JohanW

The Dutch place used to be Blue Side Up on Texel. They were acquired by Paracentrum Texel next door, and next year might be different. No way to know until next year. No premanifesting! Sweden has Stockholm, www.skydive.se, where prices can be as low as €6 for high, €2½ for low. But they do not run full-time. I doubt you could make your 1000 jumps there. Johan. I am. I think.

Yep. Jump number odd hundred something, a 2way nightjump (my second and last nightjump). Planned to get out, gaze at all the pretty little lights and just enjoy the view, and we did just that

Woohoo! I foresee big formations and even bigger parties! Count me in! (OK, I'll admit it. That's my beer post with every sentence an exclamation mark. Bite me!) Johan. I am. I think.

The Aerodyne website lists the Tri as having a planform factor of 0.00. That means it's square. If they redesigned it, they didn't tell anybody who told me, and they didn't update the website. Johan. I am. I think.

OK, I was wrong. It is calculated against a standardised sea level. Which is not the same as ASL there and then, but isn't AGL either. It makes sense when you think about it (NO, I hadn't ). It's the only way you can compare readings from different places. But it's still not ASL! Johan. I am. I think.

There, fixed that for you. Johan. I am. I think.

After four years? Johan. I am. I think.

You can achieve something much like this with a loop of stretch velcro. I don't have a picture, and I can't take one, sorry. The loop doesn't go around your hand, it goes from one side of the altimeter to the other side around the palm of your hand (doubled), with the altimeter sitting on the back of your hand and the velcro going around your thumb. Dang, a picture would help. Johan. I am. I think.

If you want n=1 experiments, I have some for you. I regularly fly a Triathlon 120 at a 1.8 wingload. Why? It opens on heading, flies straight in twists (up to 5 so far ), does not really react to harness input and it keeps diving nicely in an induced speed landing. I bought it for wingsuit jumps and I now use it for RW, CRW and HPPA, because it works and I like the way it flies (and lands). It is overloaded. It doesn't really maintain its speed after a turn, and its stallspeed is higher. Also, its glide ratio isn't amazing. It doesn't drop out of the sky like a brick, but it won't get you home if the spot sucks. Other designs work better at this wingloading. The Tri 135 I used to fly had better slow flight, but just wouldn't dive or turn as fast. To me, the 120 is more fun to fly. The 175 flew like a dog, the 160 flew like a nice docile canopy, the 135 flew like a nice advanced canopy, the 120 (at that wingload) is not for everybody, but I like it. Yes, I land it standing up. I have also flown a PD 9Cell 150 @ 1.5 for wingsuiting. That one was seriously, don't try this at home overloaded. It didn't have a glide ratio, it had a ballistic index, speeding it up some for landing really helped the flare, and better have good timing on impact the flare. So why did I jump it anyway? Because it opened nice (it's completely square), and the price was right, i.e. free. And I got away with it. But that didn't make it a good idea. Comparing it to a differently sized square, 9-cell, non-ZP canopy is difficult, because the only one I've jumped was (almost) twice as big. A Manta. You know how those fly. Still, apart from the pack volume, I'd rather jump a Manta than a PD 150. The Manta flies. The Manta has a semblance of a flare. The last comparison I can give you is a Katana 120 vs. a 107. Wingload 1.8 vs. 2.0. The 107 was not overloaded in the sense the other examples are, but the general "performance" of the 120 felt better (with my weight and skill) than that of the 107. The 107 was quite a handful for me, so I just couldn't make it perform the way I could the 120. Twitchy, extremely sensitive to inputs. With all that, I felt I could not get higher speed, sharper turns, longer dives, further swoops or more flare out of the 107 than I could out of the 120. This may be more of the pilot being overloaded than the canopy, but it definitely felt better flying the 120 than the 107. So overloading your canopy design a little may be worth it. It might allow you to downsize a less aggressive design, at the cost of slow flight performance. This is not generally a good idea, but for a heavier wingsuiter (me), there are advantages to it. You do not want to overload the canopy to the point that is basically stops flying and starts dropping out of the sky, you do not want to downsize to the point of overloading the pilot, but if you can time and dose the flare, don't need the glide and don't care for swoop distance, you can fly a pig with a lot of thrust. And that's why I do it. And why you should not (yet). Do as I say, not as I do. But I hope I have answered your question, at least with respect to (my) overloading canopies. And I can always be used as a bad example. Johan. I am. I think.

You could do worse when winning the lottery. In fact, if I won the lottery, I might do just that. BUT, I don't play the lottery. Johan. I am. I think.

I have jumped a canopy for quite a while that had brown discolourations from rubber bands and/or grommets on both the canopy and the lines. It had been packed for years. It was fine, rigger OK'ed it and I have never noticed any problems. It doesn't seem to weaken the fabric or the lines. But it won't hurt canopies that won't be jumped for months to be stored unpacked, in a cloth or plastic bag, cool, dark and dry. Johan. I am. I think.

Yes. On sunset wingsuit or tracking jumps, I take an analog these days. If I remember. After which I have to update the logbook by hand. Johan. I am. I think.

