JackC1

They are not really related. Yes they are. See? Related.

I think it's to do with the fact that at the current AAD firing altitude you're only a pilot chute hesitation away from bouncing if you're at terminal speed when it fires. If you wanted to give your reserve a bit more time to open after an AAD fire, you'd need to raise AAD firing altitudes. This puts you at more risk of a two out, unless you raise minimum main deployment altitudes. Obviously raising main deployment altitudes and getting it to be the norm has to come first before modifying the AAD's parameters. This is probably ground work for raising AAD firing altitudes. It's a good idea that would save lives but it will be unpopular, mostly because the old school skydivers can't deal with change and secondly because in the heat of battle, no one really gives a flying fuck about AAD activation heights. They're more worried about real stuff they can actually see like decent separation from the other people in their group and how big the planet looks, not by theoretical shit like what some gadget buried deep in their rig thinks.

It obviously depends on the aircraft. If you have benches and lap belts, it is much harder to get hooked up than unhooked. In a plane with no benches and tethers bolted to the side of the fuzz, I think it can be harder to get unhooked if you attach them as recommended (under the main lift web of your rig and round to clip the carabiner back onto the belt) although there isn't much in it. The other downside to tethers is they are often 2 or 3ft long which means a 6ft guy can slide around over an almost a 9ft radius. That's most of the plane, probably including the exit. So as a restraint, they only really keep all the bodies in the same general area as the wreckage. But there isn't much of an option without fitting seats.

It's officially winter....anyone that has a G3 have any fogging issues during this winter season?? My G3 has survived so far this winter without any noticeable fogging. I reckon it was below -20 Celsius at altitude for some of those and below freezing at ground level. I just keep the visor open until just before exit and open it again under canopy. Yup. I tried a G2 for fit which was OK and ordered the same size G3, it was too small. Had to modificate the liner with a scalpel to get it to contain my oversized cranium.

Likewise, you'll also have time to put it back on while you're gently gliding down at a 1000ft/min. Now if the plane goes into a violent spin (due to say a stall caused by CofG and weight shift issues, slow flight configuration, etc), the chances are the only people getting out are the ones that get flung out. The rest will probably be plastered to the inside of the fuselage unable to do much of anything. A seat belt will almost certainly reduce your chances of being flung which depending on your altitude may or may not be a good thing.

Try cleaning your visor with shaving foam.

Not true. It's all down to an abysmal taste in music.

eBay.

I totally agree. All the bells and whistles in the world won't stop someone hooking in if they fly like shit. A bog standard vario simply varies the pitch of the tone according to whether you are climbing, holding altitude or decending. The pitch goes up if you're ascending, beeps if you're holding altitude and goes down if you're descending. The more the tone goes down in pitch, the faster you are descending (and vice versa). At that, a vario could (under some circumstances) be useful aid for people getting trained in canopy flight. I'm not sure how you could rely on that to guide you through a perfect swoop, it would just be a dumb dive indicator. But I guess people will rely on all sorts of crap so who knows? If you wanted to turn a vario into some kind of swoop-o-meter by having it give you some kind of warning when you dive too fast too low, then I'm not sure how that would need to be set up for each canopy type and wing loading (and all the other variables), or if it would even be useful. At the moment I don't see the swoop-o-meter idea as having much merit without a LOT of development and associated training. But a vario might just be useful, sometimes.

Too late. All I see that doing is going off while you hit the ground. It would be more of a bell or whistle telling you this is going to hurt. If you programmed it wrong, that's exactly what it would do. But you could program it with any parameters you wanted. You could get it to fire off a 120dB siren and give you electric shocks if you happened to exceed a 5mph decent rate below 1000ft AGL if you wanted. Or something a bit less ridiculous. But it's a valid criticism that getting the parameters right would be tricky, especially since a safe decent rate for a 20 jump guy under a Navigator 260 isn't quite the same as a 10,000 jump swooping champion under a Velo 84. But even a bog standard Vario would give you an indication of how hard you were diving and when you had levelled off which might be useful training aid to some.

Are you talking about a variometer? Paragliders use them a lot. I've often wondered if using a vario would help to teach people about canopy flight. It's kind of hard to tell if you've planed out completely when you're 2000ft AGL due to the lack of reference. A vario would give you that reference. It shouldn't be too hard to recalibrate one to work as a "power meter" during a swoop. Just offset the level flight warning to suit your canopy's natural decent rate. Couple it to an accurate altimeter and you could program it to warn you when you're diving too fast, too low. That's easier when you're designing a warning device for an aircraft where the performance is fairly fixed, but canopies have a big range of performance, so you'd either get a one size fits none, or you'd have to program it to have different profiles for different canopies and wing loadings.

