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I don't particularly care about replacing them - it's normal for written words to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. In my experience the more you try to remove ambiguity from text, the more "legalese" that text becomes. So, instead of assuming another person has the same definition in mind for "hard deck" as I do, I think its more effective to use a few more words and point out the significance of the various altitudes and the actions/decisions associated with them. It takes but a few seconds, definitely less than looking up the definition in the SIM. Once the concepts are clear, the nomenclature (should) be easier to understand.

I also hate these terms.. even with consistent definitions, it's very easy for new jumpers to just flip the jargon around, and understand the wrong thing. I think this is one of those areas where the sport's military drilling style of training sometimes falls short. Whenever I get asked about "hard decks" or "decision altitudes", rather than just spit out numbers I just try to reply in complete sentences, eg I will deploy my main at minimum at X. If I find myself in freefall below that I will deploy my reserve directly. If a malfunction looks fixable I'll try until Y, but then chop immediately no matter if I've almost solved the problem. I will not cutaway a mal below Z, I'll either ride it in or deploy my reserve in addition to the main. It's good to think about these and choose your own altitudes, but also understand that depending on the day, place, and jump some may need to be adjusted.

holds for any container in general .. but... friends don't let friends overstuff WINGS!

I think the only way to really know is to jump those canopies for yourself - choose a day with moderate wind from a good direction for your DZ and ask your buddies if you can borrow their stuff. For what it's worth, my personal experience: Hurt myself on a canopy collapse on a SA2-97, upsized to a CF2-107 to come back, and then down to a JFX-87 once I was good and current again. My reason for going crossbraced was I wanted a design that kept more pressure in the wing, rather than to increase performance. So I first borrowed a VE-103 and VE-96 from friends for a few jumps, and then had the opportunity to demo VC-96, VC-90, VC-84 and also JFX-94 and JFX-84 at events. At my wingloading (just over 60kg exit weight), the openings were really uncomfortable on anything larger than a 90 - the 103 was just a shitshow. These things like to be loaded. Since you're already at 1.75 it probably won't be an issue for you - but may be part of the reason for the big jump to 1st crosbraced you see. I know .. i know .. body position .. fly the opening ... maybe! :) I repeat: this is just my personal experience, not intended as advice for anyone. But if you want to know what these things are like before you buy them.. fly them for yourself That said, be ready, engaged, and conservative on these jumps. People say crossbraced flies "bigger" - in my experience the VE-103 was definitely faster and more agile than my beat up SA2-97..

I don't really get the relevance of this to the thread, but please DON'T carry scissors in your jumpsuit, especially pointy ones :) ...and DO carry a hook knife on every jump

I have a Vector in "Triple Lightning Split" that's almost Identical to the one in this pic (from skyshop.eu) . As you can also see in the pic, the reserve and main flaps don't always perfectly line up. It only takes a few seconds to line them up though

i've got a V305-1 built in late 2019, with an OP113. Its already pretty tight, so I'd think the 126 is out of the question

If I remember correctly, Worldnomads changed the wording on their policy sometime in 2018. Someone mustve made a large claim. I have an annual IHI BUPA travel insurance, and an email confirming they do cover skydiving. Unfortunately they don't cover paragliding, but I guess thats not relevant here. Truetraveller are a bit more expensive, but seem to cover everything except BASE under their ultimate cover.

I guess the key words are "bartacked" and "dacron" though ... these lines are too thin for that.

Just to add for anyone looking at this in the future, the response from NZA was "Don't worry, it will not increase wear". Just being a bit too paranoid I guess...

Cool, thanks for the info

Hi all. So my rigger just installed a new Vectran 400 line set on my JFX87. Jumped it and all appears normal, however when packing I noticed the stitching on the cascades end about 1cm lower than the point where the cascade emerges from the "outer" line. Of course I brought it to his attention, and while he didn't have a particular reason for doing so, he also didn't think there is any issue with this method. I also showed it to the other rigger on the DZ, his preferred method is to finish the stitch right at the cascade mark. Again, he had no particular reason for doing so, other than copying what the manufacturer did. He also pointed out that he only has experience with PD linesets, and the method for NZA may well be different. Looking at some Youtube videos, I found other riggers claiming this can create friction and increased wear on the outer line due to friction. I'll give NZA a call tomorrow (Monday), but in the meantime I'm wondering what the riggers on here think. Is this a major issue that will significantly reduce the life of my lineset? Is the cure just putting another stitch on higher up, or would one need to unpick the existing ones first?

Wow the Insta 360 OneX looks good - have you experimented with mounting it somewhere other than the helmet or even sideways ? Including the mount it seems it gets rather tall...

Great! learnt something new, and will pass it on to those that taught me the trick! Thanks Blis, mxk!

re. jumping with t-shirts: if you have hip rings you can attach a tandem bungee on either side to hold your t-shirt down works a treat!

http://xkcd.com/1321/

Bought and jumped a 135 as my first canopy (~50 jumps) ... scary shit!

