sriddy

You should have gotten into a bad motorcycle wreck before you started AFF. "Hey mom, I started skydiving." "Well that's gotta be safer than that damn sport bike of yours." Worked for me...

I was on a 10-way speedstar team that had 8 guys and 2 girls. I called it "Two Holes Short."

A 6'4" 250 lb jumper like myself loads a Katana 170 at around 1.6. I wouldn't consider it a lightly loaded high performance canopy in this case. Although I don't consider it loaded super heavy either. Big guys want sporty canopies too, without having to make extreme jumps in wing loading.

I think she was half joking at the time. But I didn't start dating her until she was half way through the student program and I was pretty sure she'd stick to skydiving.

About a year ago I started working with a personal trainer at a local gym. I had previously talked to her about jumping and after hours shenanigans that the dropzone provides. I show up one Monday and she tells me this: "You're 5 min late. I thought you had died!" To her credit, she now has 75 jumps and just applied for her B license.

We haven't gotten far enough in the planning stages to announce any dates yet, but stay tuned!

I don't really see how the exposure could be a bad thing. More people coming out for a first jump ultimately more people to play with in the sky later. (When the few that make it get their license) But also, in the times of youtube, I don't see how the Transformers 3 movie would create a huge influx of new students like Point Break did. Anyone can pull up proximity BASE videos at any time, so I think the 'WOW' factor in seeing wingsuits over Chicago is less than it would be if there was no internet videos. But all this is a total guess on my part. ;)

Hey Cam, I'll be out at WP Sat morning. I can take a look at your PC and bag if you'd like. I also have an idea to test this 'HMA through the grommet' theory. Steve

http://ireport.cnn.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?secondarySortBy=lastweek&sortBy=shared&sortOrder=2&numResults=12&topicId=503822 Anybody gonna put one up that was taken from freefall?

Interesting! Thanks for posting about it. When the window was opened and the AADs fired, was the plane still descending, or flying level? If it was level, how long had it been level? Was there a response from Airtec? I don't really remember how long the plane was level, but I don't think aircraft decent was the cause. The window that the pilot opened was a side window in the cockpit, but it is slightly angled forward. So when he opened it, it caused a slight ram air effect. (kinda like the nose of a canopy). This caused a sharp increase in cabin pressure. The only thing an AAD senses is pressure. It records how fast that pressure changes to get decent rate. It has no way of knowing if it is in freefall or if a pilot opened a window. In this case, the pressure increase from opening the window was high enough to and fast enough to trigger the student cypreses, but not fast enough to trigger other AADs. I believe that the consensus of dropzone people involved was that the student AADs performed as designed. The problem was with the pilot (a newer one if I recall) that should have known better than to open that window. Because nobody blamed the AAD, I don't know if Airtec was notified or if they sent a response. As far as filtering goes, the more data filtering you add to smooth out the pressure spikes, the more lag is added to the measurement, which slows down the unit's reaction time. If you add more logic so the measurement has to meet more criteria, there will probably be a skydiver out there who will eventually be in some situation that doesn't meet all the criteria, but really needs an AAD fire to save his ass. (In other words, better to use the KISS approach) Or at least, that's the way I see it...

I suspect there is more than just the arming altitude at play. If the plane had ascended above the CYPRES arming altitude, then descended back to the altitude at which the incident occurred, do you think the CYPRES would have fired? Or do you think it has data filtering and/or algorithms that would have prevented a firing due to a physically impossible event? I know of two student cypreses that fired on the same load under these exact circumstances. The pilot went above 1500 ft. Then descended to about 1000 ft. to quickly look for a cutaway canopy when he flew over the suspected location. He opened the cockpit window for a better view, and POP, two pilot chutes in the face. The pressure onset wasn't fast enough to trigger any other AAD, but it was for the student version. (Student versions trigger at a lower sensed airspeed and higher altitude) So from this, I gather that there are aren't any cypres algorithms that perform in the way you are suggesting.

http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=223&Itemid=42

The way I see it, as a lowly nobody senior rigger, is like this: In two incidents, a problem was found with the Argus cutter not completely severing the closing loop. Aviacom acknowledged the problem and attempted to solve it by recalling all cutters made before April(ish) 2007. A third incident uncovered the same problem with a newer cutter. This implies that Aviacom hasn't fixed the problem. Now the issue is known to the public, including lawyers. So the manufacturers are disallowing Argus use until Aviacom gets their shit straight. Like it has been said above, all AAD manufacturers have had issues to solve, so I'm not trying to badmouth Aviacom. But I can see the point of view of the container manufacturers that don't want to be sued out of existence.

I liked, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." Doesn't have the rhyme but... And: In the line up just before the count to the person in front of you, "Did you know this about your reserve? Oh well, it'll probably be OK fot this jump." I heard something similar on the ride to altitude last weekend. After fixing something on the rig in front of her, the jumper said, "It's ok. I hid the problem, so it doesn't bother me any more."

I won't mention her age, but Carol Clay passed the 17,000 jump mark this year. I'm not sure how much time she spent in freefall, but you would measure it with a calender. I haven't personally witnessed anything from her that would qualify as really BOLD. But I have heard stories...