Booster_MPS

In a sport where the community is so small and close, the community of African American sky divers is even smaller and I thank you for welcoming me. It was always great to see Burt when he would come in town for big ways and it's through meeting great people like him that I learned that so much of the good stuff in the sport does not always happen in the air. It's all about the people, great people like Burt. This just should not have happened my friend. I will miss you so much bro, it is just too soon. Way too soon.

Any video or camera at this point in your career is a distraction so just don't do it. I can give you a bit of advice that will without a doubt hold true. If you stay in the sport and continue jumping, you will have more than enough pictures of yourself in the sky and plenty of video as well. Just be patient and you will be on jumps where there is video and if you pay for a pack job or two, your video guy might share them. Slow down and enjoy the sport knowing that all the good stuff will come in time.

Great opportunity for you to use your double fronts and figure this out for yourself. Remember your parachute is a wing and produces very similar responses to inputs as the control surfaces on a plane. Double fronts deflect the front of the canopy down decreasing the angle of attack. An airfoil produces the majority of its lift towards the front and this deflection reduces the magnitude of lift, thus you will lose altitude. Think of this as rotating your lift vector forward and decreasing the magnitude of it. Spend a moment with an advanced canopy pilot to discuss the forces/vectors acting on your canopy system and how they are oriented with different inputs.

1. Why would it matter if you are tracking until deployment altitude and then doing a barrel roll right before pitching? 2. If I was on a bigway RW dive, I would turn 180 track on my belly for a sec and then turn to my back to make sure the air remained clear above me. I bet you $1000 I could out track you on my back. **There is no way in hell I'm going to waveoff, deploy, and cross my fingers that there is no one above me and put his/her life and my life at risk. I do understadn though that some training would be needed for RW jumpers that haven't left their belly since '93. I can't emphasize enough that this is just not the way to do it. I have zero big way jumps, but I have been on 20 way + jumps and around many of these events. In a big way you track off in groups and the point is to stay with that group and fan out together. You must track well but the point is not to burn it away from your tracking group, you only fan out from the group at a pre-determined altitude and at that point, nobody should be above you if every did their job (and only people that can do their job are invited to these events) Congrats, you can out track everybody on your back but that does not mean that you leave and RW group and go to your back while risking losing altitude doing that. When I teach tracking, I emphasize that during a track you focus on 1. heading and 2. tracking flat. If you do those two things you are doing your job and keeping your friends safe. Oh and by the way, while you are being cool on your back, good luck seeing the person under canopy that you might be tracking towards. Just don't do this.

I am sure seasoned big way skydivers will step in quickly but I will advise that anything other than tracking away on your belly from a skydive, especially a big way, is never advised. You track for your life on a big way, period, and rolling on your back or any other shenanigans can kill you and others. If you told me you were going to roll on your back even in a 4/8 way, I would think that would show poor judgment.

denete I had the exact same mal. I chose to keep the canopy as cutting it would have trapped my finger and I could flare and control it. Turns out the hitch came out at the bottom of my flare during landing.

1. If slack brake line is not properly stowed, when you grab a toggle you could possibly create a knot at the metal ring on the riser - imagine grabbing a toggle that has gone through a loop of line. 2. Even if you carefully release tension on your brakes to adjust your chest strap, it is possible for the wind to flip a toggle around the brake line The lesson is to always look at what you are grabbing.

I have a Wings container DOM 4/2007 and the elastic keepers are quite difficult to use. I find them to be rather small and difficult to thread slack line through without deforming the brake line long before it should be replaced. The method that I have been using to stow the slack is by taking the loop formed by placing the toggle through the cat's eye (below the ring) and placing it on the top of the toggle before stowing the toggle in the top keeper. The top of the toggle goes through the loop of brake line. Brake line to the inside of the riser going to the canopy, excess to the outside of the riser. Going forward I will either have a rigger modify the loop on the back of the riser to make it bigger or try Mirage's riser which has a larger loop. For the record, I always store the slack line. I had the tip of one of the fingers on a glove get caught in my brake line as I deployed them once - the excess was not stowed.

Well said tbrown. Jumping with an AAD beyond student status is and always will be a choice as it should. AAD related/prevented accidents are NOT the problem that we face in this sport. The issue this stands before us now is keeping people alive after they have a fully functional canopy over their head and making sure they make good decisions under that canopy. Stay safe everybody and take care of each other.

Taking a canopy course is an awesome idea and I am very glad that I spent a couple days taking Scott Miller's course. You will certainly get your questions answered during the class and also have an opportunity to put your knowledge into action over a few jumps. I can't emphasize enough the importance of knowing how and when to apply braked/slow flight in your pattern and the effects of slow flight on your pattern and approach depending on being upwind or downwind. We will all find ourselves having to make good decisions under canopy over unfamiliar terrain. The key is being prepared. Not to dodge the answer to your questions, but it is best to have this discussion with an instructor one on one so that you can have a conversation and discuss all of the possible situations that you could see under canopy.

I strongly suggest that you work with your local instructors to understand two things: 1. Know the effects of each of the 8 inputs to your canopy flight 2. Fully understand the difference between flying your canopy in slow flight and full flight when you are flying downwind and also when flying upwind. You will really need these skills when you find yourself in an off landing situation or when there are obstacles that you have to deal with. This is not the time to make an error piloting your canopy.

Every team or group is different in what they like to use and there is no rule. Jumping with the same people regularly you begin to find a rhythm that allows everybody to get set. When I am outside I always wait for the group to be "quiet" in the door with no motion, that lets me know I am good to go. Sometimes I might ask to have grips taken on me last to let me know the team is set. Even if it is a random group of people, dirt diving the door a couple of times on the ground with the same timing helps a lot.

Everything you need to know is found in the SIM Your instructors should also be able to go over everything. There should be nothing covered that you have not seen in your student program.

I'm sorry but you have no base of experience for this opinion and example. If you've let a malfunction last long enough to make it close to g-lock, then your altitude doesn't matter anymore. What kind of dytter or wrist mount altimeter doesn't matter. What kind of cool jumpsuit you're wearing doesn't matter. None of that matters. You already waited too long to chop and are 100% behind the curve. Since you're big on people needing to be on the "cool kids" list in order for them to even have an opinion, I'll let you read this guy's opinion. Apparently he's on the "cool kids" list. His last name is Booth. Risk of spinning mal with g-forces not allowing you to cut-away I think the point is (assuming your profile is correct) that the bottom line is altitude awareness no matter what type of instrument that you use. Indeed as Bill states things can happen very quickly after a poor opening followed by a malfunction. The lesson to be learned is that you should be altitude aware during 1. breakoff 2. end of your track and 3. when you pitch your PC. Analog, digital - it's only a tool. Always stay altitude aware and you don't get in a corner during a high G malfunction.

I personally agree with this course of action and this is how I was trained. Rely on your own training as you were instructed. One thing that should be mentioned in this discussion is altitude awareness. If you are deploying at your licensed altitude please keep in mind that the ground is quickly approaching and it is critical to get something over your head. If you are accurately able to see a PCIT, then in no way can you make the assumption that it "might" clear. You have no information while you are in the moment that leads you that way. Because of this I would go silver ASAP. Stay safe everybody.