Spizzzarko

...Yawn... When is this pissing contest between you people going to end? This is getting to be rediculous. To all, if you want information but can wait for a good answer then go to canopypiloting .com. It may take a while to get an answer but it will not have the blatant arguing over and over.

The dacron loop holding the ring on is non load bearing so there realy is no preasure on the teflon cable. Having really hard cable will interfere with proper packing and allow the slider to move away from the slider stops resulting in a harder opening. (slider rebound)

gang spanking One word.... Mooth

"quit telling everyone all the shit I taught you" The student has become the master, young grasshopper!

It is a full time job being this beautiful. It's a wonder I have any time to jump at all!

I wish the Rigging Innovations folks were more accessible by phone. Bad enough you have to wait nearly 5 months to get the container. Dude, You should have no problems talking to Sandy at RI. I have found the paragear chart to be groosly inaccurate so your best bet is to call RI. I am surprised tohear that you are having problems getting ahold of them at RI. They do work 4 days a week there so you may be calling on a Monday or Friday and they may be closed. Good luck.

I really don't rig much for other people than myself, but my prices vary greatly. It just depends on how good of a friend you are and what my mood is. I have done AIR's for free, and have charged up to $60 in Colorado. If you need it by a certain time and there is no apparant reason as to why you need it unless you just want to sky jump this weekend and you give me the rig on Friday night I will usually turn you down or charge you out the ass. I have had people willing to pay. I have also had people stiff me on the save bottle too. That makes me angry! Then I no longer rig for them.

