unkulunkulu

I heard stories about people landing it with the flaps closed A very uncomfortable situation to be in, I guess.

A friend of mine had this bungee break after opening when he tried to seat properly in the harness. He said for one second he thought that the harness broke and his was toast

I think the minor point you're missing is that this question is mostly directed to non-skydivers. I don't know about you, but my first jump was made because of thrill seeking, curiosity or something. It's only when I saw what is there, I started jumping for different reasons, of course.

Care to elaborate more on this?

I use the roller mount (with Go Pro 2) 1. Loving it, consistent camera angle and got rid of lines getting under the mount after landing (hopefully will prevent such things on opening). A little bit of a hassle with the hexagonal screw, seems non-standard size here in Russia, so I have to always have the screwdriver that came with the mount, cause otherwise I cannot find a matching one. 2. When the camera is detached, the visor easily comes past the mount base and doesn't contact it. I have a few scratches on the visor from back when I used the standard sticky mount, but now it's safe. I drilled the mount as written in the instruction, it doesn't allow the visor to fully open when the camera is attached and I do see it in my field of view, but this doesn't really bother me, quickly got used to that.

Soo, this is actually the dominating reason why trackers stay longer in the air, right? Not "lift"? Also, this must work for larger canopies (most canopies?) And in general, what reading do you suggest on canopy aerodynamics?

Another perspective: imagine a no-wind day and say you're trying to land on a moving vehicle. It's obvious that your descent rate will be the same no matter whether you're landing in the direction of this vehicle moving or in the opposite direction (let's assume that the vehicle is huge and you can easily land on it in those conditions). Now the only thing left to understand is that the ground is your vehicle moving in the opposite direction to the wind, because you know, all movement is relative and air moving wrt earth is the same as earth moving wrt to the air. Does this make sense?

I'm talking steady and uniform winds and steady condition. Means: no changes in wind speed wrt time and space, so equal winds at different altitudes. Also, after the transitional processes died out (i.e. becoming one with the airmass). Shears do affect the canopy, of course, haven't you been there? All this happens in the no wind situation as well and this is accounted for when we say that the "canopy airspeed is 20knots".

I wrote about that in post #15, first page. First, we have to understand basics (steady uniform wind), then move to gusts and shears.

The relativity principle is very strong and buried deeply in the laws of physics, you can rely on it very confidently. It's way more essential than aerodynamics, lift etc (if you can speak like that). So _my_ opinion is yes, this is simpler in a way, because we only need to know one principle, we don't have no know anything about aerodynamics, because it's dynamics, but the question is about kinematics, i.e. known velocities. What exactly do you mean that parachute forward speed is 20 knots BEFORE interaction? It is measured when air and the parachute are interacting. So everything is accounted for when we say that parachute's airspeed is 20 knots. Then, we add wind. But wind -- is just another frame of reference. And even the simplest Gallilean invariance tells us that the ground speed will be 0. It's that simple. You see, no one has discovered any changes to the laws of physics when moving to another (inertial) frame of reference. Disclaimer: I'm talking Newtonian physics here, relativistic effects and near-light speeds issue is omitted. In near-light speed scenarios the change in lift might become possible :)

Sure, why not. You see, speeds are kinematics, they're the result. If you know that windspeed is 20 knots and airspeed is 20 knots in the opposite direction, then you defined the kinematics, there's no way they don't sum up to zero :) Yes, but even if you fly downwind all the same effects are happening in the airmass. The only thing that changes is the direction of the windspeed vector that will be added to your airspeed to get your groundspeed.

why link to some shitty website with captcha instead of the direct vimeo link? http://vimeo.com/92502298

It can be whatever, if it satisfies the laws of physics, the rate of descent will not be affected by steady horizontal wind.

Ok, if the subject of the chest strap came up, this video should be posted here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU1mL3YLOIY some points regarding cutaway scenarios must be brought up.

Oh, man. Now I get what you're trying to say :) You mean, it will ascend like this ...*.......... ..*........... .*............ *............. versus ..............*...... .........*........ ....*........... *............. Well, sure :) So height versus horizontal distance travelled will increase. But the OP was asking about descent rate. Rate is per unit of time, not per unit of distance. Height/time. Height/distance -- glide, height/time - rate, ok? :)

So you're saying that when taking off into the a headwind, the aircraft climbs faster? (you see, I ask _climbs_, not takes off, we start timing once the wheels are in the air, not when the engine is warming up) So let's say we'll get to 300ft in less time? You really believe that?

Why so long posts. Will headwind affect the vertical speed of said aircraft a couple seconds after takeoff or not? yes or no?

It's called the relativity principle, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_invariance Basically: if the wind is uniform and steady, you can take an inertial frame of reference that moves with the wind. In this frame of reference the canopy flies the same as in no wind conditions. Wind (the wind you talk about when you say "downwind landing") is flow of air masses relative to the ground (every motion is relative). If there was no ground, there wouldn't be any wind to talk about. Your canopy is not bothered with ground, it flies in the air! That was uniform and steady. The changes in the wind (be that temporal or spatial) can provide some dynamic effects. To reason about those, you must first understand the basic stuff about steady winds and the relativity. All that matters to the canopy is the relative wind (wind relative to the canopy). For example if you fly into the wind and descent from stronger winds to an altitude where the wind drops momentarily, the canopy will surge, because it lost some speed relative to the wind => the lift is lost as well! If you catch a frontal gust, you will sense an increase in lift. But all those are dynamic effects. If you fly in a steady wind without giving any inputs to the canopy, the rate of descent will be the same no matter what your heading is. Downwind the same as into the wind.

Seriously, short? I mean, you not high right now? Oh, man, I cannot express how sorry I am for you Two years in and still wonder just how long will it last

You like discussing personalities, I see What does my personality have to do with the suggestion in question? Nothing.

what? I do look at the profiles, but the siglines are not there! That's what I'm talking about. Don't see where your negativity comes from, I just thought it would be a logical addition, saw it on every other forum basically.

I have user signatures turned off on all the forums I visit because I feel they create unnecessary noise. But sometimes people refer to their signatures and I miss the context this way. It would be helpful if the user's signature would be displayed somewhere in his profile so I can go there and see it (when I need it).

And we've got a recent fatality where it appeared that thing is what might have happened.

Cool, a good observation that you only need the terminal velocity to calculate everything, didn't think about that! However, there's one small addition: the starting velocity is not zero, it's horizontal and it does have some impact. You cannot just project everything on the vertical axis, because the drag is quadratic wrt to velocity and you'll accelerate to terminal a bit longer than what this equation implies.

http://makeithappen.com/spsj/altaware.html