yoink

Low experience. Multiple camera angles. Buzzing friends / spectators for video. Poor launch technique. Skydiving gear. Dude, you're really pushing it. On top of that, you're giving poor advice. Don't.

That should be a T-shirt. Preferably with a beer logo somewhere.

Other than digging deep into both brakes to get yourself out of an impact, I can't think of any time when aggressive, sudden inputs are a better option than smoth progressive ones. Slow is fast.

Yup!

Hope is not a strategy. True, but it is an observation about the minute differences which can result in either life or death OK. Given that you've noticed one of the minute differences that puts you in a risk catagory, what do you intend to do about it, if anything? Do you see as a big risk? As a genuine question - I'm not going to give you a hard time no matter your answer - did you know about these sorts of catagories when you picked that wing? If so, why did you feel that the Advanced bracket was right for you? Genuinely interested.

To quote from the Novice category "people who haven't had a whole lot of experience with a long spot, off landings etc" I would imagine that the vast majority of people with less than 200 jumps have limited exposure to these situations. Precisely. Which suggests that people with less than 200 jumps are probably best off jumping in the 'Novice' catagory - forgiving canopies and wigloadings. Sounds about right to me if you want to give safe advice to the masses. Of course, you're never going to get anyone with just under 200 jumps to admit that. Far more likely will be people with that sort of experience making excuses why Intermediate or Advanced canopies are actually more appropriate for them... You see, people like definition when it means they can reinforce their own opinions of themselves, but not when it conflicts with how they want to percieve themselves. The 'Intermediate' catagory, from that report, reads to me like canopies and loadings that are suitable for people who are actively persuing canopy training. They have the skills to consistently make good decisions and the experience to back this up. They're actively trying to improve their piloting and are trying to learn advanced techiques safely. Doesn't that sound like it's someone in the 200 - 400 jump range? It's difficult to see it being much less... Of course, those same people will be absolutely CONVINCED that the same skills make them 'Advanced' pilots and that flying wings in a lower catagory is insulting somehow. Again, pinning jump numbers to the definitions is pretty pointless and arbitrary. It's really about dedication to learning a separate skill and being mature enough to ignore the hubris of thinking you're better than you are. That only comes from time spent in the sport; time spent flying, time spent learning, time spent trying to better yourself and time spent seeing other people make mistakes. Someone could make 1000 skydives and still not be as safe under a loaded Intermediate canopy as someone who has practised for a few hundred jumps.

what about suspended centre of mass? We're not suspended from our C of G, although while vertical it all tends to be in the same place regardless of our harness shift. I don't think it's unbelievable to think that a human who leans forward and tucks their legs up shifts their centre of mass forward under the wing - not by much, but maybe it's enough. As far as I'm aware, a for a human that centre of mass is just in front of the second sacral vertebrae. If someone is wearing a weight vest, leaning forward will move a larger portion of that suspended mass forward than is counter balanced by the legs. WHY this would affect a wing in the way it does, I've no idea. I've never understood it. I may well be wrong. My point is that I do think it's overly simplistic to state that the 4 reasons that you've listed are definitively the only possible reasons for a change in performance unless you can prove it mathematically.

There isn't really a lot to show or hear. It beeps loudly 3 times at your 2 preselected altitudes, then flatlines at your third. Most people use these for breakoff, pull and hard-deck keys. what more do you need to know?

Skydiving is a little wierd. We're a small community and tend to all hang around together for several days a month doing something that is pretty exhilarating and these physical factors have a psychological knock-on - they can artifically inflate your feelings of trust or family for others aroud you, whereas in reality skydiving is just a microcosm of the world at large. There will be criminals and scumbags at your DZ, just as there are in your neighbourhood, school or work. I've had good times and bad times. I've been lucky enough to leave my wallet out on a bar overnight and not have it moved, and I've had stuff nicked from a zipped bag. Bottom line is, you don't really want to be leaving stuff lying around - particularly not at Boogies where people come and go.

poorly.

