DrewEckhardt

lI'm ready to exit an aircraft at 1000 feet. While they might not climb twins don't really loose altitude, cessnas come down slowly with the engine idling, and with their huge wings porters and caravans should do even better. There's plenty of time to get out or put a seat belt back on if the pilot won't let me out. Except for unlandable structural failures and mid-air collisions, planes only crash suddenly on take-off and landing.

I live on caffeine. Apart from the frequent restroom trips, it doesn't seem to have negative effects.

It would be relatively easy to run turbines on biodiesel and pistons on alcohol from fermented biomass.

I find that modern ZP parachutes land more like a Cessna 172 than my large F111 seven-cells - they're different animals. 1. Get video, it shows what you're doing rather than what you think you're doing. 2. Make sure you can actually stall it at altitude. Enough toggle to get a parchute to "flatten out nicely" can still have it flying at a speed you wouldn't want to land. 3. Your feet touching the ground doesn't mean the canopy is done flying. If it's not yet going slow enough add more toggle. Many people don't finish their flares. 4. Stall speed depends on wing shape, angle of attack, and wing loading. You can change all three. Flaring warps the wing like flaps on a plan) and slows the canopy down while you continue going forward thus changing pitch. You can slide with part of your weight on the ground thus reducing the stall speed. 5. It's a dynamic system. How fast you do things influences how the canopy lands. Quicker input on plane-out will get you a lower stall speed. Sinking lower than your final landing altitude will allow you to apply more input at the end of the flare getting you back to ground level instead of feet in the air, pitching the canopy, and getting you a slower stall speed. 6. It's interactive. You'll do things differently on different days, your perceptions will be different, the wind will be different, density altitude will be different. You need to see what's happening and adjust your inputs to match - add enough toggle at a reasonable altitude to plane out, add more if you sink too much, pause your flare if you're floating up.

I will not jump some one else's pack job off a cliff. With a bridge (off heading won't matter), over water (worse things won't), and huge landing area (blown toggle won't make a water landing more attractive) like the legal bridge in the potato state I would.

I'm really happy with my Samurai 105 (would want a few hundred more jumps before I thought about downsizing, although I'm beginning to think it's fast enough), and wouldn't buy anything other than a PD reserve without crawling inside and test jumping it. Right now I have a 143, although my belly shrunk and I'd be happy with a 126. Sunrise and Mirage both make rigs in the right sizes (Sunpath and RWS don't), I might buy the Wings because of the customer service.

While I don't like spending more money, it costs me $9.70 more round trip to ride my bike to Brush (assuming no speeding tickets), $17.60 more to go by car , and much more in lost billable hours if I take off work for the Brush experience. Even a couple dollars a jump more wouldn't be interesting. Waiting is another story - we've gone elsewhere once the backlog hit 1.5 hours.

I don't make terminal jumps without goggles, and have worn a helmet since my goggles blew off and took my glasses with them. Apart from that I need at least one parachute with a reserve pack job (not all countries require a TSO'd dual canopy setup).

In 9 years of skydiving I haven't gone more than a month between jumps since starting AFF.

Using brakes is a better idea because you can come in steeper, hold the angle longer, and won't be going as fast. While I have canopies that I wouldn't want to start flaring from deep brakes, they all (Samurai 105 to Fox 245) sink nicely on approach. Flying a longer base leg will give you more room to adjust your height to where you want to be on final, and gives you more room to round off the corners if you're going to be short.

I put a couple hundred jumps on a Batwing 134, and then about 600 on a Stiletto 120 mostly at exit weights arround 195 pounds (180-205). The Batwing wasn't as sensitive to control input and had a shorter recovery arc than my Stiletto, but turned about as fast. It's closer to a Stiletto than a Spectre or Sabre. Switching to one after a lay-off and/or without a few hundred jumps on modern gear would not be the best idea.

I know of one new rig where critical harness stitching was missing. There's a lot to be said for personally going through your gear or at least delegating to some one you trust. When delegating, I'd expect a checklist and tools in/tools out count.

Step throughs fly and land fine, although peeling your toggles off twisted rear risers is a little strange. It's big, square, conrollable, and landable. Why cut away?

Also knock off 3/4 * $160 for the four-year check and either 1/2 $85 if the battery was replaced on time or $85 if it's expired. That yeilds $550.

