waveoff5500

daves right, and he makes a hell of a good cup of coffee. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

welcome to skydiving man! tracking is a great skill that takes a lot of jumps to perfect, but there are a couple common issues like you describe that are easy to deal with. first most likely what is causing your teeter totter effect is that your legs are too close together. try widening your stand a bit which will greatly improve your stabiliy. secondly people tend to dive a bit when learning to track, so its important that your are pushing against the air with your arms and cupping as much air as possible to get good altitude conservation. far flat fast are the trademarks of a good track. keep practicing! "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

lol my digital alti died in freefall this weekend. i watched it turn off as i turned to track. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

think about the distance between the molecules as you go up in altitude. up at 120,000 plus ft there is very little air density. so the sound waves have farther to travel between molecules. at regular pressures the molecules are very close together so the waves can travel between more quickly. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

youre totally right absolutely no contribution to either. good call man "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

haha ok good "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

whether people like him or not he has done a lot for wingsuiting and base in general to the point that i dont think he needs to be jealous lol "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

you realize that response was totally tongue in cheek right? "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

i really dont have a small rig because its cool its more about me caring for my friends, so when i auger in on a hook turn and they divide my gear amongst themselve, they dont hurt their backs carrying a giant rig! that and im a trend follower "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

realistically speaking it might not be the best idea financially to buy a brandnew container for your first rig. couple of reasons why first, youre still relatively new to skydiving, you havent built up really solid preferances with respect to gear choices and design etc. secondly youre probably not going to stay on a canopy of that size for too long, as you start to get to a higher wing loading you will spend more time on a size before downsizing so it makes more sense to buy a new container if thats what you want for your second or third rig. third, you want something thats going to look nice, sure you can fit about any size parachute into any rig, but its not going to look good. the company has made that size container for that range of sizes and its going to look awkward (really loose with a small canopy and really buldgy with a big canopy) if you force it in. its going to be a pain to pack, and over all it may interfere with its intended purpose...saving your life because more tension is going to be put on a normally sized closing loop if the canopy is too big and not enough if it is too small. so i would recommend buying a used rig for a season that will fit the size you need NOW and then worry about buying a rig til youve reached some sort of leveling off point. good luck man! "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

lol i can just imagine the thought process "who should we trust with a finicky door that can fall off if opened wrong...i know! skydivers!" "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

after the surrealness wears off it becomes like any other activity. the problem with "work" jumps is that they are for the most part pretty routine. obviously there are crazy situations that happen sometimes in any jump but generally the plan for the jump, be it aff or tandem or video, never changes. so if you think about literally doing the same thing for thousands of jumps and nothing else it becomes a bit clearer to see why people burn out. the key is to keep it fun, keep it interesting outside of your work jumps, and try to perfect your skills on the work jumps. i have the great oppurtunity to work and have it pay for my jumping so i pretty much break even but do my best to keep it interesting and break up the work with fun jumps etc. so yeah i can see how people get burnt out after doing 4000 tandems etc but remember why you started jumping was to have fun! "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

also once you have a solid and fast sit and youve worked all of the random corking out by learning how to stay fast, you should try to tag along on smaller freefly jumps with experienced jumpers who can fall straight and at a normal speed. this will let you "chase" and improve movement and level control a lot more easily. keep it small with more experienced people for the time being so you dont have 4 new freefliers having a horrible break off a the end of the jump! good luck! "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

no way, that will be horrible to pack. just get the right size container "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

haha yeah skyvan doors arent known for their reliability! "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

dave lepka! hes older than the student canopies and bold like a good cup of coffee! for realz though i would have to say john winkler aka wink our dropzones master rigger. he has some aweome stories of the glory days and has contributed a lot to the sport as i see it. hes also made me a mean closing loop on occasion but then again so has lepka so i think its a tie. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

had the same thing happen on my old icon, its your closing loop length shorten it up and it should fix it. the pin cover looks to be off center because when you pull the right flap shut it pulls the center grommet over to the right. then you close the left and it stays over to the right and just pulls the right flap towards the middle. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

sorry man, more tongue in cheek than serious, just trying to convey the point that youre focused on other things than the camera and end up forgetting it because its not a first priority. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

well swooping is an activity for very little room for error, especially at the speeds people can generate using modern swooping canopies. so its not very surprising to me that people die from it. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

cover any potential parts that could snag with gaffers tape for a quick cheap fix. if not, there are a number of mounts that are squared off that the whole gopro fits into and eliminates any snag points "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

i agree with what the others said, also check out http://www.chutingstar.com/expertadvice_en/buying-gear/41-best-fitvalue-for-1st-rig.html that article has a pretty good general explanation so you can make some sense of what seems like a gigantic pile of choices right now. good luck! "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

dude you COULD have a malfunction with literally anthing in freefall. just because there is potential for malfunction with a hoody, obviously quite small as shown by the number of jumps dave etc have put on them, doesnt mean its a hazard that no one should use. the jumpers that have used them have said remove the drawstring, tuck in the hood if you want, have it secured by legstraps. but its a peice of clothing that isnt really much different than a long sleeved tshirt "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

My first piece of advice would be that anytime you get conflicting opinions from two reputable sources regarding safety and skydiving, go with the more conservative option. I can't recall that last time a jumper was injured because they chose to take to slow and easy. Next up, you already mentioned, talk to the local camera flyers. Truth be told, if your flying and awareness are up to flying a camera, you don't need more than a handful of jumps to prepare for shooting video. So if you have 70-some jumps now, knock out another 100, and then talk to the camera staff to get you squared away. In the meantime, just jump and have fun. The only jump you need to be worried about right now is the next one. Focus on that, and worry about flying a camera when you get closer to actually flying a camera. daves right, i learned a lot about camera flying from dave, but none of it would be helpful if i didnt have some sort of foundation with flying skills. also having enough jumps to encounter different situations to expand your knowledge on how to deal with different problems a camera might introduce. when youre wearing a camera and forget to turn it on, that might be a checkmark in the list of things you need for camera flying. its pretty funny/scary to see people who are so distracted by turning their gopro on that they dont realize their gear is set up wrong. then you have the people who do their gear checks, know the plan for the skydive and have to turn their camera on in freefall because they totally forgot they were jumping a camera. when you get to that point its a fair bet youre not distracted by the camera. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

dude, cutaways happen and so do long spots etc so if someone is giving you shit for it tell them to shove it. the other end of that is expanding your knowledge in general to deal with canopy problems if possible preventing the situation. but who cares youre alive and have learned from it and that experience will come as you gain more and more jumps "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653

the release mechanism could be a 3 ring release, similar to the strong tandem drogue releases. the cypres could cut the loop holding the 3 ring together. thats simple and easy as well as proven. the tube could be attached to the apex of the round canopy and stay attached during decent. the weight should provide enough tension on the lines that the canopy wouldnt be drastically effected by the still attached tube. even if this didnt work, an old freebag could be easily rigged to the tube and work with the same 3 ring system. we can do a couple test drops on see what works best....also if you need any faucet help i can assist you with that. "its just a normal day at the dropzone until its not" 1653