980

flying a landing pattern consisting of 3 distinct legs: downwind, crosswind/base and upwind/final and doing right hand 90 degree turns between each leg this person flew the same pattern as someone doing just 90s right for every turn ***AFAIK left pattern has just left, right pattern has just right turns.*** that is correct if you are looking at the final effect of every turn only a left hand 270 = a right hand 90 (as far as the landing pattern goes) it's like they say: 'Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.'

What rig does the guy in the V2 have? Looks like a Wings. It also looks like it's packed with the PC under the sideflaps, although it is hard to see because it's all red and the pic isn't very zoomable. As far as the Blade goes, what were your previous wingsuits (for comparison)?

that's a lot of math to prove something that's not correct do some simple tests in the real world with measurements and you will find that: - a single loop of 80lb break cord will break at almost 160lbs given a gradual and static loading, this is almost not affected at all by whatever kind of knot you use (it is really much harder to measure a dynamic load than a static load, unless you happen to have a load cell and data logger) - two sufficiently different length loops of break cord will break at a load of around 160lbs each, whereas two loops with not enough length difference will generate a significantly higher load before breaking arguing this point with fancy math only proves you do not understand the system sufficiently well to model it correctly with math, as a few simple real life tests will prove 'In theory, there is no difference between reality and theory. In reality, there is.' cya

Hi everyone. I qualified as an FAA Senior Rigger in December 2006 and I am back home in Southern Ontario now. So if you are looking for a rigger and you are in Southern Ontario, Canada, you now have one more choice. happy jumping Sam

I demo'd a lot of canopies in the quest for that fun to fly wingsuit canopy. I bought a Nitro 120 loaded at 1.6 and put 350 skydives on it, mostly in my wingsuit and loved it, so I would recommend trying a Nitro especially since you have flown an elliptical already. The more important thing IMHO is to deal with line twists the more effective way: Get your links/3 rings/risers equalized ASAP and in most canopies that will stop your turn and dive. I prefer pushing my 3-rings together, NOT pulling apart. You will then tend to naturally unwind under the canopy.

How about the time it takes to unzip your wings and get full control of your HP canopy? How about how much faster the HP canopy flies (even in brakes) and how much quicker you lose altitude? How about a brake fire? If you think you can keep jumping any high performance and never get linetwists, then obviously you need to jump it some more... not applicable to many people... I am perfectly happy jumping a Velocity 90 (at 2.2 lbs/sq.ft) all day when I'm not jumping my wingsuit. I have also jumped that same canopy with my wingsuit (twice) and now I will rather not jump than jump a Velo at 2.2 in a wingsuit. 60 sounds like a lot to someone with 400 jumps I have almost that many jumps in my winsgsuits on a Xaos-21 100 at 1.8 lbs/sq.ft and with that canopy I am comfortable in a wingsuit. I have around 350 wingsuit jumps on a Nitro 120 at 1.6 lbs/sq.ft Linetwists happened with both of those but once I learned how to deal with them a bit better, it never became an issue. When deciding what canopy to get though, I demo'd quite a few canopies in wingsuits and with around 450 skydives at that point and just moving to elliptical and HP canopies (the Nitro), I got linetwists that became a spinner and chopped a Nitro 135 that I know now I could've fixed, if only I had some more experience. At the end of the day there is no magic size, type or wingloading of canopy that is fine for everyone in a wingsuit. There's a reason you don't see many very experienced wingsuit jumpers using a highly loaded high performance canopy (especially crossbraced canopies) for their wingsuit jumps. The reason is that it is not the smartest choice. Then again, the smartest choice is not always the most fun. I guess the trick is to try and be smart enough that you get the optimum fun-to-risk ratio. Be a little too conservative and all you lose out on is a little extra fun. Be a little too aggressive and you lose out on a lot more. So go ahead and flame me if you want for saying that you seem to be under-estimating the risks of jumping a loaded HP canopy in a wingsuit when I choose to jump exactly that. Keep in mind though that last year I did 328 skydives.

hey hey I think I recognize the LZ in 'tight.LZ'. That's BH right? If it is, then I have had a fairly close look at that landing area and I wouldn't be calling that tight (by a long shot). I'm curious what the other UK jumpers think if that is BH.

Media - Plain and simple. The less they know of what we do our illegitimate activies and/or our ideas regarding illegitimate activities the better. They Frequently sensationalized media coverage of illegitimate BASEjumps are a constant pain in our ass and we have made thing worse for us ourselves in the past, by not keeping illegitimate jumps quiet. The less we broadcast information about illegitimate jumps the less they we can will mess things up in the our future. there, I fixed it for you... If confined to legal jumps, BASEjumping is a totally legitimate activity, like paragliding, hang-gliding and motocross and much less sensitive to any sort of publicity whatsoever. If confined to illegal jumps, BASEjumping is an illegitimate activity and no publicity of BASEjumping as an illegitimate activity will ever do it any good. I am not saying we should all limit ourselves to legal jumps only (Happy, Sabre210?). You know from travelling around a bit that every type of object B, A, S and E are jumpable legally and therefore as a legitimate activity. I am saying we should avoid any and all publicity of illegal/illegitimate jumps and actively encourage publicity of legal/legitimate jumps. I think that is the only way to legitimize BASEjumping in the public's eye and once the public sees BASEjumping as legitimate, we are in.

