mattjw916

why don't you just hang out at the DZ in Neal Houston's RW suit, it seemed to work for him... NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Newbie camera-flyer action featuring Colorado skydivers et all... A little bit of everything: freefly, flatfly, bigway tracking, pylon racing, balloon jump, long spots, beautiful women, and some fringe dot commers. Safe for work, skydiving footage only. DivX 6 codec so get the latest here http://www.divx.com/divx/play/download/?hp3playdl if you need it. http://www.savefile.com/projects/281298 just follow the download links, I'm trying a new host. I'm new to Premier Pro so be kind... and yes, I really need to mount that ring-site. Something to hopefully brighten your Monday, enjoy! NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Welcome to Colorado... I still find snow amazing after living in the desert most of my life. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

these? http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part105-17-FAR.shtml NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Seattle, WA ---> Osan, South Korea you know the flight is long when you get 3 meals, read 2 books, and a good night's sleep all before landing NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

seconded... I'd take a VooDoo or a Talon FS over a Wings any day. They have one of the most comfortable harnesses ever too. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

A bunch of us sat right there and watched it from the BirdMan tent. It was pretty nuts. John was up there going "WOO HOO HOO" before they landed. It was slick. Like Bo said though, there were litterally four mal/CYPRES fires in a row out of that PAC. Yeah, I talked to John about the jump a couple of months later. He's a really cool guy. While some people think they were mental for doing it, it definately wasn't something they just tried out-of-the-blue from his own account. So while some people here think (thought) they were mental, I really think it was more brilliant than anything else. Way to go IMHO! NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Please review this concept: Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become "open" to them. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

for the magazine silly... NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I put something like 200ish jumps on my Safire 1 and think it would have made an excellent canopy for jumping camera with. The openings were extremely consistent and Spectre soft. Mine had the control line mod though. I jump a Nitron now, with camera 95% of the time, and also think that it is well suited to the task since the openings are very consistent. I don't have a lot of jumps on it yet, but my initial impression is very positive. YMMV NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I can name dropzones that do all kinds of extremely dangerous and scary things, does that make it okay for everyone? It shows a lack of mentoring that lead to an incident. Obviously you know nothing about statistics since generally you have to calculate them before you use them to refute something. I'll do it for you then... if you add up all the threads about Safires, Stilletos, Velocitys, FXs, VXs, and just about any other canopy you can think of it won't even come close to equalling the number of threads about Sabres opening hard. Hmmm... that argument seems to be getting a little weak. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Why don't you ask the guy that femured right in front of me at your home dropzone how much he loved his Sabre, or maybe why he was loading it at ~1.4 at ~100 jumps. I haven't jumped a Nova either, does that disqualify me from making a recommendation to someone jumping one that he should shelve it immediately lest it kill him? One does not need to hold ones hand in fire to know it _will_ burn. Since you have already proven your skill at using the search button, why don't you do some searches on Sabre hard openings and report back what you find. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Congratulations, you contributed nothing useful to the thread, and most of the information is plain wrong... NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

The only person that I _personally_ know that discovered it in freefall fought with it until his Cypres fired and saved his life. It took him the whole way down from the time it was discovered to get it routed. The only other case I know of is someone cinching it down while on the camera-step of an otter. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

McBain and King... "Team Crater" lol.. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

I'll split some time with you for freefly coaching. I still suck on my back in the tunnel, but a couple more sessions should fix that hopefully. If it's run similar to Eloy, we'd split a 1 hour session up, usually at least 4 people for 15 minutes a piece with 2 minute rotations in and out of the tunnel. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Zig, My profile has as much information in it as I care to share. Having witnessed several negative incidents over the years on this forum (Aggiedave's and PhillyKev's to name a few) I choose not to fill in any additional information. End of story. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

