robinheid

"Who the **** is making these things and who the **** is selling them." Nothing wrong with selling a small reserve -- to a small person. In fact, as Roger Nelson proved when he switched his students to Sabre 170s (and thus much smaller rigs), smaller people definitely benefit from rigs that are proportional to their size. What's psychotically silly is that most of the people putting highly overloaded reserves into their containers would never even consider BASE jumping, and have no idea what goes into creating reliable one-parachute systems, yet there they are making essentially one-parachute jumps with gear that's not designed for that. "Good idea" is not the driving concept here; "cool" is the concept. So until we start ridiculing the gods for their de facto one-parachute systems, until we make it clear that it's not cool but idiotic to jump an emergency lifesaving device that will probably kill you if you have to actually use it, people will keep doing it because cool trumps good idea. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

On the bright side, here's a shining example of Pat's editing work. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Which proves once again that we need restrictions on these canopies. Call it a ban if you wish, but that may be the only thing that saves these fools from themselves. Well said, whuffo. "Which proves once again that we need restrictions on these canopies parachutists. Call it a ban if you wish, but that may be the only thing that saves these fools from themselves." 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Start selling boxes. LOL +1 And along this same line, Gary has just given a completely new meaning to the skydiving term "boxman." 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 I would only add that, for Step 3, lose the D-bag and skydiving pilot chute and go with the tailpocket and BASE p/c that probably came with the BASE canopy you acquired at Step 2. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

And the Occam's Razor Engineering Award. Well done, young man. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Blood makes everything slippery. The line is drawn by the DZO whose legal butt is on that line. S/he may allow/encourage/discourage/prohibit whatever s/he sees fit. That is how private enterprise works. Perris led the way as one of the early proponents of swooping as organized activity and competition. It is now leading the way away from it. Many DZs followed its initial lead; hopefully at least as many will follow it now. The owners and managers of Perris are among the world's most experienced and long-running operators, and their decision was not made rashly. That they chose to make the decision they did should serve as a big flashing warning light to everyone else. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

the reason you don't get rollercoaster stomach even on rollercoasters is that you may lean forward into the dive rather than leaning back. When you do that, it changes the centrifugal force vector away from your head toward your back, so the urine hits the back of your bladder instead of the top, which is common in normal life so it becomes background noise, so to speak. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Nebug brings up a good point. What do you do if the pilot is not unconscious but merely overwhelmed? In the above case, impairment was the cause, but what if it's other circumstances? Here's a survival story that's exactly the same except completely different: Jumpers returning in a Cessna from a boogie. Pilot is VFR-rated. Suddenly they are in unforecasted soup. Zero-zero. In mountains. Rigs onboard but not on, and where would you go anyway? Solution? Pilot kept his eyes on the balls (wings level, tail straight) Jumper #1 watched the vertical climb indicator. Jumper #2 watched the heading. Jumper #3 watched everything just in case somebody else missed something. Result? They made it through the soup back to CAVU and the PIC handled it from there. Lesson? Even if you aren't a pilot, you can still be part of the solution if you: stay calm keep thinking get creative 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Welllll, that is why I attached the article. It was carefully researched through multiple conversations with multiple big dogs as well as my own multi-decade experience as an instructor and sometime-swooper. On the other hand, my posts on this thread are more reactive and by nature fragmentary and as I already said to DSE, I can see where he drew a similar conclusion to yours based only on those posts. So thanks for reading the article and to sum it up: Work that larger wing to its limits before you go smaller -- but do the one thing no one seems to be teaching: Make sure while you're doing it that you don't exceed the larger wing's turn-radius limits that I proposed in the article. