bofh

I bought a new one and after less than 50 jumps the visor started to crack around the buttons (starting from the holes and going towards the edges). Paratec claimed I had abused it and refused to exchange the visor. The reseller let me keep the old visor and buy a new one for half the price (and do check out the price of the replacement visor, they are not cheap). It felt good when I first tried it on, but with glasses on and an Optima in the pocket it became slightly too narrow, yet it moves back and forth a little bit in freefall (when tracking, the visor touches my not so big nose).

My top list of soft opening canopies would be something like this: Neos-99 (when it doesn't open hard, have not tried any with the fix). Crossfire2-129 Safire2-139 Storm 135(?) JVX-90 Scirocco-77 Crossfire2-119 Safire2-119 Its been too long since I jumped a spectre to know where it would go in the list, but probably near the Storm. Of these, I can only recommend a Safire2 or Storm to someone with few jump numbers. I've also only jumped one of each kind and all canopies are a bit different.

' I'm out of my mind then, but on my rears with louie-loops the risers where too thick to have slink protectors installed in the normal way, so I turned them upside down and then folded them and put a few stitches in them. That might be possible on the rear risers too if one wants to use top rings.

Personally I use the one hand per handle EP (hence no sweeping) and I think its a better method for wingsuits since reserve handles have been known to be slightly swallowed in some suits. I think it is a superior method at all but that's a different discussion. I can see a point in sweeping and teaching it to students, but what's the problem here? He pulled as far as he could and he had no midget arms. He felt the canopy leave. What would the sweeping get him?

I'm using slink protectors (or whatever those hats are called) to keep the rings up.

I would turn it off, but some like it even when they are not swooping. With seven jumps I assume you are a student so you should really talk to your instructors about it though.

They are used for swooping to get feedback for the downwind, base and the initiation point for the final turn. By listening to the beeps you don't have to look at the altimeter as much and can look around for other canopies more. There is a minimum height for the 3rd canopy descent warning (and the altitude between the 1st, 2nd and 3rd altitudes) which makes it somewhat useless for a straight in approach. The unit beeps more and more often as you approach the third canopy descent warning height and at the third warning altitude it continuously beeps. The time between each beep depends on your descent rate. If you have a constant descent rate, it will appear that the beeps come faster and faster. Assume your third altitude is 200m. It will then beep at 230, 220, 215, 210, 207, 205, 203, 200m (or something like that). Its pretty obvious once you hear it. Correct. The descent rate doesn't change with wind speed or wind direction. Unless you are landing in a hill where the air isn't moving horizontal.

The AltiTrack (not an audible), the ProTrack and Neptune have computer interfaces and they log the altitude a couple of times per second so you can look at graphs in Paralog for example. There are probably a few more, look in the gear section. But I doubt you can learn much about your track from either of them since you want to know your forward speed as well. A GPS logger is a better tool for the job. The FlySight (http://flysight.ca/) GPS logger logs five times per second and you can connect ear-phones or a speaker to it that will beep your current speed or glide ratio for in air feedback. Read more about it in the wingsuit forum where there is a long thread about it. As for it being a distraction, yes it probably is at your jump numbers. It would be better to go track with some more experienced jumper that flies base for you. That way there is a lower chance that you'll track into/above someone else or miss the dropzone.

Something tells me he thinks nothing, you must be the one with the problem. Thanks for your concerns! Years don't tell everything though. I took two years to finish my static line course, then I only did a few jumps a year for many years until I became active in the sport. Still 2.25 is a pretty high wing loading at my current 900 jumps. Not to sound too defensive, but no one that has seen me fly has complained about my wing loading. Perhaps I've gained some extra skills because for the last two years I've only trained canopy piloting from hop & pops or pulling high or perhaps I've just been lucky. Given that I only train for competition in canopy piloting, what do you think would be a suitable wing for me?

