FrogNog

Oh. I get it now. So in a Mr. Bill you're supposed to stand on his shoulders (after y'all survive the opening)? Never knew that. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

This is where it's good to be the little guy. Dealing with some people, who we will call "Ebay Assholes", you will be threatened with bad feedback for leaving bad feedback, even if you were in the right (say for ordering a dress in good condition in the right size and getting one with stains in a different size). I say suck it up and just make sure you put the honest truth (if the unflattering side of it). People will still sell to you with some bad feedback marks, I reckon, unless they know they're planning on hosing people over and they don't want you to give them trouble. And in that case, you don't want to buy from them anyway. :) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I counted 100 lightning strikes (each seemed to average 3.5 flashes) on a 40 minute drive last night to the GF's. I get there and think it's all over. Then about 02:00 I wake up with that primal fight-or-flight reaction from the deafening thunder. Yummy. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

That is some seriously funny shit. A good laugh.

That's what I was going to tell. Pilot has very decent glide ratio. However, I dislike Pilot's oversteer. I have a Hornet (same as Pilot) and I don't mind the oversteer. I've just gotten used to it. However, I can see how someone who has flown something better could dislike it.

What if he pulls before you do? If he sees someone below him waving, he could skip waving himself and just pull. I'm not saying this is better (or worse) than trying to avoid in freefall. I'm just saying that if the high person starts deployment before the low person, the high person gains an edge (which may or may not be enough). -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I'm surprised nobody else has answered this yet - I know some dumper jumpers know the answer. When the air is thinner, your entire body has to work harder, even just sitting still. This tires you out faster. Add in some packing, temperature changes, wearing a heavy rig and being cramped up periodically, and riding the adrenaline (even if you're used to it), and someone could get plum tuckered out. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

man i'm an idiot! After having given up a few months ago, i forgot that i had 1 or 2 roll ups that day. No wonder! Anyway thanks for clearing up the mystery for me, i was wondering why i was feeling it on particular that day and not previously....

Sounds like once the situation happened, you did the best you could. Glad it turned out OK! So... got video? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Is the extra $ you will have to pay for rental worth it to you to have a Cypres on your back this weekend? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Bottom line: Follow mfgrs instructions. The bag is sized and shaped for the particular container. For most, it was designed for the bridle attachment point to be against the reserve wall. The origin of the practice was "fitted" corners at the lower end of the main container. By having the bridle rotate the bag 90 degrees as it comes out of the container, the pressure is released on the fitted corners, enabling the bag to be extracted more easily than if it was pulled straight out. He's not asking why the bag fits in the container or comes out a certain way, he's asking why he was taught to insert the bag grommet-to-pin, then rotate it grommet-to-reserve. Chuck pointed out he doesn't rotate it grommet-to-reserve, he just leaves it grommet-to-pin. Freaky, but there you are. :) When I learned to pack, I learned the same way as fundgh - coil the lines just off the risers into the tray, then drop the bag in line-bights-to-backpad (grommet to pin), then rotate it 90 degrees (line bights to BOC, grommet to reserve). Thankfully my rigger explained why: the goal is to ensure the lines just off the risers don't loop any of the line bights (stows) by ensuring any rotation the bag makes throughout the rest of the container closing process has the line stows moving away from the lines just off the risers, and so it should be trailing and stretching out the line coil, reducing the likelihood of wrapping. During that rotation, the bag holds down the line coils, too, theoretically keeping things more predictable. Personally I don't subscribe to this 100%, but I still follow it partially. Right before I close my rig I hold the bag a few inches above the empty main container and coil the lines just about the risers, making sure where they connect to the closes stow they don't loop around the bitter end. I put the coils as close to the reserve as possible (which some people say is bad**) then set the bag down at about the angle halfway between grommet-to-pin and grommet-to-reserve, so my stows are as far from the coils as they can get. Then I rotate the bag so the lines are at the BOC and I make sure I can see all the stow ends, lifting them out from under the bag if necessary. That's how I tell I don't have any stows wrapping each other. I think this is one of those voodoo things that probably has a kernel of safety goodness in it. Problem is, I don't know how large that kernel is. ** I coil the lines between the risers and the closest stow as close to the reserve as I can to keep them away from my stows. Some people say this is bad because it could encourage those lines to catch on the reserve container and tear it during an abnormal opening, and some people don't like their coils here because the base of their closing loop / closing loop lanyard is at the reserve. (I have a recent model Infinity, so my closing loop is in the bottom flap.) My disclaimer is this: anyone who thinks they know how their gear works could be right, and they could be wrong. If you think you know, you may want to doublecheck. If you don't know, you should ask a rigger. If his explanation doesn't make sense, then you may have to do what he says without understanding it. (I am in this boat from time to time while I'm still "figuring things out".

