pilotdave

Demoing a canopy without having your own container will probably be tough. You might be able to use a student container, but if the demo canopy is much smaller, it probably won't fit in the container. That's one reason to buy a container before a main. The demo canopy (at least from PD) is set up on risers. You'll need a container, pilot chute, and deployment bag of your own. (All of which come with a container). Once you have those, hooking up the canopy is fairly easy (for me, VERY easy for people that have done it a bunch of times). Dave

Not that it matters all that much if its actually 1000 feet, but altimeter lag could be making it look longer than it really is. The lag will affect the top end of the indicated opening altitude than the bottom end cause you're moving faster when you pull than when you're under an open canopy. Dave

I havent read all the replies so maybe this was mentioned already... but the 2 times I jumped a manta 288, I COULD NOT spiral. I couldn't make that canopy dive in a turn at all. I was literally doing full toggle input s-turns down to maybe 50 feet. I might have been able to turn faster if i had wrapped the brakelines a few times though. Dunno if it woulda taken 45 mins to get down from 13,000, but it wouldn't be quick either! And no, I wouldn't be pissed. I'd be mad at myself and mad at the gear, mad at the packer, mad at the DZO, mad at my 3rd grade teacher, and mad at my weight vest... but I'd expect to have to walk back, whether anyones searching for me or not. Can't be easy to find a skydiver 2.5 miles off course unless he lands next to the main road. Dave

155 square foot wing is pretty big for such a small plane. I fly 4 seaters with 140 sq ft wings (loaded at about 19 lb/sq ft)

Like bytch said, demo some canopies. My first canopy was a PD150, which is a very simple 9 cell f111 canopy. It flies great and isn't hard to land, but it doesn't have a very powerful flare. I was actually completely shocked when i tried out a Sabre2 150. The flare was like nothing I ever experienced before. I then demoed a spectre 135 and then a sabre2 135 (both loaded just over 1:1) and found the spectre was much trickier to flare properly. It was a lot more like my PD150 in the way it landed, just a WHOLE LOT faster. The sabre2 came in even faster than the spectre, but I could just fly it right to the ground, flaring only as much as it needed to bring it to a stop. Thats what made me decide to buy one. So yes, to answer your question, some canopies definitely have better flares than others. I think a spectre can be landed very softly every time too, but it takes a little more timing...in my opinion. I put 17 jumps on the spectre and only maybe 6 on the sabre2, and i could still consistently land the sabre2 better. Dave

I loaned my rig to a rigger to teach a packing class to a bunch of guys in my college skydiving club once. I wasn't there, so I had no clue who last packed it or how sloppy he was. When I showed up at the DZ with it, they asked if I had repacked it. I asked why I would do that, and to their amusement, I went ahead and jumped it. Opened just fine, just like always. Dave

I'm a pilot and I happen to work in the aviation safety field, but I still just have to assume that the planes I jump from are properly maintained. If I KNEW they weren't, I wouldn't jump there. But most of the time, I just have to assume. Many of the planes I've flown in (for non-skydiving purposes) look like they're held together with duct tape when in fact they're perfectly safe (as if that's possible) and properly maintained. Obviously we can't just go by looks. I know some pretty basic things to look for, which I check on every plane I fly before getting in. But when I'm jumping, I rarely get a chance to take a close look at the jump plane before getting in. Even if I did have a chance, I have to assume the pilot flying it knows a whole lot more about it than I do. So yeah, properly maintained aircraft is important to me, but I also assume the aircraft I jump from are properly maintained unless I have some reason not to. Right now I jump at a club. One great thing about that is I know there are no secrets. The plane is leased and proper maintenance and use of the aircraft are terms of the lease. Dave

I'm not a fan of too much moderation here, but I HATE the number of absolutely useless posts here, so I'm a big fan of this new rule. THANKS! How about another rule banning bitching about locked or deleted threads?? Dave

I always keep some rubber bands and a pullup cord in my jumpsuit, but never even thought about how nice it is to have them for an off landing. I just carry them there so i have them when i'm packing. During normal jumps I don't carry anything else. For night jumps I bring a cell phone and a flashlight if I have one with me. Dave

I did 5 years in Maryland. I swear that state is a breeding ground for stupidity. Never spent any time in VA so I don't really know much about it, but it just sounds nicer to me. Also I THINK you'll find a shorter drive to a dropzone if you stay south of DC. Just be careful of the maryland drivers! Dave

What's that noise I hear? OHHHH, it's a web server's hard drive burning out. Dave

It's been discussed to death already, but i have no problem at all with the commercial. I think it's hilarious. Watch how many different "odd" activities get portayed in commercials. I doubt they ever consult with participants in any of those activities. The details don't matter. Everyone gets the point. Who the hell knows what a reserve ripcord is? Backup cord at least shows some level of knowledge of skydiving equipment, and is probably a whole lot more universally understood. No idea why they'd say 90 seconds, but again, who cares? Dave

Ya know I actually saw that before I had any clue what it was. My friend sent me a link, I congratulated him on the porn, and forgot about it. Then I found out it was the biggest story on the news. If I had saved it, I'd post it. Dave

back online. woohoo! Dave

skydivingmovies.com doesn't have any specific tracking videos (i don't think), but clips from tracking jumps are on a bunch of the freefly videos. Why is tracking more of a freefly thing than RW? And how the hell do you track on your back? I tried that once...didn't work well at all!