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Call me stupid and unimaginative. I can't think of a productive motive for it. The only one I could come up with was if he was hoping to get asked to leave the airport and could negotiate a lease contract settlement on his way out like Larry Hill did at Coolidge. Vance Brand is the closest airport to the front range cities between Boulder and Denver which is out of DIA's air space so you can get 12,500 AGL without permission from air traffic control. Moving would be a pretty dumb business move. I can easily picture Jeff Sands sending out the bumper stickers; maybe Frank was channeling his spirit. As I understand it, Frank admitted to sending the stickers out as a joke. And as we all do one occasion when making jokes, he didn't think it through. At least he didn't make a joke to a TSA pervert about his rig being "the bomb" or yelling "Hi Jack!' to one of his buddies on the concourse. I think the motive to which we can chalk this up can be filed under "It seemed like a good idea at the time." One thing he should perhaps do, though, is buy the airport manager a case of beer. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Sorry, the faulty reasoning lies with you: I never said any such thing. It's not turn-dependent; it's ALTITUDE dependent. What part of that is so hard for everyone to undertand? I was jumping a canopy with a huge recovery arc so when I botched my entry, I had 300 feet to fix it; no problem. When my friend botched her landing on a small recovery arc canopy, she had 30 feet to fix it; game over. Please read my article attached above that was inspired by her death and then we can continue. 44 Hi Robin, So you are saying that the problem is the little boys trying to emulate the big boys but with inappropriate gear and also lacking the knowledge and experience to jump the appropriate gear all the while thinking they they are making a safe progression until it all turns to shit. (What a long sentence) Therefore most training and doctrine for learning HP landings has been wrong and is a major factor in the carnage? (That doesn't apply to the hotshots that won't listen to anyone) Regards Marisan Your sexist spin notwithstanding (after all, my article was inspired by the death of a woman trying to emulate the big boys), your first sentence is essentially correct except that this is not THE problem with swooping; it is A problem with swooping. The principal problem with swooping is that aiming yourself at the ground and then trying to miss it at the last second is a RUSH but it's not practical. Your second sentence is not essentially correct because, IIRC, most of the swoop fatalities happen to the bigger boys, not the kids, and that relates less to gear, knowledge and experience and more to the incontrovertible fact that aiming yourself at the ground and then trying to miss it at the last second is a RUSH but it's not practical. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Maybe, maybe not. It certainly exposes the "Quiet Skies" dipsticks as loudmouth whiners who complain about everything -- including getting a bumper sticker in the mail. I think Frank ought to do a follow-on to the bumper sticker gambit and pull a Rush Limbaugh* on them: Form a "Quiet Meetings" group dedicated to reducing noise pollution at city council meetings by whining weasels with nothing better to do with their time (and those of others at the meetings) than bitch about businesses that pre-date their residence near-to by years and decades. 44 * Rush Limbaugh created "Rush Babes for America" to counteract the National Organization for Women, and in 48 hours far exceeded the NOW membership rolls. Regardless of your feeling towards the guy and his politics, it was a brilliant move and Frank should see similar results because I think there are far - far - more people in that community who are much more sick of whining weasel noise than they are of airplane noise. As a 20-year veteran as on-air talent in the radio business, I can say with a pretty high degree of confidence that your assessment is incorrect. Rush's success is predicated on such moves as an obviously controversial media personality. In that game controversy spurs listenership on both sides of the argument and can't put you out of business as long as there are sponsors waiting for their turn to write checks - which Rush has truckloads of. In the case of a DZ with pissed off neighbors, stirring controversy has no positive outcome. The whiners will only see the DZ's actions as rubbing the issue in their faces, prompting a predictable reaction. Some folks in town may see that response as whiners just whining louder, but to those who matter - airport board members, city council members and city management - the whiners are citizens of the community who vote. The primary goal of city officials is to dispose of the issue and hopefully make everyone happy - or at least not angry - in the process, which the DZ's actions are not helping them do. Even if city officials agree with the DZ in this case, they are extremely sensitive to the wishes of the voters, and the squeaky voting wheel gets the municipal