Gali109

This method is great. It makes packing a lot easier for me and you can fill the bag nicely and evenly. I also like it because the last thing you put is the bottom of the canopy so you can check the slider is all the way up. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

A few things I would add are: - Understand what went wrong (turned close to the ground, uneven flare, too high, too late...?)so you know what to do next time. I'm sure you went thru this with your instructors. - The key to a PLF is to keep your knees/feet together and NOT keeping your legs stiff when your feet touch the ground (bend the knees to absorb part of the energy already). Then land on your butt and roll over. This is an obvious repeat of what you heard before, but I insist on knees and feet together because I still see occasionally people trying to "PLF" with feet and knees apart (not good!). Don't be afraid to do a lot of practice on the ground so it becomes a second nature and you become more and more confident you can do it right. -You can visualize your landing until you see yourself landing nicely and feel confident. It could help to rebuild your confidence and control the natural fear you may have at first. Like Wendy, I'm always ready for a PLF, especially when the conditions are not quite right (windy, bumpy, uneven terrain off airport...). With time, you won't need it often, but being ready to do one on every jump if necessary is definitely a must. Good luck and have fun for your next jump! Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

You could ask someone who is an experienced canopy pilot to jump it a few times. Make sure he/she looks at the way it's packed before to make sure it's done properly. He/she should be able to tell you what is wrong (body position, packing, canopy...). If your rigger or the test jumper thinks something might be wrong with the canopy, just call PD and they will help you out quickly. Here is also a link to PD FQA section that talks about end cells closure: http://www.performancedesigns.com/faq.asp#4 Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

I also fold the excess loop and stick it in the tape. It never came off, not even once. You would probably have to fold the excess loop anyway with the elastic. Before I had VSE, I had risers with elastic and after a while, the elastic had to be replaced because it was becoming too loose. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

If you can read French, you can see some links here: http://www.wuza.net/index.php?p=liens&cat=2 There is a section with links for used equipments but it's limited. With the Euro/USD exchange rate to their advantage, Europeans seem to look more and more for equipments in the US. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

When flying in Europe or within the US, I usually take my rig with me and check the rest in. When going thru security, I remove my rig from its bag so they can see what it is. I never had any major delays doing so, even with the AAD. Make sure you remove the hook knife if it is on your container like mine. If you jump in France, and if you have a low number of jumps, you should check with the DZ: ask them what they will ask you to jump there, can you jump with other people.... Last time I checked, you need a certain number of jumps (50min I think) before you can jump with others. The AAD is mandatory and the size of the canopy is also regulated (function of experience, current or not...). If you have a chance to jump in Gap, it's really nice (between mountains), but watch out for landing because of the higher altitude. Hope this helps. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

With my previous canopy (sabre 2 150), the slider was what affected the most my openings. I had a few slammers when I didn’t pay much attention to it. The problem disappeared after I started to expose it a lot more (pulling out its nose an opening it up) and making sure it’s spread out well (quarters) . If I wanted a quicker opening, I exposed the slider less. What solved my problem is exactly what popsjumper described earlier. I’ve never really tried psycho pack but it does look easier to put in the bag. I still pro-pack but I don’t put the all canopy at once in the bag. I make the 1st S-fold on the top of the canopy leaving the bottom flat on the ground. This is done easily once you knee on your canopy about 1/3 from the bottom. I put the 1st S-fold in the bag and make it nice and symmetrical. Then I make the last S-fold with the lower part and tuck it in after I checked the slider is all the way up. For those like me who cannot get the all thing at once neatly in the bag, it’s a lot easier. Once you get used to it, it can be a lot faster than fighting to keep everything together, especially for a new or big canopy. My current canopy, Crossfire 2, opens slow (700 to 800 feet) and I like it that way. I always pull at 3K so it’s not a problem. But I can make it open faster if needed by playing with the slider. In case something doesn’t go quite right and I have to track longer and pull lower, I just don’t slow down my track as hard. Essentially, I pull while still moving forward. That makes my canopy open faster. That might not be a good thing with some canopies. An experience packer is actually the best source of information for this kind of stuff. They know how to change the openings for many different canopies. Hope some of this stuff can help. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

yep, looks like we have a miscommunication here! well, I agree with you that this discussion is not going to help convince his dad. I also agree that statistics is not an input people uses when they decide to skydive. There is also never a 100% guarantee that any jumper will survive a skydive, no matter what the experience and conditions. But I never said that. The only point I'm trying to make is that unlike dices, there are more parameters and some you can control. For dices, once you set the # of dices and the # times you throw them, that's it. Your chances to get a 6 is set, no matter what else you do (no experience or human factor). I just don't want new jumpers to believe that their actions and decisions have no consequences on the risk they take, but most importantly the risks they add for others. But that is so obvious that we all already know that. Definitely a discussion I'd like to continue around a beer if we get a chance. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Well I agree on one thing at least is that thinking you can control all the risks is illusion. But you cannot seriously say that jumpers have no more control on the outcome of a skydive compared to rolling a pair of dices. Yourself (Bigun) recently considered that 145 jumps and 2.45 wing loading is probably madness. It puts the jumper and others at additional risks. It's just common sense and you were right. Someone with no training at all wouldn't survive a skydive at the first place. Poor decisions and poor training do increase the risks for everybody, and this can be more significant that the risks we can't manage. So I think we can agree that part of the risk is in fact manageable by making reasonable choices. It's the jumpers responsibility. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

