raymod2

It seems to me that the non-swoopers (ZigZagMarquis and mjosparky) feel that swooping is a misuse of their equipment and that swoopers get what they deserve for being so reckless. It is not Hooknswoop who is ignoring the facts: - the Velocity was designed for swooping - the Velocity was around long before the CYPRES2 was designed - the CYPRES2 was marketed towards swoopers - Airtec declared in their manual that you cannot cause a CYPRES to fire under canopy ZigZagMarquis and mjosparky: What is the fastest vertical descent rate you have achieved under canopy? If you don't even know how can your argument be based on the premise that everyone should?

> If you pull your reserve at 200 feet and it fails to deploy before > impact, did the reserve cause the fatality? No. In that case there is an emergency and your gear failed to save you. Take the reserve out of the equation and the outcome is the same. In Adrian's case there was no emergency. His gear created the emergency that killed him. Take the CYPRES out of the equation and the outcome is reversed. > Umm...emergency braking in a car is a predictable requirement for > the manufacturer. Canopies descending at 78mph was not foreseeable > until rather recently and is still an unusual event. I disagree that canopies descending at 78mph was not foreseeable. But I think we will both agree it is foreseeable now! I'm not saying Airtec should be sued for negligence. What I am saying is that they should admit to a problem with their product and work quickly to come up with a solution. I think a solution can be found despite the fact that everyone here is an engineer and has declared the problem unsolvable.

I really don't understand why people like you are trying to downplay this incident. A device intended to save lives caused a fatality. For all the rhetoric in this thread that fact remains irrefutable. People are demanding a solution and they should. Tell me this: how would you react if one of your family members died in a car accident because they braked too hard and their air bag fired which caused them to run off the road? Would you say "the air bag was designed to fire at a certain rate of deceleration and it was functioning correctly"? Would you say "he should have read the owners manual and avoided hard braking maneuvers"?

Pulling the riser down or pulling your body up. They are the same thing. Just different points of reference.

I say you should... IMO. I dont think Adrian was jumping a compatition-loaded canopy (ie weights)... Unless I missed it somewhere in the posts, it was his regular canopy (well, a canopy of same size and make since his didnt make it to the DZ), with no weights. From the bits and pieces we have been given it doesn't look like wing loading is the problem. It looks like multiple rotation turns (more than 360 degrees) initatied from above 1000 feet are the problem.

I have uploaded another angle of the world record distance runs at Mile Hi last Thursday: Mark Shimmel's 594 foot run Jay Moledski's 619 foot run Jay Moledski's 678 foot run http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=download&id=2735 Regarding Jay's first run: In one breath Jim Slaton says "5.4 on the wind meter" and in the next breath he says "and now it [the world record] will be owned by Jay". I thought 5mph was the limit for setting world records. Regarding Jay's second run: in the video it looks like he touches the water. You can hear Jim Slaton saying "looks like they've got a video review on the water - it can be close, he might have had a touch". What was the result of that video review? Did he touch the water before the gates? Is that still legal?

I agree with Ian and Mark. Just get out there and compete. It's not like the CPC is so crowded right now that you need to split it off into multiple classes. Hell, if you competed in the Illinois region this year you would have gotten third place just for showing up at all the meets. And I think that drawing a line between crossbraced canopies and non-crossbraced canopies is ridiculous. If you think you are going to double your swoop distance when you go out and buy your first crossbraced canopy you are in for a disappointment.

That's a good question. Stated more formally: For any given path to the ground can your peak horizontal speed exceed your peak vertical speed? Instinctively I would say no but the correct answer is yes. Consider a straight slide that is 10 feet tall and 20 feet long. When you reach the bottom of the slide you have gone twice as far horizontally as you have gone vertically in the same amount of time. Therefore your average horizontal speed is twice as fast as your average vertical speed. By using differential calculus it follows that at any given point your instantaneous horizontal speed is also twice as fast as your instantaneous vertical speed. It also follows that your peak horizontal speed is twice as fast as your peak vertical speed. Did Jay Moledski go faster than 91mph in the vertical direction during his world record distance run? I don't know but it is possible that he didn't.

I know there were some mistakes made when tallying the scores for the distance rounds. They were corrected by Thursday morning. Maybe that explains the discrepancies. On a related note, did they ever post the complete score sheets that show the results of the individual rounds? Are they planning to?

Public image when relating to wuffos. This is not the reason I remember Jim Slaton giving us during the briefing. He said it was to encourage safer landings because too many people were getting injured in zone accuracy. Also, we were warned not to stall our canopies in an effort to salvage a bad run. A red card was given when one competitor did this.

You are wrong. In zone accuracy and freestyle stand up landings are the goal. Most people took a 10 point penalty in zone accuracy for failing to stand them up.

American Airlines (RT Chicago/Denver): $218.40 Payless car rental (4 days): $100.69 Super 8 in Longmont (3 nights): $165 + tax CPC registration: $150 chance to compete with the top amateurs in the country: priceless

Widgeon makes a good point here. If you want to make it harder to reach your dive loops then loosening the leg straps should achieve the same effect. The same can be said for the magical "pendulum effect" that has somehow evaded physics books for centuries. But one thing longer risers will give you that loosening leg straps won't is a flatter canopy. The same could be achieved, however, with less drag by using longer lines.

It looks like the schedule can be found at the following URL: http://www.milehiskydiving.com/gofastchallenge/ I'm a little confused, though. Will the Standard class be competing with the Pro class? And if you are in the Standard class which days must you attend? Just Tuesday and Wednesday?

I think it is a poor analogy to compare a 500 foot swoop with a 30 foot long jump. It looked to me that he landed on his ass because he had too much speed to land on his feet (due to the "pop up" technique, the tailwind, or whatever). Do the pros still land on their ass when there is a 10mph headwind?

I personally would prefer that the same rule of being below the gates through whole swoop would apply to the distance rounds too. It did look like the "pop up" technique resulted in somewhat of a crash landing.

How do you know that it gave you extra distance? I saw Nick doing this during a distance round at the 4th meet of the Midwest region. It looked to me like it may have shortened his swoop rather than lengthened it. I'm curious if the pros are doing this on purpose (by applying extra rear riser input) or if the canopy is popping up on its own due to the high speeds required to set a world distance record.

Keep trying to make it back up to the formation. When everyone starts tracking, you track too. Pull low (2000 feet).

Maybe a stupid question but what is the definition of "dirt-water-dirt"? Does that require the first point of contact to occur before the water? Do you have to drag your toe the entire length of the pond?

This is all very interesting. I wonder why nobody has mentioned this to PD.

Please explain this.

This kind of comment really annoys me. A vertical earns you a score of 0 for a good reason. It's not "almost" a world record or an "unofficial" world record. As far as I know Jonathan Tagle still holds that title and he earned it by going through the gates.

No, it's not the same. When you choose deep brakes to get back from a long spot you are choosing to minimize your sink rate at the expense of glide angle (which the tailwind more than makes up for). That is also a static flight mode (all forces are balanced). A swoop is a dynamic flight mode and your input is continuously changing to maintain level flight.

What's cheap about $10 hop-n-pops? At our dropzone that is the price every day.

Well, first you need to convince a DZO and an organizer that the effort is worth their while. How about collecting names of interested, qualified skydivers? I'm sure you have contacts at DZs around the midwest. You'd probably find 40 or so just at SDC and Hinckley. Don't forget about Sky Knights. We have lots of RW talent up here, too.