MarkM

Generally yeah, but hookitt was giving what he'd do in this specific situation. A damaged canopy at, what, 4k? And while the safe thing to do if you're gonna cut is cut right away and work on getting a clean reserve above your head, it wouldn't be a big deal for someone with that much altitude to fly it down some for a better main recovery. Compare that to a normal pull that puts you in the saddle at 2k with a damaged canopy, then yeah, you shouldn't be screwing around when you're at your hard deck. One thing to keep in mind is sometimes a really experienced jumper might deal with a situation in a way not completely recommended. For newer jumpers it's best to keep things simple, black and white, less confusing. When you get more experience you may vary your EPs a little within a situation.

Joking about "if the TM took his seizure medicine" is hardly scaring someone witless, which is what I was responding to. The original vid? I think it was dumb mostly because you don't know if the student is gonna freak and start pulling handles.

DSE was excluded because it's become well known that he's DEA. Apparently the feds got wind of a highly skilled group of wingsuit base jumpers flying drugs in across the border. They sent in a burnt out field agent to infiltrate the wingsuiting community. He did some training in a wind tunnel which is why he has the flying skills he has(see attached photo), but this meant his landing skills weren't quite up to speed. Hence the recent injury. The world record was just a cover(something DSE suspected all along) so we'd have the planes and man power to fly in a quantity of smack the country hasn't seen since the Village People hit the disco scene. Don't sweat it though, he's fallen in love with the rogue culture of the sport, the freedom, the people, and before next year's attempt he'll have cut away from his old life and be able to join in.

Oh please, that's harmless. Sure, if the tandem is white knuckled and pale white, okay, probably not the best time for humor. But the usual "just sorta nervous" a casual joke isn't going to do anything except break the ice some. Tandems are supposed to be fun. Not some mechanical strap the dude up, throw them out of the plane. I love it when I see a TM put some personality into his work. Shit, I got into skydiving because jumpers are light their farts on fire fuckwits.

Yeah, as you'll notice from this thread in some situations everyone has a different opinion on which option is the best option

Yeah, I started the use of the term "canopy transfer" in this thread and what I meant by it was: Get reserve out, downplane my fucked up main, chop it. I didn't post that at the time because it's sketchy, hasn't been done much and I don't want new jumpers getting the idea of doing it if they're under a perfectly landable side by side when they get a two out at some point. How much would that suck? Dude gets a two out, gets nervous about it, remembers reading about canopy transfering on dz.com, chops, his main risers foul his reserve and he goes in. So I posted the typical "get more shit out" explanation which is a no brainer if you're at 200ft and find yourself under a main that won't land you in one piece. That's something which I hope is taught in every FJC.

Several years back the wingsuit scene was pretty young. Not a lot of people owned them, Tony wasn't making suits yet and GTI's really were an "intermediate" suit. If you wanted to wingsuit and you lived on the east side of the US you traveled to ZHills. That's where the scene was and that's where I went to learn. Most everyone had no real experience. The flocks were total slop. We zoomed all over the place, saw ourselves in grainy out of frame video and we loved it. There were a few guys though that were good and had the jumps, but instead of going off and doing their own thing they gathered everyone together, flew base(which is boring as shit) and grew the sport. Steve was a part of our base. We're stronger today for him having been with us through the years and all the weaker now with his passing.

Think it gets a mention because catching a freebag(or really more so a canopy), seems harmless enough to some people, but people die doing it. Last fatality was a really good guy, young, amazing canopy pilot and soon to be married. It's just a pointless way to get killed.

To you? Nothing. To the pilot, he can have his license revoked.

The pilot needs to file a NOTAM for your jump and if you're jumping over a populated area, it could be considered a demo by the FAA which you don't have the licensing/ratings to do yet. So no to the HS football field jump.

Yeah, I would've thought the same thing. Registration up til 6pm on Sat.

On the way home from your friend's place he was in a terrible car accident. He woke up days later in the hospital and had no memory of the accident or the night before. He goes about his life now with this empty feeling in his heart, like something once filled it yet now is gone. He also finds himself drawn from time to time to the bar where he met your friend. Being a talented artist, he finds himself scribbling portraits during board meetings at work of a beautiful woman he's never met. He has no idea why he does these things or feels the way he does and generally just wanders the world in a sort of listless state, searching for the meaning of it all. Why does he feel the way he feels? Who's this mystery woman he obsessively draws in his spare time? He may never know.

