crazydiver 0 #26 January 4, 2005 QuoteSorry this is annoying me... One of the best skills in skydiving is filtering. The great thing about our sport is that people are always ready to give you help and advice. Although always well intentioned, the quality of the advice ranges from downright wrong and dangerous up! After a while one learns to filter the advice, to sift through it and find out what works and is good for you. On the Internet (all you have to go by is someones profile) this is harder. Students and novice jumpers usually jump student and novice equipment + have student and novice abilities. Maybe it's good for someone with similar experience to say “well I tried that and nearly died, it wasn't as easy as they told me!” I would never discount any advice given to me by a student or a novice – after all their formal training and exam was recent. Mine was nearly five years ago. Aside from my faulty memory that's five years of improvement and extra knowledge gathered along the way. Obviously one has to figure out what you'd you do in scenario x on your equipment y in conditions z. As they say, the dump questions are the one's you don't ask or discuss. I thank everyone for making me think about this question. I've been told that landing on rear risers can range from “riding a bicycle on ice” to a walk in the park depending on the canopy, conditions and ability of the person. Often people say that “using your reserve if your unsure is the least risky option.” So if your not sure you can land you canopy safely then using the reserve maybe the better option. You'd feel pretty stupid with a broken leg and a perfect reserve unused and still on your back! Play around _up high_ with your canopy and do some personal research - obviously remembering to watch for other traffic! I landed my team mates safire2 canopy (my first jump on it) with a stuck toogle in high winds - nice landing, no worries. In retrospect, I think the better (less risky) decision would have been to chop as it was my first jump on it! blues This is definetly true. Its all up to personal interpretation and selection. Cheers, Travis Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Travman 6 #27 January 5, 2005 QuoteOne of the best skills in skydiving is filtering. The great thing about our sport is that people are always ready to give you help and advice. Although always well intentioned, the quality of the advice ranges from downright wrong and dangerous up! After a while one learns to filter the advice, to sift through it and find out what works and is good for you. Very true. I've just recently completed my AFF. I found everyone I asked a question to was always very happy to help, but sometimes they would completly contradict what the last person said. So you need to learn to determine what will work for you. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tbrown 26 #28 January 6, 2005 I was told that if you have a steerable canopy you should keep it and use the rear risers to control it, b/c if you have something above your head don't take a chance on the reserve which might not work. It seems to me that I would be taking a chance by relying on the reserve, but I would be taking a bigger chance of injury by waiting to PLF on a "wounded" canopy. Aside from the issue of whether or not to keep a marginal canopy, there seems to be an added issue of "reserve paranoia" popping up in this and other recent threads. It's been pointed out, correctly, that there's nothing magical about a reserve. There's no Fairy Godmother standing by to guarantee your reserve opens. But some other facts need to be pointed out. First, your reserve is a ram air canopy and ram airs basically want to open. Second, unlike your main, your reserve has been tested against some strict standards to be approved for use as an emergency parachute. For instance, it must open within 3 seconds, even with three line twists intentionally packed up against the canopy. Third, your reserve is inspected and packed every 120 days by a licensed rigger, who signs and seals the packjob with their name, number, and reputation. Cutting away a canopy is not a fun experience, at least not until the reserve opens (that brightens your outlook considerably). A malfunction is a frightening and disorienting experience. You're suddenly not having fun anymore. A slow or marginal canopy malfunction furhter injects a lot of "what if" questions into the mix. But you have to keep in mind that a ram air is a wing. A wing has to fly, even the big canopies are too small to lower you to the ground the way a round would. All the while you hesitate, worry and dither, you're losing altitude and probably faster than you think. Before you know it you're too low for proper procedures. And then the ground comes up. Cutaways are a fact of life in our sport. If you're going to take up skydiving, you will more than likely have to cutaway sometime. A few of us are lucky enough to have gone thousands of jumps between, or even without cutaways. But all of us have to be ready to chop it every single time we jump. We just have to be able to accept that less than pleasant fact, that and the fact that we take a highly calculated risk on our lives with every jump. That's our sport. If you don't like the way your main looks by your hard deck, then lose it. The reserve has a better chance of working than an "iffy" looking main. Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity ! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
