bofh

My friend with the 99 has returned it too now after two weeks of having a sore neck after a brutal opening. The reseller just lets the customers pick another Icarus canopy now instead after too many complaints.

Has anyone tested that? Those mounts seem pretty solid to me.

Here's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA2R8tib-yM my test with mounting the GoPro on the mud flap. I just used the provided bicycle helmet mount. Two unexpected things happened during that jump. I hit the camera with the wingsuit arm wing during opening. I released the toggles and then tried to loosen the chest strap, almost getting the steering line caught in the camera on the mud flap.

From wikipedia: "A patent (pronounced /ˈpætənt/ or /ˈpeɪtənt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention." It can not both be patented and a secret. The only patents I can find from Airtec Gmbh is: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/result.html?query_txt=%22Cloth,+Helmut%22&sort=relevance&srch=top&search=

In computer security its called "security in depth". When one part fails, another part should make up for it. I don't see anything wrong with making the system perform better when one part in the process (the rigger) has failed, even if the end result never can become perfect. In this case one failure mode is traded for another. I think the riggers making mistakes is a more common failure than the cutter malfunctioning, but I don't really know.

Probably. GPS receivers measure the height above a mathematical model of the earth (a geoid), not the actual "sea level" and those differ a bit.

Why store it in the same format as you export it in?

In Sweden for non-restrictive wingsuits like the Prodigy: * 300 jumps. * C license for more restrictive wingsuits: * 500 jumps. * D license. * The arm-wings should have a cut system. For both kinds: * AAD * Audible altimeter * BOC * No bungee-pilot. * No flying near tandems. The first two jumps should be solo jumps and after a briefing from someone with at least 25 wingsuit jumps. The deployment altitude of the first twenty jumps should be above 1000m.

Why not? Is there no point, because it doesnt work? It was a serious question. Only in a mathematic world, does everyone fly like pieces of lego. The proposed method could easily be extended to handle the case of wackers by partitioning the original formation and judge each partition on its own and also judge the angle between the partitions. How it is partitioned should of course be specified before the jump and I think the judges would have to use their judgement to cover all cases. In the case of the V formation, each leg would be a separate partition and the angle between the partitions' L-lines would be compared.

My guess is that capitalistic mechanism of supply and demand is working as intended in this case... High demand, limited supply. Yes, I bought it directly from GoPro instead. The customs forgot to take out any fee nor add the VAT, so it really ended up being a lot cheaper than the local resellers.

Do they list their resellers somewhere? The only resellers I found near me were 50% more expensive than the listed price.

I have a little program that shows all activities on a serial port... I don't have windows running right now so I can see what its name is. It was one of the first hits on google when I searched for a serial port snooper.

I read that and decided to have a look to see if I could figure it out... First of all I cracked open my USB-Track and saw that they use a chip from FTDI (FT232BT if I remember correctly), an usb to serial interface. There are standard device drivers for both linux and Mac OSX to communicate with that chip, giving a tty-interface. On my Mac, I downloaded FTDI's VCP driver (http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm) and then I had to change some file (something like /System/Library/extensions/FTDI*/Info.plist) to associate the driver with L&B's manufacturer id (4056) and product id (1). I ended up with a file called something like /dev/cu.usb-serial.872346 On my linux box there already was a driver supplied with the kernel, so I just had to load it with: sudo modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=4056 product=1 and I got a /dev/ttyUSB0 On windows a COM4 appeared with the supplied drivers. On my windows box I noticed that when L&B's software talked to the Alti-Track, they used 115200 8N1, no flow control and the commands being sent were simple ASCII strings, with CR as end-of-line character (for the commands, CR LF for the returned strings). I connected to the device with a terminal program (minicom on the linux box) and sent "Help" to the device. In return I got a nice description of the commands it understands and descriptions of what one will get back from those commands. Worth noting is that the commands need to be sent with the correct case (ie "help" will not work). The protocol is really simple and the documentation is great.

Me too, except I got linetwists as well and had to chop it. That's when I bought my TruLok risers.

That seems really bizzare, are you stowing them as the manufacturer reccomends? Yes, I stow them as described in the pdf I linked to earlier in this thread. With break fires I mean that the toggle has come lose from the eye in the line, not completely loose. The bottom pin has still retained a part of the line so the spinning has not been that bad.

http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/PDF/Support/Sport/09110(TruLock-Risers).pdf

Get tru lock and you won't be dissapointed, you will also be assured your 3 rings and riser loops are manufactured correctly as they are made by the company that designed the 3 ring system. Those two are with my new Tru-Lock risers...

I've had two in around 200 jumps.