grease. Also remember that many if not most of the jumpers live outside the city and don't vote in city elections. ALL the whiners are city residents that vote for city officials. Rush is in the entertainment business where sponsors can be replaced with others salivating to buy a finite amount of commercial airtime. Mile High is in the skydiving business on a municipal airport managed by people who need to ride the political fence for their own self-preservation. Two totally different creatures with nearly polar opposite tactics for success. LOL... that's why I prefaced my response to "stupid move by Mile high....." by saying "Maybe, maybe not." Can't quibble with a thing you said and after briefly pondering what you said, I still won't say the Mile-Hi move was stupid, but you make a very sound argument indeed that they should have just let lying dogs sleep. Thanks for the insight. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Sorry, the faulty reasoning lies with you: I never said any such thing. It's not turn-dependent; it's ALTITUDE dependent. What part of that is so hard for everyone to undertand? I was jumping a canopy with a huge recovery arc so when I botched my entry, I had 300 feet to fix it; no problem. When my friend botched her landing on a small recovery arc canopy, she had 30 feet to fix it; game over. Please read my article attached above that was inspired by her death and then we can continue. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It's not hooey, it's all about the degree of the mistake that was made. Your mistake was smaller in respect to what the canopy was capable of, and your friends mistake was larger in that same respect. If you has made a mistake of the same magnitude that she did, you would have also died on that day. I never suggested that those type of canopies were better for swooping, just that they would reach a lower overall speed. What I did suggest is that if you made a large error on any canopy you're going to have a problem. I swooped a Sabre 1 for years with no problem. I was loading a 135 at 1.3 or 1.4, and doing nothing but a quick 180 'wingover' with a riser. That was the style at the time, and the canopy I had the skill to jump, and I made it out just fine. I went on to downsize to another 'square' Sabre 1 107, and swooped that one for years without any problem. The flaw in your thinking, or at least the way you're presenting it, is that it gives people the idea that they should be jumping long diving canopies at higher WL if they want to swoop. That might be your point, and in a way I can agree, but what you're not saying is that people shouldn't be swooping until they have enough jumps and training to be able to handle those canopies in all conditions and the judgement to know what not to swoop. What your argument leads to is jumpers pushing the downsizing and rushing to HP canopies because they want to swoop, and those are 'safer', and in those cases that's not the case. The canopies dive longer, fly faster, and require greater care and judgement to fly safely, and if you don't have that, they're not 'safe' for any purpose. The answer is the pilot, not the parachute. Take Mario Andretti as an example. Put him on a race track in a street car, with street tires and street suspension/brakes, and tell me that it's more 'dangerous' than a race car. We both know that Mario will have no problem hustling the car around the track at 10/10ths, and everyone will come back to the pits in one piece. It's not about the equipment, it's about the driver (pilot). If the pilot is qualified, you can swoop anything safely, from a Sabre 1, to a Navigator, to a tandem. Trying reading the article first, then we can continue. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Am I understanding that you feel limiting turns to not greater than 90 degrees will not lessen injuries at any level? No, you are misunderstanding, but I can see why you think so; my bad for not making it more clear. Please see the article attached to my response to Dave. I think it addresses your question... and may raise a few more. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

That's not a solid argument at all. It's not about the exact numbers of the errors, it's about the percentages. Do lightly loaded, lower performance canopies require a lower turn in order to swoop? Yes they do. They also lose less altitude in a turn and can recover from a dive quicker. Of coruse, on the other hand, highly loaded canopies have a greater range of 'acceptable' turn altitudes based on the length of their dive, but if you turn them too low, you're going to hit the ground and it's not going to be 'just like' the bigger canopy, it's going to be harder and more violent. If you turn any canopy too low for it to recover, you're going have a problem. Everyone who is intentionally inducing speed for a landing is going to be pushing their dive to teminate very close to the ground in order to get a 'swoop'. With that in mind, each canopy has it pros and cons in terms of 