Kurbe105

When you think you're ready to downsize invest in a weight belt and strap on enough lead(within reason like under 35 lbs) to get to the same wingloading you will be under the new canopy. Jump it a few times and decide if you're comfortable enough with the canopy speed and flight characteristics to land crosswind, downwind, half brakes, no brakes(ie land with rears). Remember this will be your new wingloading IN ALL CONDITIONS!!! Find a wingloading you're comfortable with and use that as your base. If you want to target a specific wingloading above 2:1 to focus on canopy piloting or on occasion just go faster simply strap on the lead.

Just sharing our conversation from way back when. I got back on the scene last year after a 6 year hiatus due to a plane crash. I just do 270s & probably barely crack 60mph when I'm lucky. Nick's results tell the rest of the tale. My thought process was this... "If I hold my arm straight out of the car window at 60 mph with my hand flat and parallel to the ground this was the least drag I could have and felt little resistance. If I rotated my hand 90 deg so my palm was catching the relative wind this was the max drag I could have and felt mega resistance. But somewhere between 30 & 45 deg there was a sweet spot where my hand would support the entire weight of my arm without trying to pull me out of the car. Step up the speed to 80 mph and the sweet spot is even more noticeable. Logical thought would dictate that by presenting your body to the relative wind at just the right angle(also like being on the hill just after exit) you could help propel yourself in the direction you want to go." I don't mind the voices in my head... they come up with some really cool ideas!

Yep, it is fucking crazy! No secret just bad ass skills and a whole lot of dedication!

Here's some more really good footage of Nick's body position. On his rear facing camera footage notice how his hands are positioned on his rear risers. He's holding them from the front and towards the bottom of the riser as he's coming through the corner. This allows him to rotate his shoulders, keep his arms behind him, lean forward and arch. I picked up on this little trick and it seems to make a noticeable difference as my arms are now in my burble instead of above my head or out to my sides(like in my profile pic) creating drag and it's also easier to assume the position before having to give any canopy inputs. To me it just feels more natural :-) http://www.3news.co.nz/Horizontal-parachuting-with-a-top-skydiver/tabid/817/articleID/333804/Default.aspx#.UxIOgnH74kk.facebook

Leaning forward in the harness has multiple effects depending on how fast the canopy is flying. Nick and I used to watch hours of competition tapes trying to learn what the top guys were doing just after he earned his procard. At first we noticed what everyone notices... leaning forward and arching reduces drag and helps get you a little more pendulum forward and yes does flatten out the angle of attack ever so slightly. Then we noticed something else, a lot of jumpers had a bad tendency to let their knees hang down and not arch from the hips. Then finally one of us said "Dude, look how long even the best guy waits before he leans forward. They're almost all through the corner and have already started the deceleration cycle before leaning forward in the harness. If you're hitting speeds close to 90mph doing 450 deg rotations and you were to lean forward and get into that arched body position as you're still accelerating through the corner with your knees up and arching from the hips, you would be unbeatable in distance. Think about it... use your body to generate lift as well and you've got an edge no one else has." Multi-time world record distance runs later he still does it best! Nick does what he does because he is flying his body as much as the wing the entire time. Notice how he gets there while the canopy is still diving. Balls like freakin' coconuts I'm sayin'! http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/champion-skydiver-swoops-into-nz-video-5851854

Lodi's cool... feels old school. Just don't do anything stupid or Bill will fire you!

Lee hit the nail on the head!!! I would much rather strap on 50 lbs of lead then drop 20 sq ft. I've been away from the comp scene for a while but do the rules still determine how much lead you can wear according to your body weight?

Not sure about that one. Haven't really tested it or know anyone who has. From what I understand longer risers give you a slightly longer recovery arc but other than that I would just be making stuff up. I've always used Mirage 22". Anyone have any personal experience with this?

I used to have a Paraconcepts RDS. I was going to get another one before I found the Chupacabra. I really like the solid metal grommets though. I think they have an option for metal rings now but I had an older one with plastic around the grommets. I always had an issue with the grommets sliding up the risers after rotating and coming out of the corner and would wind up with a handful of grommet when I would go for the rears. We added this mod to each of the rear risers like a barb on a fish hook. It worked well so I just left it in place. Also unkulunkulu the biggest danger from routing your risers over the flaps is a toggle coming unstowed before deployment which would almost definitely result in a cut away under a highly loaded x-braced canopy. Take a look at the 2nd attachment. If I have a total mal or pilot chute in tow there's no reason the reserve pilot chute shouldn't launch normally. Granted I have stable body position.

