IJskonijn

The Note is a story in its own, but in general it is easier to short-circuit (read: set on fire) a battery when it is not contained in the product. Throw a battery and your keys together in a bag and the keys might just do the trick of connecting the leads. Makes me wonder, do the rules allow us to make a product that holds the batteries in a safe way, but allows an end-user to easily take out the batteries? How shall we call something like that... maybe 'holder' is a good word? =)

Agreed, but teaching people what looks funny and teaching them to speak out about it is also very important. You can only teach them so much about how something should be done, there's just too much to cover it all.

Checking if a parachute of unknown history is airworthy is a rigger's job. The best you can do is go to the DZ where your AFF is scheduled and ask for their rigger to have a look at it. Prepare to tell him everything and anything you know about the parachute. Also, ask away at him. Many riggers are friendly people who will gladly answer questions, especially if you lubricate them with their favourite drink! As for packing, look into packing courses given by your DZ. They will likely use DZ equipment, but that's no issue as the packing techniques are pretty much generally applicable. If your parachute requires special techniques, then it's unlikely to be a beginner-friendly parachute anyway. Do your AFF with the student equipment the DZ will provide you with, and start learning about gear after that. Talk with your AFF instructors about the suitability of that parachute for you, there are too many variables for a bunch of folk on an internet forum to give you a solid and clear answer.

Granted, I'm in Europe, but I always get my small-time stuff (a meter of webbing here, two pieces of hardware there, etc.) from my local master rigger. He uses enough of it to make shipping from paragear worth the effort, and charges me pretty much the equivalent price.

You can't. Each of those devices will be very helpful for you. Just recognize that each have their own positive and negative points. The final choice depends on your personal needs. I personally use an Optima to great satisfaction. It has a more difficult menu structure & operation, I required a good hour of messing around with the manual open in front of me before I got the hang of it. But the upside is that it offers canopy alarms (VERY useful for learning consistent patterns & learning the sight picture at different altitudes) and it has the option to store different alarm profiles. This makes for easy switching between disciplines, where you want the alarms to go off at different altitudes. It is more expensive than a Solo, but it also offers a lot more options.

I see the low-profile metal D-ring or soft loop ripcord with CRW-dogs occasionally, mostly as a way to prevent the ripcord being dislodged during wraps. It's bad enough if your cutaway pillow gets ripped out (I've seen that happen once), but a multitude as worse when your reserve is activated while you're still working yourself out of a wrap/entanglement. Personally, I think pillow-type reserve ripcords are a fashion fad more than anything. I cannot think of any serious advantage they have over old-fashioned D-ring handle.

We hardly ever do tandems, since our proximity to EHAM limits our altitude to 6000ft max. We mostly jump a mix of static-line students and sports jumpers. Adjusting the club gear to include a seatbelt by default may be an option, but we definitely cannot mandate that on sports jumpers individual gear. The belting method in the FAA report looks solid, but it has the issue that it's not always that easy to route it through legstraps. Taking myself as an example, I prefer to have my legstraps really tight, so fitting anything through it is very difficult. MLW by itself is much more accessible.

How to find a master rigger: - Look up the closest dropzone to your place (use the dropzone locator on this website). - Be bold, call them (or better, visit them if reasonably close), explain your school assignment and ask if they can hook you up with a master rigger. The worst answer you can get is "no", and it only gets better from there. Most people in this sport that I know would be more than willing to help you. At my home dropzone, we used old surplus (no longer airworthy) parachutes to help a school project a while ago.

This thread went maximum zombie. It was created in 2004, and resurrected yesterday. The issue is simple. We cannot by law (generic, pretty much every civilized country has such laws) require people to divulge what illness they have. Only doctors can give you a medical, and doctors must (also by law) keep the information you give them confidential. There are extremely good reasons for these laws and zero reasons to make an exception for this sport. Full Stop.

