team after last year, in fact i have almost totally retired from parachuting now. Who are you jumping with? I thought you had a rots team? I think Ian Marshall from our old team will be there. I do remember the drinking sessions from Eloy which is still my best memory of competition. Good Luck. Plastic

um, i thought they landed ok, but then i thought the ar-7 landed not too bad, but i'm not as tall as i used to be! Maybe there is a connection. Plastic

Hi, I was on a sequential team (circa 2000 - 2001) that jumped diamants, and we were coached by the guy that designed them. They are a canopy designed for experienced competitors, they are not the easiest canopy to use (although in the right hands they were at the time the best sequential canopy around) they are also unfortunately not compatible with any other crw canopy around today. I would not advise beginners or low experienced crw jumpers to use them. Sorry. Plastic

Hi, Some crw jumpers jump with pointed tip open bladed knives but the thing to remember if you are in a multi person hi speed wrap there could be bodies spinning and banging into each other everywhere and if you draw a knife like this you could easily end up stabbing and either seriously injuring or even killing them or yourself. Although some times this may be the type of knife you need, your choice, if you want one a good source would be a scuba diving supplier. Personally i jump with a jack the ripper on my chest strap (tied on with a lanyard) and a smaller poly carbonate type in a pocket on the front (not the side, too prone to lines catching) of my thigh as a backup. However 1000+ crw jumps and i have never had to use one yet, i saw one used once and that was just to cut a bridle line. Hope this helps Plastic

Hi, Nice video, i have given up warning people of the dangers of crw on high performance canopies, if they do it and that happens and they survive they wont do it again (hopefully) and if they dont survive then they really wont do it again. Plastic

A pity about the divx, maybe they just needed the codec to play it. Another year or two and i think most dvd players will support divx, mine does and it is 18months old. Plastic

When you get to my age memories are all you have so they have to be good! Plastic

Hi Andre, I seem to remeber in eloy 1998 your team had some canopies that were pretty much like ar7's. They seemed to land ok though, at least looking from a distance! Plastic

I Belive, having been coached for several years by vincent ferrer - ex french team and designer (or at least part designer) of the diamant\rubis - that many years ago the french team purchased from aerodyne the rights to make their own canopies based on the design of the ar7. This was when the team moved away from the contact manufactured by parachutes de france, i think after bill haslet's team won the rotations in thailand 1990 on ar7's. From time to time they would make minor changes to each canopy to improve the characterisitics of the canopy to match their techniques. Although the canopies are now much changed from the original design, the ar7 landing characteristics still remain i believe with the rubis. We (uk sequential team, world meet 2001) did buy and jump diamants for a while and found the landings ok, although i have never jumped a rubis. The diamants were a good sequential canopy but took a lot more getting used to than a lightning and we did not get enough training jumps on them before the world meet and our scores suffered for it. After 2001 i left the team and my diamant with it. I believe i have my facts more or less correct, however if anybody knows better then feel free to correct me. Plastic

Hi, I hope the guys you are going to jump with also have ar-7s as these canopies are not compatable with either lightnings or triathlons. I have a few jumps on an ar-7 and we had a couple of teams in the uk that used them in the mid 90's. As for packing, they pack the same as a lightning, the openings are ok but they do not land well which was the main downfall of this design. Plastic

You could do similar with somebodys freebag!

Hi Cheryl, Good points and very true, the whole object of the exercise is to get clarity of the rules and then make sure that dives are judged to the rules as printed. The lack of clarity and different interpretation of unclear rules even at international level is making this much harder at domestic level. Considering the 2-way competition was meant to encourage new teams in the discipline the problems being experienced may well start to have the opposite effect if this continues. Plastic

Having re-read my posts i have decided that the comments i made may have been seen by some to be a personal attack so i have requested the moderator to remove all my posts on this thread. Can't find my dummy though. Plastic