Grogs

[disclaimer]Ok, I am *not* a swooping god. As a 200 jump chump I'm certainly not an authority on how to swoop, so what I'm saying is what I've heard talking to the swoopers at the DZ over beers, read online, etc. Skymonkeyone could offer you a much better personal explanation of the differences based on his flying, but unfortunately he's at Quincy (and I'm not )[/disclaimer] The problem with the toggle hook turn isn't really with altitude loss or the amount of speed picked up. If you land in a hard turn, you're probably going to the hospital regardless of what type of turn you made. There are 2 problems with a toggle turn. First, your body gets swung farther out from under the canopy than it would on a front riser turn - that's why the alti loss isn't as bad as with a front riser turn, where the canopy dives more and you remain more 'centered'. The second problem with the toggle turn is that you're actually deforming the rear of the canopy when you pull down the steering toggle. A front riser turn doesn't do that, it just makes the canopy tilt forward and left/right, but the shape remains mainly intact. What these 2 factors mean is that when you're in a hard toggle turn and you release it quicky, 2 things have to happen. First your body has to swing back under the canopy, and then the tail of the canopy has to reassume its shape and begin flying again. Until these 2 things happen, the canopy will not flare. So with a front riser turn you have a much better chance to 'dig yourself out of a hole' if you realize you've started the turn too low and have to flare in a hurry. mbolism: You aren't alone with the high front riser pressure. On my Silhouette I can barely manage to do a 360 front riser before they get pulled out of my hands, and I could never even think about reversing the turn for a good 3-4 seconds, so no 90-270 landings for me As I understand it, riser pressure generally decreases as you downsize, so when you step down a size or 2 in your canopy you should have a much easier time of it.

Actually, we have a pretty bad-ass swooper at our DZ. There are some guys who can out-swoop her, but they don't do it as gracefully and most of them have much more heavily loaded canopies than she does. Unfortunately, she broke her tibia and fibia on a landing gone bad 2 weeks ago. I think the comment from just about everyone who heard about it was 'She's the last person I ever expected to get hurt' because she makes it look so damn easy. I think a contributing factor to her getting hurt is she does her maneuvers on toggles rather than front risers (which are generally a bit more forgiving and let you dig yourself out of the hole a little better). I think that might also be a factor in why you don't see as many girls swooping. Some of the girls I've talked to about it say they just don't have the upper body strength to do a good front riser turn. Given the choice between hooking it with the toggles and not hooking it at all, I'd choose to not hook it. I don't know if that's a concious factor in most girls' minds or not.

I thought the T-10 had steering toggles. I know the -1B's I jumped had no steering whatsoever (unless you count trying to do a pullup on the riser as steering), but I remember some of the instructors talking about T-10's and how they could be steered. Hmm. Maybe I've just forgotten. It has been over 6 years and I said there was no way in hell I was jumping another Army parachute after those 5. Something about wanting to keep my knees and back in one piece.

Hehe. You should offer to buy them a tandem next time they say that. Your money is pretty safe. I'd give you about 100:1 odds they'll just think up some other excuse for why they can't do it.

Wow. That's got to be the best newspaper report I've ever seen about a skydiving accident. Words like 'tension knot' usually don't appear in newspaper articles. It's usually just a bunch of crap about how the 'parachute failed to open'. Here's another version of the story that was (I believe) posted up on rec.skydiving and e-mailed to me:

Here's a quote from Symantec: I assume that's what you mean by "has mutated and attcks windows 2000 and NT machines." Instead of just using the server as a launch platform, it now allows a hacker to do anything with it he wants to.

I've got a Silhouette 170 I've put close to 200 jumps on. I PRO pack it, leave the nose out (don't even push it back) and put maybe 3-4 rolls in the tail - I wouldn't dream of rolling the nose as the openings tend towards snivelly already. Wing loading might be a factor here since I'm pretty lightly loaded at around 1.1:1. I've yet to have what I would consider a hard opening on it, and maybe only 1-2 slightly brisk ones. I've also tried a Psycho pack on it (although PD doesn't recommend this) but I didn't really notice any difference so I decided to stick with the standard PRO pack.

235... enough to know that's not very many.

Congrats on getting signed off. Let me know when you come down to Suffolk and I'll make sure we get in a few jumps together.

Take a look at www.freefall.com

And let's not forget when you knocked your 2 JM's heads together. My most embarassing moment is still when I put the wrong rig on and jumped it.

I haven't seen the 2000 USPA stats, but in 1999 there were about 184,000 tandems done. I've looked through the skydiving fatalities page and I only remember seeing maybe 2 tandem fatalities in the last 5 years, so you're probably talking 1:250,000 or so. Injuries are a little more difficult to pin down since a lot of them probably don't get reported. Personally, I've probably seen 500-1000 tandems land in the last year and only 1 or 2 sprained ankles.