I can understand why the riggers out there are unhappy with the 100% riggers fault option. For me, it's a question of the severity and obviousness of the mistake. We don't expect people to be perfect. We understand that human errors can and do happen. If I was to get a line over on my reserve? Well shit happens. That could happen even if the rigger is doing their very best and I understand that. But this isn't like that. This is a case of a rigger missing step in a defined process. If the rig is equipped with an AAD I'm assuming that at some point in the rigger / AAD/ harness manual it states 'route the closing loop through the AAD cutter' or something similar? Simply not doing that step is a BIG error. Even leaving tools in a rig seems a more understandable mistake - there's best practice to have a process for counting your tools when you're done, but I don't believe that is formalized. Closing a reserve when an AAD is equipped is. Again, don't get me wrong, I don't believe the rigger is completely responsible for the student's death. He is 100% responsible for not closing the reserve properly. As 'Twardo so eloquently put in the other thread: "Again, ~this riggers mistake may have failed to prevent the fatality, but it certainly didn't cause it. "

umm.. Because we're not living in the 16th century? seriously, the macho bullshit surrounding this whole debacle that some people have disgusts me. The people that post shit like this are just as pathetic as Gary is. You've been fucked. Sorry about that. It happens - been there, done that. Pursue the SOB to the limits of the law. Go vigiliante or hire people for physical vengance and I hope the law pursues you as well, and I bet you'll come off worse. The evidence in these posts should help... Rant over. Congrats on the new arrival! Focus on the awesomeness of that!

Making ever more efficient designs based on the current technology, that's true. Eventually you'll reach a performance plateau. However I woldn't be surprised if the current path of making flatter and flatter designs leads to a hybrid ram-air / hangglider type of wing, rather than the paraglider crossover - something that once inflated is essentially rigid, closed and thin. I've been drawing designs like that for the past 3 years and I'm not a specialist. Someone else must be doing more. Would it fit in a cool, tiny container? Probably not. Would it glide like a bastard? Who knows? I'd fly it! for the OP, I tend to think of both paragliding and canopy piloting as having the same basic principles, in the same way that Formula 1 and Rallying have the same background, but each becomes its own specialty with gear, techniques and training specific to it. It's massive hubris to think becase you can do one, you can do the other.

Why did this become the norm for teaching sketchy landings instead of PLFs? You blow a PLF, you end up with a broken arm / leg. You get unlucky with a sliding landing and you hit a rock and shatter your spine... Tandems, OK, I sort of get it, or specialist swoop comps where there's a designated sandy landing area that's been cleared. But I don't believe it's ok for anyone else to think that it should be an option in standard landings.

That was the confusion I was having - The way I looked at it was that the rigger is responsible for packing the rig correctly. He didn't do that and is completely responsible for that aspect. The student didn't pull their reserve - something they were completely responsible for. Both factors are the root cause of the accident - remove either and there probably wouldn't have been an issue, but each has a different responsibility.

I'm surprised by the low % for the rigger being completely responsible, but I guess that people may have had the same confusion I did: To my mind, both the student and rigger completely failed in their duty, but each duty was different so both are completely responsible. I wonder if people aren't putting 'partial' as an answer because they think the 'completely' ones are mutually exclusive?

After having this happen several times, my procedure was actually to remove the other contact once I'd got some room to myself under canopy. I personally found it easier to judge depth with everything being equally blurred, but bifocal, as opposed to one and one. You might want to try some experiments on the ground to see what works best for you.

REALLY well fitting contacts AND goggles. Even then, shit happens. My vision is about -6.5 in both eyes and landing without a contact takes all my concentration, all my skill from many years of canopy flying and not a small amount of luck. It's a shitty place to be. If you're worried about it, wear prescription goggles or glasses with goggles that fit over them. You may not look the coolest on the DZ, but you look better like that than you do rolling around the landing area clawing at the ground after blowing the landing because you couldn't see properly. Edit: re Sorz goggles - I tried a pair and they simply didn't fit the shape of my face well. I don't think there's a simple, single answer - the foam surround is what you're looking for to minimise air leakage, but try on as many pairs as possible.

Bollocks, that measure is OVERKILL Sounds pretty good to me actually. Knowledge of what to expect (good and bad) on a certain type of skydive, and how not to endanger the people on it seem pretty critical prior to trying to film it.

