cpoxon

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Posts posted by cpoxon

  2. Quote

    You must be soaking yourself in DEET to be to worried about it



    Seen the bugs in Scandanavia?! :-P

    I'm worried about the cumulative effects. With skydiving, my biggest concern is sweat (I already take precautions against UV). However, my local A has a big mosquito problem and I smother myself in DEET. I should probably worry more about the cumulative effects on my body, but with a single parachute system I like to have a good shower before I pack.

    MOISTURE VAPOR TRANSMISSION RATED OF SELECTED WATERPROOF/ BREATHABLE FABRICS: EFFECTS OF PERSPIRATION, STOVE FUEL, INSECT REPELLENT, AND REFURBISHMENT. R. Ernster. Design, Merchandising and Consumer Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Master's thesis completion 1996. B. Brandt, Advisor.

    Will read when I'm a bit more sober

    BSc. Chemistry :-S

  3. Quote

    From a full speed inverted position to belly and dump, instantly, without any worry of crazyness, a little off heading but what do you expect @150mph...



    Oh yeah, forgot to say, the other time I get 500 foot openings on my Crossfire is when I'm doing 150 mph on my belly in my rubber suit whilst flaring out for 3,000 feet after a Speed dive.

  4. I have a Voodoo 2. I had a Voodoo 1 which RI rebuilt (put a Voodoo 2 container on my Voodoo 1 harness) because the riser tabs and main tuck flap stiffeners snapped fairly quickly and the reserve flap would ride up. I like both of them (although I preferred the main pack tray arrangement in the original - opened much wider so better for wingsuit). They are supremely comfortable. After three hundred jumps on a Voodoo I still find myself occasionally freaked out in freefall wondering if I'm wearing a rig (this might be a con for some people!) I also like it because of the way it looks. This is also a downside. I like the way it looks, but in practice it doesn't always look good. I don't know if it's because of the canopies I have in my V3 (Crossfire 149 and PdF Techno 155) but it can look rumpled. I think it looks better smaller. My girlfriend has a Voodoo V0 with a Spectre 120 (PdF Techno 128) and that's better. Also depends on how the main and more importantly the reserve is packed. The guy who packs my reserve has a lot of experience with Talons but neither he or I are totally happy with the way it looks.

    I'm not sure if I'd buy a Voodoo again, but only because I'd like to try something else. I love my Voodoo and I love RI's customer service and would like to patronise them again and would certainly recommend them.

  5. Quote

    I've even deployed it with only one brake stowed (I packed it that way) to see how it would behave,



    Rich, Chris's suggestion in the canopy seminar was to pop a break on opening to see how it would react, not to pack it that way! ;-P

    My experiences are similar to Rich's. I jump a modded 149 @ 1.5:1. I always to deploy at 3,000 minimum to ensure I'm open by 2,000. I have a bad habit of trying to control the opening with the risers, which does nothing for the opening, rather than steering it with my body. Like Rich, I'll be working on that.

    The 'best' (i.e. on-heading and within 500 feet) opening are with my wingsuit. I've done one jump on a later (i..e no mod requried) 139 and bizarrely that was a very quick, hard opening but I think that can be discounted.

    Hoping to try a Crossfire 2 at the Empuria Christmas boogie to see if I stay with Icarus for my next canopy purchase.

  6. Perhaps some guidelines (similar to those on the Inicidents forum) should be given on the Post New page for this forum with information such as this?

    Edit: I see Erno has already made this suggestion in the Suggestions and Feedback forum.

  7. From the minutes of the Safety & Training Committee, British Parachute Association, 28th November 2002

    Quote

    4) viii) One report concerned a display, which happened abroad, but is worth mentioning. This concerned a CF jump, a Tri-by-side formation. The jumpers were attached by ‘probes’, which were attached between the harnesses. One canopy went behind another and the formation started to ‘rock’. In an attempt to ‘cutaway’ the probe, one of the jumpers cutaway his main canopy by mistake. This took place at approximately 250ft. The jumper who cutaway his main was still attached to the other jumper by his probe. Both jumpers landed, without injury under one canopy



    :o

    Are you familiar with probes? Several military display teams use them to alleviate pressure when building three- and four-by-sides. The probe has a carabiner on each end which the jumper attaches to a ring on the harness and is handed to another jumper to clip onto a ring on their harness. The carabiners are connected by webbing with a 3-ring in the middle. The 3-ring has two handles, two lolon cables and two loops enabling the probe to be cutaway from either end.

    If it's who I think it is, these guys are very experienced CRW and demo jumpers. I've used these probes myself and I though I find it difficult to see how they were confused (cutaway on chest vs. cutaway to the side of you), it just goes to show anyone can make a mistake? Be familiar with your drills and your gear.

  10. Quote

    -- I saw there weren't any recommendations on the website.. other than don't do it.



    There used to be

    Under WATERLANDINGS:

    Quote

    Avoid waterlandings at all costs! Without immediate help it is extremely dangerous to land on water with the wing suit. If that should happen, keep your hooknife ready, cut your wings away, undress the suit and gear, be prepared to use the hooknife to get rid of the suit. All this can be extremely difficult or in same cases impossible. Once again, avoid waterlandings at all costs!



