nathaniel

To keep the results up to date, they should periodically re-poll, yes. But a good random sample of a few thousand people will do the trick for each poll. Or we could make it a required part of the membership renewal to list the smallest of your primary mains...maybe just harrass the lifetime members periodically =) Then we wouldn't need statistics at all. I dont think we should count on education as a silver bullet. Someone described on this forum a canopy control class with an appalling post-class landing injury rate. Irrespective of the accident rate I think dissemination of knowledge is Good, so in principle I could go along with increased education. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

if that's the only explanation we can come up with, these numbers are sunk. what part about experience gets us to these numbers and not different numbers? Let's be honest with ourselves. Nobody knows, the numbers just look good. The exact numbers are essentially meaningless. It's a mistake to codify meaningless numbers into our training curricula. How about instead every year the USPA does a survey of jump #s and wingloading, and publishes that instead of scribbling in the BSRs or the SIM. At least these numbers would be grounded in the real world. S&TA's would have something real to refer to when it comes time to step in and talk to at-risk jumpers. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Thats not an answer. Where did he come up with them? Does he have mystical powers or did he just make it up? How can you prove they are more unreasonable than Brian's famous numbers? What's your standard of proof? What makes one set reasonable and the other not? nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

In the SIM recommendations is better than in the BSRs (or rather, less bad)... but where do those numbers come from to begin with? Why not A - 0.5 B - 0.6 C - 0.7 D - anything Do we wait for B-licensees to die jumping under 1.1 before we make a proposal with crazy numbers like these? If I get my C-license this summer the SIM recommends against a Spectre-110 (~1.4 for me) but doesn't recommend against a VX-119 (~ 1.3 for me)? How about a Cobalt? It says right there in the 2003 SIM Section 5 "Design, materials, and construction techniques can cause two equally wing-loaded canopies to perform very differently." I know this is old ground...I think your heart is in the right place, but I think playing with wingloading just doesn't get us there... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

To be fair, Honda has been selling them for a loss, despite even tax incentives in the US. Tho it's possible they're be profitable at this price if they scaled up the production lines like Toyota is trying to do...and if people actually bought them so do like billvon says and go buy one

