MarkM

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Everything posted by MarkM

  1. Wingsuiting probably had me pulling lower than I'd pull if I didn't do wingsuiting. Primary reasons where the slower fall rate made it seem like I had a lot more time, sometimes I'd be chasing canopies or clouds and need to go lower to clear or get to them, and wingsuiting also kept me in a more docile canopy which gave me a bit of complacency in regards to dealing with issues on it. A wingsuit jump going below 3k didn't really phase me all that much. I just tried to not make it into a habit. But the idea of a freefly jump down to 3k with a highly loaded elliptical? The idea would just seem crazy to me. In some ways the complacency was legit. Starting deployment with a 40mph fall rate under a lightly loaded square has it's benefits. But I'm sure there are many mals which just don't care about your fall rate or how lightly loaded you are and an extra 1k of altitude makes all the difference.
  2. If your wife was driving and a dog ran out in front of her car, she'd probably slam on the brake to stop and not "freeze up". That's due to training. She's driven a car for so long that there's no thinking about how to "stop" a car, it's just a reflex. The problem is with new situations we have to think how to react properly, like your wife on the motorcycle. The way around that is to eliminate thinking during the event and just train the ability to recognize the situation and do the proper response. Hence the "rules" in skydiving that give us specific responses to known situations. For the record, I crashed a motorcycle same way when I was learning. A turn got out of control, I leaned back which twisted my wrist(which gave me even more throttle), brain locked about how to stop the bike and threw it under a parked car. Years later I took professional courses, learned to ride and did so for about 10 years. Doing static line training I'd sensory overload during my PRCPs. I'd do it wrong but not remember why or how I was doing it wrong. The only way I got through that was to practice my pulls in a swimming pool a few hundred times. I aced my next jumps and I've never since had a problem going for and finding my handle even though I use a small freefly handle and have to reach around large wingsuit wings.
  3. The skin will peel away from your face long before that adhesive stuff on the mount fails. Really, the only issue you may have is the plastic mount where the camera "snaps" in is a little loose and can shake a bit if the direction of airflow against it changes a lot. You can fix that by adding some material to make that connection more snug.
  4. A big cause for this is people stop flying their canopy too soon. For example, you come in for a landing and are flying fine, feet touch the ground and then you're in "I'm a ground animal" mindset, so you stop flying and start crashing. But then it's impossible to say if this is your problem, because none of us have seen you land. I'd really recommend the following http://www.bigairsportz.com/publishing.php#parachute The book covers a large range of canopy flying topics and really goes into the mental part of flying too.
  5. Well, except you can have your rigger also check out the rig to make sure there aren't any issues with it when he/she repacks it.
  6. Pretty much. I've been jumping a Lotus 136 for the last several hundred jumps and any problems I've ever had with openings I'd tend to blame on a lazy packing or on a sloppy body position/deployment technique. The biggest reason I think they didn't gain in popularity is because Brian Germain held the patent on it for skydiving canopies and his canopies(though very good) never really caught on in popularity. Other companies just marketed their product better. And today, no one is really asking for them. There's very few designs that people really ask for. The skydiving market is kind of finicky and "follow the leader" ish when it comes to the products we buy.
  7. Looks like a good helmet. If I could remove the back handle, I'd use it, no problem. Would probably want a place to stash my audible in it though.
  8. Most skydiving incidents are very much in your control. Realistically, the chance of dying in skydiving is pretty low. That chance goes up very quickly though if you get complacent, which is why it's always important to keep a safe mindset. That said, injuries are pretty high in the sport. They're typically fairly minor, sprains and simple breaks, but it's not at all uncommon for people to get injuries that require multiple days in the hospital and surgery of some sort.
  9. I'd really like the altitude and GPS for wingsuiting, but these things look huge.
  10. I've been a little shocked at how fast wingsuit designs have progressed. At 10 WS jumps back in the day a S3 was the most advanced thing around and it was a scary suit. At 500 WS jumps today the x-birds totally leave those in the dust. And on top of that certain aspect of wingsuit safety(being able to cut away the wings in freefall) have gone away because it's just not safe on the larger suits and pilot skill has made it unnecessary. Then you have things like air locks, which on some suits can be very hard to shut down even when you deploy. I'm very surprised we haven't had more incidents. I don't know if that's luck or because our community is very social and the experienced birds are watching out for the younger ones.
  11. Anything you implement is going to change. Wingsuiting as a discipline has barely begun and the stuff we're doing today is going to look like a joke in 10 years. Technology will also be a game changer at some point. We're using camera and eyeballing it to judge right now, how long til every wingsuiter is flying with a $10 GPS? How is that going to impact records when we can plug exact hard data into a computer and run the geometry? But all anyone has to do is put up their own better system the community can peer review and test. So why hasn't that happened?
  12. I think that's pretty much what will come to play out over the next few years. One of two things can really happen: 1> We come up with a great super system that covers all types of wingsuit formation flying. 2> We end up with several systems, each one designed to cover one or more formation types. What I don't get is why it's such a big deal to have a system today we can use at the Flock and Dock three weeks from now. I don't think anyone is saying that this is the end all be all of formation judging.
  13. It's not "newer", that was the old way of doing it. But no one would agree on the "prove it" part once you already did it. So today we're trying: 1> Come up with a standardized method to prove it. 2> Plan the dive around #1. 3> Do it.
  14. The big bitch is that this forum tends to be full of a lot of people who are more than happy to tear things down, but don't do anything themselves to create something. Because, you know, that actually takes hard work to do. Don't like how the grid doesn't work with certain formations? Then come up with a better solution, put together some formations, use your system to judge those formations and then fly out to a BOD meeting and present your results.
  15. Want to stay with AT&T, yeah an iPhone is the way to go. Otherwise the Droid and Nexus One are solid phones.
  16. Pfft. Everyone knows "duck and cover" is for nuclear blasts and not earthquakes anyway.
  17. The main thing to ask yourself is what would you have done after a few attempts at this. You could easily get so focused on clearing the PC that you lose track of altitude and time. Pull. Pull at altitude. Pull with stability. The stability part is 3rd on the list of priorities.
  18. MarkM

