FrogNog

We found that to get into the sweet spot on the Matter2 it helped to get your backside out a little. Young ladies had almost instant improvement. For some of the men they joked it was just unmanly and good results were not so quick. My friend complains about jumping my rig because the double-wide legstraps make him "fly like a whore." I say there's nothing wrong with flying like a whore. It's all about the flying. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

One of the best ways to increase drag is to go faster. Drag increases at the cube of the increase in speed. So going twice as fast (in a viscious liquid like air) makes the drag eight times as much. So just pointing the airplane at the ground and letting it fly at a higher airspeed helps. Increased airspeed has other effects, though, which is why 1. there are maximum airspeeds for various aircraft and 2. some aircraft use speed brakes / dive brakes to help out. Since airplane engines are generally air-cooled (a design characteristic I applaud as a sensible use of plentiful resources), increased airspeed leads to increased cooling. Piston engines can be damaged if they get hot from working hard (e.g. pulling fat jumpers with oversized canopies to altitude ) and are then cooled too quickly. This typically presents a lower max safe airspeed immediately after dropping jumpers than that plane's normal structural max safe airspeed. This interferes somewhat with using elevated airspeed to get cube-elevated drag. That's where airbrakes come in. They help. But it is my understanding that turbine-engine planes generally don't need that help anywhere near as much as piston-engine planes. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think there are parts of videos that would do a good job. But I don't know of any entire videos that wouldn't be overloading, or have distractions. Video that concentrated on freeflying (i.e. without the ground filler) seems like it would be a good head-cracker for whuffos. See the plane, see the exit, see the maneuvers, see them deploy then cut to the landing and most cave dwellers would have to accept it's skydiving. But the way I recall most skydiving video being cut, there's a few minutes of flying at a time. I'm not sure if that's too much for their little brains to put together. In terms of explaining all the whuffo gear and procedural questions, I don't know. I side with Aggie Dave that they don't really want to know. If they did, I'd just give them the Poynter/Turoff Skydiver's Handbook. It could use a bit of revision with some of the gear (round reserves, hip pouches, and WDIs are not the norm these days), but it does a great job of explaining "how we don't die most times." Its only failing as a de-whuffoer is the level of detail; I feel like you're asking for the 5 minute version, not the 5 hour version. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

If the new sale price for a device (or its equivalent) comes down faster than you use up the lifespan of a device you previously bought and have to pay to continue using, that leads to the case where it's cheaper to throw away what you have (or sell it for a "loss") and buy the replacement. There are lots of detail costs to look at - transaction cost, repack, inconvenience, etc.. But economics and ideals do not always simply align. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Darkwing's reply was that certain loading types would attack the stitches almost individually (or in a line-section). You can see that for these loading types, weaker thread, even with more overall stitches, would fail earlier. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

You could get a new container fit for you and a used canopy that's in better shape than the one you just saw on offer. I keep bringing this sort of thing up because I regret buying my Hornet 190 new when I got my rig. A hundred, maybe 150 jumps and I wanted a different style and size. I could have bought a Hornet with 500 jumps on it, put another hundred on it, and have an easier time selling it for less of a loss. Live and learn, I say. But, then, finding canopies you like in certain sizes can be tough. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Above some altitudes, the lack of oxygen can do worse than cause unconsciousness - it could cause lasting brain injury, possibly other bodily injury (heart attack?), and of course possibly death. Some "time of useful consciouness" altitude charts will make suggestions on expected death times (your death may vary ). First, I would know what my "problem altitudes" were - cold vs. unconsciousness / dizziness without O2 vs. damage vs. death. Second, I would do whatever I could to get down. I like Bill's suggestion of hanging on the tail of the canopy to deflate it. That would be one badass stall reinflating/NSTIW story. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

A friend of mine dusted his bags regularly with smokeless gunpowder (i.e. the regular modern kind) to see if they would detect it. (He flies dozens of times per year.) He reported that when they swabbed his gear, they didn't do anything. From this, he deduced that they didn't care about nitrocellulose. So, no telling what they are looking for - it is as likely hand cream as anything else. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Pardon my ignorance, but why do BDUs stop being functional and/or stylish if you are on or near a military base? Do they become ordinary at that point? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I like doing a track from the strut on the C-182 with a friend doing a simultaneous backtrack (or backfly) exit from in front of the strut. On low jumps doing this, I can deploy in the track and the video is sweet. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

One thing that may help your decision-making process: if you buy a used 190, you won't lose as much money after you've decided you want to go to a 170. I'm not saying which one you should buy, I'm just pointing out that if you are concerned about spending the big bucks on a canopy so you want to get the exact right one that will be with you a long time, you can take the pressure off by buying something good, cheap, and used. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