Advanced Flying Techniques: Back to the Basics. There has been quite a bit of discussion here online about how one should do this or that with their canopy to achieve the perfect swoop. I honestly do not think that there is only one answer, but I strongly feel that a good foundation of proper techniques will allow you to build your skills faster than just skipping ahead to a smaller faster canopy. What I have written is aimed at the canopy pilot who wants to start swooping, but there are good ideas for everyone who lands a parachute in this article. Please do not go out and fly yourself into the earth after reading my thoughts on landing, as the ultimate responsibility relies squarely on your shoulders to not hurt yourself or others. Many people here online will tell you to read Brian Germain's book. I think it is a good book, but I do not think that just reading his book will automatically make you a better canopy pilot. Among the many good things Brian expresses in his book is the (now pay attention) ACTIVE PILOTING of your canopy. If you are coming out of your dive 20' high then you are not actively flying your canopy, conversely you are letting the canopy go where it wants to go. If you do that then your canopy ultimately will put you into a place where you do not want to be. There are two ways to fly your canopy, proactively, and reactively. The proactive method of flying a canopy starts before you exit the aircraft. You have to look down before exiting and ask yourself "Am I further from the DZ than I want to be?" If so then you may want to pull a little higher. In addition, you need to evaluate how many people are on the load with you and what their habits are. In this evaluation, you need to consider when the bulk of the people will be clogging up the traffic pattern and adjust your dive accordingly. At this stage in the game, you really need to back off from doing turns greater than a 90 with traffic about. You need to be able to focus all of your concentration on flying through your turn instead of having to look around during your turn to watch for other traffic. Eventually you will become less task saturated in your turn and you will be able to see more of what is going on around you. This will come with time and experience. On the other hand, the reactive method of flying a canopy is to go out and do everything as you normally do, to not pay attention to the changing environment around you, and to deal with every situation as it develops. You can do this if you want but you will be so involved in dealing with each little development that you will never be able to be as consistent as you could be if you planned your flight. I'm not saying that you need to be a totally proactive flyer and throw all of your reactivity out the window, but you need to find a way to incorporate much more proactivity than reactivity into your flight plan (YES!!! you really need to start dirt diving your canopy flight). This harmony between being proactive and reactive is probably the most important thing that you need to develop because everything you do in swooping builds upon this concept. The next thing you need to focus on is consistency. Consistency will allow you to remove as many variables from the situation as possible (yes your second grade teacher Mrs. Pote was correct when she said that every thing you do in life would involve math!). Variables in the swooping equation fall under two categories, ones you can control and ones you cannot control. The ones you have control over can possibly be eliminated. This is PROACTIVE flying. The ones you cannot control require REACTIVE flying. Do you see why you need to be able to fly in both modes and how it all builds on those two concepts? Some examples of controllable variables include when you enter the traffic pattern and where you enter the traffic pattern. When you enter, the traffic pattern will dictate how much traffic you have to deal with. Where you enter the traffic pattern will also dictate how much traffic you have to deal with. Remember traffic is not your friend when you are learning to swoop. Things you cannot control are usually environmental factors such as wind and density altitude. You will have to be proactive and reactive to deal with both of these factors because they change on every jump. You can plan for them, but do not get so entrenched into a plan that you cannot adapt to the changing external environment. Another important part of being consistent is your traffic pattern. You need to start flying the same pattern on every jump. We teach you to fly a pattern in AFF, but many people blow it off because they see the more experienced jumpers flying erratic patterns. I feel that the pattern is probably one of the most underutilized tools to getting a good swoop. If you enter each leg of your pattern at the same altitude every time, then you are removing variables to your swoop and then you can concentrate more on your turn. Being consistent also, telegraphs to people over time that you will do pretty much the same thing every time and then other jumpers can learn to stay out of your way. Exhibiting a good example helps you out and encourages lower experienced jumpers to fly in a safer more predictable manner. When this happens, the traffic pattern becomes safer for everyone involved. In addition to flying your pattern, you need to have a good understanding of the dynamics of your turn to final. In every turn, three variables will combine to give you the outcome of your turn. These are altitude, turn rate, and amount of turn. Each of these variables correlate with each other and changing one will affect the other two. An example of this would be arriving at your turn initiation point lower than you want to. To alleviate this you can either increase your turn rate, or decrease the turn amount, or a combination of the two. If you are consistent in your pattern then you should be arriving at your turn initiation point at the same altitude on each jump. Now the only uncontrollable variables are wind and density altitude. You can eliminate the wind variable by rotating your pattern so that you will end up flying into the wind for landing (this is common at most drop zones...). A good idea would be to scope out some landmarks on your landing area that you can use for the possible directions of your pattern. Therefore, with density altitude being the only variable, you can now REACTIVELY