pchapman

Yes, there's just no organization out there that gets paid to check out drop zones across the country. There are FAA standards for aircraft maintenance, and those drop zones that are voluntarily part of the USPA are supposed to follow their rules, but that's as far as it goes. A simple look at the number of accidents wouldn't help much, because they are few and far between, so the results will seem very random. Accidents to experienced jumpers who to a large extent do their own thing, don't necessarily say anything about the safety of the student program at a drop zone. For student accidents one would still have to distinguish between accidents that could relate to equipment and quality of training, vs. simply making bad decisions -- and a lot of skydiving accidents are human error. Sometimes one can relate that to a particular DZ's training or culture, but other times there's no way to do that. The historical number of accidents at a drop zone will vary by the size of the drop zone and how long it has been in business. So you could easily have two essentially identical drop zones, one that has never had a fatality in 30 years, and another that has had two in the last 5 years. There are different training methods in use for new skydivers, some drop zones using one or two methods, other drop zones using another one or two. Skydivers like to endlessly argue about these methods, but generally all will produce good skydivers, despite variation in focus and cost. So what does a prospective student do? It is nice to say that we live in a place where people are able to make their own choices, and that people should be informed consumers, but then skydivers tell prospective students "good luck with that!". It wouldn't hurt if there were some guide to choosing a drop zone. Does the USPA have anything like that, beyond explaining the different training methods? To someone new in the sport one might have to be at a drop zone for a year before one starts to have the experience to tell whether there are some aspects of a drop zone that are a less safe than one would expect them to be, based on what other jumpers observe.

I wasn't around at the time but I've only seen that done for a few harnesses using a belly mount, so that there's a reserve container in front. The container holds the main lift webs in place, although I suppose high structural strength only exists in the cross connector between the reserve risers.

These questions are technically Gear & Rigging but I think I might do better among the guys on this forum. I've got a pair of R-3 copies on a fore-and-aft rig. 1. Should one file off the tip of the lug on the male Capewell fitting, when using it with R-3s? (The attached photo labels some of the parts for those not that familiar with Capewells.) Someone suggested this modification to me, that it was important when moving risers from a rig with shot and a halfs to R-3's. This avoided side loading issues with R-3's that could make cutaways more difficult. On the other hand, I looked one full Capewell, where there doesn't seem to be any better restraint of the male fitting from side to side. (I'm not sure it matters, but I've got the old style male Capewell fittings, that match with the Type 2 female fittings, designed for the narrow old style lugs.) 2. I'm also not sure whether these R-3 style releases are using the correct length Capewell pin. How can one tell by measuring installed Capewells, whether the long or short pin is being used? (Considering that they differ by only 0.1".) Poynter's has that stuff about a '78 bulletin to make sure the shorter pin is used, so that the clip that moves the slide, does not pop over the lip of the slider. The clip on my system looks OK, but just a little wide, with the lip of the slide not really extending out past the clip. I did a freefly jump on the weekend, sitting and standing with my fore-and-aft gear. It seems to fly really nicely, with both weight and drag somewhat balanced front and back. Having the belly mount cranked tight with side straps to the main container avoids the old sitflyer problem of the backpack lifting away from one's back. Three main pins, two reserve pins, sounds like freefly safety to me.

(SSK had actually been around well before they started selling German electronic gadgets. Their Stewart Sweethog rigs were popular back in the days of 2 pin reserves. First ones were built in '77 according to Poynters. They had their own cartoon pig in the manuals to compete with Bill Booth's cartoon pig!)

Ok, here are some Rocket Jet and Para-Twin photos. This thread reminded me of seeing a rig with rusty hardware in my DZOs old storage trailer, that had zippers on it. I assume it is a Para-Twin unless someone says otherwise. The photos: 1. Rocket Jet with Pin Yes it looks like some did have a pin to ensure there was no accidental release. The cotter pin arrangement looks rather simple, so perhaps it was modified by Pioneer or the jumper, rather than the Rocket Jet manufacturer. 2. Rocket Jet open Shows the hook arrangement with the cover open. It isn't so much a "hook" as a "90 degree shelf" that does not hook back at all, so that the two parts separate easily when the cover is open. 3. ParaTwin The container is empty so it looks messy, but one can see a couple of the zippers that surround the reserve container when up top. One reserve riser has no Rocket Jet hooked up, while the other has a reserve riser attached. 4. ParaTwin reserve risers A closer look at the reserve area. 5. ParaTwin front reserve hookup This shows the main lift web with a Rocket Jet ring below the chest strap, where I'm holding the Rocket Jet as if to hook up the reserve risers.