I can see the confusion there. What I was referring to was how the distance from your chest muscles to your belly button will close if you are in great shape and add the crunch to your double front approach. The risers don't really go any further but in my opinion it makes it easier to hang on during the rotation. Much like locking your arms and legs to rest when rock climbing and not staying in a transitional position. What was the original question again??

I have no ratings anymore. Let them all go. Didn't like being responsible for others and I make my money elsewhere. I've got really low jump numbers for my years in the sport and skill level but I get a lot of people coming up to me asking canopy related questions though because they see how I fly my wing, not how many jumps I have or what ratings are in my log book. If you want to learn to fly a HP wing, find someone who knows what's up and ask them for help. If no one at your DZ is into competitive canopy piloting, it's well worth the investment to plan a trip for a professional coaching course. I'm partial and recommend getting in touch with Nicholas Batsch to find out what his coaching schedule is if you're looking for the best.

Sorry for all the confusion Craddock. When I said abdomen I meant abdomen. Didn't mean for anyone to interpret it as belly button. As far as harness inputs, I was taught they are used to finish big rotations once the riser pressure gets too high. JM taught us to turn your hips and point your toes the direction you want to go and then straighten your legs like you want to stand up. This is way more effective than simply leaning in the harness. Again, try it up high if you don't believe. Sorry about the bulking up comment. That's what I was told when I first started jumping a Velo and the pressure was way higher than my old Jedei 105. After a hundred jumps or so on the Velo I went to a JVX and the same techniques produced much stronger results than on the Velo. The JVX is a powerhouse in rear risers but the setup was the same. Do us a favor though and put on a hard helmet. I want to be able to have more good threads with you in the future. Makes me cringe to see people swooping with a bare melon. Thanks for the opinions. Definitely helped clarify a few things ;-)

Here's a couple I snapped. No adverse affects on opening but it does make any canopy considerably more aggressive. The biggest thing that can be an issue is that it's easy to have your risers twisted when your packing. I also route my risers around the flaps and tuck tabs for hop n pops so there is less material flapping around creating drag and it's less wear and tear on the container. Just cleaner in my opinion but only for hop n pops. Also I've heard people complain that the RDS rings on the Chupacabra being too small. With my risers stitched this way I have zero issues with the rings hanging up on the risers. The system works awesome!

Poor girl, thought that was a simple question huh? Here's a straight answer without any if/then scenarios. The highest performance canopy is the one which generates lift most efficiently. This would be a rigid wing such as a fixed wing aircraft. The metal is hard, smooth and never flexes. This generates lift efficiently and consistently across the top surface of the wing. Parachutes are no different. The first thing we did was make the parachute square and give it ribs with an upper and lower surface area like an airplane wing. This was way before I started jumping though. Then we created material called Z-PO(which stands for zero porosity) to help increase negative air pressure on the top skin for more lift and better response. At the same time the design advanced from a 7 cell dual chamber design(giving us 14 individual arcs across the top of the canopy) to a 9 cell dual chamber design(giving us 18 individual arcs across the top of the canopy). I"ll get into the performance gain on this a bit later. So now we're up to the days of Sabres in the early 1990s. From this point designers realized that if you tapered the leading and trailing edges of the canopy it was much more responsive. This gave us the era of 9 cell high performance ellipticals. Stilettos, Jedeis, Batwings, Turbo ZXs they would all respond to toggle, harness and riser input much more than the traditional square canopy and were hot shit back in the day! By the mid to late 90s designers were looking for a way to make the wing even more stiff and rigid. The first step was stitching extra flaps in the nose of the parachute to create a one way valve kind of like a raccoon trap. The Jedei was the first to have them I believe and they were called "Airlocks." This kept the wing firmer even at slower air speeds and in turbulence and also was an improvement for generating lift at the tail end of the flare when the canopy slowed down. Even with all this though the designers still recognized that the wing would be more efficient if it was flatter and generated lift more perpendicular to gravity instead of in a rounded arc above the jumper. This lead to cross bracing. If you have a box with four sides, it can easily be manipulated into a parallelogram. Now if you take that same box and attach the opposite corners to each other(like bracing on a bridge) that box is now extremely rigid and it's shape cannot change easily. Buy utilizing all the previous advancements and going to triple chambered cross braced cells, canopies like the JVX and Velocity are extremely rigid and create lift very efficiently. This allows a steeper angle of attack(angle the parachute flies at the ground in normal full flight) for more speed and longer diving turns because of the ability to generate lift more efficiently. Also by adding the cross bracing and third chamber to each cell not only is the overall arc of the canopy flattened out, but each individual chamber(27 on a JVX) has less arc creating a smoother top surface which increases overall lift. So at this point you would think swoopers would be satisfied with having something capable of going 80+ MPH straight at the ground and generating enough lift to easily swoop an entire football field... you would be wrong :-p Being the speed freaks we are we always want MORE!! Modifying the harness and deployment system can also increase the performance and efficiency of the wing. A traditional parachute will typically have the smaller pilot chute used for deployment and the bag which the canopy is packed inside of attached to the top of the parachute and trailing behind after opening. By attaching that pilot chute and D bag to the slider and putting detachment points on the slider, we can remove all that garbage after opening the parachute for a clean efficient wing. The big gain isn't just from the reduced parasitic drag. The canopy will generate much more lift, especially late in the flare, because the pilot chute and D bag are not creating a burble on the top skin of the canopy which is where all your lift comes from. One other trick we use(other than just plain strapping on lead to increase wingloading) is to fold our risers over lengthwise and stitch the edges together to get a knife edge. This eliminates the 1" x 22" wide air brake attached to each of your shoulders. This is all about reducing parasitic drag on the overall system and is most effective at wingloadings above 2lbs/sq ft. Enjoy :-) Blue Skies!!!

