FrogNog

I think you could be screwed then, since your cutaway handle is usually a pillow. Derek Yeah, in this situation I'd _definitely_ want a D-ring cutaway handle.

I don't quite bet the running end insertion part. The picture they show has a finger trap at the top, then they take the running end of the line at the bottom and pull it through both the outer and inner lines at the finger trap. And then where does it go? When they pull the running end through both pieces of line in the finger trap area, do they pull on the running end until the two "sides" of the hole they just went through turn 180 degrees on the long axis and the hole effectively turns inside out and looks like a little belly button and the running end is again useful for whatever else they want to do with it? And am I right in assuming this can only be done on both ends of a line if the entire first new-sew-fingertrapped end can be pulled through the second fingertrap area outer and inner pieces? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think the concern about skydivers being in the air with lightning is the heat. Nylon melts easily, and when it's wet it can be a sufficiently good conductor that it could entice a lightning groundstrike to pass right next to your webbing. So it's not death by frying in this theory, it's death by harness failure. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I wouldn't worry about cumulus clouds like that. They're mostly just visible moisture and not much movement. When the clouds are more anvil shaped and forming by thrusting up into the sky, especially if there is enough wind that they're leaning over from bottom to top, that's typically not cumulus anymore, I believe that's cumulonimbus. These are bad, and not just because the movement of the particles inside can cause lightning. They also have nasty drafts, and I fear these storm clouds' winds much more than I fear their lightning. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Are there enough incident reports to see if the canopies involved figure statistically above or below where we expect them to based on their composition of all jumps made? There are a lot of other possible factors. The pilot is one - people with certain canopies are more likely to jump them in weather conditions that can cause these problems. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I may note that these are not USPA BSRs, these are (U.S.) FARs. That means they aren't "rule", they are "law". I believe one punishment the FAA can mete is suspension of the jump pilot's pilot certificate (license). -=-=-=-=- Pull.

When the details come out, I have a question: did he suffer? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I lined the kittens up against the wall... -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Yeah, it's so rarely the case that stupid thieves try to sell the rig to the DZO of the DZ it was stolen from... (True story.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

The drogue acts like a pilot chute at deployment time. The system is similar to a pilot chute-deployed regular sport rig, except there is a "catch" to allow the drogue to provide drag for the tandem pair in freefall instead of beginning deployment immediately. When either of the main ripcords is pulled, the "catch" is released and the drogue opens the container and extracts the canopy. That's how it works on the systems I've seen. I don't know what brand they are or what variations you can expect. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Which two axes? How would you guarantee orientation so you knew it was measuring all the acceleration? Would the opening acceleration be given as the vector sum of the measured acceleration axes (of which I would hope there were three...)? Would it be susceptible to reading unimportant acceleration by being mounted on extremities? (I.e. my feet probably experience much more acceleration, or at least a wildly different acceleration profile, than my head.) How much would it cost, how big would it be, how hard would it be to operate, maintain, and extract data from, and what would be its mounting requirements? These are all things people think about when they decide to aquire additional skydiving equipment. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

[URL http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=585697]Post: So You Want To Be A Rigger[/URL] -=-=-=-=- Pull.

So what is "normal?" I'm finding frequently now that I'm looking up and seeing the slider at the top and a small round oval of a parachute. A couple times I've pulled the toggles and pumped them down (once leading to a nice aggressive left turn), the other times it finishes coming down before I do anything - maybe 3-5 second delay? (time seems pretty relative to me) These are manta 280, Fusion 270, Falcon 265. Most of the earlier jumps were with a PD300 and it was always square by the time I looked up. A more forceful opening too...perhaps I should be happy with less bruising on the legs/shoulders? Well, your instructors will know better what your procedures should be, but a slider that comes down 3-5 seconds after deployment begins sounds pretty nice to me. (Not too fast, not too slow, probably pretty comfy. ) If the slider takes longer than that, the "problem" you may be looking at is you're still falling toward the ground kinda fast. Not as fast as freefall - maybe 1/2 or 1/3 as fast. At some point that must stop. You want it to stop (i.e. convert to a fully-open, controllable, landable, control-checked canopy) before your hard deck, or things get confusing and options get less safe. So if I look up and the slider is still there after 6 seconds, I would need to know altitude and decide what I think it going on with the canopy. (Malfunction or super-duper-smooth opening I can wait out or encourage with rear risers? Enough altitude to wait or not?) My current canopy is "normal" in that I pull and 99% of the time it's either 5 seconds (aaahhh...eep - dang turn!) or 2 seconds ("ungh!...aaaahhhh...).