    I wonder why it isn't in the cuurent flight manual? The information still sounds valid to me.

  12. Quote

    as i was walking down the aisle of the train this morning for the usual commute to work, something about this guys backpack catches my eye. I look down and see it's not a rig, which is what it looked like as i was moving down, but one of those made to look like a rig back packs, complete with reserve flap.



    I saw a guy on the Jubilee line (between Finchley Road and Baker Street) last week wearing US Nationals t-shirt from Deland (when and how often have the Nationals been held at Deland)

    Quote

    Now normally, as most Londoners can atest to, talking to complete strangers on public transport is almost enough for you to be deemed to warrant psychological examination,



    Indeed! It's against the law to talk to stangers on the tube unless your foreign or a tourist so I didn'. Humbug.

  14. The difference between www.skydivingfatalities.com (Barry and Eric's site and www.skydivingfatalities.info (my site) is explained on the front page. Briefly though, a lot of the data on my site came from Barry's when I first made a queryable version, but I've been keeping it more uptodate recently, and adding other information such as Governing body findings, the names of the deceased. I also intend to add more historical information pre-dating Barry's

    I'm suprised this thread has been allowed to stay here. Expect it to be moved now I've made a fuss.

  17. Quote

    I know that minute flights are happening off that cliff, so I'd guess the total exit to landing altitude somewhere between 5000' and 6000'.



    Robert has done 1 minute from the big, legal, terminal wall in Northern Italy and that's only 4,000 feet.

    With regards to the place where Lukas did the jump in the video, I've not been there either but I found this from Jim Jennings' review of the Birdman Pantz:

    Quote

    In late August 2002, I made three consecutive jumps at a 4,500-foot mountain named K with a 14 seconds to impact rock drop of approximately 1800 feet. The next 2,000-ft. is a steep talus with a 400 to 500 foot almost sheer cliff on top of another 300 feet of talus. To clear the 2,000-ft. talus ledge, the jumper has to get into a really good track right away and hold it throughout the jump to clear the ledge at the bottom



    and this is a post from Blinc when the talus was first out-tracked:

    Quote

    He (Stein Olsen) tracked app.. 900m (3000ft) with ca 900m total drop!!! moving the record in K from 17s to 30s!!!!!.
    He is 180 cm tall and weigh in on 78 kg, nothing unusual about that! (no booties, slicksuit, just a plain outfit) After this jump, all the jumpers
    walk around on the exit prior to jump, looking like penguins! Later a girl smashed the record (31) humiliating the machos!
    (you hit water at Kjeraag at 24)



    Saying that you'd hit the water at Kjerag after less time would imply that it's lower (depends on the exit point?) but I reckon there's a bigger motivation at K to have a more efficient track with more visual feedback!

  19. Quote

    I don't have trouble with that at all. The USPA is a bit nicer now, but historically, their attitude toward BASE has been far from accepting. Last I heard, the BPA was even worse. Don't even get me started on Finland...



    It's not so bad these days. Two (at least, to my knowledge) of the current Council (equivalent of the USPA BOD) of nine are jumpers (one of whom I believe was there when "Frank was pushed"?). It's still a bit of a grey area. Officially, the two sports have nothing to do with each other but as a lot of fixed-object jumpers are also skydivers in the UK (and therefore a member of the BPA) they are technically at the mercy of the Council if in their opinions they have bought the sport "into disrepute".

  20. Can't post attachments at the moment so it's on my site

    Tandem Malfunction Flowchart

    I got it from Bill Booths Sigma Safety Features Power Point, which he presented at the PIA and the BPA AGM last year (and probably other places too!). It is 28 MB so I hope Bill won't mind me grabbing the chart.

    In another slide, Bill attributes drogue problems to the number of handles:

    Quote

    A FACTORIAL (x !) is a mathematical way of expressing all possible combinations of a certain number of items.
    A Solo rig has 3 handles. 3! (Three Factorial) = 3x2x1= 6
    A Tandem rig has 6. 6! (Six Factorial) = 6x5x4x3x2x1= 720
    720 divided by 6 equals 120.
    6 handles vs. 3 means 120 times more combinations.

  22. Quote

    ***I decided to go for it, just fly my way as best as I could. I reached the river, and crossed it at about a 1000 feet, after only 46 seconds. Some estimates of my forward speed are between 200 to 250 km/h. I 've got good video which I'll quicktime as soon as I can.



    I saw that video this weekend. I've asked Simon to encode it and upload it someone as testament to Lukas. Hearing him say, "I am the fastest motherfucker in the valley!" over the radio gave me goose-bumps.

    FastestMotherFuckerInTheValley.WMV

    Will probably move to FastestMotherFuckerInTheValley.WMV in the future

  25. Quote

    A few years ago, a jumper with two very similar rigs mistakenly picked up the one that had been field packed (i.e. rigger rolled/daisy chained) and jumped it!! Luckily he lived.



    full story on the BASE board

    edit: also a good example of the value of protective equipment