evh

I made almost 1000 jumps on my Pilot 168, almost all of those openings were super nice and soft and comfortable. Except for one. That one hurt. A lot. Probably something I did wrong, or just plain bad luck, but even a Pilot can open very hard.

Maybe have a look at the systems that are used in drones. These systems can have a range of several kilometers, maybe this would work for skydiving too. maybe this? https://www.banggood.com/nl/Eachine-TS832-RC832-5_8G-32CH-600mW-FPV-Transmitter-Receiver-7_4-16V-p-1079941.html?gmcCountry=NL&currency=EUR&createTmp=1&utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=cpc_bgs&utm_content=frank&utm_campaign=pla-ods-nl&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi9G_kdbH4AIVFed3Ch3EXQeSEAQYASABEgKCMvD_BwE&cur_warehouse=CN

Simple answer: don't mess with your gear, we have professionals for that. Sometimes the simple things can have totally unexpected consequences.

I choose a point on the horizon, far away. I zoom the camera as much in as it can. With the helmet on my head, I ask a friend to point the camera (and my head) to that that point. To judge this, a live view from the camera is needed, or a few seconds delay on the gopro app is also OK. With the app you could probably even do it on your own. Then I adjust my sight for the same point on the horizon. My sights are aligned for infinite distance; but since I know the distance between my lense and my eye (10 cm or 4"), I compensate by pointing the sight 10 cm below the point I want centered. So if I want someones eyes of in the center of the picture, I aim for their chin. This works for every distance. And what also helps: with a new setup I often spend a few minutes shooting pictures around the house, trying to frame the pictures and later check how far off I was. You learn a lot that way. Just wait till you are home alone for it, 'cause you look rediculus doing this ;-)

It's always a good idea to form your own opinion on a canopy. The Navigator is nothing like that. My dropzone switched from old F111 canopies to Navigators earlier this year. The difference is huge, and when I see students flare too early, too late or not at all, they keep surprising me with how soft the landings are. Also saw a few scary low turns that would have ended bad on the old canopies, but on the Navigators they were perfectly fine. So if you are looking for a big, slow, safe canopy, I wouldn't dismiss the Navigator without testing it.

You are not going to get an answer here, because incidents that almost happend don't get a lot of publicity. You could instead ask: do we know of any fatalities where the person died because it took too much time for help to get to them? Because nobody went looking for them, since they weren't missed (yet)? I would think that there must have been incidents like that, but to be honest I don't remember any so I could be wrong. But besides avoiding fatalities, how do we feel about dead skydivers lying in a field for 9 days without anybody missing them? We had such an incident here in 2012. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=nl&sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.omroepbrabant.nl%2Fnieuws%2F150954%2FParachutist-uit-Schijndel-ligt-negen-dagen-dood-in-weiland-Teuge The DZO decided they did not like that, and implemented a check-in system. Another one followed a few years later when they changed from a C206 to a C208. In the end the decision is about cost versus benefit. Cost in this case is not just money (almost nothing) but also the added hassle to skydivers and DZO. I agree that the benefit is small.... but so is the cost, so why not? Edit: I would like to add that the incident I am referring to, turned out to be a suicide with none of the parachutes opened. I remember that before this information became available, there were rumours that the guy got injured at landing, and only died a lot later. Perhaps this helped the local acceptance of the check-in system more than I had realised.

A skydiver died in a field. Nobody at the DZ noticed that he hadn't returned from the jump. He was found the next day. Again. Yes! The question is offcourse, how much effort, and is it worth the benefit. I am not sure about it, I just know that the effort, at least from a skydivers point of view, is a lot less than some people here seem to think.

Absolutely no problem, go take a static line course. AFF is more popular right now, but staticline is still a perfectly good way to start jumping. No tandem, jumping completely on your own. And if you're any good, you can start freefall after just a few staticline jumps.

I'd love to learn to fly like this, in fact I tried a few weeks ago but failed miserably . I can sitfly pretty well, but apparently not in my camera suit with big wings and booties. So what should I look for in a suit? Any other tips?