It's so hard to pin down a number because there are different levels and types of freeflying. Is the person going to freefly exclusively or still pick up some solid and useful belly skills along the way? Are they getting some sort of coaching beyond "face off the windline for god's sake", or are they picking it all up by themselves? The less coaching there is, the more likely we'd say "wait another hundred jumps", in the hope that they hear a few tips along the way before doing anything silly. Are we talking about solo freeflying, or the more hazardous "two newbies go for a sitfly"? It can also depend on the jurisdiction, where there may be limits on who an A licenced person can jump with. Then a newbie may be more likely to do solo jumps and play around, maybe doing more backloops, or trying to stand or sit in freefall. So it becomes natural to try some sort of basic freeflying.

I'm not sure if it is exactly what you need, but Parachutemanuals.com seems to have a "306 Squadron seat" and an addendum in another file for "Strong seat pack C9".

Great tips Dave; thanks for all the details!

Yeah, I'd like to know too. (I don't know if this is the best forum though, as tracking dives aren't a part of what Instructors are taught to teach. Since there's no tracking forum, put a link in the general skydiving forum? ) One common flight path is to fly off to the side of the jump run and then fly downwind. How does one handle the complexity of briefing two 90 degree turns for newbies, especially when a lot of people are involved, who will get strung out across the sky? There are messy angles involved. Obvious answers are to limit the number of people, and to not make the turns happen too quickly after exit. Last weekend at my DZ we had the luxury of getting a dedicated jump run downwind, so everyone could fly a straight line, great for those new to tracking dives. And what does one do for heavy people, if the formation is led by someone of average build? To some degree the heavier folks just sink out. And to some degree avoiding fall rate issues is just about dressing right, which takes some work. But unlike for RW, I don't recall all lighter people saying that they're going to wear 15 lbs of lead for the tracking dive. How about tips for dealing with a lot of separation between the first and last out? The last out ends up high and infront of the leaders. I guess sometimes the leaders just get the track going and soon get out infront, leaving someone last out (but slow to get going), able to do a relatively straightforward diving approach. But otherwise, being high and infront can lead to some very different strategies on how to get down to the formation, with possible collision potential. Then there's the issue of what the basic maneuvering concepts should be for those new to tracking dives. As for any track, the track can be controlled by the pitch angle adopted. But in addition to that, especially for fine tuning one's flight path, I'm used to the idea of spreading or retracting limbs horizontally to adjust forward speed . And arching or dearching is used to control vertical speed. But I don't know what is taught at bigger DZs.

What option is there if a big guy is getting a suit and doesn't want to go (a) super baggy or (b) fancy competition RW suit? That is, when someone wants a general purpose suit. (Yeah I know one has to have different suits for every imaginable purpose, but still, newbies want some help picking one suit to start with.) Giant grippers are perhaps not the best when trying to learn to sit fly. And booties are a bother a lot of the time. I don't know what's out there. Some booties have inlets; can one get a suit without booties but still with inlets like some tunnel suits I've seen? Inflating part of a jump suit is a way around the flapping bagginess issue. What about swoop cords combined with a loose fit at the underarms? (Creating wings but not single surface wings like some camera suits) Isn't that a decent modern way for big guys to slow down? In the end I figure it is the people at the jump suit companies who tend to know how to deal with different body sizes and shapes.

There is the liability issue of the unsuspecting public versus skydivers making their own choice. The other reason is large, heavy reserves, in large, more flexible containers, leaving the reserve less well pocketed in place as they would otherwise be. Therefore more of a chance of the freebag tumbling out during a badly timed 2-out, or (for the staging loop only) even a tumbling reserve opening.

once again, do you people realize for which kind of skydiving it was designed ? Hey, given the plane's limitations (as a development of an earlier design rather than a clean-sheet design), you can expect people to put down the simplistic marketing claims. You might as well have a doorway in a house that keeps on being advertised as "designed for people's convenience". But it is only 5'9" / 1.75 m high, and taller people are banging their head on it and cursing. I don't think the "convenience" issue goes away just because someone says, "Don't you realize what kind of people the door was made for?"