    The IT Crowd

    Nice, I'll have to find a good source for this. NZB sites are only listing episodes in German.
  19. The blood/gore is a little too over the top, but I like it so far.
  20. Got my kayaking trip moved to the 13th so I'll be able to go after all. Really looking forward to seeing some old faces.
  21. There's not a need for anyone ever to land off and yet it happens. It should be expected to happen more if you're flying a wingsuit and planned for: fly a bigger canopy that's forgiving of off landings, work on your canopy accuracy like your life may depend on it and carry a cell phone.
  22. For any decision like this, when I feel the same way after a set amount of time. Might be a relationship, might be a job, whatever, but I give it a couple of months to make sure it's just not one of the usual up/down cycles we all go through. But if you hate your job and it's been dragging on you for months, then start looking for a new one. Don't quit, take your time and find something else you'd really like. Might include a career change too. Be prepared for that to end up sucking too when you're done with the "honeymoon" period and be ready to move from that too. Eventually you get something that works.
  23. Why is that? Main reason I've seen is in flocking everyone tends to target fix on the base and everyone else around them. Basically checking your slot, making sure no one kills you and not paying attention to the ground. If base flies off into the sunset everyone else does to. My favorite is when free fallers give shit about it. It's easy to get home when the pilot is GPS spotting you and you're going straight down. Then when they go on a tracking jump, oh hey, they land off. Funny how the difficulty ramps up when you're not going straight down and have to nav around flight paths, students, tandems, keep your slot, and dodge Mr Zoomy all while covering 3 miles of ground.
  24. Yeah, "these days". Freeflying has been around for a couple decades, RW even longer. Time was putting 50 freeflyers in the same airspace at once without anyone getting killed itself was a big deal which is where wingsuit has been and is starting to evolve from. Freeflying saw a lot of evolution which included false starts and dead ends. Anyone remember the AD licenses? Wingsuiting will be the same. FF went VRW which is great for that discipline but docks just aren't practical for wingsuits and frankly would send the discipline in the wrong direction, towards smaller suits that are easier to control. Frankly the records right now are easy because there's no existing records to beat. That requires standards. We were doing 50-60 ways years back at the flock and docks but it didn't mean squat because there was no rule to apply to the formation to determine whether or not it was crap.
  25. Aerodyne has a very solid rep and has had a good rep for years and years. They don't have the same rabid fan base that PD has, but they make great canopies and offer good customer support.