FrogNog

I think the one story I had is leaving the plane when the wind was fine, and being under canopy when a gust front arrived. (The "bad" clouds were 10 miles away minimum and moving around the valley, not through it, so we thought it would be OK.) From 1,500 feet I did a hard 180 to downwind, flew awhile, then did a 90 and another 90 and realized the reason I felt disoriented was because I was still at 1,500 feet. I did alternating left/right 360s with alti check after each one until I broke 800 feet, when I felt a "drop" and saw I was now coming down - and backwards. I held my front risers so I was coming straight down, then disconnected my RSL at 50 feet, flared for 1/4 second to land softly, and pulled my cutaway as I was leaning over backwards. I didn't fall over and the canopy went about 100 feet. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Dang, Dave, how many engines do they put on 182s in Texas? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Deuce, can we get a photo showing the burr? Is it sufficiently visible? Or can you detect it by feel? The reason I ask is it's possible some pins have burrs that aren't causing bridle failure, for whatever reason (e.g. burr in a "lucky location"). Certainly, people will report when their PC detaches from their pin. But if the burr can be detected separately, that would be more info for people to look for. (Like when I pack for other people, hypothetically speaking as a non-rigger.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I would add something different than the reduction "at the pillow end ... is certainly less than 35%". I would say from a theoretical basis we don't know whether the 35% reduction number would be more or less than a jumper would see with dirty cables. The reason is that the 3-ring pulley system manages the tension on the "white loop" that goes around the cutaway cables. We know that when white loop tension is higher, cutaway forces will be higher, and when white loop tension is lower, cutaway forces will be lower, all other things (including cable dirtiness) being equal. The miniforce system has been proven, to my satisfaction, to reduce the white loop tension - as determined by reduced cutaway cable extraction force. When the cables are dirtier, pull forces are going to be higher because of extra resistance of the cable in the housing and possibly because of increased friction between the white loop and the cable. What we don't have any test data on is what the friction looks like between the white loop and a cable of increasing dirtiness at the white loop end. With a clean cable, we assume that the cable extraction force increases as a fraction of any increase of white loop tension. With a sufficiently dirty cable end, we might assume the cable extraction force increases as a larger fraction of any increase of white loop tension. If the relationship between cable end extraction force and white loop tension is linear and passes through the origin for both a clean and dirty cable end - even if the slope of the relationship between clean and dirty cable ends differed - then Miniforce's 35% reduction of cable extraction force (vs. a specific round 3-ring) in tests using a clean cable would apply equally to a dirty cable. But, again, we don't know the relationships between cable extraction force and white loop tension for clean vs. dirty cables. Is it linear? Almost linear? Does it pass through the origin, or close enough? Is there a discontinuity or nonlinear region at high loop tensions, as the cable deforms somewhat into the connector end? All of this looks at cable end extraction forces; the Aerodyne representative pointed out that extracting the dirty cable from the housing is a separate issue, and one I warrant the 3-ring system (miniforce or round) has either no effect, or only a partial effect on. (Tension on the end of the long cable could cause a dirty cable to drag more heavily on the u-bends in the housing, creating more friction. So a 35% reduction in tension on that cable presents the same friction problem in the u-bends that I wrote a lot about above for the white loop.) I think a much better exercise than asking Aerodyne about the miniforce effect on dirty cables is just to baseline pull forces on dirty cables. That's because I was surprised to see in the Aerodyne pull force results such low forces in the first place. They're showing a 35% reduction of a pull so light nobody should ever have a pull failure in the first place. Obviously they feel their invention has merit, or they wouldn't have invented it*, so additional pull forces of some sort need to be accounted for. (* I do not subscribe to the cynic's view that they invented something that has no merit, and are now trying to market it to success. Please feel free to adopt your own views.) I do agree that based on the documentation so far, it appears Aerodyne has not done the "real-world" testing some people mention. But that appearance could be for at least two other reasons: * Perhaps their real-world testing showed a smaller percentage benefit. This doesn't mean no benefit, or even insignificant benefit, but just a less marketable appearance of benefit. * Or, it could be that they couldn't come up with a "real-world" dirty cable testing protocol that they could either show was valid, or that gave meaningful results. If dirty cables change their pull forces by 30% seemingly randomly based on whether the dirty side is "up" or "down", or dirty cables have slightly lower pull forces after each pull they undergo because they transfer dirt from the cable to the valleys in the housing, and cables cannot be "re-dirtied" to specification in a way that yields reliable dirtiness-based baseline results, it would be impossible [edit: not impossible, "far more difficult"] to show their product was good, bad, or neutral with any statistical significance. What I'd like to see is a study of pull forces between dirty and clean cables. The results of that might be "if you do nothing else, clean your cutaway cables. If you do one more thing, buy Aerodyne's MiniForce. " -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Ok, I'll see if one of the resident riggers is up to it. I don't know if I could wave the chicken correctly over anything but brake line work, myself. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

That's a problem with an easy solution: friends. I'll pay 2/4 of the price of a set of SLinks. Who else wants one or two SLinks? (Probably PMing me would be best.

