pchapman

They came along later. But yeah they have been able to avoid the problems other companies have had.. (Just one minor bulletin on cracked wiring insulation, on some early cutters.)

I assume that it looked like Garmashov was part of the malfeasance, that on the face of it he signed off the improperly trained/rated TI who died with his student at Lodi. So the USPA came down hard on him, pulling ratings. Before he had any chance to defend himself. Without following proper procedure. Only LATER did it become understood that the signature must have been forged. (Luckily Garmashov had a good alibi, that he was out of the country at the time.) There's no evidence presented about that but hopefully that has been established as a true fact. I wonder what the timeline is. The Lodi fatality was August 2016 and now it is 2023. How long did it take to start finding out about the whole system of forgeries and bad TI certification? And that Garmashov's signature was forged? Could the USPA have headed off this whole mess by a quick turnaround, "We thought we were doing the right thing but we didn't follow all our procedures and were deceived by Robert Pooley; we're sorry to Mr. Garmashov who is again a member in good standing"? I wonder what UPT did when it came to tandem ratings. Did they follow USPA's lead? Or do something entirely different? For reference, the original tandem fatality thread https://www.dropzone.com/forums/topic/26768-fatality-x2---lodi,-ca---7-august-2016/ (I haven't gone through it all!) Pooley's arrest in 2021 (short thread with no followup): https://www.dropzone.com/forums/topic/272535-instructor-arrestedwas-lodi-tandem-fatality/ The galling thing is that the USPA covered it up (rather than apologizing publicly), and in mediation still wanted to prevent Garmashov from ever being a USPA member (figuratively saying "you may be right but we still think you're an asshole for fighting us, you'll never work in this town again, that is, you'll never hold a USPA rating again"). EDIT: One does find some stuff when searching for Rob Pooley on DZ. For example, a copy of the announcement by USPA at about the start of Sept 2016 that some of Dause, Pooley and Germashov's ratings had been pulled: https://www.dropzone.com/forums/topic/87-so-you-think-you're-a-ti%3F--are-you-sure%3F/?do=findComment&comment=4520528 Plus the whole TI investigation ("About 120 must undergo a new USPA-developed refresher course (some immediately and most by September 30), while some 20 others have had their ratings suspended and must undergo a full and complete tandem instructor rating course ")

"Is that you Rhys?" Concerning the Mission Beach accident & Cypres' foot dragging on the recall: There was plenty of discussion on DZ but I'm not going to go back and find all the threads again. Most of us are just happy that much of the constant bickering about 'which AAD is better' is over, compared to back in the early 2000's, when there were all sorts of AAD issues still being found. Electronic AADs were still reliable and a net benefit, but there were bulletins from time to time. There was Argus who seemed plainly incompetent to make a good product, Vigil who seemed careless & sloppy but at least tried to fix issues, and then there was Cypres, with only the very occasional bulletin (after its early years in the 1990s when it was the pioneer in the field) -- but who made their rare problems worse by their immense arrogance.

That's some major pot stirring there, whoever you may be! Well, I'll take a bite.... Interesting to see these "secret" things about the USPA be opened up to view. While the PDF above has a pages of legalize about why the USPA is obligated to pay up the $150,000 as agreed, it all came about because of the stuff described below: (Which must be about the Lodi tandem fatality and all the shady stuff going on there when it comes to fake certifications of instructors.) Mr. G sued the USPA, the court sent it to Mediation and came to an initial sort-of agreement, but the USPA wanted one more change, but Mr G didn't agree. The court then decided that the initial agreement was legally an agreement. So the USPA had agreed to pay the $150,000. Part of the deal was also confidentiality on both parties -- One of those things that's common in the legal world but often seems really slimy to someone not in that profession. The case involves the USPA and so USPA members should have a right to know if something got screwed up, that's costing their organization. I have no dog in this fight but just wanted to summarize what's hidden away in the PDF. Others are free to do a better job. Anyone got a link to the old Lodi fatality thread, or some thread that gets into whatever license suspensions took place, and all that mess with Tandem Instructors having to requalify because their instructor wasn't considered to have been properly rated? One thing I'm wondering about is the statement: I suppose that has been previously established, and agreed to by the USPA prior to the court case? Is there info to that effect available publicly? It sounds like the USPA was pretty upset with all the Lodi stuff, and in effect did an "emergency revocation" of ratings.... but didn't pull out the manual to do so in the prescribed manner, allowing the defendant to make a proper defense.