Responses so far tend to be 'start big', which may be entirely appropriate when the person is very uncurrent or dealing with other aspects of injury recovery. But for low toggle pressure alone, starting small is good. Small sensitive canopies also turn easier, so there's less toggle input and thus less force is needed for a given turn. But I don't know about that canopy specifically. Find someone else to try it out? (Edit: After a recent non-skydiving elbow injury, my first jump back was on a really big canopy. Mistake - too much toggle pressure. As soon as I went back to my little crossbraced canopy it was fine. But it does help to know where one's weaknesses lie before jumping something too fast.)

1) Good question Chris. I do sometimes wonder to what degree "deploying in a track = harder opening". I'd also like to know what others have experienced. 2) The normal reason why that is said is because vertical speed isn't changed (much) but extra horizontal speed is added, giving a higher overall airspeed. Which clearly increases opening forces in general. 3) Yeah the idea that "the relative wind changed" doesn't make much sense; the canopy is still deploying along the relative wind. (I'm not including Brettski's ideas in this - that's a separate issue.) 4) I agree Chris that if someone's Spectre "slammed" them, that's because of something other than a normal, proper track away from a typical formation. 5) I figure the body position thing is significant factor in peoples' perception. The more one swings, the harder the opening feels. Like students who dump while somewhat head down -- a big swing makes them feel a lot more whipped around. So if in a track one is just slightly head down from level, but the canopy will deploy with the relative wind up and slightly back, that's more of a swing than for someone not tracking who is level or a little head high. (I'd say all this is more of a factor if the peak of the opening shock is near the beginning, before one has swung much.) 6) I agree on a good long track one can get some low vertical speeds. (I'm light & tall and also get down into the high 70s mph on a dive dedicated to a track.) I've never tested it, but it seems to me it takes some time to get that going. On a quick little track away from a small RW jump I doubt that people typically have reduced vertical speed much. 7) Brettski's thoughts are interesting. I'm not sure there's anything in it, but it's an idea to explore. The idea is that if the opening isn't vertical so one will get some other factors, like the jumper weight returning towards the vertical, which he suggested loads the front lines more. Or one could say it introduces rotation into the situation, or creates a more dynamic angle of attack situation. Off the top of my head I still think any effect would be small and could usually be neglected, but who knows. (So now someone has to do high speed hop and pops both in a normal head up position and diving downwards, to see if the canopy pitching forward vs back makes any difference.) 8) Occasionally there will be confounding factors like not tracking long enough after a freefly jump. One might still be slowing down and have a harder opening simply because one hasn't been slowing down for long enough. E.g., if one tracks a short X seconds, brakes for a few seconds, checks the alti, waves off, and dumps, sure the opening could be softer than if one just tracked X seconds and dumped. So the question is, just what happens to the vertical speed, typically, for short tracks? A few people may be diving away at extra vertical speed, but for the rest, is the speed largely unchanged from regular belly to earth freefall? Does it start to slow a bit simply due to exposing more area (lower legs out, not arched)? Or does it slow much more due to the lift from a good track? If there isn't much slowing for the situations most people are thinking of, then the added horizontal speed in the track will increase the airspeed and presumably result in a harder opening. The airspeed certainly doesn't change as much as we might think by seeing the numbers. Even knowing Pythagoras, when we see say 115 mph vertical and 30 mph horizontal, it "feels like" we'd be talking about a lot of extra speed. But root (115^2 + 30^2) = an airspeed of 119 mph. Faster, but not hugely so. If one did slow a bit vertically in that track, to 110 vertically, then in that particular case the overall speed is 114 mph, essentially unchanged from normal freefall.

Any particular reason? C of G hard to hold within limits?

I wouldn't go quite so far. I'd encourage them to learn more. But your points are valid about how we all have to start somewhere and learn. Someone newer in the sport might look at an older design rig and say they aren't jumping it. Not because they are a pussy or an idiot... they're just unsure of the details, they've never been taught about it, and want to stay safe by not messing with something they don't know about. Sure, I or someone else with more experience might get a laugh out of it. C'mon, what's the problem? Velcro, no tuck tabs, a high stall point on the reserve, F-111 main, no AAD, whatever, it can all be used reasonably safely in the right circumstances. But you can't always blame them. And so we have discussions like this one to hash out more detail about where dangers lie or not. For every newbie who thinks everything old is dangerous, you also get a newbie who shows up at the DZ with some old rig as his first rig and really doesn't understand the implications of what they've bought. I'll defend old equipment -- but just as with new stuff, one has to learn its limitations.

