feuergnom

guess I'm in the mood for telling stories - so here we go (and if I make a mistake there will be someone around here to correct me for sure) basically an AAD measures changes in airpressure and through a sophisticated algorith aka clever programming tells the unit at which speed you are falling and at which altitude you are - so far so simple and yet so hard to do accuratly. if you do a search in the forums you will find lots of very clever arguements and discussions (some pretty stupid ones also) circling around the slight inaccuracies that are connected to slight variations in pressure around a moving object in airspace - read the effects of the burble. so in other words: while on the ground the AAD calibrates itself to the local airpressure. as soon as you start you way to alti it logs the changes again and arms itself at a given alti (well at least this is what a cypres does) once a skydiver has reached his final destination (aka jumprun) one could say that it switches to alarm mode - the ground is approaching. given that you pull in time and there is no more rapid acceleration after deployment, it goes to sleep again. if you don't pull in time and fall trough a predetermined height with a predetermined speed it will give a signal to the cutter to do it's job. and all this is done in real time - pretty impressive, isn't it? don't know if there is an in depth vid about all this out there, but if you take a look at cypres' webpage you might find some more answers

I knew someone clever would come up and do this sort of math (insert emoticon of your choice) since the biggest part of the skydiving community lives in the U.S. aka the home of capitalism and neocons I'll just say: suck it up, cupcakes. who said that businessmen don't have every right in the world to make big big dollars? on a quick sidenote: IIRC helmut cloth originaly wanted a partner but was turned down by many big companies - so he dished out all the dough out of his own pocket - which by the time being the eighties of the last century was a shitload of money. so stop bitching about the cost for an electronic backup device that not only has saved many dumbasses lives but might be doing the exact same thing for your sorry bum ETA: this is not meant to be an insult on drew eckhart - more as a general fedup notice to the public coming from a poster whos simply fed up with people arguing about the cost of skydiving equipment and the sport as such. want someting cheap? get a bowling ball The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

ok, i'll give it a shot: last summer i had the opportunity not only to meet helmut cloth (the inventor of the cypres-unit) bit to have some very in depth talks with him and the chance to take part in one of his presentations of the cypres. to state that it's just another electronic gizmo with some circuits and wiring falls short of what it really is: its a highly sophisticated piece of electronics where each and every component has undergone extensive testing and quality control during assembly - either in part or the whole. as helmut cloth told it, no other electronics manufacturer (he dropped some big brand names) wanted to go trough the adventure of manufacturing it - so he had to invent the whole production / quality control process. if you search the forums you'll probably find a thread about dissassembling old cypres units (cypres 1 that would be) and what you find in them, iirc with pics. so try to imagine what it takes to put it together in the first place and seal it off with silicone.... assembling cypres units is still done by hand and - again iirc - it takes a week do finish one unit. even if I have no similar stories from the other aad-brands you can be sure there are a lot of factors that add to the cost - which is why I find the point of "marketing-issues" a bit retarded. one more thing to think about: a cypres will last 12 years - if you divide the original cost to the amount of time it will serve you, there's loads of more expensive (and many times pretty useless) skydiving paraphernalia around

we once had a group of people from seeing impaired to completly blind. for the briefing we took loads of extra time "showing"! them around the place and to get their hands on everyting - rig, canopies, plane, even our faces and hands. most of them had excellent body awareness, so training freefallposition was easy. do not forget to train the actual exit in the plane while still on the ground - that will save a lot of trouble on your side. when explaing stuff: don't forget they are blind, so its no use describing visuals the way you would to a seeing person. what helped me was the desciption of the wind on the body, what you hear in freefall what an opening feels like whatthe wind sounds like when under canopy - I guess you can come up with some stuff yourself. anyway: have fun and make it a really special jump for you and your passenger The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

quite interesting - thanks

from what I learned from the answers so far is to pack the drogue properly. I still have to get my hands on a rig to figure out what tom noonan meant as I have a hard time picturing this in my mind... The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

thx to all for the responses so far - and it somehow relieves me to see that I'm not the only one with a drogue on the back as for packing the drogue - usually I pack my own stuff but this time it was done by a packer the previous day. not sure how he did it and if the way I do it is the mentioned method. but I'll have a look into the manual to make sure I stick to the book. as for actually "throwing" the drogue: with a drogue the sice of a strong one YMMV and mine certainly did The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

