FrogNog

Not just a snap-strap that goes over the zipper head after you put them on and close the zipper? (If that sounds insultingly obvious, sorry about that. ) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I was fine the first 30 or 50 jumps after I downsized from a 190 to a 150. Now that my orthopedic surgeon has cleared me to jump again, I'm looking forward to jumping the 170 I traded my 150 for. (After a couple of refresher jumps on larger canopies.) Granted, my stupidity was the real cause of my injury, but I was also too highly loaded on the 150 for my own good and the combination was a bit much. Glad I recovered from that lesson. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Last year this happened to a tandem instructor I know - the student pulled and the ripcord just happened to whip up and catch in the lines during deployment, sticking the slider up too high for retrieval or full deployment. I don't know how many jumps this TI had before that happened. A few thousand or several thousand, I guesstimate. But, this was during a stable deployment. I assume Bill Booth's entanglements were also on stable deployments? It's possible unstable deployments increase the risk for this. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

To quote Dilbert's boss: "Is that a 'do' or a 'not do'?" -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Meh, as a fellow skydiver I could respect this if he didn't do it until above 2k. (Students and Tandems may feel differently.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

How does its price-volume ratio compare to the other parts of the jet engine? Its price-mass ratio would be interesting, too; some parts of jet engines can be expensive, large, but light. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

What is the material and age of the slider bumpers? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Looks like the toggle was stowed almost properly, except either the excess brake line or the canopy end of the brake line was wrapped around some part of the toggle. Either when the toggle was released or at opening, instant knot. I'm guessing based on the picture and my own experience doing something not quite as bad once or twice. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Happy and I both [have] a friend dead due to that. Do you both have a friend dead because of swoop cords under gloves or because the loops snagged on a hacky? I will check with some experienced camera-suit fliers as you suggest. As there is clearly some issue here, I think I will quit the swoop cords; I only used them because they came with my suit, not because I actually need them for anything. I think they just ceased being a net benefit in my eyes. (The swoop cords on my suit, that is; not swoop cords in general.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I wear my swoop cords under my gloves because I don't want the loops out there more easily able to snag on stuff, like my hacky. (I would hate to throw out and bring my hand back in front of me to find I had my PC stuck in it.) I test my swoop cord length carefully, with a margin for error, to make sure I can still reach everything I need to. So I may be sacrificing some swoop cord performance range for the flexibility and cleanliness I want, but that's how I do it. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I remembered to on a high-wind landing where I knew I was going to cut away when I hit the ground. I remembered just in time - maybe at 100 feet - because I thought ahead to what I was going to do. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Ah, you were in California. That explains it. The California Air Resource Board probably would have gone nuts if they heard you were distributing particulate matter into their air. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Hmm. I wonder what the altitrack does when the batteries die. Does it drop to 0? Or does it just stay where it was? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Yes. From a Windows XP Pro Eula on the web; I assume it is genuine. (It looks familiar, but I admit I don't memorize these things...) The capitalization appears in the original. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

From their web page: Infamous?