Well, there was the McDonnell Douglas A-18A and the F-18A which were eventually combined to produce the F/A-18A. Then there was the TF-18A which became the F/A-18B, then there's the CF-18 variant and also the Northrop Grumman F-18L. But pointing that out would just be pedantic.

1) Mostly free fly but some relative work 2) Matter FF suit - it's OK Symbiosis RW suit - again OK 3 & 4) I like a close fitting suit around the torso so it wont foul on my handles. I had my FF suit modified with some neoprene panels to allow a bit of stretch for when I'd been on the pies a bit too much that month, or need to wear thermals underneath. I also find that the booties on my RW suit can come undone which is annoying, so a decent method of securing them is a must. Reinforced knees and butt are a good idea too as they always wear out. External pockets need a zip and velcro to secure them. Velcro isn't a great option for cuffs and neck as it tends to wear out and the hook part also grabs on other stuff (like rigs) and wears them out too, so as little velcro as possible please. It must also be sewed together like it needs to withstand a hurricane, because it does, especially in the wind tunnel where it will get ripped to shreds if it isn't totally bullet proof. 5) Definitely. The mark of a really good jump suit is how good your ass looks in it.

+1 The only downside I can see to this is you float more which means you're in cloud for longer. But I think decreasing the chance of meeting someone and going a lot slower if you do more than make up for it.

I feel sorry for all those A licensed jumpers being made to get on sunset loads without any night jump training. If it wasn't for their mad skillz, they'd be screwed.

Accuracy is a tricky one when you haven't got a great deal of experience. There are tricks like 'S' turns and sinking in using the brakes but I always think doing that in the pattern is a bit like trying to aim for the freeway off ramp by zig zagging across the lanes of traffic or slamming on the brakes. Not wise when there's traffic around so pick a line and work with it if you can. The best bet is to plan your pattern by starting with where you want to land and work backwards. Think about how far your canopy will glide for a given loss of altitude and then think where you need to make your last turn and at what height you need to be in order to get to your landing spot. Then work back again to the place and height you need to be in order to make your turn onto the base leg. Then work back again in order to see where and at what height you need to be in order to enter you downwind leg. Once you've got a plan, go and fly that plan and see how right you were. If you're clever (and lucky), you can adjust your plan and hit your target on the second try. The only point you really must hit in order to be accurate, is the turn onto final approach. The ones before that, you can use to refine your pattern by cutting the base leg short a bit, or flying the base leg a bit wider, or crabbing a little off the wind line during your downwind leg. Be sure to keep looking around for traffic and pick a landing spot away from the main area until you've got your technique down. Remember that the wind speed will give you a push on the downwind leg and hold you back on the into wind leg compared to how much ground you can cover. Before you make a turn, check for traffic, check your altitude and check your position over the ground. When flying, you can make an estimate of where you're going to land by using the "accuracy trick". Roughly, that means looking for the spot on the floor where the ground seems to stay still, not moving upwards in your vision or moving downwards. If the wind stays constant, that's where you'll land. But the winds will generally (but not always) reduce as you lose height so the spot will change. When you're high up, look down and see how much ground you're covering into wind and downwind to get some idea of how much space and height you'll need for those wind conditions. If your prearranged plan doesn't come to fruition, don't get tempted to turn lower than you had planned to try and land on your spot or you won't learn where your plan was deficient so you can correct it next time. That is, provided you are going to land in a safe area. If you're heading for a gator infested swamp, abandon the plan and land safely elswhere. And if you really aren't going to get where you want to be, pick your alternate landing spot early. Time flies when your under a canopy and any mistake you make early on will compound as you get nearer the floor, so don't get fixated on landing accurately. Get fixated on landing safely. Accuracy will come. With a bit of practice, you'll be able to assess your flight plan and compensate for the wind variability without much trouble at all. You'll even be able to rotate your pattern around to land accurately in any direction you want. Then you'll be able to land on your target virtually any time you want and you'll be predictable to other canopy pilots who will be able to fly with you rather than into you. Also, see if you can find a copy of "The Parachute and it's Pilot" by Brian Germain. All these ideas and more are covered brilliantly in that book.