I bought my jumpsuit when I had maybe 15 jumps (got a 25% off coupon). The dealer I was buying through wouldn't let me order booties because he said they'd be too hard to handle at that number of jumps, but he wrote on the order form that booties would be added later. Supposedly (no clue if it's true or not), Bev stitched the lower legs differently so that they could be easily removed and replaced with booties. I'm only unsure if it was actually done because I later found out that dealer was a compulsive liar (not even kidding). I was told by one of my AFF instructors that booties were a must for me to get a decent amount of drive in a track since i'm small and the legs are tight. Still haven't gotten booties added but probably should at some point. I don't think I have any problems with tracking or forward movement without them. Dave

Thanks for the reminder... I'm in there and I realized I've been signing the wrong C number for the last couple months! Just off by a digit. Oh Well. Dave

Exactly what I was thinking... I thought I was the only one though.

I dunno why so many people are in a rush to downsize. I downsized from a PD230 student canopy to a PD150 when I had about 40 jumps. Big drop, but it's the same type of canopy and I only loaded it at around .85. It was a lot faster than I was used to, but still very forgiving and easy to fly. I didn't plan to downsize again for a long time. I know a lot of people that have their entire canopy progression laid out right from the start though. I ended up downsizing after I demoed a sabre2 on my 100th jump. I realized that ZP canopies are a hell of a lot easier to land, even though they fly faster. I went down to a 135, loaded around 1.0...maybe a little more since I think i've gained some weight. I've had a bunch of people tell me I should have gotten a 120. I'm pretty sure I could handle a 120, but I don't see a reason to try. My current reserve is a 120 and I'm not totally comfortable with that. I already bought a 143 for my new container when it comes. So I'll probably downsize someday. Maybe years down the road I'll be jumping a sub 100. But I'm not gonna schedule what canopies I'll buy with what jump number. Dave

I've received a very generous offer from every skydiver's favorite web host, WebHostWorks.net. It's a large bandwidth donation to keep the site running reliably and much faster than ever before. There's one catch. I need to supply a server. If I had a spare computer sitting around, I'd send it right out. Problem is, I don't. So, if anyone out there, especially in the Portland, Oregon area or at least in the US has an unused computer sitting around, consider donating it to run skydivingmovies.com. The site originally ran just fine using my old Pentium II 300 with 64 megs of RAM. I don't know what the minimum specs are for what we need, but I'm guessing faster and more memory can never hurt. If you have a computer that might do the job, PM me. And thanks to narcimund for the offer! Dave

If you know you'll be doing RW for a while, get an RW suit. It's gonna be a lot easier to learn RW, and get to the point where you can start freeflying, if you have a good fitting RW suit. Struggling to belly fly in a freefly suit is just not going to help. I almost always do RW (or whatever you wanna call chasing people around the sky on my belly

On windy days, I find going by my gut doesn't work very well...my gut always says no. If I'm iffy, I'll watch landings for a while. If the swoopers are still swooping (into the wind) and the slower canopies are still moving forward, I'll probably give it a try. I used to take more chances... I've been backing up under student canopies more times than I would have liked. But even now, when the winds are borderline, I'll often just give it a try. If I don't like it, I won't try again.

Well... it's one possibility I'm looking into. Professional hosting is another, much more desirable option. This is getting pretty far off topic for this forum, but anyone have any experience setting up servers through a linksys router? I've been unable to get anything to work. I'd play with bittorrent if i could figure this out. Port forwarding just seems to have no effect. Dave

Somewhere in the area of 11 gigs last time I counted. Probably a little more than that now. Dave

If you have a static IP, it's not very hard. There's plenty of free software to do it. Used to use a server called omni httpd then switched to apache when I needed some more advanced features. So if you've already got the connection, and the site is small enough not to piss off your internet provider, it won't cost a thing. Of course you'll probably want a domain name. That costs a very small amount. I paid $12/year or so for the one I bought. But everytime some game crashes your computer, down goes your site. If reliability matters to you, leave it to the pros. Then again, I'm finding win XP VERY reliable. I'm not running any servers or anything, but I haven't restarted my computer in over 80 days now. 10 was my record under win98. Setting up your own server can be a bit of a pain, especially if you need server side stuff like CGI or PHP, but once it's running, it's not a big deal. Dave