Isn't the term for this actually a high-speed stall (as some others have posted) or an "accelerated stall"? I think dynamic stall (on a canopy) is just the regime where the canopy changes orientation significantly (e.g. it drops back and down all of a sudden). -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I had a problem at that point too. I think it was my seventh 10-second jump where I finally got it. I'm not sure what will fix it for you but just because you're stuck here doesn't mean you're a bowler at heart. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Antilock brakes have a similar problem - increasing accidents caused by people being stupid because they "know" they have equipment to make it all better. Still, I'd take a skyhook. I just wouldn't be cutting it away at 250 feet. Unless I was being paid to do stupid stuff and I really liked it, or something. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I keep asking my insurance agent if I need to list certain household items (periodically we talk and I bring up my latest big-ticket items), but they never need me to. I guess I don't have anything they would consider really "nice". -=-=-=-=- Pull.

-=-=-=-=- Pull.

The double-wide legstraps meet in the middle for a lot of people (including me) when they walk. For guys, this pinching can be a minor issue. For gals this can be unacceptable. You might want to try one on with the wide legstraps to find out. The Cordura vs. Para-pak thing should be documented in searchable threads, and I think it boils down to: para-pak: cooler, smoother/slipperier; cordura: rough and tough (just the way I like it ). If you get a light color webbing, I think the plating on the standard hardware oxydizes and rubs off on the webbing behind the harness 3-ring ring which makes it look dirty. I personally plan to pay the extra $ and get stainless hardware next time solely to avoid this issue. (On dark webbing it's not so noticeable.) Ask if they have any more of those ghetto 3-color kill line pilot chutes. I got one and everyone thinks it's cool. I think the 3-rings size and riser size are covered in the "Post yer Infinity" thread, and certainly the deployment type is covered somewhere. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I've done a few cool jumps I wanted to get into videoing for, and I was sorta bummed they didn't have video. But, after doing those jumps I realize I can just go do them again later, when I'm good enough to be into camera. Now I have just enough jumps and "teeny, tiny, baby malfunctions / in-air problems" to know that I haven't actually run into anything serious, handled it well, and proven myself.* So I'm cooling off on strapping snagpoints to my melon for a few more jumps.

Where is our info source that Vectran lines can snap without prior notice? Someone at my DZ told me this entire story came from one incident where someone used understrength Vectran brake lines (and probably died when a brake line snapped during a swoop). The implication was there isn't a body of evidence saying Vectran are no-warning-snappy, there was one incident. Does anyone have anything real on this? Know what forum search I would do? (If I searched now with what I know, I expect I would find 100 people quoting the person before them that "Everyone knows"...) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

It's a high-stakes, low frequency arena that's hard to enter and secure a good reptutation. We know of something like two unexplained events? Four? I'm not saying this doesn't damn Vigil; I'm only saying it's an extremely small number. But the number of no-pull / low-pull fatalities we're trying to prevent is also a low number. And to get there we have to install a lot of AADs (at no small cost) and make a lot of jumps. Since I plan to make a lot of jumps and expect to need my AAD very rarely, if ever (when something totally nasty happens) and I can't tell for sure whether it's going to work in that situation, I went with what I'm comfortable with: a Cypres just like the one I had all through my student status. Do I think the Cypres is better? Yes. Do I have any proof? Not really. What I have is confidence. Part of it was the student Cypres I wore (that never had to do anything for me, thank goodness) and part is SSK's website's explanation of some of the details of the 4-year check, which makes me think they are 100% serious about preventing all avoidable failures. So if other new jumpers are like me, that's how Vigil can get to them: have a Vigil in their student rig throughout their training, and convince them that Vigil is torture-tested and followed up, every unit. I should mention SSK has their own recent confidence issue, though, with the displays winking out on some of the Cypres-2s. How history shows they handled that will impact my confidence in the Cypres-2 AAD, when/should I need to move up. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

If the standardized rigs aren't the jumper's normal equipment, would you also suggest a day of jumping the equipment before the "big day"? EP drills are one thing, and they're valuable. Pulling, "housekeeping", and landing, without the pressure of 29 more jumps to do before night, would seem to add to that. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Do you really weigh 115 pounds out the door? Or do you weigh 195 out the door? Wingloading is given pounds:square foot. Sorry this isn't answering the question... -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Until he isn't dead anymore. -=-=-=-=- Pull.