parachutist

Mike, Are we talking about the same Thursday? It's been my understanding that PCB boogie registration doesn't even start til Monday, April 28th. I'm going to be there for the whole week's events, April 27 - May 4th. I don't have your cel # here, please e-mail it to me thanks, Chris W

This Wednesday I'll be at Thomaston, but I'm going to be heading down to Panama City Beach on Saturday... I may be able to stop by the DZ for a few hours on the way down on Saturday, but after that I'll be out of town for a week. Chris

Quote Does anybody jump one of the new Dolphins or one with the riser cover mod? Comments? Quote My 2001 Dolphin has tuck-tab riser covers that cover the shoulders. I specified tuck-tabs when ordering, and if you're getting a new one make sure and specify it. They work great. A friend of mine had a 1998 Dolphin modified to use tuck tabs and he's happy with the mod. I suggest you call Altico and talk directly to the manufacturer because he knows his products better than anyone else and he's a personable guy: Mike Furry (352) 523-0052 Chris

That's where the Grab-the-other-riser technique comes into play. Let's say you do a 180 front left riser turn and come out too high..... keep holding that left riser down and grab the other one.. pull it down even with the left one and now you're flying straight ahead while still diving... so you don't lose your speed and plane out, and you don't keep turning. When you get down close to the ground, let up on those front risers evenly and flare. "I had such a problem with the plane out and drop affect" That's actually called the Pendulum effect. You go into a dive and you're swung out behind the canopy... you come out of the dive and you're swung forward below or in front of the canopy.. then the canopy surges forward and you have no flare. So how do you avoid this? Do not allow yourself to get swung forward: keep up the forward speed by using both front risers for a straight-in front riser approach. Chris Warnock

Yep, working on it. Sit-flying was fun too.. nice cartwheels Mike. =] - Chris

If you want to learn CReW this summer, just drop me an e-mail to let me know what dates you'd like to dock. I plan to be available in Atlanta most of the summer: http://www.skydiveatlanta.com I have several CReW canopies, hook knives, and rigs availabe for you to use (If one of my CReW canopies will fit into your rig then we'll use your rig, if not then I have a couple others available.), so you will only need to bring a few simple items: - USPA A license - long pants or jump suit - gloves Contact info: ------------------------------------ Chris Warnock D-25468 [email protected]

I'd say go with the Canuck's idea, or you can use a standard pro pack sequence and use your knees to hold the folds in place, as shown in these pics: http://www.funjump.com/photos/safire_pack/ Chris

I ordered that vid online... it was supposed to be here by now and I haven't seen it. The link to the "Out of the Blue" DVD has been removed from the PST web page, and I haven't heard a thing from PST about it. Anybody have a clue what the deal is here? Chris

Factory brake toggle marks set by any manufacturer are simply suggestions. They are an indication of a good place for you to set your brake toggles to begin with. Start there and adjust them to your liking. Ideal setting of brake toggles for any canopy satisfies both of these criteria: - gives you at least a little bit (I'd say 1/4" minimum) of slack in the brake lines when toggles are all the way up. - allows you enough flare to stall the canopy. (If you add 6" of slack in the lines then you take away 6" of flare from the bottom of your flare stroke: so if your stall point was previously at almost full extention of your arms and then you add 6" slack... you're not going to be able to reach that stall point any more.) The second crit is not achievable with some canopies, especially at light wing loadings. A radical example of this situaton is: Student flying a 288 Manta. There's no way the student can stall this canopy and it's intentional. You'll also find this when flying many other large canopies. So sometimes you basically just have to deal with imperfection in flare setup and learn to work with it. Most important thing is to practice flaring repeatedly up high after you adjust those brake toggles, every time you make an adjustment. Learn where the stall point is and learn how to feel it long before you get near the ground! =] When changing the settings of your brake toggles: Make sure that your lines are tied up correctly. It's easy to do it right, but if you haven't been instructed the correct way to do it, then it's very easy to do it incorrectly and have a failed brake line / toggle connection at a very inopportune moment. Chris

Yes I had a room booked so I could do the swooping comp, and then I found out Mike was organizing some CRW for the event... so I'll be there all week hoping to get in some of both CRW & swooping, depending on what Mike's CRW schedule looks like. =] Chris

Ok, thanks guys... I'll try your elastic idea this weekend if the weather clears up Chris

I've been doing CReW for about 4 years, 300 CRW jumps, and I have yet to have a CRW cutaway. I think the main reason I've had such a record has been the highly experienced people with whom I've been jumping. Several times that I know of, I've done some things that were likely to cause wraps and cutaways, but Dogs around me were ahead of the game enough to avoid such problems. Chris Warnock

Hey Ramon, It'll be good to see you in PCB. I've been meaning to ask you a question... I saw your pic in the recent Parachutist mag and I noticed that you were wearing a pair of motocross style pants. I just got a pair of those to take with me to PCB and I'm unsure about ankle protection with these pants: Do any swoopers use ankle protection or just keep ankles clear when sliding in? Motocross guys wear boots with these pants so they have plenty of abrasion resistance, but when I'm wearing sneakers the ankles are exposed. Chris Warnock

