champu

I think the comment that got on people's nerves, and I realize it wasn't yours, was the suggestion that in posting this video one no longer had a place to stand when discussing gun violence against women. It's one thing to insinuate that someone who enjoys watching women wearing bikinis and shooting guns is simple minded or base (however condescending that may be) and another altogether to associate it with a drive to hurt women.

cough... Jedi... cough... Seriously though, is the competition on for august 23/24? I want to buy tickets... or not... buy tickets.

This poll goes for more than just camera flyers. Many disciplines result in sometimes elaborate housekeeping under canopy. I don't fly with camera wings very often as I mostly just shoot VFS these days, but here are my routines: When I'm belly flying: -spot canopies / pick a direction to fly (noting which way jump run was) -collapse and stow slider -loosen chest strap -remove booties -grasp toggles -give the steering lines a once over -pop the brakes When I'm shooting VFS: -spot canopies / pick a direction to fly (noting which way jump run was) -collapse and stow slider -loosen chest strap -grasp toggles -give the steering lines a once over -pop the brakes -turn off camera When I'm shooting belly stuff: -spot canopies / pick a direction to fly (noting which way jump run was) -remove swoop cords -collapse and stow slider -unclip lower wing attachments -loosen chest strap -remove booties -grasp toggles -give the steering lines a once over -pop the brakes -turn off camera When I'm wingsuit flying: -spot canopies / pick a direction to fly (jump run doesn't matter very much in this case, but now I have to note where the tandems are and if fitting in is going to be an issue) -unzip arm wings and drop the loops -collapse and stow slider -loosen chest strap -unzip leg wing -remove booties -stow leg wing -grasp toggles -give the steering lines a once over -pop the brakes -turn off camera Something I was doing a lot of this past weekend in light of Shindig's incident was touching my handles in the plane and noting where they were, then touching my handles under canopy before I loosened my chest strap, and finally touching my handles again after I loosened my chest strap. I think I might work a quick handle touch into my routine after loosening my chest strap in all the lists above.

Iwan? Nope, Iwan cuts away all the time. Mostly because he is too much of a pussy to land his Velocity. He actually has a Sabre2 230 in his reserve container. You're right, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that. I read "at Byron", "2 rigs", "3000 jumps", and "velocities" but forgot about the "no cutaways" part. I've actually watched him cutaway now that I think about it.

Iwan?

Another contender... Mel Curtis had one cutaway pre-A-license and has made about 5500 jumps since then without one. My best stretch was only 765... not really anything to get excited about.

Yeah except I looked on your profile and you are exactly what I'm talking about. Wingsuit and freeflying? Besides you aren't at my DZ. Might as well though, you'd fit right in. I plan to come up there for Leap for Lupus, and I will be bringing my freefly suit and my RW suit. (and if I still had a wingsuit, I'd bring that too.)

Watch your example video again, and pay very close attention just a few moments earlier (at 1:36.) There is a wind gust from the right and you can see the canopy yaw to the right, that is, into the gust. The following roll/pitch to the left looks like toggle input to me. The whole approach was very "toggle-happy" and the lesson to learn there is to do less on final, not that he or she was had by the wind. Either way, glad to see the note that they were okay.

Are you sure you don't design 2,000 watt car stereos? I've actually done both at previous jobs. (not entirely true, I designed digital radios for police / fire departments, but close enough.) When I lived in Chicago and had no garage I had a remote starter because in the winter months using my car often involved removing half an inch of ice and six inches of snow from my car before I could even get in it. With the car running it helped out the process a lot, but it still took me more than 3 minutes, so this law is pretty silly.

Historically the line between has been one of popular support, but 50 million Elvis fans can be wrong. Fighting to preserve your rights is a pretty basic instinct, and when it's done against odds it can even be admirable. But a line is crossed when you no longer fight because you think you know what's best for you, and start thinking you know what's best for others. There's been a lot of groups swinging to and fro over that line in the past few decades in the middle east. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and you can cause, and get yourself into, a lot of trouble by trying to juggle assistance to groups based on which side of the line they happen to reside on today.