fly to overcome this variable by increasing or your turn rate, or decreasing the amount of turn that you do. Do you see how every choice you make effects another outcome later in your swoop? With this talk about increasing your turn rate and decreasing the amount of turn, you need to keep one thing in mind at all times. DO NOT FLY INTO THE EARTH AT A HIGH RATE OF SPEED. This will probably kill you. Even though it is a simple concept, it is probably the most important concept out there. You owe it to your friends and family to keep this concept fresh in your mind. With experience, you will gain the knowledge of when to bail out of a turn and what you can and cannot get away with when landing. We all learn more and more of this on every jump. It is not something we are born with, but something we need to develop over time. The one thing we are born with is instinct, and if you feel that you are getting into the corner then you very well might be, so take corrective actions to fix the situation immediately by getting your wing level and flaring as needed. In the plane out rear risers or toggles are the two ways to control our canopies. I would suggest that you forget about using your rears for right now. Using the rear risers adds another dimension of complexity to swooping that you do not need at this time. For example, rear risers are more efficient if used properly, but they will cause your canopy to stall at a higher airspeed. If you use them to dig yourself out of the corner then you can find your self in the stalled configuration at a very high airspeed and violating that important concept that I elaborated upon earlier. I have seen people flying rears much too early in there progression and learning very bad habits that will short them on distance later on down the road. Let us go a little more in depth about flaring your canopy. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad advice out there in regards to flaring. I have heard things like “when you get scarred jam on them!” or “use a two staged flare”. I think when people are talking about staged flares they are just passing on bad information! Think of it this way. In its simplistic form, there are three areas to a landing. 1. Approach 2. Plane out 3. Stopping To transition from your approach to plane out, you need to give input to the canopy whether it is toggles or rears. Now do you stop from there? NO. You have to give more input to the canopy to transition from plane out to stopping. Now I'm going to introduce a little bit more of a radical concept here, so everyone take a second and catch your breath... First of all wee need to get rid of this concept of a two or three staged flare. You do not come in flare halfway, stop, and then flare the rest of the way do you? If so, you are doing it wrong. Does that method work? Yes, sometimes, but we are a little more advanced than that, are we not? I believed the old timers who were transitioning from F-111 to ZP canopies brought about this concept. They used this method when their canopies would balloon up after they flared all the way, as they were used to doing with their F-111's. Let us take the three areas that I spoke of earlier and make them into just one simplistic concept. 1. Landing You need to start thinking this way because, when you are transitioning to smaller faster canopy's, landing does not just happen when your altitude reaches zero. Many of the more advanced canopy pilots here will probably agree with me that landing for them starts after they get everything stowed away after an opening. Watch them, and talk to them, and you will soon see that every maneuver they make is to set up for landing. There is no more "Playing Around" when you get to small canopies. Now let us get back to landing. Your approach flare and stopping should all be one smooth movement and you should only flare as much as you need to maintain the altitude above the ground that you want. Some people have a difficult time with this, and I think it is because they are judging their altitude from the wrong area of the ground. If you are on top of a tall ladder and look straight down it is scary, but if you look at the horizon, you can still tell that you are high up with out the looming effect of the ground. Try looking at or just below the horizon when you are beginning to plane out. This will allow you to judge your altitude more effectively. To illustrate this standup right now and look at a far doorknob or something out your window on the horizon. Now stand on your toes, and then back on your flat feet. Do you see the difference in your sight picture when you do this? In all actuality, you have only moved 2 to 3 inches if that. Now that you have your sight picture mastered, think about continuing your flare only as much as you need to so that your sight picture does not change. Now that we are flying flat and level over the ground, we eventually need to stop. To do this you just need to keep flaring, and maintaining your sight picture. Eventually you will have flared so much that your canopy will no longer be able to produce the amount of lift required to hold your body weight in the air. This is usually when you put your feet down on the ground. If you watch people land, you will soon notice that many of them do not flare their canopies all the way, and this is the cause of many jumpers landing problems. If you are flaring properly then you should not have to run out your landings very much even on low wind to no wind days. In addition to changing your mindset about landing, it would behoove you to begin to fly your canopy as smoothly as possible. Erratic flying can be more of a hazard than a joy. Realize that you’re suspended below your wing and if you are flying in an uncontrolled manner then your canopy could turn before you do. This of course can cause line twists and if you combine uncontrolled flying with turbulence, you could be in a lot more of a bad situation than just line twists. In the future flying smoothly will increase the distance of your swoops. I hope that this has helped you out. Please get coaching from a COMPETENT instructor. Some people will tell you that they can teach you anything, but remember you get what you pay for in this sport and get good instruction from a qualified canopy coach like Scott Miller, Brian Germain, Jim Slaton, or Ian Bobo to name a few is priceless. Be careful out there, and good luck. Grant S. Adams

