Trae

in rep 2 "If you want I can put you in contact, at the time he was looking for other pilots...." .......................................................... Sounds good ,.. my lack of French would possibly be a prob Any clues what his current project is? Thanks all for the rest of the replies . The Vamp1 wins.

in reply to "I vote for Yves Rossi and his Jetman. ' Yeah pretty good alright . If he had one available for sale I would seriously consider buying one. Although that jet-wing is not really user friendly looking. In the meantime ....things are looking fairly vampiric.

In reply 2The111's "I would question the logic of waiting for something that "must" be in the works .............................. Logic what's that? Still looks like the Vampire and the wait for more and better which must be worth waiting for..... Jumping a Vampire do you have to keep slowing down for all the other suits?

Looks like the Vampire wins so far . Everyone else is just mucking around. Phoenix must have another Vamp being worked on . Might really be worth waiting for.

There is very little on this planet and human cooler than a free climbing rock climber. Climbing out under overhangs with no ropes??? Give me a nice warm skydive any day. Those free climb iceburgs make us skydivers and a lot of BASE jumpers look like over cautious ninnies. I say :- 3 to the freeclimbers , 2 for the BASE jumpers 1 for the skydivers and not much at all for those climbers that use ropes oxygen hammers and all those other things they need like sherpas and helicopters.

This is a bit of a hard call not knowing the true extent or placement of the damage. If your friend had noticed the hole there are a few things he could have considered. Some people would say just chop it to be on the safe side. For low experience people this is probably the best idea. If it was a basketball size tear in a largish canopy say 230+ then it might not have been a major problem depending on a few variables such as where the tear/hole was. You'd have to have a GOOD look and determine whether the hole was getting bigger. You'd also be sensible to give the canopy a thorough control check. If you were not capable of doing this with confidence then....chopsuey. If you have any doubt about whether you could land the damaged canopy......you know the drill. If it met the control check and the hole wasn't getting bigger then I would be inclined to stay on it. I've seen people do inflight transfers below 300' more than once. ( wait till you get line stretch on your reserve then cutaway ) Even though in flight transfers are not a tactic to be recommended to students it would be a worthwhile back up plan if you were going to land the damaged but flying canopy and then changed your mind at a lower altitude. Not to be recomended but worth keeping in mind. If you were really low and the main decided to go batshit then it could be advisable to just dump your reserve without cutting away. Quite a large number of skydivers have been killed by cutting away from canopies too low when they would have been better off just dumping the reserve. This is definietely a grey area . (i can feel the Ack Ack warming up ) If you found yourself in such a situation any extra options could just save your life. perhaps you can see why most people would simply say ..........CHOP IT. & POP IT.

In an ideal world the instructor should be spotting for the reserve while of course allowing for an acceptable ride on the main. A lot of the hard learnt lessons with round parachutes re spotting and wind effects have been diluted in this modern large aircraft, GPS ,square reality. Some students and lots of novices get to jump what used to be considered fairly hot parachutes . A lot is expected of modern students some people would say too much is expected . Over reliance on high tech gear (eg expecting the canopy to get them home , expecting the AAD to save their lives , doing the spotting from the GPS ) can have repercussions when things don't go to the perfect plan. It also allows for funny discrepancies as the gear is generally much better and can hide other deficiencies a bit such as poor spotting. A poor spot under a roundy and there was no hiding it. I've noticed a lot of modern skydivers don't really know how to spot for themselves never having had to do it much. Some number of instructors and very experienced skydivers also appear a bit retarded in their spotting abilities instead relying heavily on pilots and GPS.. Often the poor ol' student is blamed for getting it wrong when it all could just be a bit much too soon for them. Decent instructors pick up on this and can modify their input if the student requires more attention or just a bit of extra guidance at some point. The less skilled instructors tend to blame the student when it is perhaps at least partially the instructors fault for not recognising when a student needs to take more time to learn. Rushing students through the AFF course in record time can become a point of pride for some instructors with questionable teaching ethics. Whenever an instructor boasts to me about his last student only taking two or three days to do the whole course I seriously doubt whether the student has received adequate basic training. The current high incidence of landing accidents should be recognised as the deficiency in training that it reflects.

I heard a whuffo say once that skydivers must have 'balls of steel". Now I understand what he was getting at .....not that skydivers are very brave but that they MUST have replaced them with metal ones. This is the sort of thing that you shouldn't let happen even once if you can help it. As if a male would need reminding. I'd almost recommend dumping low while you re-adjust rather than taking the hit. Seriously though.... Severe trauma to the testicles is apparently a cause of testicular cancer and can affect reproductive abilities...worth taking good care .

in rep 2 Tonto's "I got 161 mph on my suit. " And your suit is a ..............??? ....over 360 klicks horizontally is getting fairly fast. I reckon the Vampire looks the fastest . That extra leg area must help push it along. The S3 felt good for tricks but a bit of a slug for speed. How does the S5 compare.?

