Polorutz

Hiya guys. I've started head down in the tunnel and can fly close to other jumpers no problems. Most of my friends at the DZ can only sitfly though so I end up using them as reference. Problem is, I almost always end up low no matter how big I make my daffy. I've seen video of Olav Zipzer head down with belly flyers so I know it's possible, any tips?

And trusting your rears!

Angle dives, being able to fly next to people.

Champu, thank you very much for your post, that's the kind of information I was after. To all of you out there with more experience, what have YOU decided? I'm leaning towards trying to get the safest mount I can and keeping the Mard hooked up.

Ok, I understand the gopro is not low profile, the newer hero 3 mounts have flush sides that I think make it a bit harder for snags to happen but I understand it could still happen. What I want to understand is which kinds of malfunction warrant having the RSL disconnected. I would assume anything that has the main risers or lines tangled up in the camera, you wouldn't want to deploy your reserve into a streaming main without falling clear. Are there other types of situation where the RSL is a bad idea?

Hi guys. I live in France where rules are a bit different and they allow you to jump a camera after you have 100 jumps. I have no particular need to jump a camera at the moment but I might want to do it in the future and I want to understand what the main issues are before deciding whether it's something I want to do or not. Some of the guys around my experience level are starting to jump gopros and the main guys at the DZ always make a big deal about having the RSL disconnected before going to the plane. I understand the need to do this if you have a huge camera with lots of snag points but is it really necessary for a helmet with a cutaway and a low profile gopro? I have a skyhook in my rig and I quite like knowing that when I chop, odds are I'll be under my reserve before I can blink, I wouldn't want to give this up if I can so basically, can you explain to me the pros and cons about jumping say a cookie fuel with a cutaway system and a good mount hero 3 when it comes to having the RSL connected or not? Thanks!! -Polo

Guys, thank you very much for your inputs. I have bought a pulse 170 and am loading it at 1.0 / 1.1 depending on how many donuts I eat that week. I am comfortable with it and plan to stay with this canopy for a long time to come. I've done a canopy course with Flight-1 and the instructor agreed that 1.4 is about as much as you want to load a canopy for wind purposes. I plan to downsize to a 150 in maybe 300 or so jumps after I have experienced the 170 in all wind conditions. After that I plan to stay on the 150 forever or until I change my mind about high perf landings which I don't think I will. Once again thanks for the comments.

Wow, thanks guys some pretty good info in all the replies!

Hi guys! I've been doing some tracking jumps as part of my fun jumping and I want to get better at them. In my DZ unfortunately I don't think there are many people who are good enough to teach the newer dearched tracking position, everyone's doing the old school delta track. Do you guys have any videos or tutorials for the basic position? I can find a bunch of atmo videos but they're already from people who are doing a lot of advanced stuff, mostly almost head down, I'm more interested in the real basic stuff. How to go up, down, slower, faster, etc... I want to do a beginner angles camp but there's nothing near me atm, possibly will do something like that next year in a planned holiday, but until then, anything you think might be useful?

ANything that isn't easily confused with "tracking" or another established term in the sport. I don't know how "tracing" made any sort of sense in the first place, actually. To trace, according to the dictionary when used as a verb, is "to follow a course, trail". Hence, tracing makes sense because you do a course in the sky that one can follow... maybe?

Pablo, I regularly do spirals and digging out of turns without releasing the in-the-turn toggle as practice for the situation you're describing. I also do front-riser turns and I thoroughly explore my canopy's handling characteristics and will continue to do so. I do this well above 2500' and clear of traffic, after that it's the be predictable game for me.

Thanks for your reply Joellercoaster, that's round about what I was thinking. What is the difference then regarding wind penetration when you fly at 1.3 WL compared to a higher loading?

Hi guys. I'm an inexperienced skydiver getting to grips with Canopy Flying and all that entails. My question is this: If I do not want to swoop or hook turn close to the ground, what is a good wingloading to have in order to have good control authority in the flare and stability in winds? Basically, I do not want to swoop or hook turn, I want to be able to fly well in full flight and give myself a good forward speed to be able to fly in windier days. I am currently flying a pulse 190 and plan on staying on that size for the time being, I weigh 165 lbs and adding 25 lbs for gear I'm roughly loaded at 1.0. When the wind picks up to 15 knots or so it starts becoming a bit of a pain to get forward speed. I don't think I want to go too small but I do want to be able to jump in windier days so long as it's not too gusty. Any ideas?

I was trying to explain the situation in a concise manner. Profile drag is part of parasite drag, I just wanted to differentiate between drag that increases with airspeed (all parasite drag) and just form drag. It's been a while since I've reviewed these concepts so might have gotten the terms wrong but the logic still works.

I'm not a swooper but I'm a pilot with a physics background. In sport skydiving the only thing producing lift is your parachute, unlike in airplanes where the fuselage can come into play. Therefore, when you reduce drag in the system as a whole, you aren't really changing the amount of lift the aerofoil is producing, what you are doing is removing drag for that aerofoil to fight against. When you're in full flight, except in phases of acceleration, the aerodynamic forces on your system are in balance, if you were to accelerate, the parasite drag would increase with speed, which would eventually lead the system back to its original balanced speed. Imagine you instantly change the lines in flight, now your system is no longer in balance because you have less drag, what happens then is that the system accelerates until the point where the speed itself causes enough drag to stop the acceleration. It's useful to know that there are 2 types of drag, profile drag and parasite drag. Profile drag is the one you're thinking about when changing lines, presenting less surface to the airflow, etc... Parasite drag is proportional to the airspeed, the faster you go, the more drag you will create. Think of it as dragging your hand through water in a pool, the faster you move your hand, the more force you'll feel push against it. EDIT: To answer your question, reducing profile drag by changing your lines means both a higher airspeed for full flight as well as a reduction in drag overall. What this means is that most definitely your gate speed will be higher, and due to the drag being lowered a bit, the rate at which that speed bleeds off during the swoop is lessened to a degree, so you'll fly farther too.