Hi Dries - I weigh exactly the same as you! ... and when I had about 50 jumps I bought my Silhouette 135, and am still flying the same wing ~600 jumps later... Looking back now, I know it was a mistake. The first few dozen landings scared the crap out of me, and I truly believe it was more a matter of luck than skill that I never seriously hurt myself ! I strongly advise against following my example, and going for a docile 150 canopy with a bigger reserve. At the very least, try to borrow or demo a canopy of the same make/size as the one you are intending to buy. If the (experienced and respected) person who owns the canopy is not willing to let you jump it, there's your clue right there ... Also, since you mentioned lead - don't forget that 10lb of lead is almost 10% of your body weight. That will certainly have an effect on how the canopy flies. Combine this with a small(ish) wing and an ill-fitting weight belt and hey presto: unexpected, unintentional harness turns. Similarly, in freefall you'll need to learn to compensate for this weird weight distribution (or buy a weight vest that fits you well) . Personally I really hated lugging all that extra weight around, so I've trained to minimise my flying surfaces in all orientations and wear a tight fitting suit. I can now easily stay on level with even the heaviest of jumpers. Good luck buying gear, stay safe and have fun!

I really do look forward to it! As skydivers, dealing with malfunctions and executing EPs correctly is a very important part of our training. Suspended harnesses and ground drills can only go so far to simulate a real mal. I'd jump at the opportunity to jump a tertiary for an intentional cutaway, but again, the stress of identifying the malfunction and taking the appropriate course of action is taken out of the equation. So I guess I see my first mal as my personal skydiving "litmus test" ;) ... and I'm also keen to find out how my reserve flys - but that's minor ETA: not saying I would do something to "create" a mal so that I can deal with it - that's just stupid

I really think that for every post that mentions NZA or their attitude there should be one that clarifies: Icarus Spain (the company that sponsored this team) has nothing to do (anymore) with NZ Aerosports (the company that developed the Icarus brand). The NEOS is *only* made by Icarus Spain. We can interpret "Fuck Yeah!" many ways. Fact is the jump in question did not have a "Fuck Yeah"TM sticker on in in any way.

Hi Oli, and congratulations on a very nice article! There are not many Bachelor students who get to publish in an Elsevier journal!! Have you considered making the full paper available on a personal website/arxiv? This is common practice in many fields, and most Universities are happy to pay any OpenAccess fees that could apply. Indeed the paper has much better answers to the questions people raise on here - I must say your replies sound a bit defensive :) My best attempt at summarising would start by reminding people that science takes baby steps, standing on the shoulders of giants and junk. The intended audience of the paper is academics, and the question studied (as I read it) was whether skydiving is a good in environment in which to study people's reactions to stress, while the rest is a bit of a spin. Certainly not "what is the exact jump number after which a jumper gets to be called experienced" :) And your answer seems to me to be, yeah, it allows us to observe phenomena that we haven't been able to under lab conditions, namely that the 30+ group understate/underestimate their stress levels, even though no significant difference is observed when you actually measure it. In contrast findings in controlled conditions suggest that it should go lower the more times you experience a stressor. Your sample IS small, but I've seen worse in psychology papers. I guess its hard to get volunteers to be put in stressful situations, and again here skydiving presents an opportunity (allbeit one you missed by collecting data during the winter). The most basic distinction you can make is between the people who HAVE or HAVE NOT experienced skydiving before, and this is what you did, using a 30 jump window, which I think is an appropriate first step. What worries me more is the standard deviation of your 'experienced' group which is about as high as the mean. That's an indication you have some subgroups in there (and of course that also make sense, if you know about skydiving). However, theres a few things that can be clarified with the current data. What does the distribution of jump numbers look like ? Have you tried testing individuals off the high end of the group against your novice sample? If they're significantly higher, how many can you include in decreasing experience order before the stress levels fall below significant? In terms of what we can learn from this as skydivers is that, well, it appears that the bodies of 24 of our sky-buddies with experience 0 - ? (must be in the thousands to get that mean) jumps experience the same levels of stress even though their owners say they get less stressed over time. Indeed, as it has already been pointed out this might simply mean that stress is constant, we just learn to deal with it better as we grow in the sport. Or maybe that most of us "choose" our jumps to keep the stress level costant. Or that 'experienced' jumpers lie about their stress level - complacency, not 'listening' to your body and all that... Probably all of them (and more) in different combinations I'd guess. And it's probably of value to discuss these. Of course to get answers someone needs to collect more data, and I guess thats the real question for you. Are you going to follow up on your findings and study this further? The only reward for a good scientist is more work! I'm a post-doc in Computer Science at VU Amsterdam, would love to have a play with your data should you be willing to share. Antonis Loizou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT3oaXkFUiQ think its the same one.. once on the interweb ...

I hope you don't mind my asking because I would seriously like to know. Why would even want to do that ? If you just want to stare at some dude in the face for 5-7 mins, do it on the ground. If you want to jump out of a plane, there are effectively 3 ways: SL, AFF and regular old tandem. For all of them, we've learned how to do them properly by watching people who didn't get mangled or die. Simples