Good on you for providing something of interest Rhino. All those brain-washed anti-conspiracy conspirators get sooooo boring. Apparently it's a sign of widespread brainwashing when you keep getting the same response to different information no matter how ground breaking . This basically means that a lot the general public is not capable of thinking for themselves . It's much easier for them to repeat what they've been told to think. Keep up the good work..... I think it's called bio-diversity... like to ensure the survival of our species. New/old 'anti'- catch term. 'WHACK-JOBS ????? ' Are they/we/ us whack jobs because the conspirators don't want the truth to come out??? Anyone want a whack job??? ---------- join the army.

Hello there, Winter in Korea....cold?? Paraglding especially cross country can be very good as skydiving replacement therapy. Slope soaring with decent gear can also be a lot of fun. The two go trogether fairly well except the PG pilots tend to be a lot more conservative than most skydivers. Have fun in the forums. Cheers Trae

Do you remember when you go to sleep? You know when you decide to sleep & you close your eyes...........well.....do you actually remember when you go to sleep ......as in the exact instant you are no longer awake & now asleep? I know a lot of people rely on passing out rather than going to sleep & others seem to be able to instantly nod off whenever. Others with a mind full of stuff might have trouble slowing down enough to sleep. I've found that trying to pin-point this transition instant can cause insomnia.....however it also appears to create some very powerful & lucid dreams. During one of these little edge of sleep events I found myself floating up to the ceiling. Looking back I fell back into my body and 'woke up' startled....but I hadn't gone to sleep. I spoke to a slightly esoteric lady about this and she said that I was basically astral travelling...if a bit fitfully. Since then it has become fun to try and stay awake while going to sleep. If you try this just be aware that it can cause insomnia even though you may be asleep while experiencing it. Sweet dreams

Heaps more skydivers have been killed on the way to the Dz rather than while skydiving. In skydiving you've got two of the best brakes in existence. Imagine you were in a car going 120mph and you hit the brakes half a mile away from a brick wall. In a car if your brakes don't work you have few other options . In skydiving you have another brake that works even faster than the first set. I saw a guy die once after falling 20 feet from a walkway. In skydiving you've put yourself in a potentially dangerous situation but have the power of lots of technological and procedural developement to help keep you safe . If you take your time and do it right (flying & landing safely is doing it right ) then skydiving can actually become lots of relatively safe fun. Cheers

The large choice of wingsuits is getting a bit confusing. Can some-one help me by telling me what the best wingsuit is at the moment if you want to go fast horizontally. I'm aware that some fall slower vertically due to being draggier but I'd like to know what goes the fastest forward. Is it the Vampire from Phoenix ?

in reply to Finns ........"I'm brand new at this, weigh 175 without a rig, and In reply to Finn's "weigh 175 without a rig and am jumping with a Manta 288. I'm having the same issues as mentioned here with regards to penetration. ........................... Are my issues more likely skill or equipment related? " ....................................................................... If you are landing backwards &/or spending most of your descent going backwards then it is my feeling that the issue is gear related ( or too high a wind) and possibly due to instructor irresponsibility. Of course your relatively low experience levels may contribute to you not handling this situation but then it seems like your instructors should be more responsible and either get you to wait for suitable conditions or get you a correctly loaded student canopy. If you are going backwards and the winds are below the student limits then you have a 'too big a canopy ' issue. What a lot of people seem incapable of understanding is that a too lightly loaded ram air canopy just doesn't fly right. I weigh about 65kgs and once did a jump with a tandem rig 425sq ft canopy(no passenger). This was the scariest canopy ride I ever had. The thing kept folding under and dropping me suddenly and basically moved around without any direct control input. Flaring became a joke as the canopy basically did what it wanted to . I manged to fly it down somewhere near where I wanted to go and I was thrown around by turbulance causing me a hard landing. My ' friends' thought I was being hopeless or something....NOT. It was like trying to fly a bubble compared to my usual properly loaded canopies. I did my student training on 35' roundies . We were always being blown backwards. A large Ram-air just doesn't work well if too lightly loaded. The large roundies were quite ok with my lighter weight. I've owned canopies from 230sq ft down to 120 sq ft. in reply to Tso-d chris "My point in this thread has been that some people were claiming too big canopies were keeping people from landing in the designated landing area, and that was negligence on the part of the instructors, when in fact that is a symptom of a poor spot. " .............................................. It is too easy and not reasonable to simply blame the student or "the spot". It's my feeling that :- putting a lightweight person out under too big a canopy resulting in them being blown into a dangerous landing zone is negligence on the part of the instructor/student operation. :-If the wind comes up and the jump is not aborted then that is negligence as well. :-If the student receives inadequate target control/ guidance then that also is negligence. One thing I noticed from the statements and transcripts was the extent that incompetent people will go to to cover their negligent behaviour. This issue is really quite simple . The right canopy for the right job. Most people get this . Don't let the courts teach you this lesson.