So I've seen people get canopies with all the lines loose and just tied in a big knot, because the previous owner was so desperate to hang on to his $25 Slinks...

Manufacturing & design defects, yeah that's another super rare but not impossible issue. I've heard of a MLW/ring junction not being stitched behind the cover (found before it wasn't jumped); that very poorly designed Ukrainian (?) rig coming apart on reserve opening; and way way back the poor Green Star Express design (combined with some incautious users.) 20 years ago?? That's bullsh...... oh, wait, Excalibur.

Trying to find a simple answer for the original poster's question, what are the chances of falling out of one's harness? Really they are pretty much nil, and it just about never happens. Even a lot of gear that doesn't fit well or is left on loosely works in practice. It has to be really out of whack to cause a problem normally. There are a just a couple very basic things you have to do to avoid falling out: a) You do have to put on the harness properly. A few people have fallen out if the chest strap is undone or done up entirely wrong. (But plenty more have survived the same thing) Very simple to avoid. b) You don't have loose and ill fitting equipment AND get in a position where one is sliding out 'the hole' butt first, completely dearched, AND then deploy the parachute. A lot of things have to go wrong at the same time. ('The hole' is a concern but not a day to day issue. One might get someone with the leg straps to their knees in a sitfly with a very ill fit harness but they and they should realize that quickly and not keep doing that until the issue is resolved). As for the harness breaking, that is very very rare. It isn't impossible, but is in the category of being struck by lightning. All sorts of old and beat up gear works in practice, without harness failures. (Harness failures won't necessarily eject someone from the harness but they'll be just as dead.) Yes there are all sorts of other gear related things that can go wrong, but generally the harness strength is not an issue. ============ So as a question to others, when have people actually fallen out of their harness? - There were the couple tandem students with special circumstances and/or very poorly adjusted harnesses. - There have been a few people over the years who didn't do up their chest strap correctly. - There was the wingsuiter who wasn't fully in his harness. - There was someone in Italy with some odd issue with a broken chest strap on opening. When has anyone else actually fallen back out of the hole? And broken harnesses? When have they actually broken? There were the one or two (?) Jav adjustable MLW failures. I can't recall what else there has been in say the last 30 years of gear.

But you're not actually buying it, it is just on loan, so you shouldn't pay anything. A government could tax you on the small 'rental fee', but not on the value of the equipment. ... but even so I see the issue of trying to prove that to suspicious customs people. (And the PD program is USA only last I heard.)

I'm not against sky surfing but there are a couple issues I've noticed: One impression is that there's so much one can do in freeflying these days, with other people, that it isn't worth getting into the complications of a board. One other impression: I saw videos of wingsuiting from a world championships about 5 years ago. Spin spin spin spin, transition, spin spin spin, transition, spin spin spin, and so on. Were they demonstrating great skill and control, that took time to acquire? Yes. But did it start to look a bit boring and pointless? Yes.

Even if an airliner is going 550 kts, the indicated airspeed (ie, the wind pressure) might only be, I dunno, 250 kts due to the low air density at altitude. Still it would be a bit of a "brick wall" to hit, even without contacting any wreckage.

Fair enough as an opinion. Especially if you jump a lot and it is your main set of gear. These days though we're getting well past some major changes in the sport. Although we're not at a plateau, what I mean is this: If you pick up a used rig that's been around the DZ for a decade, passed from one owner to the next, you may have quite a bit of choice of newer or older styles. While you can still pick up Vector II's with Raven I's and Sabres for example, you could also pick up gear that's very modern in design, still in production with no or only small changes. Like a PD reserve. Or a Vector III or Javelin or Mirage with good reserve pin protection and tuck tabs everywhere.

C-182 widebody at DZ "A": No hooks. (Seating often is facing the student.) Caravan at DZ "A": Lower hooks attached from takeoff. (But the Caravan is new to the DZ and won't have the door for a couple weeks, so who knows if procedures are adjusted later.) (Being hooked up at the hips seems to make it harder to get up to the kneeling position to hook up -- less movement coordination needed if taking hooks off, getting up, then reconnecting.) Caravan at DZ "B": No hooks. Seatbelts used in all cases.

The Nationals are on at Skydive Burnaby Aug 3-8. Therefore plenty of jumps going on weekdays although people may be a little focused on competition.