OK, so I forgot to mention that in all these cases you should have the PC in your hand also. It really is common sense and so instictive that I totally forgot to write it down, as it requires no real thought. thanks for the correction, you are of course right about the PC

not sure about now, but they were made under license by Precision Aerodynamics when I got mine you may or may not be aware of this, but many skydivers have had some sort of issue with their Precision Aerodynamics canopy. I am not going to make a blanket statement about Precision Aerodynamics' quality control or their products, as that would be unfair given the small sample size I have had(2 canopies). I do feel it is relevant to point out that there are many people who have had some sort of issue with their products. I currently skydive a Xaos-21 that I bought with around 1300 skydives on it (mostly in AZ) and I absolutely love how that thing flies and opens. I love pretty much everything about my Xaos-21. No issues at all. The other canopy that I have owned that was made by Precision Aerodynamics was a vented and valved Rockdragon 266. Apex Moab was awesome because when I phoned them to ask what stock canopies they had (my 2nd canopy was not going to be ready for my trip and my 2nd rig was), as I needed a canopy in less than 3 weeks, Marta asked me what colours I wanted. I said: 'Why? Do you have many 266 V&V Rockdragons in stock?' She said, no, they don't, they will make me a V&V Rockdragon in the colours of my choice if I order in the very near future and I will have it in time for my departure. They were not kidding, just over 2 weeks later my brand spanking new 266 V&V Rockdragon arrived, resplendant in custom colours. I had my 2nd rig in action for my trip! Thanks Marta and Jimmy! I put 2 skydives and 17 BASEjumps on the Rockdragon. Many of those BASEjumps were back-to-back loads with my Blackjack 260. At that point I had about 111 jumps on the Blackjack and as that was the only BASE canopy I have jumped it was my only point of reference for the Rockdragon. I liked the openings on the Rockdragon, clean and very good on-heading performance, even though the DBS was a hair on the deep side for me and the openings on short delay slider off antenna jumps with high tailwinds were sometimes feeling a little stally. (symptom of too deep DBS). It was never enough of an issue for me to tune them, as I had one 160 degree offheading with it and managed to turn it just fine on the rear risers (brakes stowed) without stalling out the canopy. That off-heading was in no way due to the canopy, it was caused by the wind. I know because my friend jumped first using my Blackjack and we both got the exact same offheading opening, into the cross/tail wind and I have seen many short delay slider off loads on antennas suffer that kind of offheading in high cross/tail winds, so I am certain based on those observations. I don't have that logbook with me now, but I remember doing at least one slider-up sub-terminal antenna jump with the Rockdragon and after a 5 - 5.5 sec delay it opened very nicely and perfect on-heading even though I was stupid enough to jump from 750ft with winds straight down the wire. Not that one jump means anything, but you did ask for any comments at all and that specific deployment was one of the most satisfying ones I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I liked the Rockdragon's turn response on toggles and on risers. It felt to me that the Rockdragon did not have as high a glide ratio as my Blackjack. Close, but it just wouldn't go quite as far. I did not like how it felt around the stall point and in deep brake sinking. Keep in mind my only reference was the Blackjack and I will point out that a far more experienced jumper than me sold both his Aces and bought Rockdragons because he did not like the Aces' behaviour around the stall point and in deep brake sinking. I believe he flew a Fox/s before he got the Aces, so this might just be a case of being used to canopies that behave a certain way around the stallpoint and in deep brake sinking and when flying canopies that behave markedly differently, the jumper dislikes that. (this was the case with both me and this experienced jumper, albeit the canopy prefrences were switched around) I only have a handful of jumps on Aces but believe from other jumpers' experiences that the Ace and Blackjack behave very similarly around the stallpoint and in deep brake sinking, so I think my point is somewhat valid. I found the Rockdragon to be more difficult to get as soft a landing on as my Blackjack and it felt like it had a little less lift available on the flare. A lot of the things I did not like as much about the Rockdragon's flying characteristics could probably be attributed to it being a 4 upper control line canopy and me being used to jumping a 5 upper control line canopy. After 13 jumps on the Rockdragon I contacted Apex Moab because I was not entirely happy with the Rockdragon. There was a slight issue with some material and between me, Apex Moab and Precision we could not agree if this was purely cosmetic or if it was cause for concern. I kept jumping the Rockdragon and monitoring the issue and after another 4 jumps I felt more concerned, so I let Jimmy know that. Jimmy contacted Precision again and they said it was purely cosmetic. Jimmy knew that I was very concerned about it though and he wants all his customers to be 100% happy with their gear, so he offered me a new Rockdragon or my money back. That is about as good as customer service gets and as much as anyone can stand behind their product. The issue with the canopy and Precision is neither here nor there, nothing is perfect and we are talking about man made items after all. The important thing is customer service and back-up for their products and Jimmy (and everyone else I have dealt with at Apex) really do go above and beyond. If you are curious, I took the refund, not because I had any reservations about getting another Rockdragon (I have none), but because I felt it flew significantly different to my Blackjack and I preferred the way the Blackjack flies (probably because I am so used to them). I decided I wanted all my BASE canopies to fly exactly the same, so there is never any time/thought wasted as to how the particular canopy I am jumping now will react, they will all react the same and the only way for that to happen is to have all your sets of gear identical, which is the way I went. I hear/read (haven't jumped one yet) that the Flik flies more like the Blackjack than like the Rockdragon, so if you are like me and you like those flying characteristics, you will probably like the Flik better, if you are like the experienced jumper who preferred Fox/Rockdragon type flying characteristics, you will probably like the Rockdragon more than the Flik. You mentioned low stuff - I understand that Jimmy built a very special Rockdragon (for someone who posts on here regularly) exclusively for low jumps and that he was super impressed with this canopy when I asked him about it. I believe it featured a ZP topskin, which brings me to my next point, I have moved on from Blackjacks to Blackjacks with the ZP on the front 3rd of the topskin and I have found that the ZP improves the glideratio, gives greater forward speed (but not at the cost of good lowspeed flight), gives a little more flarepower and opens a little bit quicker. It also seems to make the canopy turn quicker and dive and surge more. Kind-of reactive like a canopy one size smaller, but still retaining the slow flight behaviour of a same size non-ZP canopy. Might be an advantage on low jumps if flown correctly. Phone Jimmy up and talk to him about it, he is always super helpful. As always, try and demo any canopy you are curious about, it is really the only way to know.