At least it is a big round canopy here: 1937 French tandem under a round. Ok, a stunt, not a regular thing. (I imagine a bit of a discussion on the way down, about how to properly PLF.)

Hey, not everyone swooping a pond is a professional. (Pond availability varies a lot. Can be quite rare, but not always just at the 'super big DZ's full of pro swoopers'). Always good to know what the latest tech is and that includes waterproof status.

Just to be clear, you're saying the inertia of the heavy diaper & lines basically pulled down on that side, causing the opposite seam to get pulled up. Do you remember the circumstances of this one? (Year, location, anything?) I have tried to keep track of any Phantom failures but hadn't heard of that one. National of course isn't big on advertising their canopy failures. Certainly there was the one where a pilot bailed out at very high speed, and blew all the lines off his Phantom. (Su-29, 1996, Louisiana, radar showed aircraft at 220 knots at some point). Your case was definitely a different one? (The way National certified the Phantom was pretty sketchy, making 'engineering' judgements or assumptions that meant their canopy may not have been given tests anywhere close to the strength requirements of the old NAS804 used in the certification. At least, that's what one can infer from the very dry, factual statements by the FAA when investigating that 1996 accident. )

Seems OK by the manual. Cypres would just get fooled if you started at "ground level" then during the climb the pressure went to below ground level. (Special case: If a DZ offset is set, then the limit is that new level, not zero.) So climbing to 3000', starting to pressurize and going to a cabin altitude of 3000' minimum (or even dipping down to say 2000'), and then climbing to altitude with the cabin altitude only slowly ascending or level at some value, before eventually depressurizing.... That's little different to a Cypres than climbing in a regular aircraft to 3000', ducking down lower because of some clouds, and then climbing to altitude. But question #3 makes one wonder what the original poster's skydiving experience is... Since basically nobody uses pressurization unless you are on some very rare, unusual world record with exotic aircraft. It doesn't apply for 99.9999% of skydives.

I agree, I'm also a little skeptical of that being a universal truth. "Analog is better" may only be for a certain circumstance: E.g., looking down a couple rows of gauges of engine instruments to get a rough idea if all numbers are reasonable and "in the green" rather than being out of a certain range. Much easier to see that "all gauges are pointing to the upper left" than see a list of numbers and have to interpret what each value means, when 'good' numbers could be 2450, 90, 28.5, 375, 1550 etc. depending on the gauge. And were the digital numbers of those comparison studies recent enough to have colour displays that could show whether a digital readout was in the green, yellow, or red, to make the comparison more meaningful? Indeed I think many LCD etc screen displays on airliners now show both the actual value, and a circular sweep gauge -- both kinds of readouts are useful for different reasons. But if you want a single value, then it can be easier to look at a digital number. (And I'm saying this stuff that is pro-digital, as someone who still uses their big old Alti II mechanical gauge alti and is fine with that.)

Bonfires have been pretty traditional at the DZ's in my neck of the woods. (Southern Ontario) A bonfire is a place to socialize around. Maybe the hangar or DZ buildings get locked up late at night, and there isn't some well lighted patio at night as one might get at a giant DZ. Maybe it is a chilly spring / fall / even summer evening. Maybe a fire keeps a few bugs away. So better a bonfire than standing around aimlessly in the dark and cold. The OP mentioned fire hazard as one reason not to have them. One might also have DZ's at a municipal airport, where they aren't allowed to have open fires. I have also seen the tradition wither somewhat as a DZ gets bigger, where it goes from 'We're all here for fun, did a few fun jumps, did a few working jumps for the DZ, now we hang out late at night' to 'A bunch of staff are full time at least in summer and are doing this 5 days a week and have just done 10+ working jumps today -- so screw it, they just want to go get some sleep'. So there are a bunch of practical reasons why a bonfire may be more or less popular at different places at different times. Next up for the OP to learn about?: Flaming soccer. Also not something for tinder dry locations.