Ah. You mean "Bootie". Booty is something entirely different. It's either a pirate thing, or a butt thing.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I disagree. A good pilot will promptly trim the airplane for best glide speed, which is similar to best rate of climb speed and similar to approach speed, usually 1.3 times the stall speed. I've listened to some of our more experienced pilots mentoring the new pilots, and from what they're saying, it sounds like our 182s only have two speeds: 1. "jump run" 2. "a bit faster than jump run" (climb speed, and I think same as "coast back to airport with dead engine" speed) 3. "descending" There may be a fourth speed if the wings rip off, but I try not to worry about that. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I'll try and make my standard rabid pro-tec rant short. Protec: ugly, cheap, tough, protective, comfortable. (YMMV on the comfort.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I did two jumps on a Rage 185 a while back (loaded about 1.2:1) and I put it down and backed slowly away. It was just too much for me at 220 or so jumps, and would continue to be too much for me for a long time.

I had mine cut off when I got tired of tripping on it. Now sometimes I kick it, but at least it doesn't grab my shoe. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

[URL]http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/photos/photo.asp?PhotoID=49315[/URL] -=-=-=-=- Pull.

The off-season has the benefit of quicker delivery times. Of course, then you have the downside of waiting for good weather to jump in. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Confucious said*: "Sometimes the best teacher is the worst teacher, because he forces the student to learn on his own." (* Actually, Confucious did not say that.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Cratered. Definitely a "Hard Pull" situation.

Classic.

It's my understanding, from past posts here, that even if you don't take money from the public, but you skydive (even if just part of a club with your friends), that "the pilot needs to be commercial rated and 100-hour inspection will need to be performed". -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Maybe you could work backwards from there a bit and look at tort reform. Part of the reason DZs don't have insurance is they don't want to say "here is a big fat purse for you to sue for if something goes wrong." The insurance companies agree. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Yeah, I found the 2k container opening altitude too low for me as well. At around 150 jumps I started thinking I could pull at 2.5k all the time and it would be fine. Well, I had an "internal clock" issue on a twilight 3-way combined with a snivel and re-thought about it. And what I came up with is altitude is a safety margin that I want. So I pull at the high end of the allowable standard range for traffic reasons, every time if possible, and damn the lost freefall time. If I snivel, open with twists, or screw up by 3 seconds, it's an exception and not a rule and there's a chance a hard deck of 2k is still below me. And my audible? I don't have it on my helmet yet. I don't know where I'll set it for, either.

I think you need to vary your dosage.

Just one Cypres cutter costs more than a Vladiball, and I think a Cypres is larger than a Vladiball. If you're trying to make something like a Vladiball skyball, only bigger, and relying on some end-of-lifed electronics, go for it. I would trade it in on a new Cypres 2. Or, if I wasn't going to buy another AAD, I'd call up whoever made the Cypres (Airtec? SSK?) and ask them if they want me to send it to them so they can have it.

I would recommend you make sure the slider is all the way against the stops. When I have the canopy over my shoulder, after flaking everything, I quarter the slider and ensure the slider is against the stops, and then I fold the tail folds back and forth over the slider (and then each other) like a zipper, to try and help keep the slider from moving when I fold the canopy up and stick it in the bag. I've only jumped a Hornet 150 once, but I have over 100 jumps on my Hornet 190, and once I payed attention to the slider, I found it always opened smooth, instead of "sometimes smooth, sometimes abrupt." The nose I found didn't really matter that much, at least on my 190. If I rolled the nose, I just got worse end cell closure on opening (at 1.15 lb/sf loading). So I would just leave the nose hanging, or push the entire nose straight back into the pack job just far enough that the sides of the pack job "cocoon" would hide the nose. On my Hornet I can't say if that made a difference.

XPSP2 wasn't really released to make peoples' computers work "better". It was released to make them work "more securely." If your machine is not going to be attacked by bad people on the Internet somehow, then you probably don't need XPSP2. But, hackers are like skydiving problems: you don't find them, ... And, look at the sunny side: if XPSP2 hoses your machine beyond relief, you can always reinstall your OS and start over. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

It took me about 10 tries and two weeks to learn to pack. Now, I understand what I'm doing very well (most everyone who packs does), but it's not something I can just tell you how to do. My problem was there were so many steps, I could never remember it all. Keep trying. Seriously, maybe I would have learned faster if I had written down a list of all the steps. Instead, I just kept trying with someone there who knew what they were doing (very important) and humbly asked them "OK, now that my brain shut off, what am I forgetting to do next?".

Arg, where the h is Ivan?