dorbie

Gotta love it when a bureaucratic agency in the executive branch writes legislation like this. James Madison's mouldering corpse just increased it's rate of rotation by a few rpm. They should just ask the NSA to tap into their back doors, and save our great grand kids some money. Mitnick can explain it to them if they're confused.

A similar thing happened with Intel and a competitor a while back. The first thing ANY major corp will do when offered industrial secrets like this is go straight to the authorities, there's just too much to lose. You have to be seriously clueless (we're talking 9-11 conspiracy clueless) to think this is a viable criminal enterprise.

Bush created the darkness, it never existed before he was President! Al Gore invented the lightbulb!

Bush LIED about the darkness!!!!!!!

A: none. It was a waste of time installing a light in the first place, look at this frickin electricity bill!!! That light has never been bright enough and YOU never had a plan to get sufficient light in this room. We have a plan to fix this situation, but there will be no light bulbs involved. We need to remove this bulb because the light is never going to get the job done and it's scaring away the cockroaches!

My first DZ was USPA and had a wind waiver for students. Why? Probably because it was a windy DZ. Of course they exercised good judgement and caution at all times, I was still grounded above 14 at times and they nudged the limit up as experience or conditions changed. Even USPA DZs have student wind limit waivers so the high horse should probably remain in the stable on this one.

It DID happen to a civilian, that's the point .

I can't believe they're using Kelley as an example of this. The BBC has blood on its hands and have never been more political or self serving than in the aftermath of his suicide.

Actually they did until the US started shipping stinger missiles there in quantity.

I'm pretty sure I'm safer diving than skydiving but it depends on what you do, I'm pretty conservative and rarely dive these days anyway. When I started there were no dive computers, no nitrox, no BCDs or octopus rigs. Shit I went to get a PADI cert recently and they didn't even mention buddy breathing & EAR was a separate course.

I was a diver long befor I was a skydiver. I don't SCUBA so much now though.

I'm guessing that's because you already consider what I said as so obvious it didn't need saying. No, as I said earlier, I am not sure what your point is and after reading your explanation my head hurts. Its as if you are trying to apply quantum physics to something that can be handled with 3 grade math.

I'm guessing that's because you already consider what I said as so obvious it didn't need saying.

Because encountering a main malfunction is actually pretty probable, there's not much doubt there and lots of hard & anectotal evidence on the probability. Why don't you jump a tertiary? I was just making an obvious observation, not trying to start a pisisng contest. Maybe you sould read that earlier post again (first mention of armchair) and consider whether you actually disagree with it. It was not actually intended to refute what you wrote.

I ran with scissors once, I'm hoping for leniency when I turn myself in.

That IS my point, everyone does this to some degree. As I said, I'm left with my armchair guesswork to base gear decisions on. Any scenario offered is shoehorned into our personal frame of reference, and it's all about personal perception of risk. Throwing some malfunction into the theoretical mix especially if it's seen as vague or unlikely is not gonna change much if there's an existing perception of a substantial safety benefit. But that's not the point I was trying to make, I've already reitterated what I was trying to say enough times, it's not really obtuse and it stands on its own. I don't actually jump a rig with a skyhook, at some point it the future I'll make that move if product hints I've been given pan out. I'm not going to run out and change my rig for something like this. For me it's a factor that will be weighed when I'm getting another rig. If I jumped a vactor3 I'd probably have had the upgrade done, but I don't.

Right up untill it doesn't work properly. And when you can give me the probability of that with one vs the probability of going in with without one I'll be able to make an informed decision, until then I'm left with my armchair guesswork to base my gear decision on. And that begs the question; can you give the probability of going in without one vs. the probability of going is with one? I don't think so. So what is your point? You just made my point again.

Didn't this slippery slope start with the first act to control drugs in America? At a time when Coca Cola's main ingredient was cocaine congress pretty much thought their hands were tied until some smart ass came up with the idea of taxing and controlling these substances under the commerce clause. It was seen as a radical and tennuous stretch at the time. It's amazing to think how recently this was (between world wars AFAIK). It's like a completely different country now, and it could have gone the other way. Listening to the history and debate at the time it's absolutely stunning how people's attitudes have changed in a couple of generations. Many Americans now just expect the Federal monster to get it's tentacles into everything as if they just don't know about the country they're part of. If Lincoln had seen this coming he'd have surrendered to Lee without firing a shot.

Right up untill it doesn't work properly. And when you can give me the probability of that with one vs the probability of going in with without one I'll be able to make an informed decision, until then I'm left with my armchair guesswork to base my gear decision on.

There seem to be obvious differences in the scenarios and opportunities for this. A skyhook has a main yanking on the bridle or it's not in play and you have a normal deployment where a hesitation would just be a hesitation. As for the pilot-line group entanglement the skyhook to freebag bridle section is longer than the skyhook to pilot chute, that's got to be deliberate. You're solving different problems under different scenarios and that makes all the difference. You can always argue that some scenario will kill you (you've encountered some of that resistance yourself) but the issue the likelyhood of encountering a problem vs a benefit. I thought your idea was great until the pilot chute hesitation was mentioned, that makes me wonder about the relative probability of that killing me vs getting hung up in my reserve pilot chute where you save me. I really have no way to accurately judge which is more likely, it's probably still a benefit but there's doubt. I don't have a similar concern about the skyhook, yes there are concerns but my perception is that the benefit is such that a skyhook is much more likely to save me than kill me, and I'm already acclimatised to the concept of a basic RSL anyway. Decisions, decisions, if only I knew what was going to kill me in skydiving I could buy the gadget to save me for old age

And what was the reason for, or advantage of, removing 20" of line length? You act like a pendulum under your canopy. The period of that pendulum is shortened if you shorten the lines. Another way of looking at it is if you move forward a foot relative to your canopy (or your canopy moves back relative to you), the change in angle of attack of the canopy will depend on the line length, the shorter the lines the greater the change, but the initial input to affect that change would be almost identical. Same input very different response, shorter lines causing the greater response.

P.S. I also believe that ground handling and specifically forward kiting in the right conditions (moderate wind) can give you a powerful sense of pitch/surge control and make you feel a lot more aware of what your canopy is doing in turbulent conditions. You can spend hours on the ground kiting vs minutes flying and you have a solid frame of reference for pitch just by standing there, there are just some things you just pick up like that. I can't say for sure if it's faster, but it's worthwhile trying IMHO and doesn't cost you a jump ticket, just don't get dragged and maybe get soem supervision the first few times. Don't go to some random hill and think it's safe to do a quick sled ride with a parachute, it's a lot more dangerous than most skydivers realize. I'm talking about kiting on the level or on a slight slope, not flying.

In addition to avoiding turbulance, if you find the wind sock switching on landing then try to bisect the angles between the indicated landing directions. Your canopy flies slowly, a sudden change in wind direction can induce a stall and collapse. Minimizing this change in relative air speed due to wind shear can make the difference and keep you flying.

If you have 2 PC’s on the same bridle, the first one to catch air will have to pull the other one along. So it might be that 2 PC’s will make deployment slower. See attachment I don't think so when you consider the relative motion of the air, not just the relative motion of the pilot chutes. P.S. I mean at least w.r.t. pulling against an inflated chute (it wouldn't inflate like that), it'd still potentially have to pull against mass of pilot etc. in the hesitation scenario mentioned by Bill.

It seems like a dilema, solving this problem is a matter of ensuring that the bridle length between pilot chutes is less that the length between the secondary pilot chute and freebag, but you need that distance between pilots to be long to facilitate extraction while the secondary pilot is pulling on the free bag end of the horseshoe (which also eats up some of that bridle length).