'safety', but you have to give the nod to the lighter loaded, lower performance canopy for the simple reason that it will attain a lower overall top speed, which euqals a lower impact speed in the event of an error. Just because some, more accomplished, pilots can make use of the greater range in a dive offered by a long diving canopy, it doesn't make those canopies or that style of landing 'safer'. Those canopies, like all others, have an altitude that's 'too low' and if you bust it, you're going to get hurt and probably pretty badly based on the speeds involved. Beyond that, the turn limitation is also a move to prevent collisions. It takes two canopies and some degree of turn to have a collision, so the lesser degree of turn anyone is making, the less chance you have for a collision. It's far easier to check a 90 degree slice of sky just off to your left than it is to check the full 360 degrees all around you. sorry, dave, that's a load of hooey. When I made my mistake, I had hundreds of feet to fix it; my friend had 30. Game over. And the worst part was that she died precisely because of the flawed thinking you just exhibited. Lightly loaded, fast recovery is precisely the wrong canopy on which to swoop because, drum roll please, you gotta turn so low to keep the speed up for your swoop that you are instantly in the death zone as soon as you start your entry turn, with no room for error. That means the people with the least experience and skill have the smallest margin for error. Basic facts: I made a 300-foot entry turn mistake and fixing it was a yawner. She made a 30-foot error and died. What could possibly be wrong with this picture? In fact, after she did, I wrote an article about it for SKYDIVING that challenged the conventional "wisdom" you outlined so eloquently, and I attach it here for everyone's consideration. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

So therefore it is a pointless bandaid? Nothing more than a PR exercise? No. Bigger turns require better judgement, more accurate setup, and give greater speed. There's less margin for error on them. That doesn't make 90s safe, but they are somewhat safer (or perhaps less dangerous would be more accurate). They also are a lot less dangerous for other traffic in the vicinity. Not turning into a blind area lowers the risk for a collision. I disagree with most of this (apart form the greater speed part). You have more time to bail on a bigger rotation. +1. One time I made a 300-foot entry turn altitude error on a 270 on my heavily loaded Velo... Result: A high stab-out, routine landing, no threat of injury, and a little embarrassment for blowing it like that -- precisely because I had plenty of time and altitude to bail on a botched approach. One hour later, a friend made a 30-foot entry turn altitude error on 180 on her lightly loaded Pilot... Result: She died -- precisely because she had no time or sltitude to bail. And the best way to do that of course is to have an area dedicated to that kind of landing approach because it is in fact ridiculous to allow trajectory aberratiohns like that in the general landing pattern. = = = = On a related note, swooping is just like pulling low: Aiming at the ground and missing it at the last second is a RUSH, but it just isn't practical no matter how you dress it up. For example... Wendy, I love ya, but you is out to lunch to compare swooping to CReW because, guess what: CReWdogs don't aim at the ground and try to miss it at the last second (yes, yes, I know, tell that to the guys who tried to land the old Lightnings). In fact, when I was doing it (we called it C-R-W back then), we were top-docking, landing 8-stacks, and doing tri-planes (that we landed) after RW, all with dangling pilot chutes on long bridles. So yes, you can adapt and evolve some parachuting disciplines to a point of reasonable risk. That, however, is not something you can reliably do with parachuting disciplines that involve aiming at the ground and then trying to miss it at the last second because the GR&R numbers don't work out to a reasonable level of uncertainty. Or as I said before: Aiming at the ground and trying to miss it at the last second is a RUSH, but it's not practical. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It also shows mile high to be antagonistic... Or just standing up for itself in the face of would-be bullies trying to game the system. I mean really, think about the responses this generated from the "Quiet" loudmouths: "The conclusion we come to at this point is that Mile-Hi is very proud of being one of the biggest noise producers in Boulder County." --Quiet Loudmouth Ron Korsch to the Longmont City Council. "I do think it sends a very clear message to me from Mile-Hi that they are untouchable and that they have the city in their back pocket." -- Chief Quiet Loudmouth Kim Gibbs Frank got one loudmouth to draw a ridiculously over-the-top and obviously incorrect 'conclusion'" -- and another to publicly insult the city's entire leadership. Seems to me that he did more good than bad for the DZ and the airport, airport manager Barth's handwringing notwithstanding. Having said that, neither of us are there on the ground dealing with these dipsticks face-to-face, so we're both just launching liquid into the wind. As the Chinese farmer said, "We'll see."