what next are you going to tell us that the earth is slowing down and days are getting longer? at some point in the near future (geologically speaking, anyway), left uncorrected, International midnight will cross over the international date line!? we need to stop this! we need to increase the earth's rotation! and bring the moon on in closer while we're at it /troll My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's disingenuous to make claims like this about the various WL BSRs proposed here and elsewhere. It could have cost the lives of 13 additional people too... key word being could. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Just tossed in my $0.02 via email. For all the non-USPA S&TA committee members here's what I wrote: Hello USPA Safety & Training Committee. My name is Nathaniel, I'm a new jumper with ~ 100 jumps having started in this great sport approximately 1 year ago. In March I purchased a rig with a used Sabre-150 that I load at 1.0 lbs / sq ft. The proposal to restrict or recommend wingloadings on the basis of a jumper's jump numbers or license level or other measure of experience makes several assumptions. These are my opinions on some of them: 1 (jumpers with less experience are more likely to be involved in accidents or accidents of a particular type.) It's not enough to look at accident numbers; we are interested in accident rates. According to the USPA website, more than 50% of skydivers have less than 250 jumps. So a high number of accidents among less-experienced skydivers by itself does not justify this assumption. Until we have evidence that experience is a factor, we should not restrict the discussion of wingloading regulation to jumpers of any experience level. 2 (high wingloadings increase the accident rate.) This assumption galls me--without in-depth study this assumption is a striking misappropriation of causality. My experience with other jumpers has been that smaller, high performance canopies are the expression of a jumper's preferences, not the cause. Jumpers with less experience and higher wingloadings that I have met are frequently jumpers flying camera and doing complex freeflying formations--some of them do BASE jumps. Their choice of high performance main canopies does not seem to be made in ignorance, but out of increased tolerance for risk. I detect in myself a strong libertarian leaning when it comes to regulating the informed decisions of other citizens. The claim that the same accident made with higher WL will be more severe than with lower WL is plausible to me, but this doesn't justify the assumption. A jumper forced to fly a larger canopy than she prefers will not fly her canopy the same as she would with a smaller one. Forcing people to fly larger canopies could even /increase/ the accident rate if it gave jumpers a false sense of security in their parachutes. A jumper of any experience level can die jumping a parachute of any size under the wrong circumstances. 3 (wingloading is constant). Wingloading is not constant. Parachutes tend to stay at approximately the same size as when they were manufactured, but jumpers do not. Personally I jump between 1.0 lbs/sq ft and over 1.1 lbs / sq ft depending on the amount of belly weights (0-12 lbs) I'm wearing. It's preposterous that judicious use of weights might be restricted by wingloading regulations. 4 (wingloading is a good measure of a parachute's performance characteristics). To be sure, a smaller parachute will fly more aggressively than a larger one of the same design when flown by the same jumper. Wingloading loses some of its appeal when it is used to compare parachutes of different designs. Is a jumper with a C license and 250 jumps safer flying a PD Spectre @ 1.4 lbs / sq ft or an Icarus EXtreme-VX at 1.3 lbs / sq ft? If we regulate on wingloading alone, jumpers may substitute for wingloading with more advanced parachute designs to get the flight characteristics they want. Wingloading is most meaningful for average-size people. A 100 pound jumper on a 90 sq ft canopy is a creature very different from a 220 pound jumper on a 190 sq ft canopy, even if the canopies are the same model. Parachute design is an inexact science. The sizes and designs that are popular today will one day be obsolete. If Atair came out with a canopy that was as safe as other models with 10% more fabric (or safer), what good would the USPA achieve in misclassifying it? We'd need to continuously update the standard in close communication with industry representatives to ensure it didn't become obsolete with today's gear. Otherwise regulations based on today's wingloadings could have an unanticipated impact on the sport parachute manufacturing industry. They would encourage the use of a particular amount of fabric for no other reason than it was the amount popular when the regulation was enacted. - It is quite possible that wingloading regulations might decrease the accident rate, but the opposite (including no effect) is at least equally likely. If we go with a regulation or a recommendation in the SIM, we should avoid oversimplifying the issue of canopy performance to wingloading; we should include all major factors that affect canopy flight. We should also consider other ways to encourage safe behaviour, such as * extending the coach / instructor system into a longer-term mentoring system * dividing the coach / instructor system into specialty classes, eg., CRW, freeflying, swooping, etc * providing incentives and recognition for safe jumpers and safe DZs Thank you for your patience and your time. Nathaniel Chicago, Illinois A-41130 My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I do a straight pro-pack, no fancy roll this or that and sometimes I'm pretty lazy about tossing my pc during tracking...in about 40 jumps so far the only slammer was a hop-n-pop (!) that I packed in about 7 minutes... the canopy was mfd 1996 but only has ~ 150 jumps on it now. the only thing that stands out to me that I do different from most people is I'm very retentive about flaking it all nice and pretty...usually winds up taking 25 minutes to pack the thing so...this probably won't help you any nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I detect a curious parallel between the "it's worked for us up until now" argument used to justify arbitrary WL BSR's and the "I've landed this thing before" argument used by mad jumpers to justify arbitrary wing loadings. I think in both cases one should ask for more before making a committment. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Despite the fact that distraction kills in this sport, distraction is human nature. Have you not ever become caught up in a book or a movie or a video game and look up the clock to find several hours have suddenly passed you by? If you can lose hours just with visual stimuli, I think it's reasonable to expect you could lose a minute here or there while skydiving. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

until we see it on a weapon used by a nation's armed forces I think it's safe to say this is just a bunch of marketing hype they hooked CNN with. "no moving parts" - not exactly. they stack the barrel of the gun with bullet, propellant, bullet, propellant, etc. It's a hard engineering problem to get it so one shot doesn't set them all off. and once you've shot them all off, to reload either you re-stack your barrel or you get another pre-stacked barrel. and since your bullets travel down different lengths of barrel you have to aim them differently or settle for badly. "caseless ammunition" - again not exactly. the barrel is now the case. see google groups usenet archive for a discussion of it on usenet...one of many actually...it's been hashed over there many times... and then there is the problem of recoil... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

three days off this week gastroenteritis! crap! too much crap that is immodium helps come jump with me, understand: float up at own risk My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Amen to that. The most popular peer-to-peer "software" out there is called the Internet Protocol. Sold by dozens of vendors, given away by others. If you're reading this chances are you already own a copy. iow, peer-to-peer isn't going away any time soon... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

thank you for shedding some light on the potential effects of education. I am starting to think that blanket education requirements are just as bad as blanket WL recommendations. Here's a possible sequence of events 1. more canopy classes offered / required 2. leads to more people maxing out their canopy performance envelopes / absolute risk level increases 3. leads to more accidents Education helps stop people under-estimating their risks, but it also helps stop people over-estimating their risks. When we say that education will lead to fewer accidents, we are saying that jumpers are consistently under-estimating their risks. I have seen no data to support this--interviewing only the injured doesn't count, it's a biased sampling method. This is not to say that education isn't a good idea for other circumstances. I honestly believe the problem with low-time high-WL is one of risk preferences -- education doesn't necessarily solve issues of risk preferences. Here's another idea: how about subsidizing safe jumpers? Institute a 5+% USPA jump tax and give a USPA sponsored 5% discount on jump tickets to jumpers that haven't injured themselves in the last n years or m jumps. Next time your buddy with 100 jumps and a 1.7 WL thinks about hurting himself / herself s/he'll have another reason not to. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

after that high alti load on sunday morning I wound up more pooped than I've ever been before... course, it was probably worse for having ~ 4 hrs of sleep on the ground no mattress next to the train going by all night ... I wouldn't trade it for anything

hrm...but it is not canopy size in question, it is WL. I'm an A-licensee and I load above or below 1.1 depending on how many weights I'm wearing under my jumpsuit. I choose the amount to wear on a jump-by-jump basis. do they have to check my belly every time I jump? maybe just ask a question every time I manifest? nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think I have misspoken for I did not mean to disparage the current set of BSRs... I apologize for the confusion--this is not what I meant to convey. It is in fact my esteem for the current set of BSRs that gives me pause when new ones are proposed. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