If they sat on the info and some went on with this problem, they would negligent. That is not true. The rig had this 'issue' when new. The standard of the reserve deploying when the AAD fires has not moved up. The reserve has always been expected to deploy when the AAD fires. If you had a Ford Explorer with Firestone tires that were prone to come apart, causing the vehicle to loose control and roll over, would you suck it up and replace the tires out of pocket? Or would you expect Ford to sell you tires that didn't fall apart before they needed replacing and expect them to replace the tires? This isn't a maintanence issue, it's a design issue. Derek All these things are differences in point of view. * Perhaps they would have been negligent if they knew but didn't issue an SB. A lot of waivers I sign say that negligence happens and I can't sue over it. There is some other term that's worse than negligence that people can't waive in the U.S., but I don't think failing to release this SB would make that level. And even if knowing about but not issuing this SB were a "sue-able" offense, that doesn't mean they have to issue it. They could still do nothing and take their chances. Or quit the company, break it up, and sell its assets to someone else, then all move to Pakistan. I'm happier they issued the SB but it was still optional depending on how you look at it. * The rig did have this issue when it was knew. We agree on that. However, people were still selling and buying these rigs when it had this problem. Why is that? I assume it's because the sellers didn't know, and the buyers didn't know. I assume at the times of sale, both sides thought the reserve would be as likely as possible to deploy when the AAD fired. But then new evidence comes to light, the engineering is reexamined, and now a rig that was fine before, as far as anyone knew, is not up to par. Yet, no stitches popped, no metal rusted, no moveable pieces suddenly moved where they shouldn't. The rig didn't change; the manufacturer's and owners' opinions of the rig changed. If I had a Ford Exploder that I learned had tire issues, the first thing I'd do is check the inflation. That's sort of like a "ground until inspected" SB, and it's something I should have been doing all along (similar to rigger inspects at the time of repack), and it's something that would almost certainly have prevented the problem from biting me, in the Firestone case. (And yet, two months after that story broke, I saw a Ford Explorer with grossly underinflated tires parked outside a daycare as I rode to work....) Would I want them to pay for the tires? Sure. Unless I had just about used mine up - then I'd see if they offered, but otherwise I'd just buy another manufacturer's tires and be done with it. But if they didn't pay, what would I do? I'd get tires I felt were good enough. If I thought the ones I had were still fine, I'd keep riding them. If the SB implied they could fail with no prior notice, I wouldn't trust them and I'd replace them before driving much more. And I'd consider that $500 and some inconvenience, on a dozens-of-thousands of dollars vehicle, was a pain but wasn't the end of the world. * It started out as a design issue but it's a maintenance issue now, as far as current rig owners are concerned. The cause is imperfect engineering that resulted in their rig. The fix is cutting and sewing, which is the style of maintenance repairs. And I was just saying I would personally label it a maintenance issue, pay and get it done, and move on. Labeling it is just my way of dealing. -=- I stand by my appreciation that Mirage, despite having to choose between 1. giving away a lot of rigging effort for free (for an imperfection, flaw, fault, inferiority, goof, mistake, screwup, or stupidity - reader's choice - in their engineering) and 2. risking pissing off their customers, still released the SB, instead of searching for a third option like burying their heads in the sand. Obviously it's better customer service if a manufacturer stands behind their work in a bigger, more glowing way. But I'd rather hear "you're unsafe, for $60 plus shipping we can make it better" than nothing. I will have to eat some of my words if it comes to light that they knew or should have known about this issue a significant time ago. But I don't consider the fact that the engineering was imperfect a de facto indication that they should have known about the problem as soon as they shipped their first paid rig. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

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I want to take a second to thank Mirage for coming out with this SB. They didn't have to. The fact they did shows one or more of 1. ethical consideration for other humans they don't care about, 2. care for fellow skydivers, or 3. concern that not doing this could affect them in court. I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the first two.

That's why I prefer the floor: better window views (in C-182 and Caravan) than when sitting on side benches (in Otter). (Btw, those 3 aircraft types cover 272 of my 273 jumps.) It might have something to do with being 6 feet (1.83 m) tall. So, sign me up for preferring floor seating. Two rows all facing backward in the Caravan. Pile o' bodies in the 182. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

At my DZ last year it was unicycles, not footbags. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I second that - riding in the beaver was like having a summer picnic with wings. Thanks, Ralph! I think that would just be my "coolest aircraft to ride in." -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Incorrect. HMA most definately shows wear. Good to know Guess there is just alot of opinions about HMA running around.. Is this opinion just another view of the "HMA snapping" myth? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Put simply, I fear the ground more than I fear other jumpers. I will do everything I can to avoid pulling low*. If I knew I might have people from another group above me, I would rather pull at 2.5k and risk being hit by them than suck it down lower and risk hitting the ground. The ground never misses. (* Full disclosure: I have opened unacceptably low at least twice so far in my jumping career. Both times were 100% my fault. Neither caused an incident.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

On other manufactures of rigs, I have seen a difference in how easy it is to thread/unthread the chest strap through the hardware depending on the strap thickness. This was concerning when looking at water landings. On one rig, there was NO WAY I could undo the chest strap in preparation for a water landing because the fold-over at the end of the webbing was so thick. If possible, I would recommend you try on both and see what you like. Also think about if you plan to land in the water and or otherwise want to be able to undo your chest strap under canopy.

Not currently possible, since the number and capacity of jump planes in the universe is limited.