in reply 2 Waltappel's "I personally think all drugs should be legalized, even though I don't smoke, drink, or do drugs. I consider the "war on drugs" to be a war against the American people. " I tend to agree wiyth this . Legalising or at least decriminalising would certainly change the current power base and perhaps reduce widespread drug corruption. Perhaps fewer people would even feel like using drugs if the world was so advanced and tolerant to decriminalise all illegal drugs. A lot of the trap od drugs is that it's all so hush hush. If it was out in the open the usually tacky reality of heavy drug use would put most people right off. A bit of the problem is that very few of us can remember when most modern drugs weren't illegal. I can remember when ecstacy was actually legal (1980's .. at least not classified yet ) Also LSD was quite legal for a while in the USA and elsewhere. Heroin cocaine opium have all enjoyed legal if not really acceptable status in the past. A chemist fried of mine once told me that last century before alchohol prohibition was replaced with illicit drug prohibition the junkies used to line up at his door in the morning to pick up their legal fix(es) for the day. When heroin was made illegal they used to serve themselves by busting in at night. Now he reckons it's just totally out of control compared to the relative control they used to have over drug dependent people. They gave them what they needed up to a point. Many drug dependent types I've known over the years are now being legally supplied their tabbies by the drug companies. Often this is following a serious accident and the drugs are for pain relief. It's a cliche now but drug use and dependency could really be treated as a medical issue rather than the police /law enforcement issue it has become. A lot of police are very sick of being psuedo-nurses to the drug world. The underworld that has been created by the 'war on drugs" is also rampantly out of control with the whole thing looking like a VERY vicious circle which sucks in all sorts of victims... innocents and the 'guilty". Cheers for the excellent replies especially from Gravitymaster ...most informative. And by the way one of Shapelles visitors had a bag of pot slipped into her garment by a warden. This was found straight away by her kid. Perhaps the law enforcement officer was just trying to help.

looking at my log book brought back some good slightly forgotton memories.

in reply to happythoughtsThe tense of the sentence contradicts itself. ............................................. So my english sucks ...it doesn't change the truth and reality of this as an issue. I don't really want to get into the specifics even though I could provide some more intimate details of these cases (some of the transcripts and statements do make VERY interesting reading ) but I don't have a link for you. This sort of thing is not usuallly made available to the skydiving public ......especially by the negligent perps. Here we're only talking about the issue in general . OK so it's an old one for some out there .... and a lot of places know how to deal with it... next.. The thing is there are a lot of new players in 'pro' skydiving and to them it could still be an unknown POTENTIAL problem...relatively easily avoided if aware of. I know it has given more than a few operators a nasty bite for not protecting themselves against this. in reply to Witelli "What do you think, when a newbie asks a question can we change the phrase "Talk to your instructor" to "Talk to your instructor, feel comfortable with your instructor said and do it, or DON'T." I'd say talk 'WITH' your instructor no 'TO' them .

The even simpler answer is not to go anywhere near these countries. I'm not such a hard liner that I believe people need to be put in 3rd world jails for decades just because their drug of choice is different to the accepted alchoholic norm. The way the victims are set up is the real worry. The problem that appears to be on the increase is that in these countries white westerners are dished out a different form of justice to what the locals get. The street dealer will be there every day selling his wares in full sight of the law but pick up a smoke or a toke from him and you could be looking at 20 years jailtime. He'll be merrily there all day no matter what happens. It's too easy for us to just say that's their law . These people are basically setting up westerners as their new form of corrupt earnings. A bit like institutionalised terrorism. in reply to Andrewwhite.. 'This has been going on in mexico for thirty years. ".................................. It's not really new in asia either just seems to be picking up a bit lately. I once heard that Mexico doesn't have a drug problem ..it's just the people that go visit there that have the problem.

