TALONSKY

I psychopack my Safire which is recommended by Icarus. As someone has already stated it is not alot different than a PRO pack. As far as what kind of canopy should or should not be psychopacked, I think that if your canopy takes 600 plus feet to open now it should not be psychopacked, other than that I think it would work great on any canopy. I had a Falcon and for some reason after 80 jumps on it over the 820 jumps it had when I bought it, I starte getting slammed on opennings. When I switched for psychopacking it, it openned great it took a little longer to open but it was a nice soft openning. There is my .02 Kirk

Hi Michele: I love reading your post, you really should look into being a writer for some magazine. As for the fear thing , it may take a while but it will go away for me right around my 25 th jump it went a way. I mean every once in great while a thought of fear may bleep though my head for a second but it does not stay. I have 175 jumps and even the low altitude 2200 hop-n-pops do not scare me any more. As for fun just RELAX and trust yourself and the equipment. Blue skies Kirk

I jump a Talon hip articulated, Safire 169 main, Raven 181 reserve and oh yes a Cyress

I think that some of the best advise I have receive about buying gear for the first time, is to buy used gear. When you are new to this sport you do not know what you really want to end up with and by buying use it gives you gear and time to formulate your own set of likes and dislikes without have the huge start up cost. From what I have seen most all gear now is good gear it justs comes down to preferences. Some like Mirage G3 containers others like Infinity and yet others like Voodoo. Plus not to mention that depending on how much you jump and how aggressive you want to get you will probably want to down size your main canopy after 100 to 200 jumps. Most containers only allow for 1 to 2 size jumps before you would need a different container. Oh, my preferences are Rigging Innovations containers ( Talon, Talon 2 or Voodoo), I think a PA Falcon is a nice docile canopy to start with plus it is not ZP and will give you time to get use to packing. I currently have a Talon container with a Safire main and I love them both. I do not know what people are talking about the Safire being hard to land, out of 26 jumps only 2 have not been complete stand ups ( my first jump with it and one where a flared a second to late and went down to one knee) that’s loaded 1.3 to 1. Blue skies Kirk

I have never used the Oxygn A3, but I have about 110 jumps on a Z1. I love the Z1, the visor has never come open in any of my dives. A friend of mine and I jumped together and he forgot to close the visor on his Z1 the visor did not rip off in freefall and worked fine after wards. Alot of the designs on other visors look pretty weak and I do not think they would stand up to freefall open. So, in my opinion the Z1 is a really great choice.