This is an interesting thread for me. I did my first 3 AFF levels in April 2007 over a week period. Then I had to stop completely due to money problems. Took me 6 years to finish it, retook the AFF last november from level 2 and finished in a week. Therefore, from start to finish, it took me 6 years and 6 months to pass AFF heheheeh.

Of course not labrys, that's why I can't afford the gear. :P

Degeneration, I know, I wish I had money for 2 suits. I want to learn to freefly but it will take a lot of time to get good enough to be able to do FF jumps with other people. Ever since I got licensed, there has always been someone to jump with for basic RW stuff and that is also very fun and rewarding. I want a freefly suit that will allow me to still have fun with other people too. Hence the low profile grippers. I think I've found what I want in the Sonic Aerial. I'm calling them soon and asking them a few things and then probably placing an order with them.

Absolut, I'm short (1.68m or 5'7'') and relatively heavy at 75kg (165lbs). I reckon I'd want a slower suit cause I fall like a rock. I took a look at a 620 but couldn't find a gripper option at least on their website. Might have to contact them directly.

Thanks for your answer!! I might just do that! I forgot to say, I have about 3 tunnel hours and I can already backfly, I'm currently working on Backfly to sit transitions after having spent the last 40 minutes or so doing back-belly transitions. My plan is to keep going in the tunnel till April when I go to Z-Hills for 2 weeks, then I'll be doing some solo sitfly (perpendicular to jumprun and with audibles). I'm planning on having a breakoff alt at about 5500 feet to allow me to slow down before pulling. Once I get good enough I'll start jumping with other people.

Hi guys, I'm a newbie when it comes to skydiving so I was wondering if one of you skygods can enlighten me. I know RW suits have booties and grippers which are not the best thing in the world to freefly in. Budget is a bit tight atm and I was wondering if there was some sort of intermediate kind of suit, that would allow me to learn to freefly and also do some beginner's RW, so some sort of low profile grippers or something like that. Can anyone recommend such a thing?

That is close to 68 mph in full flight... scary as fuck. How the hell do you land that and survive?

Hi, I was wondering if it would make sense to make the years field displayed in our profiles to be a selectable year or even a date. This so you can dinamically calculate the time in sport so users don't have to update that value every year. What are your thoughts on this?

Hello there, I'm not a parachute designer but I am a commercial pilot with a background in physics, I'm a novice skydiver but here's my 2 cents if you want them. Performance is a very relative term, when you're talking about performance it must always be done in context, IE, the discipline of choice where this canopy will be used. A large 7 cell accuracy canopy will outperform a highly elliptical crossbraced 9 cell when it comes to accuracy landings. On the other hand if what you're looking for is speed, rate of descent, stability in turbulence, etc. Then the small elliptical crossbraced swoop machine will outperform the accuracy 7 cell. As to what affects performance? Absolutely everything, the parachute is a wing and anything you do to change the shape of it will affect performance. Line trim will affect performance, brake length, aspect ratio, thickness, the way it's braced, whether the pilot opens his chest strap or not, how he starts the flare (with rear risers and then toggles or just toggles). The complexity of the analysis is quite extensive so if I were you I would focus on one aspect of the performance itself. IE, explain why a 260 Navigator is better than the 120 katana for a given exit weight when it comes to a novice jumper. You can then put an expert jumper on the katana and compare why it will outperform the navigator when it comes to speed, swoop, rate of bank, rate of descent, etc... A fun few things to consider, give the 260 nav to an expert and get him to extract as much performance as he can out of it, compare to the HP wing and then figure out what the safety margin is between the canopies, for example, try to spin the Nav and determine it's recovery arc from terminal velocity, then do the same for the 120 katana and show how much more time a novice might have with his huge nav to recover from the dive. Compare terminal velocities on both canopies when pointed straight at the ground, you can use a pair of sensitive audibles to measure this for example. Of course, do all this very very high and far away from other canopies. Have fun and give us a copy of your work when you're done. Good luck!

Hey Stu, I am Venezuelan and I have been to some of the dropzones but not recently. I left the country in 2006. Second hand info however can be gleamed by the reviews on this site. Things in Venezuela happen at their own pace. Some days you won't jump at all just cause the dropzone owners haven't showed up. Most days it will be because there aren't enough people to send the planes up. When you do skydive though, it will be glorious and pictoresque, this however is not what's important to do an AFF course. Doing a full 8 jump AFF course in Venezuela in 2 weeks seems a bit optimistic unless you have enouigh people with you doing tandems or if it's a busy weekend, etc... For what you're looking for I can recommend Ocaña in Spain, they have a British side of the school (Freefall University) where you will be instructed by british instructors so the language barrier will be nil. Weather is awesome all year round but I would recommend calling them beforehand and try and go when there are students there. In the winter it can be a bit quiet if there are no students so you might not get as many jumps as you need. Empuriabrava near Barcelona is also great, you will find english speaking instructors there too. Weather is a bit more critical as it can get a bit windy but it's a very high volume dropzone so if you give yourself a realistic timeframe (2 weeks is plenty) then you'll be done and dusted. As for the cost, I can hook you up with plane tickets from the UK because of my work so that cost factor could be reduced massively. If you want to go to the US, I'd recommend Florida, there are 3 awesome dropzones in close proximity. Skydive City Zephyrhills, Deland and Skydive Sebastian. They are all amazing and offer good volume when the weather's good, you'd get a course done in no time over there and get a lot of jumps in too!