I'll have a closer look at our jump plane next time I'm there, but in my memory there is nothing but the normal body panel in that location. Obviously our pilots don't mind, since we've been using this configuration since forever and I never heard one complain.

A standard GoPro mount couldn't be made more snag-happy even if they tried! And be careful of mounts without camera's. During CRW, I've hooked my canopy on my buddies' camera mount even though the thing was low-profile and the camera was off (mobius cam).

In our C182 (Baksteen and me are from the same DZ), nobody is sitting against a cargo door. The closest person to the door is the jumpmaster, who has the door on his left side. The other door is on the pilot-side of the plane. Behind the pilot are no more doors. I agree in general that sitting leaning against a door is asking for trouble.

How is the seating configuration in that case? From the picture my guess would be: one goes with the back against the bulkhead, facing forward. one goes with the back against the pilot seat, facing backwards. (right-hand side in your picture) The jumper in front is facing backwards, with his back against a metal plate screwed in front of the control panel (or sitting very carefully to avoid shifting the lever for the cabin heat, or worse). How does the last jumper sit? In your picture that would be the left-hand side nearest to the photographer. Does he sit with his back to the side panel, or does he sit without back support? Facing front of facing back?

Container size does nog correlate one to one to the canopy size. Pack volume of a canopy depends on many factors, including size, type of materials (ZP packs bigger as a rule of thumb than F111), amount of reinforcement tape used in construction, type of lines, etc. As a practical example: my Silhouette 190 packs smaller than my Lightning 160. Even though its 30 sqft smaller, the Lightning is full ZP, newer, has thicker Dacron lines, and uses more reinforcement tape. The Silhouette is a hybrid with ZP topskin and F111 bottom skin. It also has lots more jumps on it, which tend to increase the permeability of the fabric and decrease pack volume. Combined with thinner lines means it packs smaller. Shortening or lengthening the closing loop does give you a bit more leeway in packing different canopies in a container, but the closing loop should always be short enough to hold on to the pin with sufficient force (to prevent a premature deployment because the pin just fell out). And since there is a minimum length the closing loop can be, there's a limit to the minimum pack size canopy you can fit safely.

I don't, but pure from running the numbers I would say M6 or M7. PD's canopy pack volume chart (http://www.performancedesigns.com/pack-volume-chart/) lists the PL-260 as being about equal to a Silhouette 230 or Navigator 220 in pack volume. Mirage's container sizing guide (https://www.miragesys.com/sizing-guide/) doesn't list the PL-260, but it lists the SI-230/NA-220 as being optimal for an M6 container, and soft (meaning relatively loose fit) for an M7 container.

The step from 0.9 to 1.2 WL is quite a significant one. I wouldn't be comfortable taking that step without at least some jumps on a 230sqft in between. Furthermore, is the PIM considered to be The Law, or merely a guideline of sorts. If it is The Law, your next canopy must be a 230. If it is a guideline, you better have some solid fact-based reasons to go beyond it. As already mentioned, everyone thinks themselves to be an above-average canopy pilot. But can you prove that you are, maybe through having followed several canopy control courses and demonstrating you can squeeze a lot more than usual out of your current canopy? Also, have a look at Brian Germain's canopy sizing chart. It has some great bits about the why of canopy sizes, and what should influence the decision (like altitude above MSL of your DZ). http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf In summary, with that kind of wingloading I would suggest a 230sqft. It's easier to downsize once the 230 becomes boring than it is to upsize once you're in hospital with broken legs.

My personal experience with a Silhouette 190 loaded at 1.16 is that its not at all a high performance canopy. In fact, I find it to be rather docile and easily able to get me out of a tight spot. I bought that canopy as my first own canopy, and coming from a mishmash of student rental canopies (solo 210, spectre 210 and 190, etc.) it didn't feel like a big step up. I feel the suggested wingloads and skill levels by PD are very conservative, maybe even to the point of recreating the Navigator-style of flying (I have yet to find the difference between a Silhouette and a Navigator other than the sizes and the name.) It's lightly tapered, but every opening I had with it was nice and sweet. Even six turns of twists was no problem, as the canopy just picked a heading and flew straight, giving me plenty of time to get the twists out. I can't really say much about the flare. I think it has plenty, but my only real reference in that respect is a Lightning...