_One_ problem that I see with a lot of new skydivers is that they plain don't want to put in the effort to learn how to fly their canopies. I agree with what many others have said here that the information is out there whether it be here, other websites, in print, canopy courses, seminars, or around the bonfire (for DZs that actually have them). As someone who "got it" faster than others I have on many many occasions offered to help people that had "problems" with their landings. I may not be joe-shit-hot freeflyer but I guarantee I can land my canopy on target every time without any drama or that pesky clear-air turbulence at 20ft that so many people seem to blame. More often than not, after suggesting some dedicated hop and pops with some video, most people rather just go freefly or flatfly instead of taking a day or so to dedicate to what is arguably the most important aspect of skydiving, landing safely. Most people really don't want to take time out from "fun-jumping" to learn, even when it's free. I wasn't granted some magical skill to swoop at birth and I don't even think I stood up a landing until like jump 12 or so. What I _did_ do was take some time off from those "cool" skydives to work over and over again at the skills that are suggested by the likes of Billvon, Brian Germaine, Bryan Burke, and my local swoop-god friends. What I also see a lot of is when Joe or Jane skydiver isn't nailing their landings right away their instructors just tell them to buy a Spectre loaded at 1:1 and don't worry about it. These are the people that most often need the extra work, but because they "don't want to swoop" never take a canopy course or try to enhance their canopy skills and often go around parroting the "the canopy is just there to save your life" speech. For the record, I have never paid for canopy coaching but I have attended seminars, read everything I could, and even asked my friends to video my landings on several occasions. Total monetary investment in canopy coaching is limited to the cost of Dan Poynter and Brian Germaine's respective books. Also for the record, I have on several occasions had someone ridicule me for the size of my canopy. I found it mostly funny though for various reasons. Wingload is a personal decision IMO based on what you want out of your canopy. Personally I know I can get more speed out of my wing without sacrificing square footage plus I'd rather practice landing with rears on something that probably won't power-slam me into the ground when I screw up. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

Made any skydives recently? Nope? Still dispensing advise, huh? Yeup, nothing has changed. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

That isn't a fair characterization. I know many many tandem instructors and some of them use this method so as to not overwhelm their passenger with a bunch of instructions before their first skydive. One specific story I can remember regarding this was a TI that explained the "landing position" to a student prior to exiting the plane and then had their passenger keep their legs up and out throughout the entire freefall portion of the skydive and also made for an exciting exit. How tall you are doesn't affect whose feet touch down first for a tandem. My first TI was about 6 inches shorter than me at least and we landed without incident having the process explained "on the way down". NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

O RLY!!? NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

The fact that any canopy can _occasionally_ open hard is not the issue here. The issue here is that there is a reoccurring theme on this board regarding Sabres opening _consistently_ hard and some people are obviously too hard-headed to accept it or pass it off as "hype" or "fear-mongering". Maybe someone who is an infrequent jumper can tolerate a higher than average rate of hard openings, but personally that is unacceptable to me. If being a "gear-snob" means I spent the time to learn about the majority of containers, mains, reserves, and AADs on the market (actually jumped them too) and made an informed decision based on said research, I guess that's me. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

The very fact that there is a thread about every month or so by some new skydiver that is getting slammed by a Sabre is a good indication that more experienced jumpers aren't making them adequately aware of the problem. I know how to fix them, you know how to fix them, but Billy-Bob-100-jump-wonder won't even know that he's getting the crap kicked out of him since it's likely one of the few canopies he has ever jumped. Given a choice between jumping a Sabre 1 or nothing, I'd choose nothing until I fixed it, replaced it, or in the unfortunate case of many of these "slammer" canopies, pass it off to the next new jumper that doens't know any better. *sigh* NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

It's not "hype" and good-for-you that _your_ Sabre opens fine but there are tons of those canopies out there that don't and major injuries have resulted. That is an indisputable fact. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080

If people shop around and resist the urge to impulse-buy there are many deals are out there to be had. Spending a couple extra hundred bucks on a canopy that won't ruin a day of jumping due to sore muscles or worse is a much more logical alternative than jumping some bargain-basement canopy with a sketchy reputation. When your life is on the line it is mind-boggling to me that people constantly try to cut corners on cost at every turn. Many people who skydive are "pathologically poor" and will wait until closing loops are falling apart to replace them ($1), try to sqeeze that last jump out of those line stows ($0.0002), jump canopies that are horribly out of trim (~$250), use pilot chutes/bridles that are way beyond their service-life ($150), etc. The main canopy is something that is used on _every_ jump and should be something you can trust and not cause you to wince as you release your PC into the airstream in hopes that it won't open like a hand-grenade. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080