What up Chuck!? How is that JVX working out for you? I got mine, but no container to jump it in Take it easy dude! Grant

I knew I could count on you! Stay Mooth!

That part wasn't really meant as an barb, but more as a general observation about the overall mood here on Dropzone.com. You have to understand that 99% of what people bring up here has been thoughorly hashed out before in the past. Sometimes the people responding to questions or inquiries get pissed off a little because what they see as inherent knowledge is not aparent to some of the newer posters. So they end up repeating themselves week after week and it gets old really quick. Other times people come on and just argue because they made some stupid remark like they are downsizing to a 107 stilletto at 70 jumps, and they fee they have to defend them selves. Other people just keep posting because they feel they need to have the last word. Canopypiloting.com is a pretty good site. It is a little slow, but you don't get the drama like you get here. Lord Slaton has some good advise even though he is a little cryptic from time to time. That site is more of a sharring site than an arguing site. I going to build a site for skydiving shit talking called swoophaters.com and the only rule will be that you have to trash talk a little in each post. I'm sure it will be popular with the crowd here hahahaaa. I will have a forum where I will take each picture from the Post your Hot swoop pics" thread on here and just talk shit about everyone pics. It will be called "post your gay swoop attemps pics" and we will trash talk all of the pics.

Shimell doesn't do free style, he does suck style! He's so bad at it he makes sucking look good! hahahahahahaaaaaaaa Just kidding

Dude, You have come into this forum here and stirred up the hornets nest in your quest for knowledge. That is the problem with internet communication, because you cannot read body language. Some of the dissension you are receiving is from some people who are anxious to criticize, and some of it you bring upon yourself by coming across as being argumentative. Either way I really do not care. I am going to give you my two cents on this swooping thing whether you like it or not. You can take it for what it is worth, but realize that I am not trying to steer you wrong. Many of the other dudes here in this forum are not trying to steer you wrong either, but you have to realize that each and every one of us have a slightly different method of conveying our knowledge. Ian is a little softer spoken but he knows what he is talking about. Davelepka (whom I have never met in person) is a little more direct about things, but he is pretty much spot on. Shimell... Well, all we can say about shimell is that, he is just shimell. He is a good swooper though. JP does not post much here but he is a smart dude who knows his stuff and is a really nice guy to be around. The thing I like about JP is that he has a tendency to point out the other side of the argument. Sometimes we are so wrapped up discussing one technique that we forget that there are other methods. Aggiedave is good at that too. Aggie is getting good and has learned quite a bit in the past couple of seasons, so his advice may contain some newer ideas. This is not bad but just a different way to achieve the same effect. Remember, what method I use may not be the same method that you find effective. Enough of that bush-league psyche out bullshit... If you are having trouble getting your canopy down then you may want to slow your turn rate a little. Please be careful.

That is the best picture I have seen... EVER!

Shitttttt.... I dominated you all that season. It wasn't until I sold you my canopy that you started doing well... hahahahaaaaaaaaaa Just kidding. You did really well in the last two comps that we did together. I can't believe it is coming up on two years from that season. I didn't compete last year, but I'm pretty interested in dusting off the old swoop pants and "No Fast" shirt and showing all you old whipper snappers who have pro cards a thing or three. Brace yourself because you will be enthralled by my 290' swoop in the distance round and my 17.5 second speed round and my chow in the zero zone for zone accuracy. I'm still going to compete in the freestyle events by asking the competitor next to me in the plane how to do the manuever and then try it for the first time in competition. That usually gives me the best results.

Old bald Canadians just shouldn't swoop...

Us old RW guys do fly smaller canopies and do HP landings. Dude if you are over 29 and swooping then you are mooth! There is an age limit to this kind of stuff. You geezers are dangerous... We don't want yall having a heart attack in the pattern and causing all of us younger people to have to dodge you while you are having angina! Old swoopers are like old drivers. They are dangerous to the general populous because they don't realize that they are slower in mind and reaction. Remember the next life you save could be your own. Just give it up and get a manta now so that you don't kill any of us!

Yawn... I tend to see things in a fairly simplistic manner like Ian does on this issue. No matter what canopy you are flying or your experience level you have an obligation to NOT come into contact with another person in the pattern. Not every landing has to be an event. If you are wanting to do a massive turn then land out or, adjust you pattern location, or adjust your pattern entry timing Pretty simple if you ask me. On the other hand, when we do think about patterns it is not the same for everyone. My pattern is going to be dramatically different than some dude on a lightly loaded stilletto or sabre 2. My pattern will also be different than the dude on the student canopy or evn the guy on the lightning doing a 90 degree front riser turn at 12' to build up some speed to land the damn thing. So enforcing a pattern altitude probably would be a draconian measure for this issue. Don't get me wrong, patterns are good, but they are not the total answer to this problem. I honestly think that there is no reason to be landing in traffic if you are doing more than a 90. Have I done it in the past? Yes. Will I probably do it in the future? That answer depends on the amount of traffic and who the traffic is. I'm not so hard up for swooping that I HAVE to do a 450 on every jump. Flexability is the key to airpower people, and I'm so flexable that the hari krisna yoga guru mofo doesn't have shit on me!