That depends on their exit weight. Manufacturer recommendations vary with manuf. and size (see their websites); for 254 lbs, both Flight Concepts (ZP Manta) and PD (Navigator) state min 260 sq ft. This strikes me as an absolute minimum. Big is beautiful Johan. I am. I think.

This is the profile police! Maybe you could update your profile. Or maybe you only count wingsuit jumps. Or maybe you did AFF in a wingsuit. Or static line (now there's a scary thought I can imagine wanting an LQRS for that ) Johan. I am. I think.

Ah, I see. My humble apologies. I haven't read the FAQ. Well, lately. I assumed there would be something in it about tracking suits, seeing how the questions are being asked more and more frequently. A quick search did not even dig up many definite answers to your questions - then again, with respect to tracking suits there are not (yet?) many definite answers. There are opinions, but BM does not seem to make any specific recommendations, and PF says something about 'good judgement' and 50 jumps (which at least some experienced fliers feel is too few). (I looked as FlyYourBody but was a bit put off by it being in French.) Johan. I am. I think.

I see no shame in organizing invitational jumps, excluding people from some jumps. As long as I can be on 'em, of course Not to the exclusion of the flocks like this year's, but hey, you didn't take any stray 10 flight wonders on the Top Gun jump on Sunday, did you? I did some checking BTW; the larger flocks in Cochstedt were between 60 and 70 mph sustained downward speed. Forward speed, from memory, was good for those jumps (have to get me a GPS one of these days). So there is some room for even higher performance formation flying, but with 20 people in the formation, you desperately need some maneuvering margin; you couldn't get much better glide without people not even making it up to the base, into the formation. You'll be hard pressed to find 20 flyers with the skills to fly 50 mph down, 100 mph forward, docked. Very hard Patrick and Adrian might have such a flock going on somewhere .. sigh .. Johan. I am. I think.

Who does? Saskia has a hybrid Tri but doesn't jump it for wingsuits I don't think, Bassie of course has the freepacked Lightning, but this particular setup I haven't seen, not in Holland. Johan. I am. I think.

I jump a regular freefall Triathlon, and I can tell you from experience it flies straight in twists. Seeing how Aerodyne says you can freefall with both a regular and a hybrid Tri (but not with a comp model), you should be OK. I think the retractable bridle is a bit longer than a normal one even, so that's even better. You do want a bag and a full slider, of course. Know your gear, though. There are malfunctions possible on that stuff that are normally not a problem. Talk to an experienced CRWdog about it. And make sure you pull high enough to take FULL advantage of your gear - there's more to life than docking in freefall Johan. I am. I think.

I think we were doing nicely in Cochstedt 2006, and 2007 might be even better

Did you read the FAQ? It's the sticky right at the top of the forum you just posted in .. Johan. I am. I think.

I didn't get you wrong - my second one was a two-way where we just linked up and looked around and enjoyed the view - and it was beautiful. My landings weren't half bad either, though I would take a bigger canopy now than I normally jump. But I didn't see the point after that - the risk of collisions seems too big - and that is after a 1000 jumps

I have two, though not recently. They were fun, the darkness and the little lights everywhere were very pretty, and I won't be doing any more. You just don't see other people in the air well enough for my comfort level. Johan. I am. I think.

The performance most people get out of the acces, is quite simulair (or beyond) to what a Classic can and will do, and is definately a step beyond a 'mere' tracking-suit... We may have to redefine tracking suits and wingsuits one day. If you can reach your toggles without unzipping, for now, I'm calling it a tracking suit. This says nothing about suit performance, and even less about pilot performance. We could start an endless thread of its own about that, I'd guess. I did qualify my statement a little in the next sentence, which you did not quote. See you on Friday? I'll be at EHHV as long as the weather holds this week. Johan. I am. I think.

If you really, really can't demo canopies, and you know you like the Spectre, why not get one? People around you may like 9-cells, but *lots* of people all over the world like Spectres a *lot*, too. They can't all be wrong, right? (Sure they can. But they're not.) But if you really, really want to, I think you can demo some canopies. It may take time, it may take patience, maybe even a little money, but hey - take all winter. If all of London can't supply you with a demo, come to Holland - Teuge has everything you want. Or just get a cheap ticket to Empuria for Christmas and demo your ass off. You don't have to make tons of jumps on each canopy - my first and second canopy I basically decided after *one* jump on the respective model (and the first one was a Silhouette - skydiving's best kept secret - and BillVon knows that, firsthand. Bill, how could you forget?

The Access is a tracking suit, (more or less) just like the PF or BM products. For both tracking suits and wingsuits you do need some skills and general experience. 200 is just a number, it's what kind of skydiver you are. 200 may very well not be enough. If you want to fly wingsuits and go for the huge forward speeds, might as well skip the tracking suits and go straight to a beginner wingsuit (if and when ..) RW suits do a mean track, you don't need a tracking suit for that. (Tonto, before you get your panties in a wad .. I'm replying to the OP of course) Johan. I am. I think.