I would like to add in that while CReW is not so bad with microlines on large canopies (still not recommended tho), it gets a good bit more risky with highly loaded canopies. The higher the wing loading then the quicker that bad things, such as wraps, can happen... and the less time you will have to react. Chris

Yeah if you wear a L or XL size motorcycle helmet then the Z1 will not fit... at all. The mouth piece of my XL sized Z-1 ends up at my nose. If you want a white XL sized Z1: I have one sitting on a shelf in my room.. maybe 20 jumps on it, for dirt cheap. Another lame factor of this Z-1: they used hot glue to glue the skirt that goes around the neck area to the shell, and hot glue does not hold for crap - as I'm sure you know. So part of the skirt has come loose. Chris

I think it's the light wing loading more than anything else: You're wondering why canopy won't open completely... You tug on some controls to get the cells open and your canopy realizes "Oh yeah.. there really IS somebody down there... maybe I oughta inflate."

Below is a copy of the official Moss Point CReW Boogie notice, contact address for Dudley & Cathy is : [email protected] ============================ Calling all DAWGS, The dates for the Moss Point Boogie are Fri. May 16th thru Sun. May 18th. Hosts for this incredible event are Paul Ferrel and Chuck Blackwell. Due to Paul's busy schedule, Dudley & I will be handling the e-mails. Please let us know if you are coming, so we can begin the LIST! When we have the hotel info pinned down, we will let you know. Looking forward to seeing everybody there. Dudley & Cathy

That's where demos come in handy. Try one and see how you like it... if you feel comfortable with it then maybe try one size smaller & see how you like that one. Large boogies are good for this sort of thing because there are manufacturers present with demos to hand out. If you don't travel to large boogies then talk to some manufacturers on phone and have them mail you demos (takes a bit longer this way but it's quite effective.) Besides all of that... crossbraced canopies should be easy for you to handle. They don't spontaneously dive at the ground the way some people seem to fear. fly it around, flare it without stalling it... it's that simple. Just leave the dive loops alone until you feel competent to experiment with them. =] Chris Warnock

No matter what size canopies they'd been flying, there would still have been a great deal of turbulence for them to deal with. I don't know what this grandstand looked like or from which way the wind was coming, but I'm sure it would have been difficult to avoid the turbulence of 40+ mph winds coming over bleachers & parked trucks under most any circumstances. Chris

Right but if you wrap before you front riser, that defeats the purpose of having enough slack in your steering lines to prevent pulling down the tail while pulling down the front risers. Hook Hook, In a CReW dive there are many occasions other than landings during which the slack will be advantageous: during approach to a formation when using those front risers, for example. During these maneuvers a Lightning pilot will not want the slack to be removed from brake lines... But then at the end of this dive, when setting up for a landing, the goal is different: A lightning pilot now wants to be able to plane out the canopy completely and use evey bit of flare that is avaialble from those brake lines. Chris

Last year's was May 18-20... I haven't heard any mention of this year's Moss Point boogie yet tho. I'll e-mail the Moss Point organizer & see what the plans are looking like. Chris

I decided the massive front riser pressure on my VX would be a good workout for me... so I figured I could keep jumping it and get better at manhandling it over time. My muscles were developing as time went on, but my finger joints were not appreciating the stress I was putting on them. After a few weeks of jumping the VX, a couple of my fingers felt as if the knuckles had been dislocated. So I modified my dive loops to make them act as bars instead of as loops (bars are straight across so you can spread the weight evenly across all 4 fingers... loops, on the other hand, are flexible and this causes them to take on a "V" shape when heavy pressure is applied to them: As a result of this "V" shape, a couple of fingers end up with much more weight than the other fingers... causing too much stress on those joints for my linking My dive loop mod consisted of a piece of PVC pipe (about 3" long). I split the piece of pipe in half and drilled some holes into it, tacked it on top of the webbing inside my dive loop.... it required attention to feed it through the slider grommet when I was collapsing / stowing slider and after a couple weeks' worth of jumping, the pipe split... So the PVC pipe definitely had some shortcomings, it worked very well up until breakage tho. I was going back to the drawing board for this dive loop mod... but then the Xaos-27 became available, so I picked one of those up instead Chris

Yes that's what happens when you screw around for way too long =]. Try it twice & go for the reserve is the rule USPA goes by. ummm... nevermind.

I have been using a collaspeable pilot chute since I was a student and I have one that came with my Javelin. I have not heard the word kill line much. Thats all.

I just noticed that on my 3-year old Dolphin container there is a little hood that the tip of the reserve pin slides under (Much like a hood used to keep the tip of a brake toggle in place). I think this must be a relatively recent refinement and it seems that this pretty much rules out the chances of a line getting caught under the pin, or chances of comething pushing on the tip of the pin to push it free from the closing loop. THere is still possibility with this design I think of the velcro cover being flipped back during climbout and heavy pressure against a door combined with movement to grab the cable itself and pull the pin that way... overall though it seems pretty secure to me. My Wings rig has a cover similar to the Infinity picture that Bob posted... where the bottom of the cover flap tucks in. But on this particular rig like you mentioned earlier, Wendy.... it's not a very secure tuck.. the flap just sits there loosely in this rig and it's easy to nudge it open. Chris