ljwobker

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Everything posted by ljwobker

  1. Think carefully about canopy size... smaller canopies are more fun to fly, easier to pack, lighter, etc. They can also kill you. To paraphrase some of the best advice I ever got: "You have the rest of your life to skydive. Make good choices." ;-)
  2. I have hundreds of jumps with one of these Garmins and use them to log wingsuit jumps and cross country canopy jumps, as well as just being a gadget freak (I get to harass the pilot if he misses the spot, etc ;-) The altimeter is *very* unreliable when compared to a wristmount barometric one. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you rely on this device to save your life... it's simply not designed to deal with pressure changes this quick. For tracking position for later use or other such things it's awesome, but not as a replacement for a specifically designed altimeter. HTH.
  3. I *absolutely* agree that Optimum's fly great. I have about 15 demo jumps on them as mains, and two reserve rides on them. That said, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a main canopy that has the flight characteristics that you're looking for. Spectres open very consistently and are 7-cell designs not much different than the Optimum... lightly loaded Aerodyne Pilots (when built with ZPX) are very easy to fly and pack relatively small... the PD Pulse has bottom skin fabric like the Optimum and is really easy to pack....
  4. You can often find used gear at reasonable prices... but try to find local jumpers with experience and contacts who can help you choose what to get and help you wade through all the various possibilities and brands, etc. A ton of stuff is just personal preference and it's a lot to absorb at once, but keep asking questions... there's also a TON of posts in the forums here... if you read enough of them you'll get a pretty good starting place...
  5. I've always jumped with a basic clock face barometric alti. No batteries, no maintenance, etc. For whatever this is worth: I found that I can "glance" at the clock face altimeter and know exactly what it says, whereas with a Neptune I had to take more time to actually "read" the numbers.
  6. Canopy performance can be broadly characterized by the size and the wing planform (a fancy aeronautical term for shape). The size is obvious, but the planform is also important. A Katana 170 and a Spectre 170 are entirely different animals. Personally I think of the original sabre as a relatively tame planform, especially when loaded at less than 1:1. That said: A competent, trusted instructor with lots of experience will be able to provide you with advice that thousands of us who have never seen you fly/land/pack would never be able to. Combining advice from multiple people like this is even better.
  7. In Perris, the winds are often light and variable, and in addition they often blow perpindicular to the "long" direction of the main/grass landing area. The long direction exists to allow the grass to be used effectively and to avoid low runway crossings if you're coming from the west. In these cases there is a default direction *and* that is the direction that should be set by the first jumper down. If the first jumper down determines that the winds are strong enough out of one direction they're supposed to set the direction accordingly. In theory, this means that no matter what you have the entire load landing the same direction. I have no opinion on whether this is the "best" way to set the pattern (my DZ doesn't have a "long" axis direction like Perris does) but this is a very well established procedure there, and I am quite certain that both jumpers were aware of it. I jump at Perris often for bigway events, and I can promise you that at those events specifically, the landing direction is very strictly enforced. If you land opposite 150+ other people: you're gonna get axed and fast. From reading here, I do not believe that there was any confusion as to what direction should have been used for the landings.
  8. A "cypress" is a tree. A "Cypres" is much more likely to save your life.
  9. I realize this is trivial stuff, but I will feel better about life if I just ask people to spell things correctly when they're posting. I also fully recognize that a lot of folks here do not speak English as a first language, and that English is absolutely horrible about lots of words that sound the same but are spelled and mean different things. All that having been said: You go into "deep brakes" NOT into "deep breaks". The canopy has "a nice flare" and NOT "a nice flair". You can jump "an Optimum 176" and NOT "an Optima 176" "Infinity" is a parachute system, "Infiniti" is a automobile brand. PD builds canopies called "Sabre" and "Sabre2" and NOT "Saber" or "Saber2" I'm sure there are others, but I see these everywhere. Thanks. ;-)
  10. Optimum 176 @ 1.35 Optimum 160 @ 1.5 neither used in anger (fingers crossed), but 20+ demo jumps on the 176. Very sweet flying reserves...
  11. that's what I thought, but wanted confirmation. Thanks...
  12. on block 7, is it legal to have the folks taking grips on opposite sides of the jumpers being gripped? As a specific example... if I take a (P) and break the centermost grip, I have a a legal top of block 7. But if I take an (N) and break the centermost grip, do I still have a legal top of block 7?
  13. Friend of mine is getting back into the sport after a couple years off. When powering up the cypres, it pauses at 6140' -- which as I recall is somewhat low for the battery power. I can't remember if it's "too low" or not, though. On the cypres website all the manuals are for the Cypres2... anyone happen to know what value is "too low" for an original cypres?
