ficus

Ten years.

9 years ago today. Still haven't forgotten about Tommy.

Ficus will be there

The round you see is a Cirrus airframe parachute system.

??? The parade has come through talking about how you will never be able to do anything more than a zoo load on your belly in a freefly suit. This is obvious horseshit. He is not trying to show everyone how cool he is. He is legitimately confused that there is apparently nowhere else in the world where people can fly on their bellies without lil' handles on their suits. Seriously, calm down.

JP, you obviously have no knowledge of Eric's contribution to the skill sets of countless younger jumpers. That he does not have an exalted Instructional Rating from the almighty church of USPA may have been enough for you to post from your high horse, but he didn't need one to spend hundreds of hours of his time with younger jumpers for no pay at all. You are way out of line. (Eric: I still think you are a douche.)

Check out the thread that spawned this petition. I address the issue of data in post #326 and up. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=2469164;page=14;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25; Thanks for the link. No way I was wading through that mega-thread otherwise. I agree with what you are saying, essentially that a sufficient sample size to make a statistical decision is pretty much infeasible to obtain. But without any sort of data, what is making people decide that things are actually broken? Maybe we have heard a few stories about someone with 400 jumps becoming an AFFI and making some boneheaded error. But you are never going to see a 100-reply thread on dz.com about some prodigy with only 18 months in sport who is a natural at teaching. Nobody notices when the trains are on time. And if they are broken, then why would breaking up an AFF certification program that is (apparently) too lax into several components fix anything?

A minimum number of instructional jumps would be better than "time as instructor", as it is a better indicator of actual teaching time. That said, I don't know that this change is actually necessary. I have yet to hear anything concrete about the supposed plummeting quality of rating holders; it seems to be more of the one horror story extrapolated into an epidemic variety. Where's the data?

Sewing, if done correctly, does not "damage" fabric.

I still have Tom's picture up on the wall in my office. Miss ya buddy.

For all you lazy bastards who want to learn as long as it doesn't require any research effort on your part. This is from the FAA Parachute Rigger Handbook.

And I probably have a great deal more HP landings than John. But it doesn't actually matter. Have you ever heard of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy? Whether John has 1 jump or 50,000, he demonstrated his ignorance of the subject in the bit I highlighted. Digging out of a swoop the lowest is a contraindication of skill. This is painfully obvious to anyone who has bothered to learn anything about swooping and has nothing to do with experience level. In a thread where we are discussing the loss of a life, posting ignorantly in an authoritative tone does nothing but increase the noise floor and reduce the utility of the discussion.

John, if you're not kidding here, you need to either seek some education about swooping, stop posting about swooping (especially in the Incidents forum of all places), or maybe both.

You should submit this to Mike G's safety stow hall of shame: http://www.chutingstar.com/archives/00000102.html

Of course the dz.com pitchfork squad will want this guy's head, but this was pretty funny. Not as good as their other pranks, but I laughed.

Awesome video.

Ian, I thought it was sort of an accepted fact that the Comp Velo's openings are better than the original Velocity. Those looked nice to me!

This appears to be a solution in search of a problem.

This also applies to skydiving in general.

Maybe this is better stated as "downwind causes people to think they are higher than they really are" (and vice versa for headwinds). Obviously doing a downwinder does not cause you to be low. But it does increase your ground track in a way that makes the sight picture very similar to a later phase of the recovery arc -- basically, planeout. Which can cause you to miscalculate your approach. I think this is exactly right. Let he who has not whalewatched in a 20mph headwind cast the first stone :)

I landed in one leg strap on one of my Wings rigs last year because of this problem. I sent them both back to the factory and have had no problems since. After I put the rigs in the mail, someone at the DZ showed me a trick. After you have tightened the leg straps to your liking, you can slide the top half of the friction adapter in the direction of the free end of the webbing and it will "lock". This was interesting, but should obviously not be necessary. It's discouraging to hear that they are still turning out rigs with this problem.

It might be possible, but I do know of one guy at my DZ who had to chop his 96 after it was packed with the brakes unstowed.

I did this paint job a couple weeks ago with rattle cans of automotive paint and masking tape. - Scuff helmet with Scotch-Brite pad - Coat of primer/sealer - Silver paint - Mask center stripe, white paint - Mask pinstripes, red paint - Loving rubdown with 1500 grit wet/dry paper to even out paint levels on striping - 4 coats of clear Warning: it will take around a week with all the waiting and curing to do it right.

Another thing you may not be considering: I highly doubt your SCUBA rig and wetsuit were measured and cut for your body like that $5K skydiving rig would be. Price out a bespoke suit sometime. (This goes for everyone -- paying a few hundred dollars for a custom made jumpsuit will not seem so bad.)

YMMV of course but the best openings I have had on most canopies I have jumped are limp and straight in the harness, looking at the horizon, not touching anything. Almost all of my last 400-500 jumps have been on XF2 109s at ~1.8 depending on how fat I am on any given day. Before I first jumped a Velocity they told me "don't try to help it, you can only make it worse". So I have been practicing the "hands-off" approach to opening even on my XF2.