prost

What if you live in a hotel? I was recalled to the Marine Corps and they have me in a hotel untill Sept. 30. William

Just wondering. Do most of you leave a tip for the person cleaning your room when staying in a hotel and if so how much?

Very sad. I met Brad when he was a DZO. Very nice guy. I was sent to Little Creek Amphib base and was stuck there with no car and was a new jumper (about 80 jumps). The first time I met Brad he just treated me like I was an old friend. He was a great instructor and will be very missed. William

I remember this coming up before. You might want to do a search.

Congrats Jason. wish I could have been there. William

There are not any serious dz's in Louisiana any more. It is a little drive over to Moss Point but well worth it (maybe 2 hours drive). They have a Super Otter that is very fast and nice facilities (always adding something new). You can find RW and Free-flyers both there and the tandem rates are very reasonable. Oh yeah, and they go to 15,000 feet for 18 dollars. William

Congrats. I have been planning on getting my vector rating for a good while now. I will as soon as I can get back to my home dz.

Your pro track doesn't know when you pull the pilot chute. It registers when you slow down past a certain point.

The Crossfire has a lot of low speed lift. You should be able to bring it to almost a complete stop with proper technique. I have jumped every size of Crossfire from 149 to 99 or 1.6 to 2.4. William

have had a streamer before. When I looked up there was no doubt that it was a streamer and not a long snivel. The difference was that some of the lines were not stretched tight. You will usually see this because the cause of the streamer is some of the lines bunched up and knotted around the slider so there is slack in some of the suspension lines. William

Congrats. I know that first pack job is a nervous jump. William

Jason I would go with you but they moved my surgery up. They called me and basically said be in tomorrow for surgery. I flew back into town two sundays ago and came out for my last day of jumping but the wind was to strong and everyone had quit. I will be out for a few months now. Maybe I will be back up for the Ranch. William

I don't have a problem with the remarks that Dan Made in this thread. He stressed what he feels are advantages of their manufacturing process. Pd might be able to bring up other points that they feel are more important. It is fine for a manufacturer to promote their canopy by stressing what they feel to be advantages in their design or manufacturing process. I am definately not on the Atair bandwagen as I do not have any of their products and I think some of Dan's past threads have gone over the line of what I think a competing manufacturer should do. I believe that this is partly the cause of people falling back on Pd (the very thing he complains about in this thread), because jumpers are scared off by all of the stories going around of bad canopies, and they feel they know Pd is safe because that is what they have seen the most. But I don't think his comments in this thread were in the least bit out of line. William

I think it is good for people to share their experience with gear. What I don't think is a good situation is when every time someone is hurt on a canopy someone wants to know if everyone else sees that they are death traps. Trying to point out the good points of a canopy compard to another is great. I think that is vital info that must be passed to another skydiver. Taking one situation and trying to make it an issue of safety for an entire canopy line is bashing and not what i would call positive sharing. There are aspects of canopies that I feel are known to be negative like the ones you mentioned before. Sharing this with someone is great. When someone hooks themself in on a canopy and you tell a new jumper you shouldn't jump that canopy because look what it did to that guy, that is being a poor mentor. William

Depends. When do you notice it being slow? When you say an m-peg to load do you mean download or load from the hard drive? William

For some reason I forgot about the lightning canopy and was picturing lightning strikes in my head. lol

What has happened is a product of the atmosphere that is now prominent in the skydiving community. There has been a lot of finger pointing in a lot of directions. Young jumpers are hearing many experienced people argue about the safety of many different canopies without a lot of clear evidence. Some of the people involved in this finger pointing have been employees of various canopy manufacturers. This makes jumpers nervous. They do not know whom to believe so the safest thing in their minds is to look to the manufacturer that has been making the most canopies for the longest time. Even though Pd is not the oldest company, they have been the market leader since most jumpers in the sport have been jumping. Look at the forums. Every week we have another witch hunt on a different canopy. This situation makes people afraid of what they don't know, and what they do know typically is Pd. I am not trying to promote Pd. I own 5 canopies and one of them is a Pd. Safety is important to all of us but I am sick of the witch-hunt mentality that has been developed. It will hurt all of the smaller manufacturers and anyone coming out with new products. William

Many people can give a clear definition of the difference in a extreme snap hook and a carve. There are approaches in between these. What if a person enters the dive smoothly and slowly, uses a harness turn in the opposite direction to increase the recovery arc and comes slowly and smoothly out of the dive but in the middle of their 270 degree turn ends up in a very steep dive because they continue to pull their riser farther down. Would this be a hook or a carve. My point is that approaches can not be divided into two neat categories. Somewhere in the middle they melt together. William

Where do most of you draw the line between a hook and a carve?

My surgery was just moved up to monday. I hurt it 4 years ago in the Marine Corps. I was expecting it to be several months down the road and was even planning on putting it off till after the pond swoop nationals at the Ranch so I could compete this year. Everyone wish me luck. William

How much of a difference in distance do you think landing on rear risers makes? William

One thing that they are not mentioning is that front riser dives produce much more speed when done correctly so that you get a much nicer swoop. Less danger and more benefit. It makes no sense to do toggle hooks. William

Then it would be like an fx out without the middle closed of cell. William

Looks interesting. Different way of attaching the cross bracings. Dan, do you want to send out some demos? William

This is the technique that I use. It will do two things for you. First your riser pressure will be lighter. Second it will make your recovery arc longer so that you will build up more speed.