Why didn't the other AADs on board the plane fire? Because pressurising is not the same as a fall of more than 35 m/s in a way you'd normally see. In this case the cypres 1 acts like this: hey this is weird, maybe I'm malfunctioning, get me to airtec i'm not turning on anymore until you do (very nice if you NEED that aad to work in the near future). Cypres 2 and Argus: hey this is weird, maybe I'm malfuctioning, I'll turn myself off for this jump and we'll see how the self-check goes when i'm turned on again (so an unusable AAD for that one jump). Vigil 1: hey this is weird, maybe I need to save someone, so I'll fire just in case (maybe this helps maybe it doesn't, you'll need a repack in any case). Sorry for having asked a pointed question but yes, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. The simpler answer to my question would have been that all the AADs "did exactly what they were designed to do." which are words of praise I keep hearing sung of the Vigil every time one goes off inside an airplane. Electronic AADs introduced higher-resolution pressure measurements, and processors capable of taking more than just the first derivative to give them parameters like acceleration and jerk. "a < 9.81 m/s^2" is a good place to start if you want to figure out if you're in a plane or not. When I said I agree with "pretty much everything you wrote," the one sticking point is where you say the Vigils thought, "hey this is weird." because I'm not sure they did. Determining that an undesired result was a product of your design is step one. Step two is fixing your design. If this design aspect was fixed in going to the Vigil II, good for them. If not, shame on them.

YES, it is. Maintaining strategically important skills that take decades to acquire should not be subject to the whims of managers whose main concern is next quarter's bottom line. PS I was an "affiliate" at LANL from 1987 to 1997. I can't speak for the DoE, but the DoD definitely looks kindly upon all the advanced degrees companies like mine sponsor. It's what got me involved (that, and I can skydive year round in SoCal )

Why didn't the other AADs on board the plane fire?

It's similar in design to the Skyhook in that it's an RSL that includes an additional lanyard connecting the RSL to the reserve pilot chute bridal. The way it attaches to the bridal is quite a bit different and is, in my humble (and admittedly non-rigger) opinion, cleaner and involves less additional parts added to the reserve container. I don't have any photos of the DRx attachment method, and don't know how best to describe it, so I'll let someone from Mirage Systems or a rigger who's had a chance to examine one chime in with further details.

Knowing and being comfortable with your canopy are very important. So I highly recommend to anyone that they spend some quality time up high (and alone if possible) with any canopy you jump. That includes seeing how it turns and recovers from harness, front riser, rear riser, and toggle inputs, and how it flares, approaches a stall, and recovers using both brakes and rear risers. Paying attention to what your canopy is telling you from its four corners all the while, and learning to speak its language. This is information you'll use on every jump and on every canopy flight. I also recommend doing hop-n-pops and flying a standard three-leg landing pattern alone in full-flight, brakes, on a little fronts, and on rears (ending in a normal straight in approach from full flight) to see how these inputs change how quickly or slowly you eat up altitude and how long it takes to get to your next leg. This is extremely important to know when encountering traffic so you can create separation in the pattern, and avoid incidents like the one in Eloy a week ago. But what I wouldn't recommend is actually performing a complete landing on rear risers, "to prepare you in case you break a steering line or jam a toggle while releasing them." You'll want to have a bunch of jumps on the canopy to understand its flight characteristics (and a bunch of jumps in general to understand what, "understanding its flight characteristics" means ) before you land on rears. You also should have a bunch of landings under your belt to be familiar with the sight picture of a successful landing, because landing on rears requires more precise timing, and familiarity with this sight picture is what's going to allow you to achieve that precise timing. The same argument goes for not learning to land with both toggles in one hand, "in case you dislocate a shoulder in a freefall mid-air" or intentionally landing in a 15 mph downwind, "to prove to yourself you can so you're not tempted to make a low turn after miscalculating your pattern" or cutting away a perfectly good canopy, "to make sure you could get to both your handles." These are all things where the potential to injure yourself is very real, and the simplest solutions to the "problems" were never canopy heroics anyway.

Ah, stillness... Having shot video of a decent amount of both FS and VFS, I can say stillness is huge in keeping your videographer's blood pressure down. There's nothing worse then climbing out and watching a bunch of legs and rigs shifting around all over the place all the way up until bodies fly out of the plane. Also, as inside center where I give 90% of the exit counts, I watch everyone get in position and take up grips. When everyone has stopped moving it tells me that everyone is balanced and ready to go. This is particularly important on things like 8s, where I'm balanced right on the edge of the door frame, not holding onto the plane at all, and I can't be looking around at everyone. Being still isn't just a communication tool either. It's important to be relaxed and to be ready to do what you need to do right out the door to make the exit successful. Really sweet exits have almost zero movement in the formation a second out the door (except if it was a really really sweet exit in which case you're going to the next point.) and a good step towards achieving that is to have almost zero movement a second before you leave the door.

