ernokaikkonen

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Posts posted by ernokaikkonen

  3. Quote

    When you add up all the "margins of error" in AAD firing altitudes, age and method of packing, body position, and pilot chute hesitations, giving up a single second of freefall, to gain an extra couple of hundred feet for your reserve to open, seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.



    I think the current AAD activation altitudes are prety much spot on for the current types of skydiving and gear. Why? We're getting a lot of AAD activations, and a lot of saves. And next to no "it just snivelled into the ground"-cases after AAD activations.

    If the AAD activation altitude were to moved up, all the other altitudes(break-off, main deployment, reserve decision altitude) would also have to be moved up at the same time. Otherwise we'd just be taking out some of the margin that keeps us from getting "two canopies out"-situations.

  6. Quote

    The Techno's manual actually shows that the Techno 98 is not JTSO C23d certified, but only to the French 530 EQ-03 standard (which may be higher or lower in requirements). Nor is the 140 size, for some reason. (Did they simply not have time to get it by the time that my manual was printed?).



    I believe this is due to a similar situation as with the smallest and largest PDR; The Techno 98 and 140 came much out later than the other models.

  9. Nice image quality, but can the HD version handle shooting directly into the sun? The version I've got burns a black circle in the middle of the sun if it's in the frame.

    The sample video had a couple of shots where the sun is at the border of the image for a moment, but not a single shot where the sun is clearly visible.

  10. I'n installing a new line set on a Cobalt 135. The line set was ordered from Stane in Slovenia, so the trim chart found on http://www.atairaerodynamics.com/ does not apply.

    I called Stane on Wednesday and he promised to email me the specs, but I'm still waiting. Now he's not there and won't be until tomorrow.

    The owner of the canopy expects to be jumping it later today or tomorrow at the latest, so if anyone has the Stane-specs for a Cobalt line set, please post them here.

    Thanks.

  11. We just replaced all of our FXC's with CYPRESes. There was no reason not to.

    We calculated that the cost for just servicing the FXC's for 12 years was equal to or higher than the cost of buying CYPRESes and servicing them for 12 years.

    If you also need the buy the FXC, you're definitely paying more for an FXC than you'd pay for a CYPRES. At least if you live in Finland.:P (We had to send the FXC's to Sweden every year)

  12. Now where have I seen that before? Ah, that's right, I made something almost exactly like that a year ago for a V1...;)

    My version just wraps around at the trailing edge, and as the cutaway cables wrap around as well, the trailing edge at the base of the wing is really a bit too thick.

    I didn't feel like cutting up a perfectly good cutaway handle for this experiment, so I just stuck the handle inside the wing, in one piece, hence the cable that needs to wrap around.

    The test pilot got some fairly impressive fall rates as measured on a ProTrack, but forward speed was not measured and probably wasn't that great anyway. Apparently flying in full flight was incredibly hard compared to the regular version of the suit, and he could only keep it up for half a minute or so.

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    :o;) Looks like Jeb is a bit late. From the slashdot thread:

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    A guy jumped off a cliff with one of these flying squirrel suits. He had a parachute just in case, but he did not use it. Picture a huge V where the tops of the V are the 2 mountain peaks and the center is a valley. He jumped off one mountain, flew over the valley, and then landed on another mountain that was covered in snow. Anyway it is one of the coolest things I have seen to this day, and this was almost 10 years ago in a Warren Miller ski video.



    Anyone have any idea what this is referring to? Has anyone seen this video? More importantly, anyone know where I can obtain this video?


    He is referring to LOIC's Verbier mountain flight.


    This video that was published about 4 years ago where he jumps out of a helicopter and definitely uses the parachute he brought along just in case?

    I'd say he was referring to something else. Probably something he saw after smoking too much illegal substances.

  16. :o;) Looks like Jeb is a bit late. From the slashdot thread:

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    A guy jumped off a cliff with one of these flying squirrel suits. He had a parachute just in case, but he did not use it. Picture a huge V where the tops of the V are the 2 mountain peaks and the center is a valley. He jumped off one mountain, flew over the valley, and then landed on another mountain that was covered in snow. Anyway it is one of the coolest things I have seen to this day, and this was almost 10 years ago in a Warren Miller ski video.

  17. I just realized something.

    No matter when or where some disaster occurs, there will always be someone who predicted that that particular disaster(more or less) will strike at (more or less) that time at (more or less) that place, going all "I told you so, and you didn't listen, and you laughed at me, but who's laughing now? Mwahaahahhahaa!" on everyone.

    Damn.:|

  18. Replies to several posters:

    Esquilax:

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    The relevance was that if Finland has typical Euro gun laws, it'd show that they're indeed ineffective in the prevention of these attacks.