towing by the bridle does not tend to inflate the canopy towing by the tailpocket is better A very experienced jumper told me this is how to deal with a deep water landing: 1 - flare at normal height if you can tell for sure how far the water is, otherwise flare when your feet touch the water (you don't always know exactly how deep it is, so flare) 2 - keep your toggles 3 - release the canopy by pulling the cutaway handle and clear the risers if need be 4 - transfer one toggle to the other hand so both are in one hand now, or drop one toggle and hang onto the other one 5 - swim while dragging the canopy by one or both toggles 6 - your canopy is worth less than your life, so if you are not 100% confident you are making it out of the water safely, leave the canopy and save yourself first (I have added a few points, hopefully he agrees they are worthwhile.) pulling the canopy by the toggle/s pulls it along by the brakelines, which will in no way inflate the canopy with water and offer the least amount of drag also swimming with the toggle/s in one hand allows you the best freedom of movement to swim caveat - I believe this method is based on jumping mostly slider off, I am not sure if using this slider-up will be as effective because it might be possible the slider can entangle with the risers/lines/etc and cause the canopy to be dragged by points other than just the brakeline attacments if anyone knows for sure, please chime in I'm sure just about everyone knows this already, but the fatter you are the longer you will survive in cold water. You will also float far better than a skinny person and within reason a certain amount of fat makes you a stronger swimmer because you are more bouyant. The leaner you are the less time you have. You will also be less bouyant and therefore will have to work harder to stay above the surface. It's good to know how your body type reacts differently to the norm in many situations. I am sorry we lost another brother.

Let's hope they avoid the record attempt as none of the locals think it's a good idea. On the positive side, I now have tickets and know my dates for this trip: 13 - 19 April Who will be around? see you soon muchoBASE! sam

Hi Mike I have jumped a 105 Samurai, 107 Katana, 97 Katana and 109 Cossfire 2 and none of them performed like my 100 Xaos21 does, so for me, even at 1.8 I see the advantage to going crossbraced. As for the Tempo, no sweat. I don't think they are neccesarily dangerous or anything like that when loaded high, but my thoughts on this are: The manufacturer tests and certifies the reserve. They base their recommended maximum exit weights on their test results and their level of confidence in their product. I don't see myself having more confidence in their product than the manufacturer does, so I keep within their recommend limits. You'll be way happy with a 143R anyways, haven't heard anyone have anything bad to say about PD reserves yet. see you in March!

