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We're happy to announce that we've updated the Bonehead Composite gear page with plenty of new items. We've been somewhat out of date regarding some of the new helmets put out by Bonehead Composite, so there is lots to check out- some of which you may already be aware of or own. Though this gives you the chance to head over to some of the new items and rate them, should you already have experience with them. Here's some of the new items we have added: The ZEUS Helmet"Take a walk on the wildside... Zeus is a new way to look at video helmets. The ZEUS from BoneHead Composites Is designed to be a versatile camera helmet with its flat side and a space provided for a Cam EYE II. One of the first things you'll notice about the ZEUS is the Retro-Roman styling. ZEUS provides more frontal facial coverage and a brim to keep the sun out of your eyes without being aerodynamically obtrusive. The ZEUS comes standard with BH's ingenious Thermal-Fit liner, our new buckle chin-strap closure and the great finish quality that you have come to expect from BoneHead. This helmet does not require a chin-cup and there is not a cutaway system currently available" The FLAT-TOP NARROW Camera Helmet"The other choice of professional camera fliers from around the world… The FLAT-TOP NARROW from Bonehead composites is the trimmed version of our almost famous FLAT-TOP PRO. The FLAT-TOP NARROW is a great all-around camera helmet for any discipline in skydiving. RW, freefly, tandem video or competition freestyle can be captured with your FLAT-TOP NARROW. This camera helmet is a rear-entry system to give the user better camera stability without sacrificing comfort. This NARROW version of the FLAT-TOP PRO has been made to allow the camera flyer less surface mounting availability and air drag but keeps the stability of the rear-entry configuration. The FLAT-TOP NARROW has plenty of space inside to run wiring, camera buttons, etc. to keep as much of the snagable surfaces to a minimum. You have the choice of where you would like a ring sight post placed. The FLAT-TOP NARROW comes standard with BH's ingenious Thermal-Fit liner, still camera adjustable platform, NEW cutaway system, and "Riser Slap" release button protector." Hells Halo Camera Helmet"Hell's Halo is Boneheads latest and greatest camera helmet. There are 3 mounting surfaces for all your camera mounting needs. What makes this helmet stand out is an internal "halo" band that is adjustable using the ratchet clip on the back for last minute size adjustment. The helmet comes in two shell sizes along with our thermo-fit foam and an adjustable chin strap. If you still feel you need a chin cup, that accessory is also available. You can choose from our regular chin cup or our new concealed chin cup which hides the ladder straps!" The MAMBA Helmet"Welcome to BoneHead's latest addition to Full-Face Flip-Up Helmets. The MAMBA from Bonehead Composites is a great choice for RW jumpers with its full face security and the ability to flip open the lens quickly and easily without sacrificing keeping closed in freefall. The new lens closing mechanism requires the jumper to squeeze the lens together to allow the closing pin to be released from it's locking position at the forehead area in order not to make a push-in button on the chin susceptible to knock and unwanted lens openings during the most intense skydives. The MAMBA features dual internal audible pockets on the inside of the helmet, great peripheral vision, a heavy neoprene neck liner to help with fogging lenses and noise, a FASTEX chin strap closure with padded strap, front Chin-Dam wind deflector to keep unwanted wind flow out of the inside of the helmet and a shape that allows full head movement and the ability to see and locate emergency handles. The MAMBA comes standard with BH's ingenious Thermal-Fit liner, chin-strap closure and also comes with the lens coated with anti-fog direct from the factory." The ALL-SPORT Helmet"Refined Sleek Shape For All Types of Skydiving. The ALL-SPORT helmet from Bonehead Composites is now available from your favorite retailer! Customers all over the world wanted a helmet that was simple, sleek and of course had the quality and design that has made BoneHead Composites famous in the skydiving world.. and we delivered! The ALL-SPORT features a very simple shell design that is flatter on the left and the right so that camera mounts can be added easier. We took all the best attributes of the Guner and Mindwarp and combined them to make the ALL-SPORT. Internal audible pockets have been integrated into the helmet so that there is no need to build out the sides of the shell to accommodate audibles and still keep the interior comfortable. The ALL-SPORT comes standard with BH's ingenious Thermal-Fit liner, neoprene padded leather FASTEX chin-strap closure. " These are just 5 of the new 10 helmet and helmet items added today. Head over to the Bonehead Composite gear page to see the rest.