So, jump 3 on this canopy sucked for you. Glad you didn't get hurt, bummer that things were hairy right down to 50 feet. Are you going to put some more jumps on this canopy to see if it was a fluke? I wouldn't blame you if you decided you were done with it. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Forgive my ignorance folks, but what exactly is a 'formed nose'? How does it change the shape of the leading edge and does it affect the canopy pressurisation? By "formed nose" they mean a canopy where the leading edge is not, like most of our ram-air canopies, open holes at the airflow stagnation point. In the case of this particular canopy (*cough*search*cough*), the nose is a continuation of the fabric wing, with a different air inletting design. (Looks sort of like a slit for air in each cell instead of a hole, from what I have seen in the pics.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Maybe it's complacency, which can be brought on by currency, or the feeling of currency. Jumping regularly is practice. But practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Being current, I guess I found out the hard way , is much more than just jumping out of a plane frequently.... -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I heard people doing serious RW care about it. I know my issues with wind when floating are only my personal fear issues - sometimes lots of wind makes me nervous, sometimes little wind makes me nervous - obviously this is not the plane / pilot's fault.

Low clouds can be fun. Nothing like sitting at the DZ all geared up (in Winter clothes, too) waiting with the pilot, looking up at the sky for that "bubble" of clear air just higher than 2k so you can do a hop and pop. Yeah, they get old, but there's a special charm in those low jumps. Like trying not to get distracted by the guy waving at you from the hangar while you're spotting. Or making sure your hackey is still in place while standing on the step. Waving to the pilot with one hand and pulling with the other without rolling. Measuring exit separation by when the previous jumper reaches inflation. Watching the 182 fly the pattern and land underneath you. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Then PPTP should probably be renamed, as well. There's lots of stuff that isn't named correctly according to historical denotations. Let me just use my small, omnivorous mammal to submit this post, now. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Dislodging a throw-out requires extracting the entire PC from the pouch before it will deploy. Just bumping the handle shouldn't be worrisome with a tight BOC pocket, and if the handle is a hacky then it might not even be any harder to grab at the end of freefall than normal. Rubbing the pin or snagging the pin end of the bridle and opening the main container is a possibility on both pull-out and throw-out systems, and it's bad either way for an instructor standing outside the plane in flight. I don't characterize it as a fault but in the pull-out case, pin extraction means immediate deployment... -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I found this while I was still on student status - I would cut my cuticles regularly on my pull hand only, probably from when I grasped the BOC ripcord in my iron claw of life and extracted it with a consistent singularity of purpose. So I went to gloves. In the winter that's a no-brainer. In the summer, I wear lighter gloves and I accept that things feel different and the strut is slipperier than bare hands. But now I don't bleed under canopy and I appreciate the extra protection the gloves will afford in case I bump the plane wrong with a hand. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I thought the benefit of airlocks in turbulence was not that they made the canopy better in the turbulence - as someone aptly pointed out, topload any canopy and it crumples instantly when there's no tension on the lines - but after the turbulence. That is, an airlocked canopy is supposed to start flying again faster than anything else because it has very little reinflating to do before it becomes a wing again. (It just has to feel tension on the lines again and dive for airspeed.) Now, at "critically low heights," the ground is the limiting factor. In the dust devil video I'm thinking of, airlocks probably wouldn't make a diff. But turbulence up higher, which may be to blame for a few incidents we've read about, might have been more recoverable before the ground came up with airlocks. That said, I don't jump airlocks because I have not yet run across an airlocked canopy that worked for me. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think part of the problem is the selection effect: colleges need professors who are free from some normal interpersonal characteristics. Like caring about their students as human beings, to generalize unfairly (but still bluntly thrust in the right direction). So sometimes they get people who move a little further out from "good professor qualities" and they have a nutcase. I believe it. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I like opening in a track on hop-and-pops. It looks nice on video, and I do it so rarely that I find the change exciting. (To the point of yelling and pumping my fist after inflation. ) But those are not terminal. I have never thrown out in a full track at terminal - I always slow down as much as I can afford. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I'll be there even tho I can't jump right now. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Seems weird to me that the pilot would yell at the last jumper to get out. I don't see how the last jumper hanging around for another 15 seconds would hurt the pilot any. And the nice thing about flying jumprun into the wind is long spots are upwind, and opening higher can usually deal with it. Now, not all jump runs are into the wind, for various reasons. And opening higher, even when last out of the plane, has its safety issues. But I'll take a long spot over insufficient exit separation any day. (Note that my jumps tend to be small groups, and I habitually open near the top of the standard acceptable range.) And I still don't get the pilot yelling at the last jumper to get out. Maybe he realized the freefliers had all gone so someone else had to do their job. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I voted "both are hard" but I would rather have a low-speed malfunction, personally. With spins, I happen to be enough of a chicken that if I ever get one that slings me more than 360 degrees before I'm out, I feel confident I'll chop it. The tapered rectangles I've been flying so far have never spun further than that. In terms of "I can fix this-itis", I know I'd rather have a virtually-guaranteed 1,500-foot or 1,000-foot $50 subterminal reserve opening than a main canopy that may not untwist or have good toggles. (That's why I try to untwist or fix my toggles early and fast. ) -=-=-=-=- Pull.