Unparagoned

I tried a few years ago. We get some money towards reserve repacks, reserve/cypres related stuff. But they won't give us anyting for our main kit. I guess it can't hurt to ask again.

It's not a vector or Javelin. The hassle also includes costs for trying to get it to the UK. If we could somehow get it from the US to the UK for really cheap and in a reasnable timeframe it would be fine, but I have no experience doing that. Also we lose out on the benefit of having our local dealer handling any problems, etc. I haven't completely ruled it out yet, I need to ask people at my DZ how easy/cheap it is to get from the US..

I was wondering about the best way to get a cheap container in reasnable condition for my University skydive club. The club provides rigs for university students for free, to help get students skydiving. We currently have an ageing 18 year old Vector which is nearing/passed it's useful life. We require a new container and were wondering if any manufacturers had any ex demo containers, B-grade stock, or are able to offer us a discount on a new container. The container will need to fit a PD 176 reserve, Pilot 210 main and cypress 2. The rig will be used by any student of any university who jump at that dropzone. I've e-mailed a few manufacturers, and one has offered us a 40% discount, but that is for an expensive rig, so in the end it works out ~£100 cheaper than getting a wings from our local dealer but involves getting it from the US to the UK. Ideally we would be looking for a second hand container but the second hand market for containers that fit a 210 main is very slim/non existent. In the past we have been able to get ex-demo kit at a very reasonable price from a manufacturer, and are looking for a similar deal. Since we are in the UK it makes things much harder to get a container at a good price. At the moment the main option we have is to get a new wings from our local dealer. Does anyone have any good contacts that could help out, or have any other ideas on how to get a container that would suit us?

That sounds more like a transition and not a position. What position are you in before you initiate this transition? I dont "hang out" on my back or anything. I just tuck in my feet, drive my heals down and bring my arms out some and then right back up (as you described). But the whole transition is made easier because it is inititiated calmly from a position that is familiar and comfortable as opposed to unfamiliar, scary and maybe even chaotic for many. O It's not a transition, it's just the most stable headup position possible, I'm not too sure what others call it but I when I was taught it, it was just called the recovery position. Basically you are curled up into a ball with your arms out. Whenever you feel yourself going, you just bring in your legs, then when you are ready stick back out your legs. This way your view is completely the same and basically you can see what is going on, what caused you lose your sit position. It is such a simple position you can work or think on who or what made you lose your position, without putting any effort or thought into flying. I don't recall ever seen an experienced sit flyer use the back fly position as a recovery position in the sky. I've done a reasnable amount of time in the tunnel practising the back the sit transition so I know it fairly well, but I would never use it in the sky since it is quite a big manouver, requires thinking, effort, time, etc.

I don't think that back flying is the best recovery position in the sky when learning to sit fly. The orientation in back flying is completely different. I was taugt to bring my knees into my chest and heels to my arse, with my arms out. This is a nice simple position and makes going back into sit very easy, the orientation is kept the same etc. In the wind tunnel, obviously you need complete control at all times, and backflying is the standard recovery position in the tunnel.

So where do you get your money from to pay for all those rigs and mantinance?

We have 3 Rigs. A 210, 170 and a 150. For us the 210 is the most used rig. We recently had to replace the 15+ year old main. We considered getting a 190 but speaking to instructors they thought it would be best to get a 210 instead of a 190. The reasons are that many stay on the 280 for training and a jump down to a 190 is too big. If somoene can jump a 190 they can jump a 210. My experience with our rigs is that they can fit allot of people with a massive range is size and height. I personally couldn't believe how a rig made for a small girl fit on a very tall friend, but it did. There may be some kind of safety concern with rigs sizes, etc so speak to an instructor about that. I don't know how we got the rigs to start with, apparently we got them so far back no-one has a clue how we got them. When looking for a cannopy for the club we couldn't find a second hand ZP 210 anywhere. But we were able to buy an ex-demo canopy straight from aerodyne. We were told that he couldn't sell us a cannopy and to go to the dealer on the DZ, but we played the "we're poor uni students, and it's for the club" card and he gave in. So try actively searching out for sources not available to the average person.

I had a slight turn(spin) which was hard to fix in the short time I was in the air

Well I pulled and looked up and the parachute wasn't there. Ohh there the parachute is between my legs- now which way am I suppose to flip. Ahh I flipped the right way, Ahh **** I'm going back on static line :(

Credit Card for protection, etc but paid it off before the month was up so I didn't pay any interest.

Hi, I'm one of the winners of your competition. I can't wait to try out your wind tunnel, I'll see you on the 17th :)

I can't wait for it to open, especially as I will be using it in the first hour of opening :)

Well I got mine a year after doing the jump, they were cleaning out some files and found it :)

Well everyone else gets to live on earth-paradise, after the end(rapture) comes.