Hey there- I didn't say anything was bogus about it. I think it is a technique that many of us use (or try to get as close to as we can). It looks like you like to teach and help. That can be a great thing! I just thought it was humorous; as this situation to me was similar to - Q "Why does my 2013 honda civic seem harder to turn than my 2009 model?" A- "If you want to win in F1, these are the 10 things Ayrton Senna does to maximize his performance through a hairpin..." I just found it amusing. :) Glad to have you back in the air. My Bad... I got the two posts confused. Sometimes I do get a little carried away. I did hold back though from suggesting he has his rigger stitch the edges of his risers together!! Lol Thanks for the laugh and the welcome. It feels great to be swooping again!!!

Zlew you did make me laugh out loud at myself!!! I'm confused though Craddock over what's bogus about double front risers to your abs? When someone pulls them down in front of their chin, all the force is on their biceps and the risers have tremendous leverage to get pulled out of his or her grasp. By getting the risers down to my upper abs/ribs and locking my hands under my chest muscles and my arms against my ribs I can hold the dive much longer and make the first part of my rotation super slow. The guys who are in iron man shape also do a crunch at this point and curl up so their hands are almost to their belly button. I'm fat dude!!! 2.15 under a 103 now with no weight and can't quite hold the crunch. Been out of the loop for a bit because I took a siesta for a while after our Otter crashed back in '06. Started jumping and swooping again this summer. I went with Nick to all his amateur comps and watched him earn his Pro License in 2005. I'm not trying to tell anyone how they should fly their wing. I'm just letting you know what all the top competitors with the best results were doing. I watched JM teach someone with 250 jumps at a 1.2wl under a square the same exact acceleration techniques he was teaching the rest of us under highly loaded x-braced canopies. The only difference was the amount of rotation. The novice jumper started with straight in approaches learning to put the first 2 acceleration cycles together correctly. After the first 2 days and about 15 jumps the novice was nailing straight in double fronts. It was impressive how powerful proper technique is! The physics never changes. The longer you accelerate the wing... the longer it takes to decelerate. One of the big keys is how to operate all the controls and have maximum control/leverage. CBASS don't take my word for it... Test it at altitude for yourself. Pull your fronts down and lock your hands under your chest muscles and your arms against your body. See how long you can hold that position. If you want throw in some turns(up high of course) just by leaning your upper body. I think you'll really be surprised how much longer you can hold it by maximizing your leverage this way. This is the position I always use when checking control line slack also but that's just me. I also suggest if you're going to go to a deep brake approach instead of a 1/2 -1/4 brake approach, allow more time(maybe an extra 1 to 1.5 sec) for the canopy to accelerate before pulling down on the fronts. Practice this up high. Wait until you feel the surge and the wing accelerate before pulling down on the fronts. Once you have them down the optimum amount of time to hold them is just until you feel the canopy acceleration flatten out. At that point your at max speed and the wing will only maintain or start to decelerate without a rotation. Also practice letting up on the fronts smoothly and not just letting go of them.

