pchapman

Some odds & ends: Bat hang from C-182 leading edge Climbing on top of fuselage of large aircraft (...better be good friends with the DZO if you ever want to jump there again...) Fake fight in back of turbine plane in view of tandem students; get pushed out by your buddy. High speed jump run with a wingsuit on (watch the tail though...) Any exit, blindfolded I liked putting hands down on C-182 step (or just in Caravan doorway) and front rolling out

And by the way, how does the evidence show that it is a CHRISTIAN god, and no other? That all those who follow other gods are all messed up? As for Hitler, remember that his troops went into battle thinking "Gott mit uns" -- that the Christian god was with them. There's little point in trying to tie WWII in Europe to secularization. Everyone goes into battle believing in their gods... You have faith. You believe in Rainbow Unicorns, or Gods or whatever. Fine. Maybe it helps you live a satisfying life and you are nice to others, good for you.

Quite the range of frequencies involved, from 5.8 GHz to something with a much longer wave. Unwinding a trailing wire antenna makes it sound like some 1930's transoceanic flight....

I have to say that neither the andym or jbelanger answers are that helpful. While there is some truth to the analogies made, and "as an experienced jumper, I personally know what you mean", they are fundamentally bad because they will deceive a novice. The problem is that the examples involve being anchored relative to the ground in some way. When driving with a hand out the car, or jogging on the ground, you feel the difference when going upwind or downwind. Which you don't when under parachute!!!!!!!!!! Those sorts of comparisons is why jumpers get incorrect ideas about the wind, like "If you are going downwind, spread yourself out to catch the wind, to allow you to travel further." The comparison one needs to make has to be something like sitting in a boat in a current, or in a blimp in the sky. There you simply float with the current or air mass, feeling zero water flow or zero wind, until you start motoring up or downstream or up or downwind. In which case, you feel only that current or airflow equal to how fast one is travelling through the current or air --- If you close your eyes, you have no idea which direction you are going or how fast relative to the ground. Using the right analogies is vital if one wants to avoid new jumpers from getting an incorrect understanding of how flight and wind works. Thanks.

The thin bungee isn't expected to physically prevent the leg straps from sliding towards the knees in all circumstances, but just to provide a little tension to prevent them from doing so when the leg straps are not under tension. E.g., when knees are moved up rather than in-line with the body. A few people use something solid between the attachments, like a pullup cord, and it must work for them, but most want something with some stretch. Placement of the attachment points also varies; how high or low to place the bungee.So some rigs and jumper combinations may be better or worse. (I think some rigs have the bungee placed too low, almost "at the bottom of the leg strap loops" rather than "part way down the butt from the hips", but that's a fairly unqualified opinion.)

In that case, there's no point in having a big bulky one.

True in one general way of understanding things, and I know what you mean, but I'd reword it. For jumpers who don't already understand winds it can contribute to a massively wrong understanding of flight. The wind isn't pushing against you in the sense of a force on your back or in your face. Instead you always feel the wind in your face as the speed you are travelling through the air. Just that the block of air you are in is moving, as "there is wind". If going downwind you are moving in the same direction as the wind - so the wind speed and forward speed of the canopy add up for more speed over the ground. If going upwind, one speed is subtracted from the other -- you are heading towards the direction the wind is coming from.

Nice to see the viewpoint of someone "on the other side", to help understand where your concerns are. Unlike one other right wing poster who often just makes one-liner contrarian replies, you're actually listing some of the issues that you see. I don't have the time right now to debate all the issues you brought up. I'll weigh in on the killing unborn babies thing though: I was listening to the memoirs of a retired western-US homicide detective, who one would expect to be somewhat on the side of law & order. He said those opposing abortion should meet all the unwanted children he saw over his career, all the ones who weren't provided for, were neglected, beaten, or otherwise abused... One can fight for good parenting at the same time as supporting abortion. There doesn't have to be just one tool to fix a problem. In general about your answer: I don't see how all those problems of society - real or perceived - somehow accrue to liberalism. It's not like there's some liberal manifesto saying that stealing is OK if you aren't caught or that one should focus on money above all else. (Wait, isn't that what we liberals think is in the too-far-right manifesto??) It's not like it was only under Democratic presidents that there was excessive interest in Hollywood celebrity, or that it was pinko liberals who legalized violent video games....

