DaVinciflies

Then why teach it as opposed to teaching a way does work? It does work! That's the point. There is no one-size-fits-all flare and the sooner a young jumper realizes this the better. All landings require a feedback loop. Neither do I and that is not what a 2-stage flare is. It IS based on feedback - primarily decrease in descent rate in response to toggle movement. Actually all of them. The difference is that they perform stage one of the two stage flare with their rear risers, but the effect is the same.

I don't.... I teach the jumper to be an active participant in the flare, not just some semi-trained monkey doing "A" then "B". I teach that the rate of flare should equal the speed towards the ground with the hands ending up at full flare as their feet are ~1 foot off the ground. I am not sure you understand the 2-stage flare in the same way as I do. - Stage 1 is to do whatever is needed to plane out the canopy. ie. to reduce the vertical velocity to zero. - Stage 2 is to manage the sink-out of the wing during the plane out until the ground speed is as close to zero as you can get it. The above is not a one-size-fits-all flare. It will have to be varied with many factors including wingloading, airspeed, flight-cycle of the system and wind speed and direction. These variables (and others) necessitate some practice up high to determine the sweet-spot (ie. the approx toggle position of the plane-out point) of the system for a given jumper. It is far from a thoughtless "semi-trained monkey" procedure and is being taught to experienced jumpers in commercial canopy courses, such as that from Flight-1.

Please don't listen to this BS. Anyone telling you not to finish your flare is not helping you. You should finish your flare before you PLF (which you should always be prepared to do).

IMO the only way to know what helmet is right for you is to try them on.

You let him jump your rig with a wingsuit you admit to being unhappy with him using. You could have told him "no". Now, hindsight is a wonderful thing and everyone fucks up, but I don't care for the way you have posted this as "what an idiot" on here when YOU had the chance to stop it happening. That is all.

You rent this guy one of your wingsuits and are now slagging him off for his performance. IMO you need to man up and take some responsibility for not checking him out thoroughly enough before taking his $$$. Bad form.

The picture did not result in a fatality.

Awesome!! Write the whole book, dude!

Still no news???

FJC students are told how to flare and are told that landing into the wind is desirable, but not the first (or even second or third) priority. Ergo, the possibility of landing cross- or down-wind is covered. Wing level, feet and knees together, prepare to PLF and finish your flare is good advice for students regardless of landing direction. What differences would you have them learn?

Congratulations on getting out of that one! Can you describe what you use to stow your lines (band types and number of wraps etc)?

The manufactures have done a good job of producing canopies that will kill you in a heartbeat ... I actually changed my original post from "making our equipment safer" to "making our equipment more reliable" along the same thoughts as you posted.

Sparky - The USPA numbers are actual dead jumpers too. I am not trying to skew anything. You provided your numbers with no context in which to evaluate them. I am merely trying to add to the discussion. I am certainly not saying there is no problem, and I am not saying that we should be complacent about it. But the full story is that skydiving has been getting safer since the 1960s. If I could draw a point from this thread it would be that the best place for us to focus our efforts now is on canopy flying and landing skills. It seems that the manufacturers have done a good job of making our equipment more reliable and the weak point now is the soft, squidgy thing suspended in the harness.

Wow - defensive much? You posted some numbers, and so did I. You respond calling BS but you don't really add anything to the discussion. I didn't even dispute what you said. What is your point?

To give a more complete picture: the number of fatalities per thousand USPA members (a better measure of the US situation than absolute numbers) continues to decline. http://www.uspa.org/AboutSkydiving/SkydivingSafety/tabid/526/Default.aspx The percentage under a good canopy would be expected to increase as gear gets more reliable and back-up devices such as AADs become more prevalent.

In what way is some fat dude crashing intense?? Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQOeWcBABjw

That is quite far from the truth. A removable slider can be beneficial for non-competitive swoopers as well as for non-swoopers in some cases. Not at 300 jumps, but, of course, the original poster will only hear what he wants to hear. Why do you say not at 300 jumps? Is it because it requires more skill than that to use or because the benefits you are thinking of do not apply at 300 jumps. Not disagreeing with you, just wondering. I do not jump an RS, but I do collapse and stow my slider and loosen my chest strap and I have thought that an RS might be nice for the sake of improved field of view under canopy.

Some canopy coaches teach that flying in "some" brakes is the right thing to do. It slows everything down and makes it easier to hit check points. It also allows adjustment for being too high or too low without the need for dangerous s-turns or sashays: Too high? Go to full flight to sink out more. Too low? Add a little more brakes to float to your next checkpoint. Having said that, this is an issue upon which not everyone agrees (no shit, right? ).

Entitlement to swoop every time is one problem. Another is people who try to teach themselves to swoop. There are ways to reduce the risk of swooping, but it requires some (knowledgeable) instruction on canopy flight and a willingness to pull high a lot of the time and practice turns, aborts, flares etc, etc in clear obstacle free airspace. I think a lot of people are trying to re-invent the wheel and many are paying the price.

Surely the point is that, in an aggressive (non-flat) turn, the wing was NOT over his head?

I have a Protrack and an Optima2 (with LED) in my Revolve.

This is the absolute opposite of what you should be doing for a soft landing. During landing, airspeed is converted to lift by the process of flaring. The more airspeed you have, the more lift you can convert it to. What you are describing is a braked approach and landing and, while useful in some circumstances, it will not give you the softest landings. You are robbing your canopy of airspeed before you need to flare, which in turn robs you of flare power. The ideal situation for non-swoopers is to allow at least 10 seconds of NO INPUT to the canopy before the flare. This means no little corrections, no partial flares, no turns. After you have turned from base to final it is arms all the way up until you need to flare (or obviously if you need to avoid an obstacle). This technique is rarely seen in practice and is one of the more common mistakes, along with not flaring all the way. Do lots of practice flares up high (after clearing your airspace) and try to find the sweet-spot. If you don't know what it is please ask your canopy coach to explain, and if they can't please find another coach. That's about all I am going to say on the theory - the next step is to get a good "canopy instructor" (ie. someone who knows how to teach canopy control) to give you more and ideally to video debrief your landings.

I wonder PD's comment pertains more to a full-RDS that includes a bag and pilot chute attached to the slider, than to a removable slider that doesn't have the bag and pilot chute attached. You could be right, but the question I asked PD was specifically about a RS, not the full RDS.

Yes, from an email from PD to me in response to almost the identical question you asked (RS for a KA120). What is it that you think is crazy about that?

From an email from PD: