TALONSKY

You should check this thread out. http://dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1108540;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread Kirk

I have never tried the Katana, however I switched to crossedbraced before they were out for demo. As far as customer service, I have always had incredible service from Icarus. It has been a year or so since I have talked to them but everytime I needed questions answered they were always there with an answer. Hell I think I called them about ten different times with questions leading up to my second canopy purchase. I have even got a direct response to an e-mailed question straight from Simon. Kirk

You should demo as many canopies as possible before deciding. That being said I would go for a Crossfire 2, in my opinion they are the best all around canopy with totally incredible opennings. Kirk

As a tandem instructor, I have seen quite a few really over weight people that did a great job. I have taken two different women both 250 and about 5' 4" tall, both could not stand up after climbing into the plane (they had to crawl over to a bench and use that to help them stand). One of these women were in their mid 60's and both had no problem getting their legs straight out for landing(in fact is was quite easy for both of them). Now I have also taken quite a few 90- 110 lbs women that were skinny that were unable to get their legs out for landing(so I had to help them.). I have learned you can not judge a book by its cover Kirk

Just really obsessed about skydiving. My wife is starting to get upset about all the purchases and the excuse that it is a tax write off is not working anymore. Kirk

I think those colors work great together. Here are a few pics of my gear in the same color scheme. Kirk

I think you may be one of the exceptions to the rule. Meaning I know more people that did not like the services provided than I have fingers. Kirk

They are really great live. The band came from the 80"s rock band Savatage. I believe they split the group into two and have studio musicians fill in for the rest. If you are interested in Savatage their Dead winter Dead is the album that they orginally did the song "christmass eve Sarajevo 12/24" Kirk

Up till about 150 tandems when getting video I thought it looked kind of cool after pulling to look at the cameraman and give him a two thumbs up with my arms extended down in front of my student. Well that changed after I had a 250 pound guy looked like a Mack truck grab a hold of my arms when I had it in that position. Also just last week I had a 6’ 3” tall 200-pound guy just grab a big hand full of each of my legs just off the plane and really grab hard. The point of this is you never know what your student is going to do so I would suggest not doing anything more than necessary when it comes to getting your body part near enough to be grab by the student. From my experience (just still a newbie with 210 tandems) it does not matter how many time you tell them to do this or not do that, the second they are off the plane it is the fight or flight mode and some just do not remember any of what they have been told. Kirk

There are afew threads in the past few months on this subject too so you may want to do a search. KIrk

I know the best advise I ever received is do not try and fix the students body position just out fly it. I spent my first 60 or so tandems trying to fix the students body position mainly ankle locking and try to fly with my upper body. This quite often made for fighting for real control. Since then I have learned to just out fly them. That your legs are a tandem instructors biggest tool and should be used for control not ankle locking. In the beginning I had a few tall guys that I had ankle locked because of leg position and then they kicked out and took me for a ride

I have a friend that has a Katana 97 and has flown my Xaos 27 cell 98. His impression is that the Xaos had a more efficient swoop (longer) but felt a lot slower in the air. The Katana losses more altitudes in turns and is much more ground hungry than a Xaos. Kirk

It is not a popular camera helmet but I really like mine the Sidewinder 2. The fact that it has a visor, you can use thin tape to create a ring site on the visor. This has the very positive side of having no snag points. Kirk

This is the only pic of my suit. It is a little blurry and at an angle but it is something. Kirk

I have a Firefly two piece freefly suit and love it. They make an incredible suit. I have since ordered an additional pair of pants to go with the jacket. They may take a while but do great work. I fax an order direct to them. Here is their web site: http://www.fireflysuits.com/ Kirk

I do not have a medical back ground so I will only give my opinion. As a tandem instructor I have my students quite often complain about pressure on their ears, so I would really would not advise it. Also have them consult their doctor on it. I have had ear infections and have always consulted a doctor before skydiving. Kirk

I find it fairly interesting that most of the people arguing for jumping camera with low jump numbers are people that have low jump numbers. OK, here are a few simple truths: 1. You may think you will not start concentrating on filming but after half a dozen camera jumps or more you will really start looking for better video content. Which means you will stop concentrating on altitude and placement of you and everyone else in the skydive. 2. At 100 or 200 jumps your internal clock is not that great, especially if your freeflying so when you are now paying attention to video content and not looking at your altimeter as much your loosing track of your altitude all together. 3. Weather you know it or not anytime you add gear you are upping the anti in an emergency situation. Yes, I know you do not think so and you will not until your in an emergency and are in over your head. Just ask the 3 people who died in 2001. But hey at 200 or so jumps you know everything Anyways so don’t listen to your piers. Hell might as well get a really small high performance canopy while you’re at it. Kirk

Well to answer your question, I have not ever jumped an Attair canopy and never will. I was really interested in the cobalt when it came out but got discussed with the company because of Dan Preston. Yes, I know he is not the owner of the company. I was way beyond sick of Dan’s post here on these forums how Icarus was going under and Dan had the inside scoop from NASA, which gee never really came out (even when we kept asking Dan about it.). Yes all of that stuff is accient history I just do not care for a company that would let an employee spew that kind of garbage. Anyway as I said in my very first post my opinion is limited to the canopies I have flown, and I even listed them. The best advice I know and have seen on canopies is demo a lot of them and make your own decision. Kirk

I would say no it is not possible to truely tighten those straps in freefall. By that I mean, yes in theory you could but you have to lift the weight of the passanger and unless they are right up next to you(unlike your picture) it would be way too much weight to move. The best thing of course is prevention. Get a cadence down and never very from it. Mine is at 4500 AGL I hook up lower laterials and put student ripcord in place then tighten them down. Next adjust student belly band. At 9000 AGL put my goggles on and helmet( lost one do to not buckeling it) then hook up top connections and then check student harness and all handles, then all connection points. I also find that verbalizing checking the connection points to your student is a great way to let them know they are truely connected to you and has at times helped calm down more than one student. Kirk

I believe that a company should let their product speak for it self. I think that most canopy manufactures make some great canopies and some well just OK canopies. I have yet to see any manufacture besides Atair, badmouth their competitors. Yet Atair has been on this site countless time toting how great their product is and how bad their competitors canopies are. Hell, Atair even stated at one time that the Icarus crossfire had a huge design flaw and that NASA was investigating it and Icarus would be out of business in a year. I find a company that will slander a competetor to be just really bad used car sales men. I would never consider Atair do to the way the conduct their business, oh yeah and lets not forget that they love to pimp fully elliptical canopies to beginners too. Oh also their almighty Onyx that they can not figure out the sizes on. Diveout Dan got one that had a written size of 95 crossed out and 105 written next to it, which the 105 was the size it was supposed to be yet when laying it ontop of a VX 109 was at least 15 SQ feet smaller. If you search the swoop forum we have pictures of the canopies on top of each other and Dan’s final review too. Kirk

QuoteI skipped the H-mod and went straight for the COMP Cobalt and I'm very glad. Quote I skipped the buying a Cobalt altogether and got an Icarus Crossfire and loved it ( I also hear that this is by far the best way to deal with the quality problem Atair seems to have) until I went x-braced. Kirk

Just got this together and put a few jumps on it. It is my own custom designed enclosure for the video and quick change on the still. Kirk

From reading all the post on the Cobalt over the past couple of years, it seems as though Atair has some quality issues. It seems that some open and fly great while others open really hard and have to modify things in order to get them to open OK. Kirk

About a year ago you could still buy Sidewider 2 from square one. It was my understanding that skysystems was trying to decide if they wanted to stop making them or not so they are just making them for Square one( when I checked they ran $495.00). I have one and love it. You are limited in without alot of modification you can only fit a video camera (no still), but other than that they are great. For a ring sight I ended up taping a box outline on the visor and using that. Kirk

If you really look at most rigs they bend at that exact point alot. Next time you get in the plane take a look around you, you will see most all containers flex at that point, Javelins have sewn the two thickness of webbing together which makes it harder to flex but will IMO will wear more over time. Infinity has choosen not to sew the webbing together there so it would be easier to flex and over time be less wear right there IMO. Wings containers build their hip ring right under the reserve and cutaway handles basicaly taking out that wear point. IMO I would say it has little to due with flying camera and alot to due with how many jumps are on the container and how much it flexs right there. Kirk