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Although the reserve parachute repack cycle here in the USA has changed from 120 to 180 days, the recommended maintenance interval for 3 ring release systems has not changed. According to the inventor, the 3 ring release should be inspected, and the lolon cables on your main parachute release handle should be maintained (cleaned and lubed) every 30 days. I don't see a correlation between the extension of the reserve repack cycle and hard cutaways. What I do see is an ongoing problem with skydivers being lazy about maintaining their gear.

For the last 400 or so jumps I've used a UPT V310 with the wingsuit main pack tray mod, long bridle and 33 inch F-111 PC. I also have the semi stowless d-bag and magnetic riser covers. It works great for me whether I'm wingsuiting or freefalling.

Congratulations Rich! I watched you take every imaginable type of person on their first jump and I always liked the fact that you treated all your tandems as skydiving students, not just passengers. I'll miss watching you pull out the "Complete Idiot's Guide to Tandem Skydiving" on the ride to altitude.

I jump a Pilot 132 at around 1.5 as my wing suit canopy and it opens, flies, and lands great for me. No drama, even with massive line twists.

I'm an H5/P4 rated foot launched soaring pilot and I fly wing suits (out of airplanes, not from cliffs). To me, flying a wing suit feels like being inside a tiny little hang glider. WS and HG have a lot of similarities, they are both gravity powered, weight shift controlled, and both involve flying in a prone position (like a bird or superman). WS is just a wearable glider. HG is cool because you can soar up to the bottoms of fat cumulus clouds and spend hours playing there. WS is cool because you can carve down the side of a fat cumulus at an astonishingly high rate of speed. What an incredible time to be alive.

Thanks for all the input! Ian read me right - I'm an avid canopy pilot, but not a hard core swooper. I'm very comfortable with flat gliding canopies because I come from a paragliding background. I've got plenty of Sabre 2 jumps, but it didn't appeal to me. I've enjoyed my Pilots, and I'm gonna keep one for wingsuiting, but the Stiletto is probably gonna be my next freefall and hop and pop canopy. PD offers the Stiletto with a variety of line options: dacron, spectra, vectran and HMA. Any opinions on which lines are optimal?

I've been demoing a Stiletto and really liking it after only 4 jumps. The Stiletto seems like a nice next step for me after having done a bunch of jumps on Pilots. They are similar in that they both have a flat glide and fast toggle response but the front risers are a lot more usable on the Stiletto and the Stiletto has a stronger flare - especially at the bottom end. It seems like the Stiletto could keep me amused for many jumps, but I'm wondering if there are any more modern designs that have similar characteristics? Is the Stiletto such a perfect design that it's simply stood the test of time, or is it obsolete?

Skydive New Mexico will have a Cessna Caravan (in addition to our usual fleet of Super Cessna 182s) for the weekend of Nov. 19 - 21. Loads will start flying on Friday afternoon Nov 19. Jump tickets are $20 low and $25 high. Amazing desert scenery and friendly folks.

Am I seeing things, or does the P2 in this photo have a slightly longer arm wing root? I've also been noticing that there seems to be some variation in the length and cut of the leg wings on some recent P2's. Is PF just making some subtle improvements, or is a P3 in the works?

I really like my Pilots. I use a 150 and a 132, both with 500 HMA lines. My exit weight is around 180 pounds. They open great (even in full flight), fly straight no matter how many line twists you get, has a nice flat glide, light toggle pressure and a fast roll rate. I've tried 170 and 150 Spectres and a Storm 135, all of which I liked, but I prefer the flatter glide and smoother openings of the Pilot.

Towing PGs without some kind of tension control device and a reliable release at both ends of the line has proven to be pretty risky. If you want to learn about towing paragliders here's a great place to start. http://www.towmeup.com/ These guys are pretty cool too: http://cloudstreetwinch.com/

Thanks for the update. I've been curious about this suit since I read about it in Michael Abram's book. Looking forward to reading your flight test report.

Just curious...did you ever fly it?

A wing suit is a gravity powered, weight shift controlled glider where the pilot is the airframe and the wing is comprised of flexible materials.

I was 50 when I started skydiving.

Some DZs use a suspended harness for training EPs and others use a "walk around" harness, which is basically a parachute rig with handles and no parachutes. I've also seen "leaning harnesses" which consist of handle-equipped webbing straps that extend from the ceiling to the floor at an angle, and the student stands on the floor and leans into the straps to practice EPs. Are there other types of training harnesses in use? What type of training harness is considered to be "state of the art"? What does your DZ use? Thanks for your answers.

Check this out: http://www.chutingstar.com/archives/00000139.html

I have 400+ jumps a J1K w/ dynamic corners. I always pack "grommet to pin". I have consistently good deployments, including almost 200 wingsuit deployments. I showed my rig to a Sun Path Rigger over a year ago when I was at Z-Hills and he said it was OK to pack "grommet to pin" with the dynamic corners. I've experimented with "grommet to B.O.C." without ill effects, but I can see some snag potential with that method, and it didn't improve the quality of my deployments, so I went back to "grommet to pin".

Thanks for the info. I had to completely disassemble the tool and drive the die out with a punch. That little bugger was really jammed in there!

I was gifted with an old paragear type seal press and I want to change the symbol. How do you remove the old die? It looks like it's held in place with a set screw, which I removed, but the die still seems quite securely attached.

I took SDC's "A License in a week" course during Summerfest 2006 and had an incredibly rewarding experience. I made 32 jumps that week and drove home with a brand new A license. Yes, there are additional distractions, but my Instructors made sure that I stayed focused. I say go for it!

I was 50 when I started AFF in the summer of 2006. Go for it, you won't regret it!

This medium size DZ has everything that a skydiver needs. An Otter and a 182 (and a great pilot to fly them), two huge grassy landing areas for both swoopers and more conservative folks, big carpeted hangar for packing and socializing, showers, huge camping area, bunkhouse, and team rooms. Skydive The Farm is also home to Mike Gruwell's Chuting Star rigging loft/gear store where you can get everything from a reserve repack to a complete set of new gear. As good as the facilities are, the Farm's real strength is in it's friendly, laid back vibe. The staff and jumpers are all super nice and helpful, and very welcoming to visitors.

I am a soaring pilot (hang gliders and paragliders) that also flies wingsuits. Here's my take on this discussion of whether or not our suits actually fly. Anything that produces lift is flying. If you can create forward movement then you are producing lift. What y'all are getting hung up on is the difference between gliding and soaring flight. Soaring is the act of using updrafts to sustain and/or gain altitude. Hang gliders, paragliders, sailplanes and some birds engage in soaring flight. A wingsuit is a glider, albeit a very low performance one; one whose sink rate is so high as to preclude soaring. OK, this is where it gets interesting. A well flown wingsuit is capable of a sink rate of around 3,500 FPM (approx. 40 MPH fall rate). While it's rare for updrafts to reach that high a velocity, it's common (at least here in the desert Southwest of the US) for thermal updrafts to exceed 1500 FPM. By flying your wingsuit in these updrafts you can significantly improve your gliding performance. How do you find and stay in updrafts? One way would be to exploit cloud streets. Another would be to use the ridge lift formed on the upwind side of cliffs on windy days.

If you put a longer set of risers on a canopy would it move the CG further forward and therefore make the wing trim faster? By CG I mean the CG of the pilot/wing combination, not just the CG of the pilot or the wing.