I like the reverse S-fold method too. Handy for unruly, puffy, slippery new canopies, or super small canopies where the full stack with both S folds gets too tall and narrow to control easily. I haven't gone as far as Westerly does to control the slider, but yeah, control the slider. When doing that 2nd S-fold with the bottom of the canopy, get a good grip on the tightly tail-wrapped bottom of the canopy -- the slider grommets will be right in there or just a little further into the canopy. A good grip doesn't leave space for the slider to slide back down the lines. Then when making the fold, try to maintain a little tension on the lines. That way one's hand is pushing "up the lines" and won't allow the slider to squirt out of ones grip on the base of the canopy or let it slide down the lines. Since the container is likely still anchored at least to some degree, to maintain tension, that may mean one lifts the base of the canopy - where one has the grip - off the floor, and moves the bag underneath it, to do that stuffing of the final S into the bag, vertically downwards into the bag.

If the prophesized apocalypse and/or Rapture doesn't come soon enough for you, bring it on for yourself & others....

I am curious how self driving cars will work out for liability. When you have a dead pedestrian, it is still awkward even if the company were able to say that their cars have half the accident rate of humans. You get no credit for accidents avoided. A particular design trait of some software is a concrete target for legal action, maybe worse than just blaming a human for an imperfection in the evolution of their brain. (How replicable some complex behaviour is 'of the computer' is another matter.) If a human driver kills a ped, instead of some random schmuck driver, now a huge corporation might be seen as the one responsible. An interesting target for lawsuits! Clearly some thought will go into how things work for insurance and liability. Edit: Acts of God are one thing, acts of software & other engineers may be treated differently....

The humour site The Onion made this up about her:

I see what Lee is saying. If a canopy were super pressurized, it would be so rigid that it would be harder for the unloaded ribs to shift upward, giving that zig zag top skin effect, where the loaded ribs with lines are held down and the unloaded ones bulge up with lift pulling up. But at low pressurization due to low speed, there's less keeping the weight vs. lift distorting the canopy. Accuracy is one area where good airfoil performance (in brakes) actually matters more, among those using big slow canopies. Maybe if all student canopies were crossbraced, one could go one size down for all students. A more efficient airfoil might give better handling, no worse stall speed after the size decrease, and better flare. There could be concern over higher speed from the size decrease, although that might be mitigated by different trim. The industry might not feel it worthwhile though, for the extra sewing time involved and maybe only a minimal reduction in weight and bulk. (One size down vs. crossbrace bulk - not sure how that works out for a large canopy.) So crossbracing isn't necessarily not useful for bigger canopies, but it just isn't the way the sport has evolved in this parallel universe.

Just my impressions: Airlocks & crossbraced together: A massive bother to try to sew both. Brian experimented with that, but not worth it. Airlocks: The concept is basically dead in skydiving. Nothing wrong with it though, other than a pain to get air out on the ground. Various threads on it over the years. They do improve rigidity in turbulence and maintain canopy efficiency. But generally if it is so turbulent that you need airlocks to save your ass, you probably should have been on the ground anyway. If it actually did collapse one side, an inflated collapsed wingtip is more dangerous than an uninflated one. So the benefits weren't seen as worth it. Crossbracing: Yeah, not worth the time and cost to build for less than high end canopies, at least for the way the market is now. (As a comparison, in paragliding for a while they were popular down to a lower level of market, as they already were building fancy elliptical shaped canopies with say 44 chambers even at a low intermediate level. So it wasn't as much additional bother when the canopy was already quite complex.)

Nervousness, not eating & hydrating 'normally', too tight harness, and just being unused to maneuvering around in the air can lead to nausea. A good instructor will fly no spirals or lots of spirals as you prefer -- not just spiral like crazy to get down faster for the next jump. Student harnesses sometimes get a little overenthusiastically overtightened, when instructors want to make sure they don't let them get too loose. So some motion sickness on a jump like that isn't unexpected. No reason to stop. Fear? As long as it isn't paralyzing fear, then no problem. It's part of the fun & challenge of learning to skydive. Lots of threads by newbies about how to get over fear, if it is something that interferes with learning & enjoyment on later jumps.

Nice to see that the Curv logo feature can now be more of a V / dagger / arrow design, rather than the original pussy / Eye of Sauron design. Guess it has actually been a while, but it used to be a bit of a dumb looking aspect to the rig.

It is tough in an era when there's more money in skydiving, and that money is often in tandem or other first jump students. The DZO may chase that money, and the experienced staff who have Coach 2 ratings may be chasing that money. A tandem or video jump can be faster AND better paying than taking up someone needing coaching. Various factors come into play regarding the degree that this becomes a problem. Good for those DZ's who are able to manage this situation and avoid having advanced students get stuck in those doldrums...