A mid-summer skydiving celebration honoring the "first man in space" is the centerpiece for one of the biggest fundraising events yet planned for the National Skydiving Museum. Fifty years ago, Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger exited at 102,800 feet from a helium balloon over New Mexico, reaching a speed of 614 mph during a four-and-a-half minute free fall. The record still stands today, although there have been several attempts to better it. The "National Skydiving Museum Weekend Honoring Joe Kittinger" will be held in DeLand, Florida the weekend of August 13-15. Kittinger’s jump was on August 16, 1960. Kittinger, who retired as a colonel and is now 81, plans to attend, as well as other skydiving luminaries. There will also be several activities during the weekend benefiting the Boy Scouts of America, another cause Kittinger supports, to commemorate their 100th Anniversary. Joe Kittinger outside the gondola from which he took his historical jump.The Saturday evening dinner will be devoted to honoring the initial class of inductees into the National Skydiving Museum Hall of Fame. A special committee carefully selected eleven honorees, culled from a list of skydivers who made major lifelong contributions in equipment design, free fall techniques, and those who excelled in national and international competitions. This fundraiser is part of the National Skydiving Museum’s $5 million capital program that will raise the necessary funds to build the museum in Fredericksburg, VA. (story contributed by Doug Garr) Show your support and join us! Skydiving Activities and Exhibitions... Here are just a few of the events that will honor Joe Kittinger and celebrate 50+ years of skydiving history including giving special recognition to other pioneers for their contributions to our sport. (schedule subject to change) Jumping for Joe 50-Way Formation Skydiving Exhibition This 50-way formation with some of the best skydivers in the country will celebrate and symbolize 50 years since Joe Kittinger’s record breaking jump. Canopies opening in an almost simultaneous rhythm will have the audience cheering until the last skydiver lands. Swooping Exhibition Swooping truly shows how far parachute equipment has come over the years. Swooping is gliding a high performance parachute across the ground or water for long distances, generally a slalom type course, to show the skill of the canopy pilot. The exhibition will have some of the top swooping demo jumpers in both individual and team exhibitions. Accuracy Competition Accuracy goes way back in our history but didn’t get the recognition it deserved until the Sixth World Parachuting Championships held for the first time in the U.S. at Orange, MA. Accuracy canopies in those days were modified military surplus equipment with very little steerability. Today, high performance accuracy canopies and the skill of jumpers make for exciting and competitive accuracy contests. Skydiving Demonstrations Precision skydiving demos the world famous Army Parachute Team (Golden Knights) and the Air Force Academy Parachute Team. Wingsuit Flying Exhibition Grand finale and tribute to Joe Kittinger wingsuit flying truly exhibits the dream of human flight. Ten to 15 of the premier wingsuit flyers in the world will fly formations across the sky with smoke to add to the effect of this spectacular jump. Source - http://www.skydivingmuseum.org/

When I started skydiving round parachutes were the only parachutes available. The landing under a round canopy had a high straight down component. Although Para Commanders had a noticeable forward speed under no wind conditions, landing in winds over 10 mph were again straight down. Due to straight down landings most injuries were to the ankles because one tended to sit down on the ankles during a less than perfect timing of the landing techniques required by round parachutes. Use of the Parachute Landing Fall (PLF) greatly reduced the extent and severity of landing injuries. Virtually all successful skydivers were experts at PLFs because not every landing was executed perfectly, no matter how many jumps one had, and sooner or later one had to land a round reserve. In the classroom it required a block of at least two hours to teach landing the parachute because so much of the time was devoted to teaching an actual PLF. The complete PLF technique is not a natural, readily apparent procedure. During the actual jump about half of the students would perform a PLF and the other half wouldn’t no matter how