G'ah! Literally one of two weekends that I wasn't at Elsinore in the last six months! Oh well, I'll have to meet you some other time. Glad you had fun despite the weather, and did an excellent job on the video.

Reserve handle: Emergency Stop - Never Use

Absolutely. Engineering still varies pretty wildly between teams on just about every draw, which says to me there's not even an agreed upon "right way" or "fastest way" to do things, let alone a straight-forward race to then do it that way the fastest. The first time last year we (Jedi) saw Faction do block 11 without moving we collectively smacked our foreheads and said, "Ah! Of course!"

That's exactly what I was thinking as I read this thread. So, from a more constructive standpoint... My current VRW (low drag) suit is from Liquid Sky. Julio continues to make great tweaks to the suit design both on his own accord, and with inputs from owners. He redesigned the grippers to be in better locations and give a better hand hold this year. He added spandex in locations around the legs/arms to give a better fit to tighter suits (proper use of spandex is important if your suit is to be both tight and comfortable.) The collar has been redesigned to be more comfortable in the front of your neck (regardless of suit maker, if it has a collar on it, make sure that your torso measurement is spot on or the collar will be very annoying.) The bottom of the zipper has a nice cover over it so you don't risk puling it down too far and messing it up. The top of the zipper has a magnetic cover which has actually kept my suit closed and flying even when the zipper was accidentally left about 4 inches from the top. All in all I really like Liquid Sky and all the design customizations they allow you. Regarding leg cuffs... I've used Tony Suit's double velcro set up, Flite Suit's velcro + elastic snap thing, and Liquid Sky's stirrups. My advice is (again whatever suit you get) get stirrups. One final thing I thought was cool. The last time I ordered my Liquid Sky suit I got hunted down by Julio (e-mails, phone calls, voice mails) asking me to retake a couple measurement for him because the numbers on the order form "seemed a little off." I re-measured and came up with numbers that were about 1" different. When I got the suit it fit really well and I was thankful for his attention to detail.

I'd like to use that with your permission. You're welcome.

Sh*t that's everyone I know! (Are there loads out there where this doesn't occur? What do you do on the way to altitude without your invisible grips???) Never pass up an opportunity to take a nap. Three cheers to that, but while we're all ranting here about people who take 4-way too seriously... Visualizing. I get it. I'm on a AAA 4-way FS team and I know first hand how much concentration it takes to deal with triple-blockers that include a slot switcher. But when grabbing your invisible grips you must realize that there are these things you have, roughly half way between your hands and your shoulders, called elbows. When you move your hands in a 3D space, your elbows move about to accommodate the desired position of your hands. When I'm not doing 4-way FS I'm usually shooting video of 4-way VFS. I use a ring-sight to do my job. I try my best to occupy my modest real-estate in the plane in a non-conflicting manner, but to date I have not found a way to hold my helmet (including leaving the damn thing on my head) that can prevent the ring-sight from from being hit good and hard by the elbows of someone visualizing their skydive like a spastic orangutan. I fancy myself a pretty laid back guy, but when people can't exercise basic awareness of where their limbs are in relation to others it makes me want to pull their cutaway handle and throw it out the door. (I know the classic thing on the ground is the reserve handle, but we're in the plane here and can't have canopies coming out. Safety first.)

No. Tracking Derby requires a steeper position because it is judged by how far you can go in a certain amount of time, rather than a certain amount of height. All I was trying to get across was that slowest descent rate doesn't always mean highest glide ratio, just like with canopy flight. I didn't mean for that to get wrapped up with the rules of tracking derby which, admittedly, I'm not that familiar with. I was just going with the numbers someone else posted.

You can track far either slowly or quickly though, which one makes sense depends on the application. If your descent rate is 120-130 and your forward speed is 180, you're going to go further (discounting upper winds) than if your descent rate is 80 and your forward speed is 95, which is why tracking derby requires a steeper body position. That said, you can't get up to 180 in the 1000-1500 ft you have after break-off to get away from everyone, so a slower/flatter track is more appropriate.

Very cool product, way to stay on top of the apparent coming death of LANC. Hopefully my PC-105s hold out for a little while to come, but when they go TU I'll have to rework my helmet setup, and it will probably involve one of these new indicators. Although... ahem... I think it's funny that your ad photo shows Sara with a hold on the flap hinge which is illegal in competition