Yeah there's something wrong with the math there. Double check your sources. I don't have good sources at hand but have seen it written on aviation sites that 40,000 ft on 100% oxygen is like 10,000'. And the alveolar partial pressure of oxygen (what counts, after removing the partial pressure of water vapour), at 42,000ft looks like it is the same as at 14,000', according to a big 2008 aviation medicine text (although using data from an earlier study). That's why something around 41,000' is the typical limit without pressure breathing, as that gets you to around the equivalent to the height where you normally want to start looking at going on oxygen if flying for a longer period. (....assuming the best case where your oxygen system is working perfectly and you have a good mask seal.) As you say, partial pressure breathing (your term was overpressure) can get you a little bit more oxygen, a bit higher.

I'm not super impressed by it. Nice idea though. Of course it is a good idea in getting people to look at different factors that people consider when looking at risk under canopy. Unfortunately the tool doesn't show the points for each of the choices one can make, so without a lot of experimentation one has no idea what the developers or USPA think about different risks. It also seems to show a lot of stuff as dangerous. Which may be true. But for example, without going into every choice: It gives me a score of 45 if I am a fairly new jumper with 150 jumps who downsizes to a Sabre 2 135 at 1.25:1, has just started to fly the canopy for the first time, and has no canopy courses (but at least isn't a total idiot and so has done some canopy maneuvers recently). That 45 is "High Risk" between 35 and 50, below the 51 "Scary" range. If I plug in numbers for myself with a cross braced sub-100 canopy, for a year where I was the most active, with thousands of jumps, hundreds of jumps on the canopy and hundreds that year.... I still get a score of 43. So the newbie who is downsizing can say, "Well sure it says High Risk for me, but only slightly more than you with all your experience? So what's wrong with me downsizing? I mean, if you with your thousands of jumps and lots on your crossbrace are High Risk... then don't I WANT to be High Risk too? Living the swoopin' life? You can't smugly stand there and say I can't suddenly downsize to a whole 1.25 wing loading, when our risk levels are so similar? Do you get more right to live dangerously if you have thousands of jumps?" If the situations are equivalent the tool pretty much only says, "Well, duh, skydiving is dangerous unless you just keep flying big canopies."

Yeah I'm guessing it is the normal wind shear that exists near the surface, with wind speed sometimes significantly increasing in the bottom 100' or whatever of the atmosphere. I'm not totally sure of the logic in all cases. Eg, why do you want just a little headwind, rather than a moderate although still smooth headwind being equally as good? But anyway, if you are down low with lets say near zero wind and pop up into a higher headwind, wham, you can get a temporary boost in lift, that gives you more margin before sinking out back to ground level. ("Temporary" until inertia effects and aerodynamics have you and the canopy reacting to the changed wind conditions.) (Note that the upwards trajectory in the maneuver matters too as the increased headwind also increases the angle of attack, also boosting lift. In contrast, when on a normal skydive you are just descending on a normal glide under a parachute, and suddenly you get a headwind, yes the wind speed hitting the canopy is higher, but the angle of attack of the canopy will suddenly be lower -- so depending on angles and speeds, the combination of greater speed but less angle of attack may give more or less lift -- the canopy might sink faster rather than sinking less fast, or even have the nose collapse downwards if the angle of attack got too low. )

Hey lyosha, that claim surprises me too. It is very rare that an underloaded canopy is dangerous. Maybe, say, a very large crossbraced canopy with a tiny jumper -- that can collapse more easily at low wing loading with its small nose openings. Or are you including cases where the jumper screwed up their flight planning? I never had any big problem jumping accuracy canopies at 0.65 wing loading, in high winds where I was being pushed backwards right to landing, even if the landing was a bit rough. But it does take some actual spotting, so if you get dumped out of a turbine aircraft at a DZ with a lot of obstacles and a tight LZ, you could easily get into trouble. But that's not directly due to the low wing loading. A light wing loading canopy is more likely in nasty turbulence to - for example - fold a wingtip under, but that's more or less compensated for, by its much more benign behavior with a sudden loss of lift on one side. So I'm also curious just what sort of circumstances existed where you had friends breaking themselves under (and possibly "due to") light wing loading.

While barrel rolls had been done for at least 20 years on skydiving gear, on a descending flight path, I guess the innovation was doing it after a touch and go at surface level. Not actually a climbing barrel roll, but with a canopy with the performance to climb enough after a touch and go, to still allow the barrel roll to be completed. Not done to a safe landing on dry land, but at least to a reasonably controlled splash down on water. Not that I know much about the history of these things; I'm just trying to put it all into context of what the specific attributes and achievements were.