It's not a real wingsuiting event if there isn't some level of drama or controversy Maybe that's because we're all wearing skirts.

Wow. How many people in the formation at that point? Who got kicked? Glad they were wearing an AAD and I guess it shows that they're still very useful for wingsuiters.

Really varies by county in Florida. Broward county it's $70. Got a ticket in Citris county and it would've cost me $500 for the lawyer with no guarantee. So I used traffic school for that one. But in a lot of places it's really become more of a business transaction. They give you a ticket for $200 and all they want is the money. If you get a lawyer and fight it, they'll plea down to an adjudication withheld with no effort and just fine you $200 + a small amount for court costs. They get your money, you don't get points, the layers gets some bucks, everyone is happy. The lawyers run clinics and probably do the cases in mass bulk so they don't have to charge much to the clients. I'm sure the courts help with this since the more cases they can turn in an hour, the more money they make too.

$80 for the attorney in Orlando Florida. Guaranteed no points.

Just how I was taught. Think the idea was to prevent it from being a snag hazard when your main gets cut. Maybe that's not something to worry about.

Eh, I'm really hesitant to because it might spiral the thread off into a "OMG you'll die doing that" and it's sketchy. But probably the best thing to do if you're too low for a cutaway is "be ready to get more fabric over your head". Disconnect RSL, pull reserve, kick it out so it inflates if you need to. You now have a two out. Land that or cut the main if you start to downplane. Nothing radical there and it's preferable to streaming into the ground under a shredding main or cutting at 800 ft and impacting under a reserve that isn't fully inflated.

If I was able to put it through the paces like you did, yeah I'd land it. I'd disconnect my RSL(if I had one) and be ready for a canopy transfer if it started ripping more below 1500 ft. Also I'd prep for a PLF on landing in case the decent was a little higher than normal. I wouldn't land a damaged high WL canopy though.

I get tickets quite a bit. Hire a traffic attorney. It's what they do for a living. They'll give you a quote that'll cost a lot or a little depending on the county you got your ticket in. Some counties are easy to get out of tickets, some are harder. If it's a hard county where it'd cost a lot opt for traffic school instead. In easy counties, use the lawyer and save your traffic school options for later.

Keys boogie was over Sunday, but they only got in 5 loads on Thursday before the winds kicked in.

Titusville does pretty well taking in tandems from the east coast and Orlando market. Buying Lake Wales was pretty smart, because it helps lock in Orlando and also opens up Tampa which is a market Skyride has a fake DZ in. And since ZHills won't take Skyride, they can now just send the tandems to Lake Wales.

Yeah, here's some raw footage I'll put up on Amazon S3 for a bit. All the vids have 2-3 mins of "sitting in an airplane", because I haven't changed up my gear up routine yet to work with a camera. This jump was done at about 3 in the afternoon. Sunny skies, good light. http://s3.amazonaws.com/gopro/zhills_paul.MP4 Another wingsuiter had the older model Go Pro camera, here's that same dive from his perspective as a comparison. http://s3.amazonaws.com/gopro/zhills_paul_nonhd.AVI Here's a sunset jump. It got dark pretty quick out, fairly low light. Most of the guys took off their sunglasses so they could see under canopy. http://s3.amazonaws.com/gopro/zhills_sunset.MP4 Here's a jump I did the next day. Around noon, complete cloud coverage at 6k that I had to go through(was very thick too). The other guy was flying one of those Sony HD CX cameras and while the picture quality up top was better, after passing through the clouds he had heavy condensation on the lens. The go pro cleared up pretty well. http://s3.amazonaws.com/gopro/seb_clouds.MP4 The 3 jumps I did on it Saturday didn't see the battery life go down from full. So figure 20-30 mins recording that day with it still being fully charged. I didn't pre-charge the battery after I got it in the morning. It came fully charged. I've never shot video before and didn't have any problem using the device. Angle size in 1080p mode(127 degrees) seems to work really well. I don't use a ring sight or anything. Just bought a hurricane 2 freefly helmet, slapped the camera on top and started jumping. Very very happy with it.

Mine was shipped Thursday and I picked it up this morning. Flew with it at ZHills. I love it, great little recorder. Uses an internal Li-ion battery rechargeable via mini USB. Which is great since I have a car charger for that for my phone. Seemed to shoot really nice video too, but then I've never shot 1080p before so I can't really compare it to anything else.

Most of them made me chuckle and smile.