The guy that broke his ribs did it after he got it back from Icarus after previous hard openings... I've rarely seen anyone pay so much attention to his packings as he does so I don't think it is pack related unless one is supposed to do something special. He's also quite experienced so I really doubt its a body position issue. I did a six second delay jump with the 109 Neos that gave my friend a sore neck and for me it opened soft, but much less soft than my crossfire would have opened after six seconds. The next jump was done with a Neos 99 (which this far hasn't opened hard for its owner) and at terminal velocity it gave me the best opening I've ever had with a canopy.

A few friends have got themselves Neos canopies. One of them got a five great openings (crossfire like), then a Sabre like opening followed by a really hard opening giving him a really sore neck. Another friend broke some ribs during an opening of his Neos. A third person I know of have the occasional hard openings on his Neos as well. Is Icarus having quality problems with the Neos or is it simply a bad design?

I've added a short extension cable to the helmet, so I can just attach the A/V cable to the back of the helmet. Perfect for debriefing, but with my PC107, I can't get firewire from the camera without putting it in the docking station so it doesn't help any when I want to dump to a computer.

It doesn't have to be like that though. First a little background and then I'll describe the way I teach first flight students (all three times). In Sweden we have a C-license plus 300 jumps limit for those wing suits that don't limit your freedom much (like PF's Prodigy) and a D-license plus 500 jumps limit for other wing suits. You should also have a briefing with an experienced wing suit flyer before your first flight, experienced being defined as someone that have done 25 WS flights... There are some more rules too, but that's another topic. The briefing I got was; "have you read the manual?", "have you practiced to pull a few times?" followed by "ok, you're ready to go". To me that worked out quite well, but its not for everyone... In my club there are no WSIs of any kind, so I've instructed three newbies. The first time my student was rather experienced and I didn't think about it much at all, I just gave a short briefing (although slightly longer than the one I had received...) and then did a proper gear check before boarding. Since we hadn't practiced much he had a horrible flight (tumbling for 1000 meters and line twists after deployment with his HP canopy...). I learned a lot there. After that I wrote myself some instructions about what to teach. Now that I read the proposal linked from this thread I noticed that its instructions were quite like my own. With the next two persons I taught, I took it in steps. First they perform a tracking jump and practiced the pull sequence in their normal jump suit (after some ground training). When they felt comfortable with that, they jumped with tracking pants/suit and also followed a flight plan. After that they did their first WS flight with a Prodigy. This way there were a lot less new things to practice on each jump and they are more relaxed.

I agree. I don't understand why Airtec does not start some kind of swap program instead of their current rent-while-you-wait program. Get a freshly serviced unit and send in your old.

Why would a vigil need a service as often as the Cypres in Sweden? The Swedish safety commitee made the decision that the Vigil must be serviced every fourth year. It is regulated in two places. One place says four years, the other says four years +- three months. So the Cypres II has a slight advantage there...

Its a matter of how common each scenario is and from there one can draw a conclusion. There are three possible scenarios: * The skydiver does not pull after exiting below 1700 feet. * The skydiver does deploy the reserve after exiting below 1700 feet. * The skydiver does deploy the main after exiting below 1700 feet. In the first scenario the jumper will die with a cypres and probably survive with a Vigil. In this case it is better to have a Vigil. In the second scenario, the jumper will have an equal chance with both AADs. With the third scenario the jumper may survive with a cypres and she may have a two-out scenario with the Vigil (which in turn might lead to a fatality). Of course not all two-outs will cause a fatality, most will not and I doubt the Vigil will fire in most cases while the main is opening, but in this case it is better to have a Cypres. I have no statistics to back this up, but I believe that the third scenario is more likely for me than the first based on what I've seen people do during emergency exits. This is probably different in different parts of the world, but my training say that I should deploy the reserve if I exit the plane at 1700 feet. And the Cypres III will pack your main after each jump while you walk to the plane for the next load. In what way does the Vigil II become better because of whatever features the Vigil III has? Because NASA bought the same product as you, to use in the space program, you feel you have got solid information? You don't think that your requirements and NASA's might be a bit different? In any case I don't see how this strengthens your arguments. The Alti-Track, Neptune and ProTrack all provides that. I often jump with a GPS logger so I get that information there as well. Hardly a feature that is needed in an AAD and one can even argue that the less features there are, the less things can go wrong with it. I'm sure Vigil II and Cypres II are both fine products. In Sweden the Vigil would still need service as often as the cypres and the cost of its service would be higher, so in the end the price would be about the same. Since Airtec has the most experience in this field, I chose them. When hearing that Vigils could go off on the ground if one forgot to turn them off before putting them in the car, I'm glad I did go with a cypres II because I often forget to turn off things.