RichM

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content

    641

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Feedback

    0%

Posts posted by RichM

  1. You're profile says uyou have 8 jumps. I know you're talking about jumping a demo 150 for a while, but given that you bought this I wonder how long a "while" is so.... even though you will only be loading this canopy at a little over 1:1 make sure you get a full briefing on it. Two important things change (there are other changes but these two are the most significant)

    (1) Unlike student canopies this one will stall, make sure you find the seperate flare and stall points on the canopy. Do not push the brakes to the bottom of your reach when flaring, the canopy will stall and you will fall out of the sky and break.

    (2) Also unlike student canopies if you try to turn by burying a toggle to the end of your reach there is a possibillity you will induce line twists. The canopy is only 135 so much narrower than student kit, and it turns much faster. If the canopy turns faster than you in a given manouvre then line twists result. Line twists are almost guaranteed if you steer one way then quickly steer the other way. Avoid line twists below your hard deck where it is too low to cutaway(with your experience I would suggest your hard deck is about 1800ft?) as landing with line twists may well break you.

    Get a briefing, deploy way high, learn the flare and stall points. If you have the height actually stall the canopy to find out what happens. If you have the height turn violently to see how much input is too much. Get a briefing.

    Did I say get a briefing enough? ;)

    If you take care, learn and respect the damage it can cause you, you should be fine. B|

    Rich M

  3. There are plenty of 10 year old and more containers around. Containers are degraded by a number of things - UV (sunlight), dirt and grit; normal wear and tear; chemical contamination. In the UK we have a material test that loads a suspect part of the container material with 40lbs (?) stretch force along the weave for 3 seconds. But in normal use I haven't heard of a container reaching end of life in the same way a canopy does. Stitching; velcro; spandex and the associated furniture can be replaced/repaired by a rigger.

    If the container looks clean, not faded and with no worn stitching then it should last for many years if you look after it. A bigger consideration if you are going to be freeflying might be is the container freefly friendly.
    Rich M

  5. In the UK we still require a student to count on 15 second delays - these are the dives that prove stability and altimeter reading ability prior to being progressed onto 20 second delays where counting is not required. I take it your system is different?
    Rich M

  6. Quote

    $45,000 for 5-6 years! Wow. I just got a lot more sympathy for the $65 balloon jump.

    Wendy W.



    Is this Burner at Eloy? Who does 4 lifts a day every day as far as I can tell? That balloon gets used :) Real nice bloke too. I also love balloon jumps B|
    Rich M

  7. Kevin - theres a render all setting buried in Premiere somewhere (I forget where, and I have 2 partitions - 1 for premiere and 1 for everything else). Find the setting and turn it off.

    Edit: Ok, so I just rebooted and looked at Premiere and I can't find it - it may have been when I had the DV500+ capture card in my system which I no longer have. Sorry for the red herring.
    Rich M

  9. Quote

    Is there any reason why you couldn't make 1" risers with the large rings? Other than "not looking cool"?



    How about normal risers but folded in half? The rears could be wrapped around the hard housing inserts and tacked, and the fronts just folded in half and tacked. This would make them thinner than 1" risers so produce less drag. Anything stupidly wrong with this idea? Has anyone done it?
    Rich M

  10. Quote

    Quote

    excellent "The Aerodynamics and Piloting of High Performance Ram Air Canopies"



    The excellent part of this paper are the sections entitled ""Learning to Fly the Canopy," "Landing," and "Crash Landing," in the 13 pages from page 58 through page 70. This is the part that should be posted for more general reading.

    The rest of it is a gassy exposition of the Ideal Gas Law (which tells us that a hot, humid day in Houston is like a cool, dry day in Denver -- that's not news), and an embarassing discussion of airfoil performance (no mention of parasite or induced drag, for example). Edit this stuff out, so folks don't have to wade through it to get to the good stuff.

    Mark



    Mark,

    I have gone to considerable lengths to ensure my port accurately reproduces the original. Jerry obviously put a lot of time and effort into creating this document. If you think you can do better than Jerry's document then please feel free, I am sure the skydiving community will welcome your contribution.
    Rich M

  12. Thanks skymama, the original format was in LaTeX (Jerry promises me that is an old UNIX typesetting language, what can I say ;)). Jerry and I have been swapping emails and he was going to review it for me, but that was a while ago. I chased him recently and his response was to carry on and not wait for him, he'll look at it when he can. I'll pm sangiro.

    Thanks to Jimbo's suggestion there's also an acrobat version here.

    Rich M

  16. Major bummer.

    When I was 20 I went to my doctor and told him I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my inability to resolve the simple question of why we are here, what purpose do we serve? After some initial shit of him thinking I was on the make to avoid work I eventually convinced him that I was burning up and he prescribed some shit. I asked if it was addictive and he replied "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it". I replied "no we fucking won't" and threw the scrip in the bin there in his office and walked out.

    6 years and a lifetime of Kendo put me back together, but I find it scary how they dish out drugs that potentially address one problem without any apparent concern or need to tell you about other problems they may cause. I trust no-one in a trade I know little about. I love the internet because the knowledge is all out there, you only have to Google something.

    Easily said in hindsight. I hope others learn from this. I wish you well and lots of strength through difficult time.
    Rich M

  17. I've converted Jerry Sobiesky's excellent "The Aerodynamics and Piloting of High Performance Ram Air Canopies" to MS Word. It's a direct port with the addition of an index. There are a couple of incomplete sentences that Jerry is looking at, but I decided not to complete them myself as I might misjudge his original intent.

    It's currently available here. Can anyone suggest a more appropriate place for it (remember this isn't talk back :P)
    Rich M

  24. Well what a great weekend. I did my 600th jump on Sat morning, a friendly 3 way flat fly. I jumped my first reserve pack job on the next dive. And I finished off with my first night jump.

    I hopped out at 12000ft above Headcorn, the dying embers of a gorgeous sunset still kissed the horizon, and the twinkle of a million lights painted towns and roads on the dark vista below me. I just gently turned watching it all.

    Canopy deployment was normal (actually its been improving since Ive been psychopacking my crossfire) and the landing site was easily picked out for a lovely no wind straight in turf surf. And a beer was quickly thrust in my hand.

    I love this sport:)
    Rich M