pilotdave

That's how it is on Vector 3s too. I personally like it because there's one less flap to close. That bottom flap was always the hardest for me to close on my old overstuffed Reflex. The closing loop is forced to squish the dbag... just ugly. Dave

Way to ruin a perfectly good quote. It was clearly in response to "I took no ground school at all. Just read the books." It obviously wasn't a perfect fit. But your argument was just dumb. Seriously. You were arguing with Robert Livingston, which seems pretty pointless to me since he's not here. "The Wright Brothers were dumbasses" - Robert Livingston Dave

Check out http://www.cypres-usa.com/usedcypres.asp to calculate a fair value for a used cypres. Dave

I'm sure she'd happily confirm she said all of those things. She even has a web page all about skyride. I don't think she said anything she or anyone else wouldn't stand by. But of course most of the quotes from this thread were taken way out of context. Dave

I don't really see why. I mean I guess people perform better when they're comfortable, so maybe that's the difference. But I'm sure the jumpers this thread is about were perfectly comfortable without an RSL too. Many jumpers are comfortable without an AAD. Someone might even be comfortable (on a skydive) without a reserve. I hate to sound like one of the old farts, but "the ground doesn't care" how comfortable anybody is. I bet lots of people are comfortable doing low aggressive toggle turns. Doesn't make it any less dangerous than it is for someone that isn't comfortable with it. Maybe quite the opposite. I've got no problem with someone choosing not to use an RSL, AAD, or anything else. It's your choice, not mine. But I just think that you're ignoring history because you think you're different than those that did lose altitude awareness during malfunctions. If I KNEW that all of those people were sub-par skydivers that didn't practice their emergency procedures and figured they could judge altitude by looking at the ground even during a spinning malfunction and yada yada yada, I'd probably agree with you. I can avoid the situation by better preparing myself. But unfortunately I've seen no evidence that I am any different from those people, so I've seen no evidence that more practice NECESSARILY improves my chances of avoiding a situation where an RSL will likely save my life. I'm comfortable jumping without one too. But that has nothing to do with my chances of needing one someday. Again, not trying to say you're wrong in your choice. I just don't personally agree with it, for me. But I do agree that it is a personal choice. Dave

All I can say is he's not a chick so don't get too excited... unless you're into that sort of thing. Dave

I also agree about MS flight sim. I was introduced to FS4 (back in 1991) at the flight school I started at. You can't learn the "feel" of flying from it, but you can learn a LOT. The more realistic you make your imaginary flights, the more you can learn and practice from it. Probably best to use it to recreate real flights you did with your instructor and practice what you were taught. You can pick up bad habits easily too... Took up a friend years ago that had a lot of flight sim practice. I was amazed how well he could hold altitude and stay on course. That stuff really works! As far as ground school, I agree with whoever said different things work for different people. I bought books and learned it on my own for the most part. There's a ton of different things to learn, but most of them aren't too hard to understand... especially from the Machado books or many others. If you have any questions, you can always ask your instructor and maybe do some real ground school privately as needed. Dave

Had something similar happen with my work computer. Kept locking up, occasionally giving me hard drive errors during the next bootup. Finally got in touch with the right helpdesk guy who left me a message saying back up the hard drive ASAP. Problem was, it died for real before I got the message. I had backed up the really important stuff as soon as I got the first signs of a hard drive problem, but I did end up losing some important stuff. Hard drive failures SUCK. Dave

Play it in windows media player and shut overlays off in that. Tools -> options, performance, advanced, "use overlays"... if I remember. Then you can take a screenshot. Dave

It really depends on face size/shape. I've got plenty of room for my glasses in my Z1, but many people find it too small for glasses. I'm able to put my helmet on and take it off without taking off my glasses. Dave

The equivalent of the SIM is the AIM (aeronautical information manual) and FARs. All of it is available online, but you'll want to buy the books (they sell combined FAR/AIM books). There are two basic types of flight schools. Most are "regular" flight school (FAR part 91), but some are specially approved "part 141" schools. 141 schools require you to follow a syllabus and buy certain books, etc. They have a very set plan for how every student gets taught. Part 91 schools are usually smaller and more personallized. If you want to do it quickly, you're probably better off at a part 141 school. Legally at a 141 school you can get your license in as little as 35 hours. 40 are needed at other schools, but the national average either way you go is much higher than that. Pick whatever flight school makes you feel comfortable. You'll spend an awfully long time in a cramped space with an instructor that you will swear is trying to kill you (he thinks you're trying to kill him), so choose a place you think you'll like. You can shop by price too... no need to learn to fly in brand new Cessna 172s when you can save tons of money learning in old ass 152s. A good book to buy is anything by Rod Machado... he writes a student pilot handbook that's really good. Ask the different flight schools what books they recommend (or require) for their students. Dave

Any single hazard can have different potential consequences, each with its own probability. So for example a "canopy malfunction" could be an inconvenience, like linetwists on a lightly loaded canopy or it could be a main-reserve entaglement. That hazard could be classified as a 4A or a 1E, depending on which failure mode happens. Course it'd be useless to try to assign a risk to such a broad hazard. Jan's article says to go with the higher severity AND the higher probability. But that doesn't work. We'd need to set some ground rules for what gets chosen. You could take another overly broad hazard like "poorly fitting tandem harness." It might cause minor discomfort on a regular basis. It might also cause a tandem passenger to fall out extremely rarely. So how do you classify it? The passenger falling out is the highest severity. The discomfort is the highest probability. If you were a manufacturer with $100,000 to spend to improve your tandem harness, would you make it more comfortable or would you add features to prevent students from falling out? Well, one seems a whole lot more important than the other, but check out the risk acceptance matrix... they're both "acceptable with review." We normally classify those as "medium." Is one really more important than the other? What would the probabiltyof the catastrophic event have to be in order to lower it's importance below that of passenger comfort? See the problem that we often run into is that a 1E can really be impossible. Sure, if it happened, it'd be catastrophic. But it's so unlikely to ever happen that we can say it can't happen, even though maybe if conditions were just right, it could. So is falling out of a harness a freak occurence, or is it something that will happen every X million jumps? The idea of risk assessment is to prioritize hazards. It just becomes very difficult to prioritize hazards that occur extremely infrequently. Dave