in reply to "How many students have been injured or died as a result of being under a canopy that you would consider too big for them? Were they exceeding the recommended winds? " ........................................................... I know of at least 3 cases fairly recently (different DZ's) in the courts (students claiming negligence) due to the student being seriously injured due to being put out in too high a wind with too big a canopy by people who should have known better. Sometimes these winds have come up after take-off and poor ground-air communication prevented the jump being aborted. Other-times the injuries were a direct result of instructor inexperience or just plain negligent behaviour. Putting a lightweight out in marginal conditions under a lightly loaded canopy can result in the student being blown out of easy sight of target control and into areas containing unfamiliar landing obstacles and turbulance creators. A combination of mistakes including poor TC can put the student outside their zone of control. This is not that uncommon in my experience but usually (thankfully ) no harm is done. However when it does goes wrong it can go very wrong. If the student/novice injures themselves or dies it is relatively easy to argue (in court) that their injuries were a direct result of negligent behaviour. in reply to riggerrob's "The only way to make your solution work is to balance smaller canopy types so they can also be used as transition rigs for intermediate jumpers." Perhaps not the only way but certainly one good idea. It IS easy enough to recognise this problem as a problem. The most simple solution is to be more cautious. It would also be helpful to be aware of the circumstances when this little problem can turn ugly....and avoid them. Tell the student/novice to wait. Smaller operations can't reasonably be expected to have multiple canopies of each different size due to excessive costs. What can be expected of DZ's is that they act appropriately when dealing with small people in marginal weather conditions. Waiting for good conditions is par for the course for students and they shouldn't be encouraged to jump if the conditons don't suit their experience level. in reply to riggerrob 'Furthermore, the trauma of one big boy breaking a leg - when given too small a parachute - can discourage the purchase of smaller rigs for a good decade. " Yep this can happen and does . Once again it points towards negligence (for the operation ) if a heavy weight student is given a canopy too small. Sometimes they just go and get a rig by themselves and no-one notices . Tighter rig control & organisation solves such problems.

There has been a large increase in the number of Australians charged with drug crimes in indonesia after 911. Often these crimes are of a relatively petty nature but the punishments dished out are extreme. A recent case ( only made public due the victim being sort of famous ) invloves a model looking at 15 years for having 2 ecstacy tablets in her hand-bag when searched by indonesian police. There are reports of multiple incidents where the victims managed to pay off the arresting police with small bribes often immediatley after being sold small amounts by street dealers. It now appeqrs that the Indonesians have a new hobby---the baiting and reeling in of tourists (mostly young Australians ) on minor drug charges ie minor if it happened at home but 'major' crimes given the obscenely harsh punishments for being caught possessing small amounts of cannabis or ecstacy or amphetamines or etc.....etc. The injustice of this situation may be apparent to any-one who has travelled in Indonesia as the native drug culture there is widespread and very open in its dealings. If you're white caucasian travelling in Indonesia take extra special care as they appear to be setting up innocents as well as catching the drug orientated tourists. This is a real pity as a lot of the indonesians are truly beautiful people. Oddly enough just like Iraq , Indonesia is a relatively recently 'constructed' country that used to be a collection a very different cultures and peoples. Now it is run by what appear more and more to be out of control corrupt bullies. Take care and give some back as well

I've noticed a bit of an increase in the lightweights (students and novices ) being given canopies that are too big for them. The resulting lightly loaded canopies may be barely OK during very light wind conditions but as soon as the wind approaches marginal lightweights under big canopies get into all sorts of trouble. The problem may be as simple as the smaller student operations not having access to small student canopies rather than one of knowledge deficiencies. Increased susceptibility to turbulance and decreased penetration issues (especially if the uppers are stronger than the lower winds) are often too much for a student/novice to handle within the required safety margins. Perhaps some clear amd consistent form of minimum as well as maximum recommended loading standards if adhered to could help here. It has also come to my attention that this is a relatively common reason for negligence claims against student operations. If a student (who has put their trust in an operator to look after them within the accepted guidlines as per duty of care) is given a canopy to use that is too big for their body weight and they get into trouble resulting in injury or death as a direct result of that canopy choice then it has been successfully argued that such operators are guilty of negligent behaviour. This can obviously have financial repercussions. Now that more and more people are having a go at skydiving the sport is also seeing more and more lightweight people . Of course we owe these smaller people just as much care as the heavier/larger ones and probably more care due to their less stout build. If you're aware that this issue has caused major problems for other operators then perhaps you can avoid this happening to you.

Hard to answer this definitively without proper access to accurate statistics regarding base deaths and injuries. A lot of base incidents go unreported and a lot of skydiving incidents get over-reported. Way more people skydive than Base jump. Both sports can get an individual the same amount of dead or injured. From general experience I'd say that Base jumping woud be the more dangerous and provide the more deaths /injuries on a per jump basis. Being in general a shorter more close to the ground type experience base jumping SHOULD be more dangerous.....it is certainly less forgiving of stupid mistakes than skydiving is. Most of the skydivers I've known that have died while doing either skydiving or base jumping died base jumping rather than while skydiving .... so that may colour my judgement a little. That said if you learn Base jumping from the true experts ( not the weekend warriors) you should be able to enjoy a long if not completely injury free career.