For the first few, four of us took our mentor out to the legal bridge in the western US (about 10-12 hours by car). Marta was also there being helpful.

On my second wingsuit flight (Birdman classic) my Batwing spun-up in spite of a good deployment and I chopped it.

Definately. I put 600 jumps on m y Stiletto 120 mostly at exit weights arround 195 pounds. There was no way to keep it in a dive and planing out high was rough on landings so I'd try to err towards the low side. Usually I wouldn't need to use any toggle for a while after planing out, although ocassionally I'd loose distance when I turned in too low and had to dig out a bit. It could have been ugly. I've had my Samurai 105 for about 140 jumps @ 170 pounds and really prefer it now that I'm used to it. I can intentionally turn in high, let it level out as much as it will, and just drift down to ground level without loosing speed. A bit low from high still has me in a good position when I'm close to the ground. It's _much_ more user friendly when you're trying to have accurate long swoops and allows a bigger margin for error.

Provided that: 1. you demo'd the main first, found it to suit your tastes more than others in the same performance class, and won't mind the decreased resale value. 2. you demo'd the reserve first, found it to fly acceptably, crawled inside, and found the construction comparable to a PD (After watching a reserve without spanwise reinforcing tapes apart from at the tail seam split into 2&5 cell pieces and spin in, I'm a little particular about this). It was a fine decision. Otherwise...

I'd continue to land the way I do until they kicked me out, and then think seriously about a share in a Cessna 182 that I'd jump out of and land on the same piece of airport property.

Control sensitivity. Under a less responsive canopy, you can burry a toggle and not have much happen. Doing the same close to the ground under the canopies people jump off student status is not always survivable. Getting out of the big movement habbit before it becomes muscle memory may help the low turn fatalities among the "not a hook turn type person" crowd.

Buy a Stiletto 150 for a good price with just a couple hundred jumps on the lineset. You'll find that it's a lot more sensitive to control input than your Sabre 150. After 100-200 jumps and you have no problems with Bill von Novak's list of things to do before downsizing, demo modern designs that interest you (Crossfire 2, Katana, Samurai), buy the one you like the next size down, and sell the Stiletto for what you paid. You'll learn a lot from a hundred jumps under the Stiletto, and will be safer from not making the planform and size changes at the same time. I switched from a Monarch 135 (square) to a Batwing 134 (elliptical) for a season, and then bought my beloved Stiletto 120. It was more of a handful than the Extreme FX104 I tried when jumping my Batwing. At first my Stiletto didn't always fly straight after planeout or land me standing up. Transitioning directly from my Monarch to my Stiletto probably would have been worse.

A year, 100 jumps, or present for beer a bunch of weekends in a row (whichever comes first). I paid $1700 for my first rig in 95/96. Prices haven't changed too much. If you buy from a private party, you probably won't e able to make payments - although your bank may make a personal loan.

Jump. I never hear my pro-track, broke my altimeter, and jumped (freefly) without it. Opening altitude was 2700'.....

How about a neptune? You get data logging with an altimeter you can actually hear. I used to have a Skytronic, which I heard on every jump but couldn't download to my computer. I repalced it with a Pro-track, which does a better job logging. However, I usually don't hear it unless I've set the final alarm high. Even on the loud setting it's not enough.

First skysurf. I learned to skysurf the Black Death Billy way before he became respectable. Back then I don't think he could go a full minute without saying "dude." Apart from what I'd read on the internet and meeting the pre-requisites (standing+sitting left and right 360s, back flips, front flips, and cartwheels in both directions) my instruction could be summed up as follows: Dude, you gotta surf it out the door and not get the tail low. Check out this video (Billy exits with an unintentional back-flip and spins out of control for most of the skydive). Dude, you gotta be aggressive and get back on top of it. Dude, you should like flip on your belly early and do a few practice pulls. and the final words of wisdom Dude, you should go to the mockup and practice getting your bindings on 10 times so you aren't in people's way. I was definately scared on the King Air ride to altitude and exit. I surfed out the door at 12000 feet, watched the plane following me down, flipped on my belly after 5000-6000 feet, did a few practice pulls, and dumped (standard recomendation is to tuck the board up in your burble and do practice pulls the whole jump). I also didn't have an AAD, although I don't think that made much of a difference in the fear factor.