much time and practice was spent on PLFs. The injury rate was quite high. About 1 in 20 first jump students would suffer some type of ankle injury. With the advent of square parachutes, and particularly with the advent of placing students under square parachutes, the landing injuries changed. Each experienced person reading this article will realize that the injuries from landings that we see today are not limited to ankles. This is because the parachute is moving the jumper across the ground in almost all circumstances. However, there are cases were a person would be descending straight down even today. A high or rapid or deep flare by a student would be one example. In this case the PLF position for landing would definitely influence the ability of the student to walk away from their mistake. In my opinion there are instances when use of a PLF for a botched landing is NOT beneficial to the jumper. A downwind landing is such an instance. The PLF introduces a roll and a square parachute introduces a large amount of speed. For the sake of this example, assume the wind is blowing at ten mph. The jumper has made a mistake and is landing downwind. He/she has the presence of mind to have the toggles at his/her ribs (half flight) for an air speed of ten mph and a ground speed of 20 mph. Please bear with me for the easy math. 20 mph = 20 mph X 5280 ft/hr = 105,600 ft/hr 105,600 ft/hr = 105,600 ft/hr divided by 60 minutes/hour = 1,760 ft/min 1,760 ft/min = 1,760 ft/min divided by 60 sec/min = 29.33 ft/second At 20 mph ground speed a person is moving 29.33 ft per second across the ground. At half flight the downward speed (3 to 5 mph) would be somewhere between 4.4 ft/sec and 7.33 ft/sec. I believe that in this example the best outcome for the jumper would be to try to absorb as much of the initial downward velocity as possible with their legs (knees bent and pressed tightly together) and then NOT ATTEMPT A PLF. The danger inherent to a high speed roll/tumble is a direct result of the laws of physics. An example using a cylinder will illustrate the principle. I am 52 inches around the shoulders so let’s talk about a perfectly round cylinder, 52 inches in circumference, moving in the air just above the ground and oriented perpendicular to the line of flight. At touchdown the cylinder is going to pick up a rotational (angular) velocity based upon the speed across the ground (linear velocity) divided by the circumference of the cylinder. Excluding friction, which will slow the cylinder by scraping, the cylinder will initially roll across the ground at 29.33 ft/sec divided by 52” (circumference) per rotation. 52 inches divided by 12 inches per foot = 4.33 feet (circumference) 29.33 ft/sec divided by 4.33 ft / rotation = 6.77 ROTATIONS PER SECOND!!! If this seems quite a lot, it is. However, this is why occupants of a rolling vehicle are thrown so far from the vehicle in a rollover car accident (buckle up?). In the rollover case the rotational speed (angular velocity) of the vehicle rolling is translated to the linear velocity of the thrown body. The thrown objects, including unbuckled occupants, are thrown hundreds of feet. Returning to the skydiver, I am not a perfect cylinder. I am more of an imperfect ellipse (oval) seen from above. This is not to my benefit in a rolling landing as the ground (not perfectly smooth) will have a tendency to turn me into a round object by attempting to break off my protrusions (shoulders, arms, knees, etc.) This is complicated by the fact that the PLF was developed using round parachutes which did not have flare capability. As such the arms in a round canopy PLF were above the head, elbows bent and cushioning the head from the sides. This positioning essentially extends the arms along the long axis of the cylinder. With a square parachute our hands are down at our sides (hopefully) controlling the flare. During the rotation of a PLF, and particularly a rotation of 6.77 rpm, the hands and arms are thus exposed to quite a bit of trauma due to impact with the ground, more than once, as the roll proceeds. What one hopes for is the best case scenario where the jumper is rolling from shoulder to shoulder across the ground. The worst case scenario would be tumbling head to toe across the ground. Unless one is a trained gymnast this would expose the head and neck to several impacts with the ground. A real life roll/tumble would probably fall somewhere between these two extremes. At a rotational speed of 6.77 rpm a PLF would risk head and neck injury. At