    I disagree. I think the Finnish laws do a rather good job of keeping the amount of such attacks low. My reasoning goes like this:

    - No gun control: Lots of guns around, every yahoo has a gun laying around, so going on a killing spree is easy, and requires little or no advance planning. I don't believe in the "The whole country would get armed to the teeth and kill the whackos"-theory. The whackos come from the same pool of people that are supposed to stop them.

    - Permit required, background checks, hunting permit or shooting club membership required: Anyone who has no criminal record can get a gun, but it takes some effort. Your average neighbourhood whacko just can't be bothered going through all the trouble. Determined whackos can and will get a gun, as we just saw.

    - Guns banned: In order for our whacko with determination to get a gun, he'd need to go to the black market. Doing that has a higher threshold than doing it by the books, and let's face it; most people wouldn't know where to start looking. Of course, even a total ban won't stop a very determined whacko. A gun ban may have prevented or delayed this latest shooting, we'll never know. Maybe he would've built bombs instead.

    I like the current laws here. I don't want a total ban just for the admittedly selfish reason that I like to go shoot a gun every now and then.

    kelpdiver:

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    What stopped him, anyway? (News articles rarely say) Was he running low on bullets and saved the last for himself?



    He had around 400 rounds, and he fired about 60 or 70 of them. I think he ran out of people to shoot, as everyone ran away. He'd shot himself in the head in a bathroom.

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    But they're harder to load, so I wonder if he ran out of magazines.



    He only had one. He would have had to reload seven times.

    JohnRich:

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    Third point:

    We're lucky he wasn't using a larger caliber gun, or the other 12 people he only injured, could have been fatalities.



    Only one of the injured had gunshot wounds. The rest were injured escaping by jumping through second story windows.

  20. (not directed at the last poster, rather commenting the concept as a whole)

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    I did a repack for a young lady with a pop-top style reserve once and when I fired the reserve, the pilot chute went to full extension as expected. What was not expected was to find the 4 temporary pins still in the reserve (hidden under the pilot chute cap). If not for the repack cycle, would that have been found prior to a fatality?



    Frequent repacks do not increase or decrease the chance of a mistake being caught.

    Assuming all riggers are created equal, meaning that all riggers have an equal chance of making a mistake(say, 1%), the probability that the last rigger made a mistake is always 1%, regardless of how many times the rig is I&R'd.

    That said, if you want your rig repacked by someone else because you don't trust the previous rigger, well, maybe you shouldn't have had him/her pack your rig in the first place?

  21. Quote

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    if i understand right i agree with you about not using the pin for stowing the excess line...i managed to create a mal that way last week because i pulled the toggle free down thru the loop of excess line..creating a neatly locked off brake line...
    as i had never tried landing on rears i chopped this and then took the resultant mess to the UPT rigger Pablo who told me not to stow that way and just to stow the excess doubled over in the elastic on the rear of the risers...



    I too was told that RWS/UPT had changed their recommendation, to NOT using the pin to secure the excess line. Maybe someone from UPT can comment?



    Not from UPT, but I have a copy of the Vector3 manual from 2003 that doesn't tell you to stow the line with the pin, and another copy from 2007 that does.

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    Closing the right flap over the left can cause a container lock on some rigs if the bridle slides under the right flap. Even if you can't easily duplicate this mal on the ground you'll find it can't happen if you close flaps left over right. Please consult a rigger on this.



    By all means, send a picture of the situation you describe, because from the text I can't tell at all what you mean.



    Here's one I prepared earlier.

  23. It's not an easy canopy to land. I had a Turbo ZX 145 that I loaded at about 1.3:1, and that was definitely too much. I always landed it either with a front riser turn or double fronts, otherwise the landings tended to be too painful for my ankles.

    As I recall, the maximum suspended weight for the canopy put the maximum WL at 1.1:1. It really didn't like to be loaded much more.

  25. Quote

    Jumping from the same altitude (more or less) over known environment from known points is beneficial for me and can give me good information if I am improving or not. Chasing something is always better than nothing, but I think clouds are not that good reference as points on the ground (if you have clear skies ground is always there).



    That isn't very different from using a GPS. You're still affected by the wind, and because of that your flights are not comparable, unless the wind at your DZ is always coming from the same direction at the same velocity.

    Clouds are better in that they are affected by the same wind as you are(as long as you're more or less on the same altitude with the clouds). The downside is of course that the clouds are never in the same place or at the same distance from you, and they never look the same.

    Looking at the ground can give you a good idea of relative performance between different parts of the current jump, but even that can be skewed by different winds at different altitudes. And since the ground keeps getting closer(the bastard), comparing the different parts of the same jump is difficult as well.

    The way I see it, unless you have a GPS with a HUD that shows you flight data corrected with very accurate real-time winds aloft data, you're just guessing. Everyone's just guessing. But I do hope that they remember to have fun while doing it...;)