Hah, we had a discussion a while back about what is the difference between a hobby and a sport. We settled on "if you can die while doing it, it's a sport. If you can't, it's a hobby". Loose standard, since stupid people die doing pretty much anything, but it was good enough for a saturday at 5 beers in the evening. Although I've never heard of anyone dying while collecting postage stamps...

I thought the whole goal of bumpers was to prevent the grommets from being damaged by the hard links. And in todays world of slinks, I doubt that's still a relevant consideration.

Total bridle length is listed on the linetrim chart, see http://www.performancedesigns.com/docs/linetrims/TC-120-230-Line-Trim-Chart.pdf. As for the loops, the top one (at the pilot chute end) needs to be large enough to fit the pilot chute through, and the bottom one (at the canopy end) needs to be large enough to fit the bridle through. I don't have exact measurements for the location of the knob that's supposed to keep the pin in place, but I would hazard a guess that anything that allows the bridle to put tension (during deployment) on the pin before the tension is on the part of the bridle between pin and canopy should be enough.

And what if I cannot find them secondhand here in Europe? All that I see on eBay are shipped from the US, and I very much dislike buying new when I am not able to test it beforehand, especially if there is a big shipping fee involved as well... What new camera with external support and a fairly narrow field of view would be a good alternative? Unfortunately, a hero 4 is a tad bit on the expensive side considering my budget.

My profile is filled in and up-to-date. With that out of the way, I'm not a videographer yet. I want to start doing it, and at the moment I only want to film CRW outside and occasional hop & pop exits. My freefall skills are laughable (my last jump with a delay longer than 5 seconds was half a year ago, second-to-last such jump was probably two years ago. I've made ~130 jumps in the past 12 months), so I'm not even going to try freefall video work. I already have a date with my chief instructor lined up to chat about cameras and safety and whatever's related, plus I've been talking to an experienced CRW videographer (and plan to talk to more such people). I have recently bought a helmet (cookie MXV) that includes a chincup, cutaway system, ringsight (which I'll remove until I have decided I need it for real) and some mounting spots already drilled. So before I can start, I just have to find a camera. Hence this thread. What video camera would you recommend for a starting videographer (budget ~€300) that should be good enough to film outside CRW formations with? Ideally, I want some form of external control and/or indication (hypeye or the like) to attach to it. So related to that, since Sony removed their AV/R protocol from newer versions of their cameras, what are my options for buying a new camcorder that includes the ability to attach indication leds to it? I've also been thinking that I might want a camera with a fairly narrow angle lens, to allow me to keep my distance from a formation (and its burble) while still having it nicely fill the field of view. Any experienced CRW videographers want to share their opinion/experience in this regard? Plus, of course, any more advice is very welcome. I've already trawled the forums about lots of different aspects, but couldn't find a recent thread about this specific subject.

Correct, it would take quite some time for the unit to cool that much. And my interpretation of the manual is that they guarantee correct operation of the unit down to -25°C. But not guaranteeing that it works below is very different from guaranteeing that it does not work below. There's usually a significant safety margin in the design of electrical components like these. You could put a small thermocouple sensor in there to record the temperature during the next jump. I'm not a rigger, so talk with someone who is about the best way to do so without messing up anything vital.

Just speculating, but it could be a battery-related error. The manual states: "The battery pack is designed to operate within a temperature range from -13°F to +158°F (-25°C to +70°C)." If the external temperature around your rig was -30°C for an hour, the internal temperature of the unit may have reached a temperature below -25°C.

I see very few canopies that don't suffer from that problem... =)