Did you try strapping on enough weight under the 96 to get a 2:1 WL and compare the characteristics to the 90 at 2:1? If you really want to know how one wing compares to another that's the best way to get a good benchmark.

The important thing to focus on here is for the canopy to continually be accelerating all the way until you want to start your plane out/flare. How are you leading into your double front approach? It sounds like your already in full flight before you pull them down. All the World Record setters I know use 3 phases of acceleration to maximize the length of time the canopy is accelerating and not necessarily their top speed. The technique Nick Batsch uses (and was taught by J. Moledzki) is to link together the 3 ways we know how to make a canopy accelerate(letting up on brakes, pulling down double fronts, and turning the canopy) 1) Go into deep brakes and get your speed as close to zero as you can without stalling the wing. 2) Let up on the brakes and let the canopy surge until it's done accelerating, feel it baby... 3) Reach up and grab double fronts and smoothly pull them as close to your abdomen as you can(yes I said abdomen, if your crying about riser pressure then man up and bulk up. It's called a sport for a reason). 4) Let the canopy surge until you feel the acceleration peak. 5) Slowly let up on one riser to begin your turn(with your front risers buried in your abdomen you can do this by just leaning in the harness) keeping the rotation slow for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of your rotation(for constant acceleration, not quick acceleration) then completely let up on the outside riser to finish the last portion more quickly. This keeps the canopy accelerating the entire time through the recovery arc and you avoid maxing out your speed prematurely. Even though you're keeping your approach straight in and think it's less critical, the first 2 phases of the acceleration cycle are the most important. If you don't execute smoothly and in the proper sequence at the start, you'll never go as fast or far as the person who does. BTW... I would guess the higher front riser pressure is coming from the smaller wing going faster in full flight. This will pressurize the wing more making the risers harder to pull. If you start from deep brakes you'll notice much less pressure when you pull them down. Be careful my friend. The ground wins ALWAYS!!!

Thank you ... against my initial thoughts but I'll go with your maths .... mine's been known to be wrong

You somewhat strengthened my argument because even if you stay with the plane and strap in, there's nothing to stop others who aren't strapped in from taking you out. Looking back after the fact I have to agree that their best chance for survival is strapped in with 2 or more points of contact. This is mainly because of the fact that it appears proper aircraft emergency procedures weren't followed causing a loss in airspeed and a stall. That's the human variable I guess? I concur it would be wiser to strap in with 2,3 or even 4 belts then to try and fire your reserve out the door even with the engine on fire. NoShitThereIwas... I think we found our answer ;-) Blue Skies to everyone who offered their opinions. Hopefully this thread will help keep us all alive until our ride comes to a complete stop!

Thank you for your heart felt response. You keyed on a very crucial point. The single point seat belts did nothing to help anyone. I have to go back to my post earlier about strapping in with 2 or more belts once you realize your making an emergency landing I guess?

It is VERY appropriate to look at the pictures and ask what situations warrant extreme measures. Just looking at the picture of take off what would you think to do? Can you show me any pictures of a skydiving aircraft with an engine on fire during take off that landed safely? If so, I will definitely consider the circumstances and outcome in forming my opinion.

Here's a photo of the plane as it took off. Take a look at some of the other crash site photos and tell me if you'd still rather take your chances in the aircraft. https://www.google.com/search?q=skydiving+plane+crash+in+sullivan,+mo&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ropVUtm5J8TR2QXAuYBw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=677&dpr=1#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=oC0cC_wMaoIrqM%3A%3B9cM-mtlxfUBuaM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Favstop.com%252Fnews%252Fquantu17.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Favstop.com%252Fnews%252Fquantum_leap.htm%3B670%3B369

The math only works if you're considering free falling from the plane. The question at hand is dealing with trying to leave the aircraft with an inflated reserve. It would be comparable to a roll over or a 'tard' in BASE jumping which takes about 50'-80' to have an inflated canopy but the slider is already down. Also if you do stay with the plane not only do you have to survive the impact but hope you don't get stuck inside the burning wreckage. Keep in mind the right engine is a big orange fireball as you're lifting off! http://vimeo.com/4193447

I agree with you in general but in this case there was no sputtering. The engine burst into a ball of fire and seized to a grinding halt as the wheels lifted off.