Well, I wasn't doing this on my 9th jump, but now I regularly do hop-and-pops with short delays and funky exit positions, and I can look "down" (between my legs or past my feet) to see the pilot or dashboard jumper smiling at me. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Do you know why the preliminary reports leave out whether the pilot bailed out? I read some of these and see that the pilot is uninjured, but the plane impacted after an "uncontrolled descent". The explanation in the 2003 Texas Porter crash is that the pilot got out and the plane impacted without him, but the preliminary doesn't mention that. I don't know whether the minor and major injuries in the spin/crash with skydivers aboard (and the police officer videotaping) were sustained by jumpers who left or jumpers who stayed, or what. Just asking because guesstimating survivability should take into account whether the occupant(s) crashed with the plane. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Havent weighed that little in 30 years when I was 10. He must have been referring to Europeans. If you are calculating for fat Americans, you would probably need to use an average of 220 lb. per jumper. Hey, I'm 220 OtD and I'm not particularly fat. I just have big canopies. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Not just packing, either - creeping, too. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Next you'll say to pull in the correct orientation, like not head-down (at 120 MPH). -=-=-=-=- Pull.

This is quite true.... - topher I disagree; I've been in the bellhousing a few times and I don't see anything in there that looks like it would wear poorly through different users' uses. There's two slabs of steel and a much more highly-consumable friction plate between them. If anything in here is abused, bad things will develop. But differing use? I give it that in my own driving, just like I do with the brakes (hard, soft, short, long, wet, dry). I don't think the fork, cable/hydraulic system, or pedal system care, either. I think multiple drivers for a manual transmission car wear things out faster because A) more people driving the car will probably mean more miles per time period and B) more chance one of those people will abuse it. (Statistically-speaking, this is only true if you exclude from the statistical comparison the single driver who abuses his car; I do exclude him, because he doesn't pop onto this forum and complain that his clutch didn't last very long and he didn't do anything wrong.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

My ultimate jump would be to de-orbit. More achievable jumps: * wingwalk * flying towed by the airplane * planecatch * snowjump (with big powdery swoop) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I think he did that one a few times, but if you're thinking of the Union Jack canopy he opens up, I believe that would be "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". (Not sure, though; I'm not an expert on the old stuff.) -=-=-=-=- Pull.

Would the second problem with a downwind jump run, in your opinion, be that faster-falling groups have to exit before slower-falling groups (i.e. the order is reversed), to avoid having the slower fallers drift under the faster fallers? This is even worse than wrong exit order on an upwind jump run; in that case, belly fliers getting out last and falling slowly can freefall into the space of e.g. freefliers who exited earlier, fell faster, and opened their canopies earlier. With a downwind jump run freefliers getting out last and falling slowly can freefall into the same space as belly fliers who got out before them, fell slower, and got moved more by the wind - resulting in everyone opening at the same time in the same place. Anyway, it all sucks.

Why didn't you take an upwind landing in the weeds? Were there some obstructions or other factors that prevented you from judging wind direction on the ground and making a landing pattern from 800 ft? Or did you try to make it back to the grass, even though you knew you couldn't? -=-=-=-=- Pull.

And stability issues, and "didn't see that coming!" issues; We have some great local video of two very experienced guys going off the step and one pulls, and the PC makes a complete 360 turn around them because they leaned a little at pull time. You can smell the excitement on the video as the freeflier with over a thousand jumps grabs the PC by the bridle, routes it back around his back, and tosses it without screwing anything up. That has turned me off of Mr. Bills personally for an unknown length of time. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

When I hear courts in the U.S. rule on this sort of thing, they don't talk about a right to privacy, they talk about an expectation of privacy. Apparently someplace you would expect privacy is some place where you have a right to it - such as a public dressing room where the door closes. Unfortunately I'm not sure whether an ER counts as a place someone would have an expectation of privacy. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

With only ~200 jumps I am not supposed to be dispensing advice, but if I were to advise, I would say that continuing with whatever system you have been using so far would probably be the best choice. Different systems may have different pros/cons, but changing systems always adds risk/danger that requires additional training and practice to reduce. I think my advice above is not novel and others will agree. -=-=-=-=- Pull.

I believe the failure mode of fabric sewn with thread that stretches differently is either: * thread isn't stretchy enough and takes too much load when the fabric stretches under load, and the thread snaps * thread is too stretchy and doesn't bond the fabrics together so they can act like one strong piece of fabric, and the fabric rips from excessive loading in places. -=-=-=-=- Pull.