freeflydrew

Why are you trying to get that extra feet in the end of your swoop? I hope you don't mind me asking, how long have you been jumping and what's your wing loading? Did you buy the main new and if so, did Icarus know how many jumps you had at the time? What dz are you from? I ask this because I have a tough time believing that a manufacturer would sell a canopy to somebody with less than the recommended number of jumps, and that the S&TA at your DZ would also allow it to happen. A 111 seems a little small, regardless of how well you've progressed thus far. It really only takes one mistake to hurt yourself... Adding a small canopy, low jumps numbers, and experimenting with rear risers and swooping, and your equation begins to look a little sketchy. I would stay off the rear risers... You're going to get great swoops from swooping without them, and you'll remove the risk of collapsing the canopy because you pulled a little too much for a little too long. I would really consider concentrating on your canopy's more basic flight characteristics until you've done 4-5-600 jumps on it, and then begin to focus on things like rear risers and higher performance landings. I'm not trying to offend, but I have a tough time reading about someone with this many jumps and this size canopy... Be safe, broh'

be careful working with the rear risers if you're jumping a non cross braced canopy... You'll probably get a lot out of picking up a video like dirt water dirt or swoop or out of the blue, and watch how the pros do it. I think that maximizing your swoop probably has a lot more to do with the beginning of the swoop, than the end of your swoop... Do you really have less than 400 jumps?

I had 450 jumps when I bought a stiletto 135... Up until then I had done all but my first 26 jumps on a sabre 170...

Yeah Jedi! If you're not totally satisfied with any info here, you should go to b&h next time your around nyc... they know a lot over there. See you soon, broh'

Right from the Icarus website... It looks like everyone's a litttle right in this case... Vectran: Vectran has become a popular choice due to its superior dimensional integrity. In other words, they won't shrink or distort nearly as much as will Spectra. As a result your canopy will retain better openings and flight characteristics for the duration of the line sets life. NOTE: Vectran does not have as much abrasion resistance as Spectra, and the lines will "fuzz out" sooner than Spectra It is recommended that you check line wear regularly. In particular, check out the lower control lines; they wear out fastest. Once again we recommend a line set replacement anywhere between 300 and 600 jumps but due to the variables involved, we recommend that you pay close attention to line wear and if in doubt at least replace your lower control lines regularly. The life of your lines will depend on several factors like your weight, the cleanliness of your packing environment, the number of lines (7-Cell or 9-Cell), how well you look after them and the condition of your slider grommets. Linesets should be monitored for wear and trim and retrimmed or replaced as you would a set of tires on a car. The things to look out for are trims, wear spots, snags and worn stitching. Often wear spots can appear quite bad but still retain much of their strength (such as wear by Velcro) and sometimes a line can appear in quite good condition and be weakened considerably (often underneath a fingertrap). A simple test is to squeeze the line between your thumb and finger and slide it along, if the line or wear spot gets thinner it is more than likely weakened. Everyone please be safe...

That 's the sickest footage i have ever seen... sicker than esmodie at the nationals last year

I think that this picture of Dave Brown shows perfect sit position... I got it off of the freefly training center website... My suggestion is to look at as many pictures and as much footage as you can. you'll learn more from watching, studying, and jumping, than you will in the forums, you know? Try to figure out what the air feels like when it passes around you.

any of monkeyclaw... pray for sun, the weather has been crap all season so far...

Sorry for the confusion! Just to make something very clear here: I'm talking about coming out of a dive between like 10 and 20 feet, and not 50 and 100 feet. From 100 feet or 50 feet you have a bunch of different options, including carving the canopy to lose altitude, giving a little of both risers to lose altitude (yikes!), and letting the canopy fly and not using the risers since you already tried to land with them once and this time it just didn't seem to work correctly. Either way, your canopy should have enough time to regain it's normal glide angle and offer you a full and responsive flair. "Less forgiving" applies when you come out of the arc at an altitude where there is not enough height for the canopy to move back infront of you into full flight, and in essence surges you towards the ground with very little response from the control lines. Know what I mean?

Look into buying a spectre or something with similiar opening characteristics... You only have 19 jumps and haven't jumped since October? That's like 8 months out of the sport. Go do a recurreny course and seek the advice of an instructor. Maybe you should go back and talk to your original instructor? Either way, definitely try to get reeducated in the sport... This will likely help you the most.

Bringing down the slider also limits the wear from the grommets against the lines... If you don't collapse and pull down the slider, it can inflate and flutter, rubbing against the lines, and decreasing their strength and longevity. (Thanks Scott Miller) I agree with all the other points of benefiting the canopy's flight characteristics...