a rotational speed of 6.77 rpm, even a perfect PLF has great risk to shoulders, arms, hips and legs. There is a solution to this downwind landing possibility. It is easy to train and easily understood by newcomers and experienced skydivers alike. The simplest way to prepare for as many landing scenarios as possible is to assume the PLF position, fly the parachute and slide on one hip in the event of a forward motion, high speed landing. I teach our students to envision holding a dollar bill between their knees and squeezing a quarter between their glutes (“feet and knees, dollar and a quarter”). Actually doing so puts one into the PLF position. When the person discovers a downwind mistake has been made, he/she should assume this PLF position. At touch down the jumper should try to absorb as much as possible of the downward impact with their feet but lean back in the harness. Under no circumstances should the person allow themselves to be thrown head first. The jumper wants to stay on their feet as long as possible, tending to sitting down. As the person sits down he/she wants to transition (during the squat) onto a hip. One does not want to impact directly onto the butt. The spine will tolerate torsion (bending) but very little compression. Sitting down directly onto the butt could cause spinal problems on its own (disks and vertebrae). Absorbing the actual butt touchdown with the hip will allow the spine to flex. Hitting a rock with the tailbone while sliding across the ground could be quite painful as a likely result is a cracked tailbone. Hitting a rock with the hip while sliding across the ground might possibly bruise the hip, an easier recovery than any spinal injury. The jumper should perform a baseball slide into second base ensuring that they remain sliding feet first. The person will get dirty. Done properly, one may see damage to the leg strap cover on the hip, but a dirty/torn jumpsuit and/or a dirty/scraped hip cover will be all that one sees. During a proper landing (into the wind) and under reasonable conditions, if a person is in a PLF position (feet and knees, dollar and a quarter) accompanied by a flare anywhere near half–flight, the parachute will lay the student down in the first half of a PLF. This is all that is necessary with a properly sized square canopy. The “lay down” is a result of the fact that most students are not true into the wind at touchdown and thus the square parachute almost always imparts some degree of forward AND sideward motion to the student. The occurrence of downwind landings is relatively rare. However, bear in mind that most of these are done by a jumper off student status (off radio assistance). This person has received very little if any formal instruction since the first solo landing class. So the technique must be simple to learn, retain and execute months after the initial training. Since I began teaching this concept, decades ago, I have not had a single jumper injury related to downwind landings when my advice was put into practice. My motivation for writing this article comes from the words that I hear when traveling to other drop zones and the words that I read in articles such as “Incident Reports”, “…you should have done a PLF”. This is not always the case, particularly with today’s parachutes. A PLF is no longer a panacea for all conditions. I also want to point out that, in my opinion, the instructor showing a first jump student a PLF accomplishes nothing at all. Having each student perform a PLF on the ground is no better. For a person to learn a PLF requires repetitions by the student, MANY repetitions, from an elevated platform. A person or publication telling anyone that he/she should have done a PLF, which the person has never actually learned, is not accomplishing what the student needed and the knowledge that the publication is trying to disseminate.

Although many long time jumpers remember the Mirage harness/container system from the early 1980's, the current system has been entirely designed from the ground up to represent the state-of-the-art in harness / container design. Our latest version truly represents all we know about rig design, and all that a select group of highly experienced staffers and associates have to say about making the safest, most functional and comfortable rig ever offered. We did this so you can spend your skydiving time having fun, not worrying if your equipment is going to perform. When you exit, you're putting a lot of faith in your gear. We take that very seriously.