  14. The vast majority of skydivers love whatever rig they own, I would bet mostly because that's what they're used to. ;-) I'm no exception, I own three infinity rigs, one from 2000, one from 2005, and one from 2008. I can't speak directly to any other manufacturer, but VSE (the company that builds them) has always been very very easy to work with for me.
  15. This is nowhere near the cheapest reserve, but it's the best I've flown. Don't expect a velocity like flare, but for a reserve it flies better than anything else on the market that I've jumped. A significant improvement on the original PD reserve (which wasn't all that bad to begin with...) and much better than my Tempo. I'd say it flies slightly better than a Smart at the same wingloading, and certainly packs smaller. My view is that you pretty much can never ever have a reserve that's too BIG, so highly recommend getting this one.
  16. I own and regularly jump a Sabre2 150, a Katana 150, and a Velocity 120. I'm about 240lbs out the door so the respective wingloadings are 1.6/1.6/2.0. For anything "big" I *only* jump the Sabre2. The Katana snivels much longer than I'm comfortable with for bigways where opening low may be required. The velo requires far too much attention during the opening phase to be a smart choice. Both also have airspeeds higher than I prefer with lots of traffic. The Katana is also trimmed very steeply and isn't great for getting back from long spots. I want something that opens quickly, reliably, on-heading, can be steered while it's opening, and isn't too fast while dealing with lots of traffic. The sabre2 is perfect for those criteria. My view of "safe bigway canopy flying" is to deploy right at my assigned altitude on something that opens quickly but not hard, and then have time and space to find lots of room in the pattern, and either let most of the people get down before me and land in the main area when it's empty, or if that isn't going to happen I have time to find a nice empty spot somewhere and wait for the pick-up trucks to come and get me. I know several people who have been hurt or killed due to canopy collisions, (on bigways and otherwise) and I have no desire to join them. I also think it's prudent not to mix/multiply risk factors, so if you already have 100+ people in the sky at once, adding small/fast canopies that may not always open on-heading to that does not seem like a good choice to me.
  17. This is my regular dropzone... they're flying an otter now full-time (upgraded from the Beech99 they flew for the first year of operation). The staff is fantastic, and there's always people to jump with. The packing area is inside the hanger, gigantic, and has really thick foam mats that are much easier on your back and knees than carpet or concrete! The briefing area, manifest, and the upstairs observation deck is indoors and AIR CONDITIONED... not something to be scoffed at in the North Carolina summertime! There's a good core of both RW and freeflyers and a busy student program. The tandem instructors are very experienced, the have probably 15,000 tandems among them, and most of the regular jumpers are coach and/or AFF rated as well so there's always someone around to teach. There are active 4-way teams who train here, as well as a couple of weekend load organizers. The only real drawback is that the DZ is located on a public airport, so you can't have a bonfire there or park RVs overnight. The owner is great, they've invested a ton of time, money, and energy into making this place a serious dropzone, and the manifest staff is as good as anywhere I've ever been. They have rental rigs of all shapes and sizes as well. Honestly -- I have no idea where the people who wrote the two negative reviews went, but it wasn't this DZ.
  18. FINALLY. http://www.performancedesigns.com/products.asp?product=op
  19. De liver de chuter de sooner de better. I built/bought two containers last year planning to put optimum 160s in them... I'm really happy to hear that there's some progress here.
  20. I've been the unfortunate recipient of an incredibly hard opening that was almost certainly due to line dump, in turn caused by rubber bands that were too loose. The opening blacked me out and did some nontrivial and permanent damage to my shoulder, so I can very very highly recommend that you NOT put yourself in this position. While not impossible, it would be very difficult for a normal jumper to set the rubber bands tight enough that a properly functioning pilot chute wouldn't deploy them correctly.
  21. Anyone shoot freefall with a Flip? I just got one as a "prize" in a work raffle, and was thinking about maybe getting a helmet and messing around with it some. Was wondering if anyone knew if it was wide enough to shoot basic 4-way, and if there was a reasonable way to low-profile mount it...
  22. Only one bag permanently... all the rest for anywhere from 3 hours to a week. ;-( Lemme tell you how much fun landing in London for a business trip and not getting your stuff for 5 days is...
  23. Anyone out there who could compare pack volumes between a Tempo 170 and a PD-143? I know a PD143 will fit into an Infinity I-3x size rig... will the Tempo 170?
  24. Pretty much zero chance of getting a rig into an ERJ-145 cabin... MAYBE under the seat if it's a really small rig. I always pack my rig into a standard size rollaboard, and at worst I can have them put it under the airplane once I get to the gate. This minimizes the time it's out of your control. I've got about 750,000 airline miles and have had my bags lost at LEAST two dozen times, but I've never had one lost that I personally carried to the correct airplane myself. (knock on wood)