I've been fine on hop & pops, but wouldn't use them for extended freefall. I've lost contacts with full goggles before now - all it takes is a little gap to make your eye start watering and there goes your depth perception...

You're right - That's exactly my point and I worded myself poorly. All the lessons you indicated do transfer into the speedflying environment. Lots of speedflyers don't know when they're in over their heads because they just don't have that experience. I believe the addage is: 'You don't know, what you don't know'... Have a look at this - another recent near-fatality on a speedwing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOV-Fn4Iu6A Again - it's a lack of skill and too much arrogance that's caused this. Someone who can't control the speed of their wing on a launch has no business cliff-launching. I'm prepared to bet they don't see it that way though. Someone with the appropriate skillset would make that launch look easy, and then you get the 'hey that lookks easy! I'll give it a go!' crowd following up, then going in. .

The trouble is that a lot of speedwing pilots don't have the experience to make good decisions on swooping. That's what you're seeing in this video. Swooping buildings, with spectators, past parked vehicles with no outs once he'd started his turn. Bad decision after bad decision. I've no idea of the experience of the pilot, but I'd expect someone who had the skill and knowledge to attempt this sort of stunt, not to put themself in such a bad position in the first place. There's no regulation on buying a wing, little on where to fly it, and generally only paraglider knowledge on how to fly them. I've been saying for years that speedflying is a seperate discipline to paragliding and swooping and needs to take lessons from both. I've heard horror stories of arrogant skydivers insisting that since they have x-thousand swoops that they don't need any instruction on launching or flying a new wing type. Idiots. Similarly those from a paragliding background don't see any problems with whipping toggle hooks for swooping - stuff we left behind 10 years ago for good reason. I'm certain we'll see more and more of these accidents as more people take up the sport. Speedflying is the new cool thing to do, and when it's done well, it looks easy. The trouble is, everyone thinks they can do it straight off the bat.

This is the fundamental problem with this argument which we're not going to resolve. You believe it is possible to truely clear your airspace and reliably have aborts on every jump without endangering anyone else. That's one opinion. Personally, I believe only a tiny, tiny fraction of canopy pilots are skilled, disciplined and mature enough to do that. If you're one of those - fantastic. What about the other 99.8% of people who aren't that capable? Do you not alter the rules governing swooping for the vast majority, because it may impact your fun? If so, that seems unbelievably selfish to me. "I want to have my skydive AND swoop at the end if I think it's clear" is kinda wanting to have your cake and eat it. How about asking some of the REALLY good pilots - the guys who are winning all the medals what they think and to chime in? "Do most people who have HP canopies have the skills and judgement to swoop at the end of a mixed skydive safely every time, and do you believe it's possible for eveyone who swoops (not just specialist canopy pilots) to really clear their airspace before initiating a HP landing?" I'd love to hear the comments.

You seem to be hung up on this jumper/jumps metric. What about the number of jumpers on inappropropriate canopies for their skill levels? Is THAT increasing? How about the number of canopy collisions per year? Is THAT increasing? What about serious / fatal landing incidents per planeload (not exceeding 200HP) when there's a gibbous moon, on the 3rd Tuesday of the month? Is that increasing? You can make statistics fit whatever you want, and I get that you're protective over the discipline you enjoy... rightly so. But we've been preaching canopy education for years and people are still dying and being killed under canopy when there's no good reason for it. I don't want HP canopy flight banned. I want swoopers to keep doing what they're doing. And I'd rather not have federal regulation involved. But at the same time we do need to get safer. We all agree on that. The only difference is that you say that we need to continue with the same formula that we've been using, while other are suggesting a definate change that will result in a change in attitude of skydivers, because those are the roots of the problem... Arrogance, Ego and Selfishness.

Except for the fact we're not sure what they want us to address. While some might assume it's canopy collisions and canopy crashes, it could also easily be cloud clearances... I think the latter is more likely as I think the FAA cares more about us possibly impacting other aircraft in the air than us injuring and killing ourselves/other jumpers on or near the ground. Personally I think it'll be everything. They won't get shirty about busting cloud cover and NOT look at wingsuiting flight patterns or canopy flight for example. If they're going to interfere, they'll do it for everything. Now we need to clean house on ALL our procedures. Do we dare assume otherwise?