* 44 * A Chinese farmer's son finds a beautiful white stallion and brings it home. "What a lucky man you are," said his neighbors. "We'll see," said the farmer. The next day, the son breaks his leg trying to ride the stallion, thereby depriving his father of his help for the harvest. "What an unlucky man you are," said his neighbors. "We'll see," said the farmer. The next week, the king came through the village on his way to war and conscripted all of the young men except the farmer's son, who had a broken leg. "What a lucky man you are," said his neighbors. "We'll see," said the farmer. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Oops... first one got lost in the ether, so I re-posted... and both showed up. But as long as I'm here, here's a pic I found on the web of Kim Gibbs. Doesn't do her justice, of course, but not bad. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Maybe, maybe not. It certainly exposes the "Quiet Skies" dipsticks as loudmouth whiners who complain about everything -- including getting a bumper sticker in the mail. I think Frank ought to do a follow-on to the bumper sticker gambit and pull a Rush Limbaugh* on them: Form a "Quiet Meetings" group dedicated to reducing noise pollution at city council meetings by whining weasels with nothing better to do with their time (and those of others at the meetings) than bitch about businesses that pre-date their residence near-to by years and decades. 44 * Rush Limbaugh created "Rush Babes for America" to counteract the National Organization for Women, and in 48 hours far exceeded the NOW membership rolls. Regardless of your feeling towards the guy and his politics, it was a brilliant move and Frank should see similar results because I think there are far - far - more people in that community who are much more sick of whining weasel noise than they are of airplane noise. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1. For most people it's better to be tried by 12 than haunted by 1 -- and in terms of enlightened self-interest, the deposit you don't make in in the karma bank by not helping someone to the best of your abilities may come back to haunt you when it's your turn to make a withdrawal. And if you do try to help when you have little or no formal first-aid training, always remember the "Three Bs:" Breath Blood Bones 1. Make sure they can breathe. 2. Try to stop any obvious bleeding. 3. Then figure out if anything's broken. Oh yeah, and don't forget to CALL THE EFFING AMBULANCE! 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I suspect that Jeb "Rocky" Corliss would agree that trying to kick a dead cat in the road going about 40 on a motorcycle is not nearly as stupid as trying to kick a balloon on a ledge going about 100 in a wingsuit. The cool thing is.... you're both still alive to tell lies about it! 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

If Obamacare stands, skydiving and other extreme sports will be outlawed along with jelly doughnuts and Twinkies because they increase health care costs for everyone else. 44 The government doesn't outlaw what they can figure out a way to tax. I must respectfully disagree and offer four examples in rebuttal: Cannabis. Coca. Opium. Polygamy. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Robin, sorry but you're wrong. Jumping at zero airspeed (balloon, hovering helo or BASE) will definitely have you experiencing almost zero G until you build up airspeed. It's simple physics. Robin, sorry but you're wrong. Jumping at zero airspeed (balloon, hovering helo or BASE) will definitely have you experiencing almost zero G until you build up airspeed. It's simple physics. C'mon, John. I love ya, but it is simple physics and you're making it complicated. I just responded to your comment about the role of physiology in that "droppy feeling" and now you're conflating airspeed and gravity. Simple physics, John: 1. Zero airspeed does not equal zero gravity. 2. Zero airspeed equals zero airspeed. 3. Zero gravity is achieved only when the centrifugal force on a mass offsets the gravitational attraction to it. So let me rephrase what I said above: You do get "rollercoaster stomach" on a rollercoaster because as the centrifugal force of the rollercoaster going over the top of its hill offsets gravity, the urine in your bladder stays where it is in space while your body moves downward through that same space -- causing the top of your bladder to collide with the floating urine, thus causing that tingly "droppy" feeling routinely mis-identified as being in your stomach. That's the only way you get to "almost zero G" -- "jumping at zero airspeed" has exactly zero to do with it. It's simple physics. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."