I might have misread the situation, but here's something that has happened to me that sounds similar. Plane went up to 14000, couldn't find a hole over the DZ, so we went back down to 4000 or so for "hop n' pops"... but from 4000, you can still do a 10 second delay or more if you want to. Different delays, exit order determined by seating in the plane (not the other way around), etc can lead to lots of... ummm... fun. So my turn comes. I waited about 3 seconds and exited, pulling right out the door. Guy before me took about a 5 second delay. My canopy opens much slower than his, especially subterminal. So there I was, snivelling, looking straight down at his canopy as it opened. Mine ended up opening just fine with plenty of (vertical) separation. But it was definitely too close for comfort. I THINK what happened is just that he got a lot more forward throw than I did, since he took a delay and I didn't. That put me almost right over top of him, pulling slightly before him. And since his canopy (PD 9-cell) didn't snivel much and mine (sabre2) snivelled a lot, I was coming almost straight down toward his open canopy. Could something like that have happened here? Dave

I work with this stuff on a daily basis for work. The risk matrices and definitions come from MIL-STD-882C I believe (-D is the latest revision and -E is in draft status, but their definitions of severity and probability don't apply quite as well). BTW, the FAA uses a different set of definitions for civil aviation. "1E" is a problem in the safety world. We run into it all the time. The problem is that E has no lower limit. In the military aviation industry (which the risk matrices were designed for), we consider it to be something that occurs less than once per million flight hours (not sure how you'd translate that to jumps). Damn near ANYTHING can be a 1E, especially if you read this part: You can't do both of those. A hazard can be a 1E and a 4A at the same time. You wouldn't call it a 1A. It's a judgement call. Sometimes a 2C gets more attention than a 1E. So I can go and invent as many hazards as I want and call them all 1Es. Like the hazard of your hook knife slipping out and cutting through both main lift webs or something. It'd be a 1E. Or maybe the hazard of gravity shutting off while you're in freefall. 1E. It becomes a problem of where to focus attention. Which 1Es are real problems, and which are fantasies? Sometimes we don't know until it happens. The risk matrix calls falling out of a harness "Acceptable with review." Who's review? The MIL-STD defines exactly who it is in the military world. So who gets to decide for us? Consumer demand? Manufacturers? The FAA? USPA? Who decides if we've got a problem with our gear and if it needs fixing? Dave

my question to you then would be, why did you not even attempt to pull your reserve handle. ... my EP's are "look right grab right(cutway), look left grab left" (silver). peel punch arch, punch arch. i dont' care if the reserve is deploying or not i'm pulling both in that situation, period!. You learned the "one hand per handle" method, which is probably a bit quicker than the "two hand per handle" method. Speed is the advantage, but that method may be more prone to error (wrong sequence, hard pull, hand slipping off a handle, etc). Somebody that learns to use both hands per handle will more likely be experiencing opening shock while trying to grab the reserve handle, at which point it becomes pretty obvious that pulling the handle isn't necessary (to survive). Still a good idea to pull it, if for no reason other than practice. Follow your emergency procedures every time, however you learned them. Dave

If you really want to learn how to do it, just search the web for html tutorials. You've got everything on your computer you need. Learn the basics of html first, then no matter what software you use, you'll have a better understanding of what's going on. Dave

I vote for a rule prohibiting posts like this. WAY too many lately. Dave

Quit passing incorrect information! That's like suggesting a velocity 84 for a first canopy. Just misinformed, incorrect, and dangerous information to give out to those that don't know better. Dave

Do you always refer to yourself in the 3rd person? Dave

If you're using windows media player, go to tools, options, performance, advanced, and shut off "use overlays." Then you can take a screen shot. Dave

When I had exactly 99 jumps I got my first copy of my DZ's newsletter. The cover is attached. That was a congratulations kiss for a guy's 100th jump. Needless to say, I kept my 100th VERY quiet. Dave

Doesn't look like it to me. Site is registered to someone in NJ. And they advertise jumping (at a specific location) for $199. Doesn't fit the MO... or they're getting smart. Dave

I think people just need to keep in mind what a TSO is. It's the minimum acceptable properties of something that gets manufactured, as defined by the FAA. It's not a set of operating rules. The FAA decided that parachutes must meet certain criteria (defined in AS8015B), just like they decided that aircraft seatbelts need to meet some certain standards and so do many other aircraft components. The TSO says nothing about how the item must be used. That's up to the FARs. Like where it talks about seatbelt usage in aircraft. FARs: when to use seatbelts. TSO: how the seatbelt must be made/what it needs to be able to do/how it is tested. You don't violate the seatbelt TSO by not wearing your seatbelt while taxiing. You do violate a FAR. If the TSO says the seatbelt must hold a 200 lb occupant at 50 mph (which it doesn't), driving at 60 mph doesn't violate the TSO. On the other hand, modifying the seatbelt does violate it. Dave

I'm ~45 mins from hartford, but the only thing I do there is drive through every weekend. I'm surprised to hear everyone say theres nothing to do there though. I guess I just assumed it was full of stuff to do. It's full of insurance companies... I just picture them all as party animals there. Dave

It looks like it's the first jump in http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=2844. Anyone have video of the second jump? Dave