To me these aren't arguments for this proposed BSR. They are great arguments for things like separate swooping areas (enter at your own risk), sleep therapy / counseling, release waivers, etc. You're assuming the proposal would lead to fewer fatalities... IMO fewer fatalities is one of several possibilities together with no effect on fatality rate and increased fatality rate. I think no effect is the most likely result. No effect on the overall fatality rate, that is. Maybe an effect on the low-jump# pocket rocket fatality rate, but to reiterate a point I made several posts up I don't think it's right to say some kinds of fatalities are "better" than others. Several people have been alluding to actions by other regulatory agencies eg FAA...am I missing something? Has the FAA or anybody besides the people on this board brought the subject up? not including the usual cast of people that think skydiving should be banned in general... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

So we can regulate them however we want, and it doesn't matter they will all stay in the USPA? The point is not that one rule will collapse the USPA, it's that bad rules are bad. It doesn't matter if we already have other bad rules (or not). I would like to keep the number of bad rules to a minimum. So if people die it doesn't matter how, we'll just make up new arbitrary rules and feel better about it? This knee-jerk approach makes me feel worse, not better. Give me a good reason the rule will lead to fewer fatalities and you will be talking to a proponent. Give me the same promises that it will lead to fewer fatalities without logic to back it up and I remain a skeptic. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Do we repeal the rule when the name numbers (roughly proportional to the number of active jumpers) wind up dead due to other kinds of skydiving accidents? If no, why not? I'm genuinely curious for opinions--I think it's a question of assumptions we make. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well now, that isn't a biased sample, is it? Betting it all on a straight flush to a 10 and losing to a straight flush to a queen sux too. That it happens from time to time doesn't automatically make betting it all on a straight flush to a 10 a bad idea. That's a (edit: an -- gosh I'm an idiot) example--not a direct analogy, for the risk of hurting oneself with a high WL is probably greater than losing with a straight flush to a 10...but there's a point underneath there that it isn't clear everybody understands... Accepting a level of risk is accepting a set of possibilities with a probability distribution. It doesn't mean you'll be satisfied with every possible outcome...when you talk about risk it often means that some of the outcomes are undesirable... Reducing the undesirable outcomes to the unavoidable or the unforseeable is a lofty goal--for the risk averse. It is not necessarily the goal of rational, educated, etc risk-accepting individuals. I put myself in the category of risk-averse...but I don't think it's right to extend my risk aversity into the lives of others -- except when other people's decisions endanger me of course... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

or a mint...just remember it should be gone one way or another before you jump out... think about it if you open your mouth in freefall it isn't going to fall down... "the jumper's parachute opened safely by 5000ft but the jumper choked on his gum and was unconscious by the time he landed." I don't want to read that any time soon in the incidents forum... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

3 loads of night jumpers went up at hinckley last night. Lots of people doing their first BEER, many wound up doing their first and second BEEER. The last load landed at 1:30AM... 5 cars total. One anorexic bonfire rounded out the visible from 14000ft points of light to 6 ...fortunately there were some friendly light patterns between Hinckley and Waterman that gave a good reference. No wind landings seem twice as fast when you can't see everything...several people landed out in the beans but none too far out...and the dirt is soft. Lotsa people came out to cheer and yelled at flare time for people landing off in the dirt. I wound up taping a glowstick on the forehead of my helmet so it was just out of my line of sight. Used it to see my alti and to see the other jumpers on a three-way holding on for dear life =) Be careful if you do this that it doesn't cause glare with your goggles. Also I used pullup straps through the tiny little hoops to tie glowsticks to my legs and taped them down with clear postal tape...by the time I landed from my first jump the tape was long gone from my legs but the straps did just fine. Being on the ground for load 1 was exciting too seeing the plane make a pass and listening to the canopies open but not being able to see them... the view was fabulous...you could see all the way to the Chicago lakefront. On load 1 the jumperssaid they caught sight of the fireworks at Navy Pier. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It usually helps me when I reduce it to bits and bytes... But I sometimes call myself a C programmer and I avoid all those fancy new IDE's like the plague... I even did VRML with C once...it was nuts. /me ducks. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?