I assume they don't mention that. But there's no real reason to pull a handle that's not connected to anything if you feel the reserve is already coming out behind you. You plan for a "one - two" peel and punch of the cutaway followed by the reserve. You pull one handle, you feel that you've cutaway successfully and are not hung up in any way, but in the second before you can pull the reserve handle, the reserve is whipping out past the back of your head.... Do you have to do something useless because there's no exception listed in the manual? Do you have to do it because there's some magical training value in sitting there under a reserve, hand on the reserve handle, and now peeling it? Well maybe, if you are incompetent at peeling velcro. By the way, the Sigma manual says this, useful to both our arguments: Note the "ensure a full & clean breakaway". If you want to get hung up on "always perform full emergency procedures", be my guest. If you say that the manual 'is God', then I can come up with a list of stupid stuff (out of date in the industry) or omitted stuff or incorrectly edited stuff from the UPT Sigma manual for extended periods over the years. Despite the great detail in their manuals, UPT, like everyone else, hasn't always been perfect. I think this argument can continue all day. I've stated my case.

His grabbing the risers was almost like an instinctive 'hang onto something' for leverage or stability. I knew a TI who did a similar thing but actually grabbed the 3 ring with his left hand when cutting away, leading to a 2-out as the riser didn't release from that side! Luckily no entanglement as the reserve PC went up into the main. The reserve was inflated when he suddenly realized what he was holding and let go. (It was all on video...) No point in pulling the reserve handle if the Skyhook has already hauled the reserve out before you can react... but one's hand should be on the handle just in case.

It's a sort of hazing thing, in effect. If you can survive this phase without getting fed up and leaving the sport, you get to be one of us skydivers. Yeah it is tough to get coaches. Sometimes you need to plan ahead, make a deal to work with one person all day or part of a day. (Someone local to me already cornered me to help them with a similar problem in a couple months.) Or come out on a less busy weekday if that applies the DZ. Or talk to the DZO about how they organize Coach 2's to get people to A level. Sometimes it helps to get out early in the season before the DZ becomes overrun with tandems. DZ's should try to have a plan (even if imperfect) to keep people from wallowing around at that Solo level just doing solos without learning much. It is tough because you need the Coach 2 for the required RW jumps, but those who are Coach 2's often have gone on to become PFFI's or TI's and thus are busy taking all those students all day. No simple answers. It's a pretty common problem though.

Sad to hear. I had wondered why I hadn't heard of him recently. He got me into my first demo jump, although it was an unofficial backyard event. He had all the approvals, but I didn't and just got to sneak in. I was on a few events and demos with him later. I heard there was a bit of a mixup once though, when he took his former beer team canopy to a bigger demo, and the event sponsors included a different beer company. Oops. Anyway, nice guy who was known both here in Ontario and at events across the US. Thanks for the photo link Andre.

Thanks for that info, I will check it out on the next repack. Check if it is visible under the riser covers and by twisting the front reserve riser to see the back side of it. (Without pulling the riser more out of the pack.) I don't recall exactly where it is on an icon, whether it will be hidden until next repack or not, but often such a label isn't entirely hidden.

I was curious so checked a Wonderhog manual that may be from '78 (complete with many hand-drawn cartoon pigs). It at least shows the traditional Vector way, top to bottom over the flap. (Although it uses an unusual configuration of pin above the bridle). What might have been tried earlier, or what other people did, I have no idea.

Parachutist Online also has a decent article from 2012: https://parachutistonline.com/feature/two-over-one I haven't checked it out in close detail, but it provides a lot of advice based on the prior studies. (The Army study, PD's followup, and the PIA paper that came out of them.) I don't know whether or not there has been additional work by the Aussie's (APF). They do however publicize the Dual Square report on their website and offer their own 1 page summary poster as well: https://www.apf.com.au/ArticleDocuments/137/2_canopies_out_Updated_2017.pdf.aspx?Embed=Y @Pit 76: This suggests that they don't have any new conclusions that differ from the Dual Square report. EDIT: Still, I see that the poster says: "The ABOVE is only a summary and differs slightly (based on more recent best practice), from the original PIA report." Where they got the changes, I don't know.

Suddenly the cabin may go from a fairly normal static pressure to having air scooped in by the door being exposed more to the dynamic pressure of the forward speed, when the rudder is kicked and the plane yawed. Sudden pressure increase of course looks like high speed descent, even if this increased rate of change only occurs at the start of the maneuver. But how much of a factor this is, in different aircraft with different doors and cabin air volumes, that I don't know.... Certainly an AAD like a Vigil can be fired by putting a rig in a plastic bag and squeezing. (A local rigger did that when putting a rig into temporary storage. Oops.)