Megatron

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Gear

  • Main Canopy Size
    190
  • Reserve Canopy Size
    175
  • AAD
    Cypres

Jump Profile

  • Home DZ
    Skydive Aggieland
  • License
    A
  • License Number
    54082
  • Licensing Organization
    USPA
  • Number of Jumps
    182
  • Years in Sport
    4
  • First Choice Discipline
    Freestyle
  • Second Choice Discipline
    Freeflying

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  1. First hop & pop I made from 3500' for my A, I was freaked out by how low it seemed.. pulled nearly right off the step, far below terminal, opening felt more spongy than a bubble bath at a nursing home.. ended up with line twist which I kicked out of. Lesson: Give it a good 4-count & pull like any other jump. You'll have ample altitude for a smooth opening and emergency proc's if need be. Now the time it was overcast & we jumped all day from 2400ft.. those you might wanna back extra careful for.
  2. I have a 5-level spinal fusion.. L1-L5 due to a hard landing after a botched swoop.. crushed L3 & L4 and lucky to be walking. Im in great physical shape, have very high core strength, and manage to get along pretty well in life and mostly without pain from my injuries. I miss the fuck out of skydiving and think about going back up every day (despite making about 20 jumps post-injury). The bottom line is that this is an unpredictable sport and you can go a long way to mitigate your risk but you can never rule out the occasional hard-opening/bad landing/major incident. The fact is that a spinal fusion turns incidents that you would other wise walk away from or not even think twice about into ones that have you limping around in pain for weeks or fuck you up permanently. I remember several landings on windy days that did not go very well.. everyone had a good laugh, hopefully someone got it on video and that was that. If I were to make such a landing now, it would put me out of commission for some time. As mentioned, mitigating the risks by not jumping in marginal winds etc makes skydiving more feasible for people in our situation but the room for error becomes significantly reduced with each fused vertebrae. Personally, I know that if a jump leaves me in chronic pain or even noticeably disabled for the rest of my life, I will regret the shit out of my decision to jump, and the keeps me grounded.. literally. :-/
  3. lmao, yeah I know what you mean. I didn't think it was that funny...wouldve been funnier if it didn't work!
  4. Yea, well I still wanna know WWJD. Jesus would probably do nothing just for the killer ground rush, while, in the process, saving humanity from damnation & resurrecting just to do it again! Beat that Chuck Norris!!
  5. Ive been riding long before I did my AFF course & back in the day riding was what skydiving is to me today. I had alot of fun on that bike! More recently I traded my cruiser for an R1 & now as a skydiver I can say that riding at 150mph is almost as exhillerating & fullfilling as some of the jumps I've made. The two are quite alike to be honest, although I can imagine riding at that speed being much more risky. I say plan to do both but get the bike first!
  6. Live water training should be required for the A-License. Enough skydivers, some of them students, have drowned that this should be considered an essential survival skill. Moreover, it will give DZO's more inscentive to host water training more often. I've met all the B-license criteria so far and still no B-license, guess why.
  7. not to seem rude but that is a horrible idea! if you dont get hurt it will be due to pure luck. the only thing I will recommend is to do the AFF course first, I hope everyone else will as well.
  8. When you said strange things I thought you meant something else...like the time I saw a girl fucking a midget off a bike trail in the woods (true story). You, on the other hand, may have OCD.
  9. 100 skydivers vs. 100 scuba divers in a fight to the death..who will win?? Dont be bias!
  10. so am I to understand that 7-cells are somehow more reliable than 9-cells? how so? please elaborate.
  11. How do you know this? For one Ive seen it happen. Guy on wingsuit gets out before tandem, flies out then back, pulls at 3000 while the tandem pulled at 6k. Both canopies end up sharing airspace.
  12. True in theory, but needless to say thats not always the case in practice.
  13. Megatron

    Sabre2

    This is my first canopy off rental gear. I was flying a Silhouette-190 prior. I put about 30 jumps on my Sabre 2-170 which I bought new. I jump it at a 1.4WL. The Good: From the very first jump it was clear that this was a SPORT canopy. Its agile, very responsive to toggle pressure compared to the Silhouette & student canopies Ive flown. Its generally quicker all around and a hell of a lot more fun to fly. This is what I expected canopy flight to be like before I made my first solo jump! The amount of flare you're able get out of this thing is HUGE! I remember coming in hot on the first no wind day on my Sabre 2 and flaring a bit too low. All of the other canopies Ive flow would've had me picking grass out of my teeth but the Sabre 2 allowed for a pretty decent slide in. Aside from that, all of my other landing Ive stood up and it didnt take much over raw intuition to pull off. I dont swoop but Im slowly learning to bring a 90 turn closer to the ground and from what little experience I have in the matter, I can tell you this thing will level out if and when you need it to (within reason of course). The Bad: The openings. Although nice and gentle (so far), they often off heading, always accompanied by end-cell closure, and the slider gets stuck about 1/4 way up the lines on most jumps. Ive tried different packing techniques and even had it packed several times by someone I consider to be a highly proficient packer. The results were generally the same. Granted, pumping the rear risers fixes all these things rather quickly. Ive even tried giving no input at all to see if they would correct themselves. They did. But should you have to deal with it in the first place? It seems this is the rule rather then the exception with the Sabre 2. Overall, I would recommend this canopy. Its very user-friendly and forgiving in flight and while the opening are a bit quirky, they are nonetheless predictable and too benign to be much of a concern.