Yes, I know who you're talking about. It is these crazy guys, who jump out of perfectly good aircraft with the bunch of ropes and fabric in their backpack. The only reason why they are allowed to do this is the fact that the pilot wants to get rid of them. Badly. Having a cabin full of freaks which are laughing, kicking out the jokes only they can understand and giving each other high five from time to time... you know, I can understand the pilot. Some of these guys are so untolerable so the pilot makes them to get out in the middle of the way up (sometimes at 3,500 ft). The crazy bastards call this "hop and pop". Aha. Hop'n'pop. You know. Hop! And pilot turns the red lights. I believe this is because skydivers almost never listen to the pilot so he has to give them a visual cue. Most of them are still allowed to drive a car so the red light still rings the bell. Surprisingly, this bell tells them "the fun is about to begin"! Green light follows. Pop! The guy is popped from the plane. I suspect, sometimes, this happens not without a good kick to the ass from the humble bros and sisters. Why would they call it "pop" otherwise??? Then, there is always somebody who is curious if the pushed out guy got his lesson - you can always see a few heads out of the plane looking at the guy tumbling in the air. No, they had not been such freaks from the very beginning. In the beginning the innocent guys and girls were lured into the small room full of weird stuff: worn out harness containers hanging on the ceiling looking like just taken from a dead body, creepy plane cabin imitation, tables on the wheels with soft tops looking very... very... suspicious. The whole place looks like a mideval torture chamber. Then, during several hours they are asked to do a lot of strange things: hang in the harness and partially disconnect it from the hanging ropes, falling down like been hanged, assume strange poses on the soft table, fall and roll on the floor while other yelling "PLF, PLF!!!", memorize a lot of motions which doesn't make much sense for any decent person who got used mostly to the movement of glass with beer to the mouths. I think, "PLF" must be an abbreviation for Practice Leaning to the Floor. But why jump from the small stair for that??? All this is sometimes interrupted with the videos showing multiple ways how the parachute doesn't work. And such videos for some strange reason are supposed to be encouraging. No way! After a few hours, when the instructor ensured the guy is driven crazy enough already, they get with the student on the plane going up. While it is the beginning, no normal person is going to jump out of plane, but these bastards got a trick for it: one of them holds the poor guy on one side, another - on the other side and then they suggest "just to look at the prop". Yeah, they are trained well so it is easy to push the relaxed guy into the air. During the freefall their favorite joke is to tease the guy in the middle with quite inappropriate gestures. The most popular is the gesture which the Rome Ceasers showed "death to him" to the gladiators at the arena: big thumb down. Some other gesture is the way people in the Europe say "you're an ugly goat" - two fingers apart. When the student screams and kicks legs, they just tip the big thinger to the palm showing "shut up". And when they sick and tied of the guy, they point to him, which will mean "fuck off, pull now so we cannot see your ugly face any more around". Do you know why they give the guy the radio on the first jumps? They always say "it's a one way radio" but actually they enjoy listening to the screams of the student. It is obvious that after such a treatment the guy goes nuts completely and gets an inevitable desire to repeat. However, some of them reasonably try to get rid of instructors on the jump (who wants these freaks around, really???). The most popular ways are: don't give an exit count or exit in the middle of count, tumble like a bitch on the exit, hoping that the instructors will be lost, assuming the unusual positions in the freefall hoping the guys aside will not be able to hold on. Apparently, this almost never works – in the most successful cases the best achieved result could be the one instructor lost only. With the time, guy's craziness goes deeply and it is only one instructor needed to make him out of plane. To check that the process of madness goes well, instructor requires the guy to do weird things on the jump: put the head completely out of plane and look for aircrafts, roll and rotate while falling, try to hit the small piece of land while landing. The advancing on that way is almost completed when the guy decides to jump out of plane alone. However, after a few jumps alone almost all of them got a bit better and prefer to get out with a coach, trying to hang on him during the freefall. Obviously, it is safer to hang on something firm while in the air! They call it "docking". The progressing in that is recorded in the special (I believe, medical) sheet (white or yellow) and then submitted to the organization which tries to keep account of the sick bastards. The organization is named USPA which is apparently the abbreviation for US Psychiatric Advisory. In 25 jumps and when all the symptoms are listed, USPA classifies the guy and assign him a first "A" number in the sad history of sickness. The progressing classifications are: A - Almost Hopeless B - Better Be Avoided C - Completely Crazy D - Dreadfully Mad It took time for USPA to figure out exact symptoms of progressing from one category to another. However the common anomalies were noted and listed (like jumping into the water, jumping in the middle of the night etc.) It is noticed that many guys prefer to exit from aircraft not alone (some prefer to have as many jumpers as possible surrounding them). And this is a natural fear - and it is not a rare to see multiple jumpers hanging on each other in the sky. Sometimes, by chance, their formation looks even nice. However, within a minute they realize that hanging on the other guys don't help them from getting close to the earth and they break off and fly do the different directions, obviously scared. I personally saw 30 such guys at once, flying from each other as fast as they could. Some of them try to pretend nothing unusual happens and flying sitting - like they were at home on a sofa. Some prefer to have some roof over the head and flying head down. Anyway, all of them soon realize that something goes wrong. "Most probably", they think, "it is that heavy backpack drags me down to earth" and the obvious decision is to get rid of it. For some unknown reason all of them start with ripcord or BOC pilot chute... In a few seconds the parachute opens and now they have the desire not to get down to earth somehow satisfied. Poor bastards! They could have simply stayed in the plane instead! Any reasonable man can confirm that having as big umbrella as possible above you is safer under the open sky.Who know, what can fall from it on your head. Especially, when you are flying. So, obviously, the most experienced skydivers land with two parachutes over them. They call their parachute "canopy". "Canopy" must have came from Russian “konoplya” and in Russian it means "cannabis" - something that gets you high, which obviously is associated both with the parachute and the whole process itself. "Get high naturally!" - they say, - "Skydive!” Hmm... I think skydiving should be declared as a controlled substance too. Note, while under canopy these guys are very dangerous and do not hesitate to use their awful knives (designed in the best traditions of Jack the Ripper) if somebody else decided to join them. Even if another guy just wanted to chill out together! The separate branch of the symptoms is the animalizing. Some of these guys (and their number is progressing with the years) decide that they are not humans but the... birds. Yes, birds!!! I suspect birds flu has something to deal with it. They take on the bird-like costumes. Sure thing, somebody is making money on this heavy mania, selling the bird suites to them. Then they jump out of plane. Another proof of the animal-like anomaly is then they get and fly together. They call this "flocking" - what else needs to be said! Sure think, not all of them so unreasonable. There are some guys who recognize their “mental change” and do the best to make it safe. The best of them do not get on the plane to jump on awfully high altitude with heavy backpack stuffed with two parachutes. They know that it is safe to jump from low, unmoving object. They know that two canopies introduce exhaustingly big number of options: which to pull? So they jump from very reliable, unmoving, low bridges, buildings and cliffs. With one canopy only. These ones are obviously less crazy and the other skydivers call them BASE jumpers - they are nuts too, but only basically nuts. Yeah, and, of cause there are some guys who enjoys to see the normal people dropped from the plane. These are very smart and persuade the good citizens to do this, proving on the ground that there is nothing scary in that. "You even don't have to wear this heavy ugly backpack. I can do it for you. But put this harness on so my boss would not suspect anything." While in the plane, they sit behind the poor guy and, unexpectedly, grab his harness and tie up to his one. He get close... very close... to the guy or the girl. And I personally saw how they pushed the poor one to the aircraft exit in front of them, telling them: just cross your hands on your chest, there is nothing else you can do now... Yes, I was the one of the guys dropped out of plane that way. But this... hmm... close relationship doesn't last long - in 6-7 minutes they are on the ground, and giggling, seeing as normal people runs from them, screaming on their way. "They are excited!" they say. Yeah, right! If the guy doesn't run away - here we go, he is another candidate for AFF (see what I wrote about it before). Oh, yeah, AFF is obviously for Awfully Freaked Fella - the student. So, when you are going to marry a skydiver, don't even hope that he or she is going to be around you all the time. Sky and jumping will be the on the top of his/her list of priorities. And if you want to get to that list not far after sky, jumping, boogie, bonefire, beer, new container, try a wingsuit, new reserve, freeflying, freeflying jumpsuit, wind tunnel, night jump, audible alti, jump from balloon, big ways, CRW, hook turns, swooping, go to Florida to jump in winter, spend vacation on drop zone in New Zealand, high-altitude jumps, sleep sometimes, try weight, try that cool new canopy on boggie, jump from the cliff in grand canyon, dogs... then you have to become a skydiver too! Wanna have him or her around more often? It is simple. Do RW with them! Blue skies!