this mal on the drogue happened on one of the last jumps this fall: uneventfull exit from approx 9000 ft, get stable, throw drogue & check for drogue. thats when stuff got scary. as I didn't feel the drogue I took a glance over my shoulder to see what was going on only to find the bright pink drogue dancing like crazy on my back. next seconds I checked wether it got caught by me or the pax - negative (which is quite positive so to say) reached around a few more times thinking: fuck, if I don't get rid of this shit soon I'll have to switch for plan B. at approx 6000 ft drogue decided to do it's job and deploy properly. thats also the time my video guy caught up with me again. rest of freefall, deployment, canopyride etc uneventfull needless to say that I got some additional grey hair upon reviewing the vid I extracted some stills - everybody is still scratching their heads on what exactly happened. as per the pics and video you can see the droguebridle dancing extracted over the tandem and the drogue on my back. We have no clue why the drogue was resting in this position for 15 sec so whats your take on this???? technical details: Rigs a well maintained Strong Dual Hawk, Drogue & all bridles/lines changed this summer, still low jumps on it The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

AAAAA American Association Against the Abuse of Acronyms WGASA Who gives a shit anyway? The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

funny nobody mentioned this one: Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

in my - compared to others, certainly limited experience as a TI, it was IMPERATIVE to follow the hook-up-sequence by the book. of course it's easier in a spacier plane than in a 172. so you have to adapt some parts to make sure you don't have to fiddle around for ages and maybe miss something when connecting lowers. also my routine includes of commenting what I am doing and telling my pax which point I am connecting. read: They know whats going on and I don't forget what I have to do

There are so many run of the mill, middling videos on the net. Some are poorly shot, some have crappy music, etc, but that's one of the best videos Ive seen in a while. It's at least 3 years old. some of the my personal favorites are 20+ years old

Grow the fuck up. You are behaving like a total tool. takes one to know one, baby! bwahahaaaaaa - fucker: coffee's all over the screen & keyboard eta: with some threads you know it's dz.com-kangaroocourt-time once more even before you start reading them. this ones a prime example of the hollier than thou attitude taking over this site. I mean how cheap is that anyway: guy a decides to jump with guy b and afterwards you turn up at dizzie just for a cheap anonymus pissing contest and to have other chiming in - how pisspoor is that. this site has definitly changed for worse in the last years. The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

nice vid The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

That is an unacceptable comment. Making a mistake while training to become and learning from it is ok. If I as a paramedic push the wrong drug or do my job poorly my patient dies. I will be pursued in court and potentailly lose all I have. A rigger is the same as a medic, nurse, or doctor and anyone that is a rigger and feels differently needs their rating yanked! You are responsible for my and others live's and if you can get a half-assed rating we need to fix that. Simply put you should be proficient at what you do and if you don't remember reference you materials or dont do it. pretty simplistic view of things. I hope you'll never make a mistake.... The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

very nice one

what can I say? Never met him in person, just loads of stories. still feel sad and like I have lost something important... The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

measuring dicks???? The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

who the F**** let you out of bonfire? The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

should this become my new sig-line??? The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

talking, mentoring, giving shit and flameing as well as calling the dz next door don't work apparently - so how should these measures look like????? there's dozens of threads around here where that problem has been discussed ad nauseatum - I haven't found a F****** clue whatsoever, and there's a ton of people with the same experience. maybe we are beating a dead horse? The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

I'm stealing that line for my FJC: "You can never get altitude back." I'll augment it with my usual lecture about making good decisions while they still have the altitude to do so. +1 and that opens a whole other can of worms: I could never get into the mindset of some TM's smoking tandems down to 1200 meters or less just to make quicker turnarounds The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

Nobody is saying that he can't say it, and the 1st Amendment only applies to gov't, not individuals. People have just as much of a right to say he was a dick for doing the lyrics as you do to accuse people of being dicks for being down on him for "dissing" the troops. Given the attitude, sounds like it's a win-win. pot meets kettle? The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

everybody is allowed to express what he likes - as long as it doesn't touch the troops. so much for freedom of speech one more reason not to visit the states. flame away The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666

Not at the two DZ's I jump at, but you may have a point if your made up statistic was more like 50%. Billvon has a good point, but I think being proficient may be a minor point to "Knowledge through experience" of what is happening in the subject one is filming. It would be good for a Camera Flier to know the little things that can be presented to them when and AFF goes bad out the door, or a tandem's trap door, side spin etc. Same foe RW/VRW filming. Matt good old talking via an exact briefing and maybe an eval-jump should be enough to work the trick IMO. holding a TI-rating to be alowed to film tandem is, as another poster already stated - bollocks The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle dudeist skydiver # 666