I agree, after a freefall jump without earplugs I am (temporarily) almost deaf anyway. I don't think I would hear anyone shouting under canopy, at least for the first critical seconds.

*** For me, its a matter of learn one way or the other, then stick with it. Indecision is likely more fatal than either method. Plan the dive, dive the plan. Adjust only when things aren't following the script. Well said. Imho, both methods work, both have their pro's and con's. Both have been tested a lot, and I am pretty sure that statistics will not prove one or the other better or worse ( if I am wrong, I would be very interested in facts and figures). Best advise is to pick your poison, understand the consequences and stick with it.

Yes. A static line student of mine managed to disconnect her RSL while kicking out linetwists. Big surprise when she cut away and made her first free fall Luckily it all ended well.

Don't wait till june to fix it. Screwing up landings causes stress for the next landing, and this can easily lead to a downward spiral of worsening landings. I've seen it happen to others, I've had it happen to me too. I've seen people quit the sport because of it. What helped is talking to some good (local) canopy pilots, asking them to watch my landings and discussing the problems I had. I learned a new (to me) trick that fixed it in no-time.

perhaps you already found this, but Trunk has a lot of great info on his site: https://gethypoxic.com/blogs/technical/whats-what-in-camera-flying-for-2017

I am pretty sure that this is wrong. If you want to define wingloading as "weight devided by surface area", the resulting unit has to be something like N/m^2 (or the equivalent imperial units like lbf/ft^2 ??) You cannot redefine the formula without redefining the units. You broke wikipedia ;-)

Using a second camera for backup during competition, in case 1 fails. Homebuilt mount, it's not that hard. Just a flat plate and some screws. The angle: When standing upright, looking at the horizon in a natural position, the camera also looks straight ahead. So no, not a problem at all. I am very happy with this setup, except when dropping staticline students from the 182.

Actually this is not so bad, I have a pair of X3000's mounted on my G3. Since the lens is higher on the camera than a GoPro, you can mount it very far to the back without getting the helmet or the visor in the camera's view. I can get my visor almost al the way open.

I used to jump much, much bigger camera's sidemounted. All the problems you mention are true, but managable and they were not a big deal for me. So with the X3000 I would think this would be even less of a problem. There are plenty of reasons to use a sidemount. Jumping from small planes (C182, c206), you don't have a lot of space above your head. Climbing out of a bigger plane, much more risk of bumping the lens againt the top of the door. Dropping staticline students, sidemount gives a much better perspective (filming faces instead of the top of a helmet ;-) ). I currently don't have one, but if I ever have time I might make one. I am also not claiming sidemount is always better; most of the time it's not.

I have always packed that way since I got my own gear. Much easier to control the fabric, and for me results in much neater packjobs. I don't think it affects the slider, compared to "normal" packing. At least I never had any problems that I know of. I guess I have done rougly 1800 packjobs that way, most on a Pilot 168 and a Crossfire 129, a few on a Navigator 240 and the smallest was a Katana 107.

Mine (I have 2) are rock solid with stabilisation on. Could be helmet vibration? I don't shoot 4K by the way... have you ever tried HD?

Can you explain what you mean with "handful to fly"?

That is what they tought me as a student, and what the consensus at my dropzone is. So it's also what I teach my students. My understanding is that flaring is not neccesary, because of the low speed. Flaring a good flying configuration might make things worse, therefore the advise is to not flare, and prepare for a PLF.

If your main is in front of your reserve, I can see how chopping would almost certainly ruin your day. In case it is the other way around, still plenty of risk that your reserve gets either ripped to pieces, entangled or otherwise useless. Compare that to the risk of landing with two canopies above your head (no big deal) and te choice gets real easy for me. I'm surprised an instructor would give the advise you got. Are you sure you didn't mis understand him?

You are wrong. There is a video somewhere (cant look for it right now) of a guy trying to do this under canopy. He failed. Sorry to dig up this old thread, but I just accidentally stumbled upon the video I was referring to, I thought maybe someone would like to see it. Turns out I was wrong. It took 7 seconds to break the mount. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsEI_6cErbM

If I did the math right, there is just 1,5 kilogram of air trapped in my canopy at sea level. I don't see why this is relevant?