As far as I know the BPA only mandate a WL restriction on students, not on licensed skydivers. The recommendations usually given are broadly in line with everyone else though. The BPA does effectively have a ban on high performance landings for low jump numbers though. No speed inducement below C license (min 200 jumps) and then a requirement to build up from double fronts, to 45's, 90's, to 180's all under the supervision of a qualified canopy coach or instructor, eventually leading to a CP1 license endorsement. Turns over 180 degrees require more training as directed by a CP coach. A CP2 endorsement requires a minimum of 500 HP landings including 100 in the past 12 months and you need this before entering any competitions. See the BPA Ops Manual Section 6.3

The same could be said for putting a jump number restriction on the maximum rotation you could make onto final. The only argument people have made against that is someone would need to watch, but like you say, no one watches pull altitudes. The upside to rotation limits is that if someone where to watch, you could easily see rule breakers in real-time with no arguments. Unlike wing loading restrictions which would require accusations based on guesswork first, then measurements and calculations later to prove guilt or innocence. Plus a 270 is a 270 regardless of DZ elevation or temperature, but the flight characteristics of a canopy will change with elevation and temperature while wing loading remains constant

That's it? You're going to recommend a rule based on guessing? I think your credibility just left the building.

Maybe. But are you going to weigh people before they get on the plane? I can gain and lose 10lbs in a week. Maybe check their log book entries against jump ticket receipts to make sure they haven't pencil whipped anything? Compensate for altitude and temperature? Apply it to reserves? What canopy measurement system will you use? In reality I guess what would happen is someone would ask "what's your wing loading?" to which the reply would be something within the rules and they'd be on the next load. You can't actually see a wing loading, you have to do some measuring and calculating stuff, but you can see a 270. Obviously there are issues with both systems. Neither would be perfect. A level of common sense and trust would have to apply in both cases. But that is too much to ask I suppose.

And how's that working? Obviously not too well otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I addressed that further up thread. To reiterate again, my point is that wing loading restrictions alone won't do much unless you are draconian with them. If you stick to Brian Germain's wing loading recommendations, that 300 jump wonder will still be able to hook himself in under his 1.3 loaded canopy almost as well as he can under a 1.5 loaded canopy. Likewise that 90 lb girl with 100 jumps will still be able to biff in under her 1.1 loaded Katana 107. You wont fix that unless you make the restrictions so seriously restrictive that you suck a lot of fun out of skydiving. You can however make a fair attempt at stopping the low experienced spiral-of-death addicts from claiming their Darwin Award by banning high rotations below certain jump limits.

>That would be great. But what could you have said to Sangi to make him do less stupid shit? Saying things obviously doesn't work too well. I'm just not convinced that wing loading restrictions alone will make that much difference unless you are pretty draconian with them. I think having a hook turn ban on anyone under X jumps and a 90 degree limit on anyone with less than Y jumps etc. would work better and be just as enforceable as wing loading restriction.

Who the hell thinks it's OK to chop at 300 ft? The bottom line is that no one wants to chop that low and if you need to you've fucked up very, very badly to get there in the first place. But if you've got yourself that deep in the shit, you do whatever you think will give you the best chance of survival. With a skyhook you might survive a chop. Without a skyhook you might survive tossing your reserve into the bag of shit that is your main. You pays your money and you makes your choices.

Would that mean not allowing swooping, not allowing jumpers to jump with others in the air? Or would it mean having eyes on every jumper so that rules violations could be swiftly enforced? Prevention is generally better than post-offense enforcement. Particularly with there being more jumpers now, keeping an eye on each and everyone would be far more difficult than back in the days of Cessna dropzones. And every time you're not caught, you figure you beat the system and got away with it (how many of us speed on the freeways?). Reducing the severity of consequences very probably is a better approach. People are going to make mistakes -- you can't legislate against that. But maybe until someone has X number of hours under canopy (if you do a lot of high hop and pops that number goes up fast), or X number of landings, they have to pass additional qualifications over just being present and accounted for. Wendy P. It wouldn't necessarily mean an end to swooping but in the same way that people are discussing limiting wing loading based on jump number or whatever, you could also limit the maximum rotation you're allowed to do based on jump number or whatever. Say straight in approaches only below X number of jumps, no more than 90's under Y number of jumps etc. With regard to enforcement, wing loading restrictions also require policing. How could you stop someone going on a crash diet to downsize or pencil whipping their log book? Are you going to weigh them before they get on the plane or insist on seeing receipts for all their logged jumps? There are basically two problems here. 1) people who don't generally do crazy stuff but occasionally make mistakes due to inexperience, wing loading restrictions might work here. 2) People who are in a hurry to do big rotations and become swoopers for whatever reason. I'm not sure wing loading restrictions will change their motivation here, unless you make the canopy so huge it's physically impossible to pull a front riser down for more than a few degrees of rotation. Maybe we need both forms of regulation?