An inexperienced person should NOT be jumping a Stiletto... plain and simple. If your body position is off, and you deploy the Sabre, chances are you will be slammed (original Sabre). If you deploy a Stiletto and your body position is off, I believe that you are less likely to get slammed, yet the possibility is definitely there. Either case will probably require you to take more control of the canopy throughout the deployment to ensure that it does not spin up. I've come to understand the term "less forgiving" to have more to do with the result of turning the canopy to land from an altitude that results in you being lower or higher than you would ideally want to be, and not having to do with opening characteristics. Obviously when you're low out of a turn, you may not have the room to pull out enough to avoid contacting the planet at a high speed. If you come out of a turn higher than you would like, you may be too far in front of your canopy to have a strong flair, and too low to allow for the canopy to regain flight (surge forward) and allow for a strong (normal) flair... This also happens when someone flairs to high, lets up the control lines, and pulls them down again and the canopy feels like it doesn't flair... Someone can get seriously injured from both coming out of a turn low, and coming out of a turn high. I believe that this is what the term Less forgiving really applies to. The article by John LeBlanc is very thorough in its discussion of the Stilleto / Sabre comparision... http://www.performancedesigns.com/docs/stiletto.pdf

http://www.performancedesigns.com/docs/stiletto.pdf

I would base whether or not you're ready for a stiletto by more than whether your 180's on a sabre are safe... Stiletto are very consistent on openings, where as the sabre (original) can at times open a little quicker than one might want, and the stiletto also turns much quicker than the sabre. The stiletto is much more responsive to body position and leg movement during deployement. The sabre, I believe, has a steeper glide angle, and quicker recovery arc. If you do switch to the stiletto, learn to fly it without diving it. You'll most likely find that it's pretty similiar to the sabre, until you pull on the risers... then you'll notice the difference. PD posts a great comparision between the two... You should check it out. Do Hop and pops! They are a really safe way of familiarizing yourself with a new canopy.

I guess I didn't try counting postings... thanks!

I had looked there and still didn't see the place to switch this... perhaps a response more than 3 letters would help a little? Thanks for the info!

How do you change your "title"? I can seem to understand any sort of system of why one person has one title and someone else another...

Once, in Eloy... After a jump my sinuses were bothering me, but I went up again for another jump... During the ride to altitude my nose started bleeding, and it kept on getting worse and worse. Practically gushing... Someone turned off my cypress and I rode the plane down...

Check out the RAWA helmet... I think it's one of the best helmets out there... Everyone, literally everyone, in Brazil jumps with a RAWA helmet, and it's quickly make it's way across the US. The Hawkeye, the Optik, and the Batrak are each nice also, but the RAWA is really a cut above the rest... It comes with a box attached to it which will custom fit which ever camera you have. It's comfortable, safe, and looks cool, too. You'll see! If you're going to jump with a camera, you should buy a helmet that's made for a camera, instead of rigging a helmet to hold a camera. If you do jump the custom job, make sure to use lots of gaffers tape... Blue Skies

I believe that you could always EASILY import footage from a PAL camera or from NTSC. Connect the either camera, import the footage and iMovie knew which format you were using... It wouldn't let you mix the two formats in the same video. Which Apple are you using? Maybe part of the speed issue is your system? I have a TiBook 500 with 512 RAM and speed doesn't really seem like a big issue. Taking a step back for a second, in terms of speed and ease of use, transitions and stuff, iMove is no comparision to Final Cut and Premiere... But it's a nice piece of free software.

0 in 820 jumps

On the technical side... 10.8 megs is way too big for a 1:30 video... Gots to try to size it down with less frames per second, lower bit rate for the audio... There's a bunch of options in both iMovie, or in Quicktime Pro (if you purchased the license)... The quality is waaayyyyyyy tooooo hiiigggggghhhhh! AND get rid of the Quicktime advertisement!!! You've got the logo at the bottom of the page anyway, right? Nice footage, though!

Apple powerbook... Any of the models are powerful enough... Great customer support, very stable, looks cool. Fully compatible with windows

Personal preference to the Stiletto... You shouldn't buy either! Look into the Safire2 / Sabre2 options... Both are nice canopies, you can learn a huge range of flying styles from them, and their opening and flight characteristics are going to be much more appealing to someone with your level of experience. Much safer to dial in swooping, than on a stiletto... If you're looking for a used canopy, be patient... the right canopy for you will come up sooner or later...

Yeah, they were traveling around a couple of different dropzones... Met them in Tahoe... They were sportin the 2kcomposites head gear. Great guys I bet it's a great boogie... Please let them know Drew says hello peace out -drew