You Say: "primarily i'm just worried about saftey because i would rather not have a canopy collapse on me. and looking through previous threads about the jvx i've read that some don't like the deep braked flight mode, so maybe there is a correlation of some kind." I Say: I really don't think it is a matter of the JVX not liking deep braked flight, but more of a matter of the JVX being more effecient on rear risers than brakes. Most 9 cell canopies will get a better glide on rears than 7 cell canopies. Conversely 7 cell canopies will hang better in deep brakes and that seems to be the best way to get them back from spots. I'm sure the jvx will do just fine in deep brakes, but I bet it is not the preferred method of operation for that canopy. The JVX and Velocity, both great canopies, are very different beasts and what you do for a velocity may not be th ebest method for the jvx. You Say: "for example you can an all zp, hybrid w/ top skin, hybrid w/ bottom skin, hybrid w/ xbraces, hybrid w/ a combination of those things, full sail, competition trim, non-competition trim, or a combination of all of that. all those different combinations probably have a different effect on the canopy, so how do they know if one combination is more or less stable, or more or less high performance, or what ever?" I say: Changing things like line trim and canopy material will have a profound effect on canopy flight, but in my opinion a crossfire made from sail is still a crossfire for the most part. You may be able to load it a little higher and get good results, but a crossfire made from sail is still going to fly like a crossfire. It's not like you are going to get the flare power of a jvx or velocity out of a sail crossfire. I venture to guess that daedolous is offering the crossfire in sail for those who are getting into the ground launching and want to still be able to use their canopy for skydiving. I bet that a sail crossfire loaded higher will still not perform in a manner that is remarkedly better than an all zp crossfire. I just do not think that we will see people being really competitive in the cpc on sail crossfires against velocities, and sail jvx's loaded at 2.5 plus. Airborne says that he needs a 139 to make it back from spots. I say: Airborne you really need to re-evaluate when and where you are exiting a jump plane or pull a little higher. Sure a bigger canopy will not descend as fast as a smaller one but realize that it also has much more drag and will not fly forward as fast. If you really feel comfortable with a 119 don't discount it because you need to get back from long spots all the time. Just change your habits and you will be able to get back easily. There is nothing gained from being in freefall below 3.5, and you have a lot more to lose to include time to deal with a malfunction and altitude to get back from a shitty spot.

Paul is a sexy man, but no where near as sexy as I am. hahahaa I Usually jump a 96 velocity loaded around 2.3ish. I perform a 450 turn from about 1100' with the full RDS. Field elevation is 5500' - 6500' for me. With the bag and pilot chute on i do the turn around 950-1000'. I have a jvx 89, but I have only put two jumps on it yet, so I do not know what altitude I should be yanking and banking on that canopy. I'm waiting to get a rig in that fits the canopy, as I do not want to make a bad opinion of the canopy because of a shitty fitting rig. I guess this thread is more of a poll to see what people are doing for turns and the altitudes, but i would caution anyone from basing their turn altitudes from what they read on here. Everyone is different, and has a different technique. What I do may not work for Ian or Paul, and what they do may not feel comfortable for me. Please be carefull out there. I hope every one of you had a good holidays.

Those are NOT allowed!

OK there ROBO 2000. Looking at the helmet you have there in your avatar, you look way to dangerous and robotic... Just kidding. Whenyou are doing demo's you are dealing with the uneducated public and you are selling an image and then a product. Those suits will get their point accross: "we are bad asses and this is some high speed shit!" I bet sponsor ship pours in for them because of those suits. The more you look like Spaceman Spiff the better. People at airshows want to be entertained, and the Torra Torra Torra act is only going to last so long. Nobody cares about the old planes except the old people, and they are dieing rapidly. In ten years there will be very few airshows, but the ones that survive will be the shit!!! because all the acts will be competing to attend. There are a lot of acts out there and teh civilian teams really have to offer something special to compete with the military teams who can put on a decent show really cheap compared to the civilian acts who have to pay their performers. The military dudes have to show up when they are told. Albeit the military guys are probably just having a party in every town they show up at, they get payed by congress no matter if they jump or not. Those dudes don't care unless it is the opportunity to jump out of an F-15 or something like that.

If they are jumping into nascar events I'm giving it a 2/3 odds that those dudes are going commando....