A jumper makes on average 100 jumps / year (3M jumps for 30,000 members). So the probability expressed in # of jumpers and in # of jumps seem in fact consistent (1 every 1000 jumpers or 1 every 100,000 jumps). The average risk is the same, the unit is just different. Rather than considering that the risk is the same regardless of what jumpers are doing, I still think that : 1) the risks we take during a jump are for most part based on the choices we make, 2) certain situations increase the risks so it is the jumpers responsibility to recognize that, be even more careful when that happens and develop the skills to minimize those risks. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

This is Chicagoland Skydiving Center (CSC). Awesome idea! Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

For Info, as Bill suggested, I added shortcut keys to time jumps: "s" for Exit and [Space] for Point which should make it easier than with the mouse. I also fixed a bug I found in the Prediction page. The new version is now available. I also added an item in the FAQ page to explain how to transfer the data in case you already added some in the original version. Let me know if it's not clear enough. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

I agree. On average, skydiving is far more dangerous than driving. The last paragraph of Tom's article makes it clear. He also makes clear that the statistics can vary so much because there are so many parameters involved that it is almost irrelevant. It's very different than statistics for the lottery. But if there was no risk, it wouldn't probably be as much fun and rewarding as it is! Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Comparison with driving: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Awesome! That sounds more like it. I can make a file that does it automatically but security features need to be changed in addition to the normal "allow macro to run" stuff. Thanks for clearing that up with me. Edit: To clear the data, simply unlock the data and delete the rows (3 rows by jump). Delete them completely, not just empty cells. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Here is the file (see attached). There is just an empty form and a basic macro. With this one you will be able to access the references. Once corrected with this one, it should work for the other one. If it works, I'll make it available on our site too with the downloads and some explanations. Thanks for helping me out clearing this issue. Well, no good reasons for me to stay home. Boring week-end. Simply no plans but that's not a bad thing for my finances to prepare the next season! Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

I just realized that you can't access the references with the tool because the code is protected. I'm preparing an unprotected file with some codes doing nothing but require the same references. With this one, you will be able to see what's going on with this. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

If you don't mind, send me the file where you get the unexpected data and I can see what's wrong. I tried to cover most errors users can make I can think of, but maybe I forgot something than I can fix. Or maybe it's a bug that I need to fix. Edit: I'm wondering if it's because you have some issues with the references. The timer might not work properly so you may get weird times. You can see that in the "Data" sheet. Thanks Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Looks like some people have issues with the references (libraries where the functions used in the macros are defined). The program only uses some basic ones (3 references - see attached screen shot) . I'm preparing a file to try to take care of this (probably this week-end). If there is a line showing "missing" , uncheck them and restarts excel. If none are selected or none show "missing", there should be somewhere in the list of references (alphabetical order unless they are checked or missing). Selecting them might solve the issue. When you say: "It's forcing me to enter the dive wrong", what do you mean? Starting the timer with a key is a good idea. Thanks. I'll make the change this week-end to have both options (exit and point) Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Thanks Pete for the feedback. None of us have office 2007 yet so it's great that you find out how to make it works. I will gather all the info I get and add something in the help/description section. We are starting also to get some feedback on the content too. Bill from Fast FWD had some great features in his tool (summary over several years, see when it's a real meet vs regular training, overview to point out areas for improvement...). With all the good ideas, we can make something clean and really helpful for the teams. So to anyone trying or using the file, any comments is really appreciated (good and bad ones). Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Thanks. 2008 should be really exciting! You put a bench of consultants/engineers together and this is what you get. Some nice charts, some buttons everywhere, stuff nobody really understands or cares about but it looks cool! The difference this time is we don't charge for it Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

Hello, Sorry to hear it doesn't work yet for you. It was made with Excel 2003. I don't have yet Excel 2007 so I couldn't test it. If you have time, let me know in details what's the problem. A copy of the screen would be great. I need to make sure it's going to run on newer excel version. You can drop me an email at laurent@cscrhythm.com I'd like to hear about what you did too. Any good ideas to make it better is great. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com

This is a very interesting thread I just read today. I understand people who may have some sympathy for this guy who took justice on his own hand. Those guys were apparently doing something wrong and this other guy felt strongly he had to do something to stop this injustice. This is by itself not a bad thing. But what may feel right might not be the right thing to do for the overall goal to leave peacefully and progress altogether. In this case, killing somebody to protect some VCR’s, DVD players or any other material stuff just seems wrong to me. But I assume the guy was scared, not trained for this kind of situation and the only thing he can think of since he felt he had to do something was to shot those guys. So he should be trialed in my opinion because it was wrong. I completely agree that when somebody’s life is at stake, it’s right to try to stop the threat (self defense….). So maybe the right thing to do in this case is to gather as much info as we can for the police (pictures, descriptions of the guys, plates….). This may help the police to arrest those guys without having to kill them. Laurent - www.RhythmSkydiving.com