I was planing on assuming a laninar ariflow.. and just use say desnsity of the air, velocity, and surface area, and angle to the relative wind to find the change in momentum. Keeping it simple, sticking in some co-efficients you can get in the right range for terminal velocity of a skydiver. This is why I'm not going to consider complicated shapes to start with, just a single block. Anyway I'll go through my plan in more detail whenever the weather is bad :P (it shouldn't be too long as I live in england)

The acceleration of someone may be zero but their drive may not be zero, as you have to factor in drag. e.g. acceleration at terminal velocity is 0, but weight is not zero. I mean drive as in a force not speed.

This is the track I was going to go down, derive some "simple" equations and then use the computer to update in small time periods. I've done a course which covered modelling PDEs which is essentially what I want to do. Derive PDEs useing newtonian mechanics, and then solve them numerically. So at least I know the way I wanted to solve them is on the right track. I felt the analysis could be useful to the common jumper. I worked out that the initial drive right at the start of the track is optimal at 45 degrees, if that turns out as true for the first 5 seconds then it could be useful information. Also you see on these boards many people talking about how jumpers track down from a formation, the analysis could simply show that they are infact just tracking faster(faster means they have the same trajectory but obviously they will be further down than others) and angles and whatever explains why although they apear to be tracking down and steep, they are tracking faster and on the same trajectory as others... or whatever

Thanks, I don't have time atm to go through your advise in detail atm, but I get the sort of gist. Your answer seems kind of text book, but I was hoping to analyse the drive and lift through newtonian mechanics, i.e perfectly elastic collisions between air and the body, so all the lift and drive will be calculated through conservation of momentum, and maybe an added parasitic drag as some kind of error term or something. It would have to be on a computer because the faster the different angle of the realative wind hits you, etc it all feeds back into each other. e.g. The instantanious drive of someone traveling at 1:1 at an angle of 45 degrees is zero. Also the angle of flight is what we want to find out, that is the whole aim of the project. To clarify, angle of flight to me means the angle of the trajectory of the person through the sky. The angle of flight is not the angle of the person relative to the horizontal.

That sounds like a good idea but I want to keep it simple first, if I just use a single block at first, to get in the right area. Going straight into having various blocks complicates matters greatly and considering it is a complicated topic to start with it is not practical for me to try. Although if the model works I can make it more complicated like you suggest.

First mistake... you spend too much time in the house. Go outside and play. PM Dr. Kallend, Winsor or BillVon with a hyperlink to this thread so they can all take a peek at it. I'm sure out of all of them, you're bound to get some guidance. Well I won't be skydiving much during the summer and won't be until I get back to uni, so I was thinking if the project goes well I can use it as one of the projects for the 3rd or 4th year, giving me more time to skydive instead of doing work. I want this to be mainly thoeretical with maybe some cross referencing to reality now and then, I don't want it to be practicle. Wingsuit data isn't going to be much help at all because it gives no information at all on the angle the person is at. Maybe if I find someone with gps and stuff I can get them to try different positions or so to test the results...

Hi, I've finished my second year of my Mathematical Physics Degree and I'm thinking about a project to do over the summer. I was thinking about trying to do a very basic model of when someone is tracking. I've seen here some people say that in the atmonauti angle you can track further than in a flat track, and others say the opposite. Even then if one side is right, which angle to the horizontal do you want to track at, 1, 5, 15 degrees? The steeper the angle you get more drive and travel faster but you reduced lift and vice versa. Also the faster you go the more drag you get, etc. I doubt it is possible to do this analytically so I would be solving it using c++. On the physics side I plan on simply using newtonian physics to calculate lift and drive, and use some drag formulas for the drag for the relative wind direction... I've only briefly gone through the idea and it may change dramatically. I doubt I will be able to get data that is useful quantitatively but you should be able to get some qualitative information which could be useful. e.g. 7 degree to the horizontal is the idea track position(assuming you are a solid rectangular sheet :P) Even if it doesn't give any useful results it will be a nice exercise for me. Has anyone done anything like this before? Are there any useful libraries dealing with fluid flow that could make it much easier to do? What do you guys think overall, is it a waste of time, should I do it on something else?

I think this is the correct response. The truth is the vast majority of groups like to stick in groups, here at uni the is majority white, but you always see groups of indians, asians in their own groups, etc. You can see this in UK as a whole with areas such a leicester where you have a massive asian population.

It took me about 28 jumps but many of those jumps were because of the wheather and being put back onto drps due to the rules.

Maybe there are so few black and asian skydivers simply because there are more white people in the western world? You would have to find the proportion of people in the western world that are black and asian and then see if that proportion matches up with what proportion of skydivers are black or asian. Other than that I know my dad gave me a hard time about skydiving saying it was dangerous... but I'm sure many parents have the same ideas regardless of colour.

Is it possible that the error is a conversion error? Are the results in km and m/s inconsistent?