After me and a friend constantly was slightly high above the entry gate at my first (and his second) competition, I bought a couple of electronic gates to better train. We put them up in the middle of a large grass field without any other markers. When I tried to hit them for the first time, I was so low into the corner that I went under the beam (1.5m) sliding sideways on my feet after pulling hard on the toggles... A few jumps later another friend came back all green after doing the same thing but sliding on the body. Then a third, much more experienced friend aborted slightly higher, but he had also set up too close to the gates and tried to dive into them... After that we took them down again before anyone got hurt. I got low because I set up too close to the gate and slowed down the turn to get further from the gate, but of course then I ended up low. I've been low before but then I have noticed it much earlier and aborted in time, but this time I was focusing too much on the gate. Since there were no other objects near it, I guess it was much harder to notice the lack of altitude. Previously when training we have either just used markers at the ground (thus no real feedback if one was too high) or huge windblades. So... How should one train safer? Will more course markers help?

Last week I managed two "holy shit" jumps in a row... We had just put up an electronic swoop gate. They were put up on a large grass field without any other indicators near it. I came in a bit too close to the gate, but tried to steer away from it by slowing down the second 90 degree turn (of a 270)... When I came out of the turn I pulled the toggles with all my strength, but I still went under the gate's beam (at 1.5m) sliding sideways on my feet in the wet grass. I could not have gotten lower without bouncing. I took a timeout after that, but did a second jump later in the afternoon. Pulled after at around 2000m. I usually grab the rears and steer the opening of my Scirocco which leads to really nice openings, straight and soft. This time I missed the left riser and I was probably a bit asymmetrical in harness because it turned 90 degrees to the left. Well, I had a nice grab of the right riser so I pulled it... The canopy turned quickly to the right and spun up, with one riser hitting my upper lip. The quick turn made my neck make some nice cracking noise and I didn't jump more that day or the next.

The Scirocco is a nine cell cross braced canopy where the three middle cells are divided into four minicells each (instead of the usual three). I've only got around 50 jumps with my Scirocco, but I like it more and more. It opens soft and on heading if you steer it with the rear risers during opening. It opens great both at full speed and at hop & pops. I jump a [email protected] where I start my 270 final at 240m. It is easy to get it to dive and to keep it diving. I just do harness turns, but its also easy with the front risers, it doesn't build up a heavy pressure. I've done 630s and higher rotations with the front risers as well. When spiraling in the harness together with my friend in a [email protected], I have to break slightly with the rears to not dive away from him! One can also fly it for a really long time on the rears during landing, making it easier to keep up the speed. Its probably the cheapest crossbraced canopy around with a list price of 1850 USD with RDS and HMA-350 or 400 lines. A new set of lines (including change) is 150USD!

You've not used an audible I take it (or use it in a different way than intended). I start my final when my audible starts to beep continuously (like in the beginning of the video). Its when it stops beeping (like in the video before he turns) that I have passed the initiation altitude and either have to increase the speed of the turn or simply abort. Then in the middle of the turn it "thinks" I'm in freefall and it really starts to scream the final warning sound, but it would be a bit silly to stop there. Of course I look at the altimeter as well as the gate before I start the final and I keep looking at the gate during the final/turn (but never look at the altimeter after I've started). I've only been at one competition over water and I found it near impossible to see if I was high/low so there I had to ignore my eyes when starting the final.

Fully open corners on my Wings doesn't affect how it looks, but it is slightly faster to pack.

Line drag is a factor to about 50 or so canopy pilots in the world. To the rest it is an ego thing. They could use 750 braided Dacron and it would not make a difference. Of course it will not make a dramatic impact for most people, but if you lose at competition by 1cm, surely you would regret that you didn't get HMA-300 instead of the braided 750 dacron lines. For people that don't compete, I agree with you more or less (I would still think Dacron would be a poor choice for tiny canopies with tight line specs though). But back to the topic at hand. Its not the size of the canopy that is the problem. Its the performance. The higher the performance of the canopy, the more experience is required to handle it and the bigger the injury will be at an equal incident. So even if there were a huge canopy with awesome performance it would still not be suitable for people with little experience and people would still "downsize" to it as they gain more experience if they wanted to get more performance.

That depends on the plane. I was a student in a skyvan and there the JM had one hand on the chest strap (to push the student back if the student didn't jump far enough backwards or cushion the impact...) and the other hand on the shoulder with PC (as far as I remember). I don't think the "standard practice" would have worked so well there. In the PAC750 we let the students sit in the front part of the door while the JM is kneeling besides them holding the student with one hand and the PC near the neck with the other, then following them down/back with the arm and dropping the PC above the students head when one can't reach any further. I do think that's the best we can do with that plane. But we do not teach many students that way as we sell AFF.