I think you may be referring to my current sigline. BASE jumping no argument there works for skydiving and some terminal BASE jumps you DO throw it, to full bridle extension, on sub-terminal BASE jumps make sense?

red is not nearly as visible a colour as people tend to think check these links: lime yellow firetrucks are safer bright green to yellow casual analysis supports yellow/green it would seem that neon yellow/green is the most visible to most humans My physiology lecturer at university in 1993 explained to us why neon orange is more visible than neon yellow at long distances, but I couldn't find anything with google to support that. I might search around some more because I find neon orange to be more visible than neon yellow, but that might be explained by this site: just to confuse you a bit

being fearless is not in your favour when jumping high performance canopies and this is a good reason to get a crossbraced canopy, how? That is the point he was trying to make. If you can't land a Crossfire at 1.47 lbs/sq.ft (from your profile) in the pea gravel practically every time, you will be ALL OVER THE SHOW on even a lightly loaded crossbraced canopy. Being able to land your canopy where you want is a pretty good indication of many of the skills used in canopy control. It shows you understand your canopys flying characteristics and that you have either a very good feeling for or a reasonable understanding of set-up and approach. These things all become an order of magnitude more important as you progress to higher wingloadings and more high performance canopies. Learn and perfect these skills on a more forgiving canopy before moving to a very much more unforgiving canopy. Which is why most people would think that getting more jumps before going more high performance (i.e. higher wingloading and crossbraced) is a good idea. Another good thing to learn on a more forgiving canopy. So they are not allowed to learn from their own experience and in retrospect say: 'You know what, I rushed my canopy progression and if I could do it over again, I would take it slower, so that is what I will recommend to others.' ?? That depends on how fast you learn and what your judgement, awareness and skills are like at that point. How did you find this? Squeezing all the speed you can from your Crossfire should not be your criterion for moving on. Having mastered the skills you need to be truly in control of your canopy and being willing to trade a lot of 'forgiveness' from your canopy for a potential increase in performance (if you fly it well it will perform better, if you don't, it won't perform better and will be a lot more dangerous) should be. Being able to land your canopy in the pea gravel consistently enough to get a PRO rating is one part of a pretty good set of criteria. Totally beside the point, but one of my pet hates are people saying they will never do something and then doing it anyway. I believe it shows a lack of understanding of the subject matter, of what their own capabilities and a lack of self knowledge. Do those sound like good characteristics for someone flying the highest performance type of canopy available?

Mike, I am curious what you are basing this statement on? I load my Xaos21-100sq.ft. at 1.86 lbs/sq.ft. and that seems to work OK. Riser pressure is not an issue either, neither was it on any of the other crossbraces I have jumped (from Velo 103 down to Velo 84).

here's some more pics

WTF? Are you even kidding me? Those things are practically indestructible. The average ostrich egg will support 90 kg on its weak axis. Put it in a box and mail it. Ask someone to ship one from Arizona, I know there's a huge Ostrich farm there near Picacho(?).

where to start... the fact that it started life as a dolphin and then with some sloppy cutting and nasty sewing became a two-pin container the bridle was made from three different pieces of tape, of two different types, one being the correct type for a bridle and the other being slightly wider than normal binding tape it was sewn together quite scarily and covered in friction burns, some of them almost halfway through the tape's whole width Potatohead quite proudly told me that this bridle once failed on an antenna jump but he managed to get the canopy out anyways and sew the bridle together again. those seemed to me like reasons why some people might call it a death rig

it's funny that everyone who has made supportive posts for Potatohead in this thread have all been busted too coincidence? I think not...

OK, let's try these: 1 - so you can more safely do unpacked 2 (or more) ways 2 - where the span extends far enough below the exit that an object strike is possible slider off, but not slider-up, it makes object strike almost impossible 3 - so your can have more canopy time when testing your slider-up line-release toggles from a 486' span 4 - so you can do a longer than 2.5 sec delay without getting spanked by your Blackjack 5- so you can do unpacked jumps from a plane 6 - so you don't get whipped as bad when you over-rotate your backflip on an IROC 7 - so you can practice dealing with linetwists 8 - so you can practice dealing with off-headings 9- so you can more easily get your toggles unstowed before your canopy is fully open and learn how it reacts to control input before pressurisation 10 - McCartwheels seem a lot less scary slider-up OK, that's all I got. No. 10 might not be a good reason because that's a stupidly dumb jump anyway.

maybe ask in the rigging forum if they think it's a good idea to pack your only parachute in a dusty construction area

unless you know something I don't, you can cross Paratech Rigging from that list as they no longer make any gear I think the same goes for Gravity Sports.

Hi Bill So your Ace an Blackjack have 4 upper control lines? I was not aware that they made any that way. Is it a special option? My first Blackjack 260 was DOM 2003 and had the upper control line configuration with the innermost upper control line spaced double compared to the other 4. My second Blackjack 260 was DOM 6/2005 and had the updated upper control line configuration where all 5 are equally spaced. This also came with the new standard slider, it is small mesh, very wide and not too long. everyone else, thanks for the responses, keep them coming!