I got these via e-mail from my DZO, who is an authorized PD dealer. I have no reason to doubt it's authenticity. Since most skydiving websites usually seem to be run by a skydiver in exchange for jump tickets or services, they aren't always as up to date as other commercial websites that have a full time dedicated webmaster, so that's why PD probably hasn't gotten around to updating it yet.

I got some info on the Sabre2 this morning such as flight characteristics, pricing info, and order forms. Since I haven't seen these posted on PD's site (or Square1's either Lisa ), I thought some of you might be interested. I just slapped the page together, so if you have problems opening something, feel free to let me know and I'll try to fix the problem. Sabre2 Info Here

Very cool Michelle. Sounds like you had a nice jump. Good luck on your graduation jump next week! LOL. Good thing there were no guys under canopy around you while you trying to do this. They probably would have run into you trying to get a peep. And don't worry, it's not only girls that have this problem. I got under canopy after a head down jump and my freefly pants were down around my legstraps. If I hadn't had the container on I would have had them come off completely.

Woohoo! Congrats on the night jump Pammi. They are fun aren't they? I pounded in on my night-jump first landing too. I knew the ground was getting close so I went to a half flare and waited and the next thing I knew *smack* there was the ground. Good thing I know how to do a good PLF.

I'm not an AFF-I either, but I did have the pleasure of watching the AFF JM Course at our DZ last fall. Every single jump was videoed, and at the end of the course I got to watch every jump on a compilation video. In almost every dive the student went on his back, started spinning, or did both and the prospective JM's had to stop it. I don't think any of them enjoyed stopping the spin, but some students are going to get into a spin and they have to be able to stop it. I just started doing coach jumps recently. I had a jump similar to that this weekend. He wasn't spinning (and I'm not supposed to stop him if he does) but he fell so fast I simply couldn't keep up with him. I swooped down and docked, but as soon as I released him he sank away again and we were never able to work on any exercises. I felt like a real ass for that one... so much so I actually asked manifest not to charge him for my lift ticket. I guess the point I'm trying to make is JM's are human beings too. They can make mistakes and get caught short on occasion.

2000' is about the lowest I'd go on a fun jump hop-n-pop. In an emergency, I'd probably go 1500' or higher on the main. For the reserve, I'd go however low the pilot told me to get out.

0:10:0 myself. 7 jumps between 5 & 9 ways, 1 2-way, and 2 coached jumps. The best of the weekend was probably the 8-point 6-way we did for the sunset load last weekend. Oh, and Fallinwoman is correct. A 5-pt 6-way is only a falcon. For a double you need at least 8 points in a 4-way or larger formation. It's still a pretty cool jump though.

Skydive Suffolk. Here's a large view of the airport And this trapezoidal area is the current landing area That wasn't the landing area in 1993, and I'm not even certain the DZ was at the airport back then (we got kicked off the airport for several years and used a grass strip).

I had the exact same problem with my Silhouette. The girl I bought it from had really short arms and had the brake lines shortened, but unfortunately she brought them in too much. I had quite a few hard landings with it until a friend pointed out that my canopy was beginning to bow-tie on landing. I talked to my rigger about it and he had me find the point on the flare where my canopy started to fly backwards and added just enough brake line to bring that all the way down to the bottom of the flare. After he added the extra brake line it felt like I was flying a completely different canopy on riser turns.

Agreed about the reserve thing. I think making sure the reserve is in date is an individual responsibility. When I pack, I generally inspect and do minor user level maintenance as required on the main: replace or tighten a closing loop, replace broken or worn out rubber bands/tube stows, push slider bumpers back up and those sorts of things. If I find a frayed line, a hole in a canopy, or something of that nature, I'll have a rigger take a look at it. As for my accountability, most of the rigs I pack belong to the DZO and he has explained that if I pack a malfunction and it is clearly my fault, I will be paying for the reserve repack (as if the thought of somebody possibly dying wasn't incentive enough to do a good job). I've only had one of my pack jobs cutaway and I can tell you I was very upset until we inspected the canopy and realized it was user error. Yes, I will get my rigger's ticket one of these days and I believe when I do all the experiences I've had as a packer will make me a better one.

What? Skydivers running drugs? Where would you ever get an idea like that? What a great idea for a movie... Umm, actually, nevermind.

On the Javelin, the letter indicates the width of the harness yoke across the shoulders and the number indicates the length of the harness between the hip ring (if equipped) and the (?) 3-ring assembly - I know it's a vertical measurement. C-17 seems to be the harness size for the average (median) male and something around the B-15 - C-16 is the average female size. As mentioned earlier, talk to Sunpath. They can give you a good explanation and tell you where/how to measure to determine your own harness size.

I always find it fun to see if I can get a telephone salesperson to hang up on me. It's usually not too hard, I just ask lots of questions about their product. There's always something flakey with what they're selling. After all, if it was really as awesome as the pitch they laid down, why would they need to call me to sell it?