There are more ways to enjoy things than just adrenalin rushes. For me kayaking is about exploring nature and getting some upper body exercise at the same time, not adrenalin rushes. A calm sea, a setting sun and paddling up near some sea bird can be magical. The risks of injury and death only prevents me from kayaking in some weathers, it doesn't make it more fun. Skydiving is about the people, the joy of improving my abilities and the sense of freedom. Sure, some adrenalin rush can be fun, but even without that I do enjoy skydiving.

The passenger needs to be able to pull, at the right altitude and stable even if they were unstable previously on the jump. I do hope that is a requirement for the A-license in all countries. Of course the more inexperienced the passenger is, the more time is spent on briefing and talking about what to do when things don't go as planned. Just like all other skydiving activities with persons of little experience. Tell them where to find the DZ, at what height to pull if you get separated early (and what "early" means in terms of altitude), etc. The passenger doesn't even need to be able to track before pulling so I consider it even safer than a FS-2 jump, something quite a lot of people have been doing right after getting their A-licenses. I've rarely seen any of these FS-2 groups exit the plane in a stable way but somehow they manage to pull their parachutes at the right altitude.

Could that not be done with different line lengths? On the other hand, perhaps it would be hard to make the canopy open correctly then since the outer part of the canopy would be higher up than the middle during opening/packing.

Maybe its my poor English, or the use of a lesser, not so well known e-mail service (gmail) that trigger some spam filters, but I also rarely get any response from my emails to US-manufacturers. On the other hand, there are plenty of european dealers that I've not got any response from and there are quite a few good american dealers that I've got quick responses from. I can understand that manufacturers don't want to be bothered with emails from customers directly, but then they can just say so on the web site and have a current list of dealers with email & web-site addresses instead of publishing their own e-mail address...

Now that the Scirocco has been approved in Sweden I've done around twenty jumps with it. The openings are soft (and long), but almost never on heading. It streams a while on heading but as the slider starts to come down it picks a heading and dives towards it, sometimes turning the other way halfway through... Steering the openings on the rears does tame it a bit though. It flies quite fast while braked. I, with a WL of 2.2, flew together with my friend's [email protected]. I was slightly flying from him when we were diving with harness input. When using some toggle input to fly next to each other, I had to make myself big and he made himself smaller so I would not outfly him. When flaring, I can pull the toggles almost as long as my arms are without stalling it. I do use longer risers than recommended (25" UPT with louie-loops). I mounted some of PD's slider-stoppers upside down on the front risers, otherwise the RDS rings could come down slightly on the louie-loops and make them harder to grab. The rings are too small for the risers so I could not pull them down over the handles. I start my 270s at 230m and when done right I am slightly in the corner and pull out on the rears.

The first one is enough if you want the jump track software. I prefer Paralog: http://www.paralog.net/ and in that case you just need the second (and buy Paralog from its site). I don't think you can try Jump Track without buying it, but Paralog can be tested without buying it (comes with a demo database).

There's quite a lot of difference between a container that has the correct size for you and one that does not. For example I really like my Wings, on the other hand I've jumped some Wings that were slightly too small for me that was quite uncomfortable. Same thing with other containers. So before ruling out a container because of how it feels make sure its the correct size for you.

Not really. Even if one side isn't sharp, the loop is still sheered off (in two places) and I expect the force to be lower than forcing a knife down against an anvil. Ff the cutter had one side up and another down and the holes were not parallell, then even more force would be used to cut the first part of the loop. On the other hand, riggers would mount the cutter upside down now and then. (and it would only work on rigs with the cutter on the bottom).

During opening the flaps open up and then bounce back to the middle so they can come in contact with the lines, unless the lines have already been moved away. As far as it has happened, I'm not old enough to remember when it was common to have longer, unstowed lines, but some of the larger Wings containers had a SB three years ago because of the design of one of the flaps and two incidents with canopies in tow. That was not because of the grommets.