JohnGraham

The BPA website has some stuff, and I think dzsports.com (or maybe .co.uk?) has used stuff too.

This is probably going to be somewhat contraversial but what the hell I'll say it anyway - why should they notice your mistake? Alright, they'd have to be blind/not paying attention/whatever to miss that - but let's be clear on this point: it would be your mistake.

Read the BPA Op's manual and it will tell you exactly what is in JM1. Basically the only requirements are that you do the specific things it says, if you've done them before but had them signed on a different peice of paper well, you've still done them.

1st of June

Firstly these don't appear in the ops manual - I think they may be local rules for a particular DZ, I'm sure I will be corrected if I'm wrong. Second of all why should you need CP1 to load your canopy above 1.4??? Fine most of the people loading this high will be doing high performance landings but there are bound to be some who - for whatever reason - just want to load this high and are safe doing so - these people will then be FORCED to swoop!!! I would think it would be more appropriate to have a max wing-loading that you can use for pre-CP1 supervised landings - that would make much more sense.

Read the PIA Dual Square Report (clicky here) on the PD website, it will tell you plenty.

Remember that you need to adjust the results you get from this poll because more people in the general population will be 1st born than are 2nd born, etc. It's easy to forget you need to do that. I'm first out of two in my family.

Just wondering what thoughts are on this - what about routing the brake line through the bottom togle keeper itself, from below or above? I also don't stow my line since my risers don't have any dedicated method of stowing excess brake-line - I can't see how this method would cause a problem, but was after some more experienced opinions.

You seem to like the drogue idea, but as soon as you attatch that to something it'll behave differently, and you'll have to learn to use it. Unless you're not exposing it to air at high speed - and then is there much point? Don't get a head of yourself, man... If you just wanna snow-board off the edge of a cliff, I'm sure you can get plenty of video of it being done to help you out, and lots of advice on how to do it from those who have...

You want to take a surf-board up with you Ross, don't you? Don't you?

Ditto - it would not be something you would "normally" have on your rig, unless I suppose if you had a rig that you only ever opened high on and thought it was worth the extra time to turn off/use, but that would be rare.

Oh, such a device would blatantly have to have a way of turning it off once you were under canopy, as well as turning itself off below a certain height (much like a CYPRES turns itself off below 150ft). This could either be via a button or by actually disconnecting a part of the system, so there's no way it can accidentally cut you away once you're open and not being spun-round. Ross I'll be happy to do any number-crunching you need, (part of the math project i just handed in was on the 3-ring system not that complicated to model really) so long as you tell me what this is all about... or are you just after a way to automatically chop a SS board???

Having a CYPRES cutter around the white loop with a variable firing height and low firing speed that you could turn off after deployment would at least jettison a skysurf board if you were spun-up so fast you lost conciousness. It would also give you a wake-up call if you lost altitude awareness and went too low below your planned deployment height!

I assume you're reffering to what I suggested? There were two incidents that I've heard about that made me think this would have been a good idea - Chris Martin under the Xaos-21 21, and somebody around the same time who got spun-up under a 107 so fast he lost conciousness - I believe the last jumper's canopy corrected itself, and he landed safely. Of course this device would do little to save you if you're spinning so fast your neck is already broken, but it would do you some good if spinning fast enough for you to lose conciousness or have difficulty lifting your arms up to your handles.

I had a thought about this a while ago when I was REEEEEEEALY bored in a certain bar and not getting pissed (yes, that actually happened once in a while!) If you could design a combined cutter/pressure guage in the shape of a grommet (ie. donut shaped) you could fit it between the gromet of the riser and the gromet at the end of the metal housing (on a non-reversed riser), making the white loop short enough to keep them together. Since the pressure applied to the white loop would tell you exactly how much pressure was being loaded on the riser, you could connect it all up to some computer and tell it to cut the loop if some condition about G-force was met. (i.e. if the jumper experiences more than 5G's for X seconds, or 7G's for Y seconds, etc.) but you'd have to get the unit to turn itself off below a certain height. (You could "calibrate" the unit for each jumper - they'd basically just need to hang themselves up in a suspended harness by the risers, and the unit would know that that's how much force the user exerts on a riser when pulling 1G) I have some stuff written down (Yeah, I'm a geek!) that you're welcome to have a look at if this is the sort of thing you're after.

WOW!!! SOOOOOO much information from a single simple question - even in the short time I've been around DZ's, I've very much learnt that there is no such thing as a "quick question" though I consider that a good thing, as you learn more than you even thought there was to learn! I have less than 100 skydives (91 or 92, I think... coming up to 100 soon, at least) so I haven't ever made a BASE jump or taken a course, but I definitely want to in the future. For now, I'm just very interested in the rigging/packing/technical side of things and this particular thing bothered me. Thanks to you all for your replies!

Hi y'all. I read somewhere (a source I consider reputable, but can't remember exactly where) that when a BASE rig is packed slider down, the brake lines must not be routed through the slider grommets. How accurate is this? And, what I was really wondering, why is this so important???

I quite like one I've heard on these forums a bit: It's better to be on the ground wishing you're in the air, than in the air wishing you were on the ground.

See this article, which'll give you some idea. Also, ask the rigger at your DZ and he/she will be able to answer any questions you may have and then some :P

It's just because during the initial portion of the track, they're moving directly towards the camera. Since he/she is some distance away, you can't really see them "grow" as they get nearer, so it just looks like they're staying still.

The current jump-numbers in the BPA's guideline to WS flying says 500 freefall jumps, or 250 freefall jumps within the last 1 1/2 years. It also says:

I assume you mean pull-out vs throw away - both can be located BOC. Do a search using the handy search functions right here on DZ.com, you will find more information/debates than you could possibly want to read, including comments from Bill Booth, who invented both systems. Hope you enjoy your new rig!

If they're unairworthy, they most often get their lines chopped and sold for cheap. Ask at any big rigging loft and you'll likely find one. Try clicking here (the paragear website) and click on "surplus" on the left hand side under "parachutes", they have an old round to sell off at the moment.

"Creep" by Radiohead has to be up there somewhere...

The BPA recently sent out a document with more statistics than you'll ever need, with a name like "incident and malfunction statistics" for 2004. Of course, it only applies to britain, but you could use the percentages as opposed to the actual numbers.