raymod2

The spirit of the rule seems clear. They don't want people adding weight to their rigs to circumvent the new weight rules. To make it easier to enforce this rule they put a limit on how much your rig can weigh. If you add weight to your rig to bring it up to 25lbs then you'll probably get away with it but it's still cheating. Anyways, that's my take on it. I could be wrong.

This event is going to be pricey. $215 registration and $35 per jump. That's $530 before you add in travel and lodging.

There is a thread at canopypiloting.com discussing the CPC zone accuracy rules. I don't think that forum gets much traffic so I'm starting a thread here. Last year the CPC zone accuracy rules closely followed the IPC zone accuracy rules. The minimum requirements were to fly through the entry gate (break the imaginary plane formed by the entry gate markers), to make first point of contact (over dry land) in a scoring zone, and to come to a complete stop in a scoring zone or a penalty zone. If you failed to meet these requirements you scored a zero for the round. Otherwise you were scored as follows: gate points + zone points - penalty points - standup penalty. Gate points were awarded for dragging your toe on the surface of the water through each gate (maximum 60 points total). Zone points were awarded based on which zone you landed in (40 points maximum). Penalty points were deducted based on which penalty zone you stopped in (40 points maximum). The standup penalty was deducted if you failed to stand up your landing (10 points). If the event was not held over water then gate points were awarded for free. You just had to fly through a gate to get the points. Since it was highly unlikely that you would hit the 1st gate and then miss the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gates you almost always got all 60 gate points (assuming you met the requirements for a scoring round). This year there are two major changes to the CPC zone accuracy rules. (1) The gate points are awarded for free even when the course is over water (no need to drag your toe). (2) You no longer have to hit the entry gate to get a scoring round. Hitting any gate qualifies you for a scoring round (but you obviously don't get points for the gates you missed). Personally, I don't like the first rule change. I think it discourages CPC pilots to learn the skills they will need to compete in the championships and/or the PST. I am ambivalent about the second rule change. On the one hand it will make it easier to get a scoring round on windy days. It will also add an element of strategy (go for the 1st gate and risk a zero or play it safe and go for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th gate?). On the other hand it seems difficult to judge since one video camera inline with the 1st gate will no longer be sufficient to judge vertical extensions.

The idea is that the success of the JVX will cause people to buy a Safire2 instead of a Sabre2. Unfortunately the branding is confusing so people won't necessarily make the connection between Icarus and Daedalus.

That is a myopic view of things. How much money does Honda spend on designing a motorcycle that will only be ridden by one person in a handful of races? The technology trickles down to other models and a successful racing bike will generate increased sales of street bikes. When an amateur CPC pilot broke the world distance record under a JVX that should have been a wake-up call to PD. They can't rest on their laurels and expect to stay on top forever.

Sure you can. Come to Sky Knights and pay $7 any day of the week for a hop-n-pop out of the 182.

Chris, when you read the Wingsuit forum do you tell them that they shouldn't discuss wingsuits because wingsuit flying is just for fun and they aren't ending world hunger? I'm not questioning your passion for swooping. I have seen you post here a lot and it is clear that you do love the sport. I think you get my point and you don't need to call me ignorant. It's no big deal, though. I was going to let your comments go but then Frost jumped in with his inane post and I couldn't resist.

The smartest thing anyone has said on these forums :) Says you. I think those comments show a poor understanding of the fact that this is the Swooping and Canopy Control forum. If you are not passionate about swooping you should probably be reading the Bonfire forum.

I know what you meant. PD snatches up all the top pilots and they fly Velocitys because they are paid to do so. So Velocitys win all the major swoop comps and people assume it is the best canopy. This makes it harder for smaller companies (ie. Daedelus) to innovate because they have trouble making back the money spent on R&D. Even if they come up with a better performing canopy people end up buying the Velocity due to the flawed logic above.

My two cents: a Velocity is trimmed pretty steeply so you need a LOT of speed to get it to climb on its own. I'm not saying it's impossible but I have never been able to do it. I watched Jay Moledski attempt a dirt-water-dirt while I was in Colorado and he dragged his foot for a little while, popped up a bit (a couple of feet) and then came back down and dragged his foot again. I think it's safe to say that pop-up wasn't intentional but (1) it was nowhere near as high as the popup you see during distance attempts and (2) I imagine dragging your foot in the water unloads the canopy some and could be the primary cause of the unintentional popup.

Perhaps someone who thinks you can't swoop a Sabre shouldn't be telling tandem instructors how to fly their parachutes.

That's very judgemental especially from someone who isn't a tandem instructor. But why stop there? Why not say that all tandem skydiving is wrong. The instructor may appreciate the risk but the student doesn't. Skydiving is unnecessary and reckless.

It was $150 to enter and there were 30 competitors. That's $4500 in entrance fees and $5000 in prizes. I agree with CanuckInUSA. Since the CPC is not a pro league there should be no monetary prizes.

My dropzone charges $7 for a hop and pop out of the Cessna 182 and $10 out of the PAC 750. Skydive Chicago charges $10 out of the Otter(s). I don't remember what Chicagoland charges but Drew negotiated $10 per jump for the meet. It sounds like some dropzones are ripping people off.

Where did this $165 figure come from? In the Illinois district we paid $25 per meet and the jump tickets were $10. For comparison the 4-way NSL meets cost $80 per team ($20 per person) for 6 jumps plus coaching and the jump tickets were the standard price for full altitude. @Spizzzarko: Please don't put someone down because they can't afford something. What is chump change to you may be a lot of money to someone else.

I've been sitting on this video for awhile and I've finally gotten around to preparing it to upload to skydivingmovies.com: http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=3191 It's contains most of the pro events from Friday afternoon: 23 distance record attempts 5 freestyle practice runs 27 pro freestyle rounds 8 team speed rounds 7 face off rounds I compressed it into H.264 video, AAC audio, and an MP4 container so you may need to update your codecs. If you want to play it in a DirectShow based player such as Windows Media Player you can use the following filters: Haali Media Splitter: http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/ ffdshow: http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Getting+ffdshow When installing ffdshow check only H.264,X264 video codec and AAC audio codec. After installing go to the audio decoder configuration and select realaac for the AAC decoder (libfaad2 results in garbled sound for me).

Only five of you on the load and four of you all had to land at the same time? I think people need to pay more attention to vertical separation.

I don't know what you are getting at but just for fun I did a google search on "pendulum effect" and nasa. I did find an article describing why pendulums slow down during a solar eclipse. It appears that the shadow of the moon causes rapid cooling of a large volume of air above the clouds. This causes surrounding air to move in and creates a gravitational pull that partially cancels the earth's gravitational pull. How this affects canopy flight has yet to be determined but I'm sure it will be a hot topic the next time we hold a swoop meet during a solar eclipse.

Exactly. Isnt that what I said ? "if you have a slow canopy and its a strong upwind it might be more efficient to use frontrisers for a better penetration" I agree with the first post and no, that is not what you said. In my experience you don't get "better penetration" on front risers. If you are downwind of your target and full glide won't get you there then front risers won't get you there either. It will only make you lander shorter. If you are actually backing up at full glide then front risers may get you down faster so you don't get blown back as much.

Anyone know who out of the top 10 took the qualifier to become a PST pro?

Just out of curiosity: how long are your risers? They are the standard size. I ordered them directly from Sunpath when I bought the Velocity.

That's a good question. Unfortunately nobody has given you a very good answer. I can tell you this: I fly a Velocity 103 at 1.9 lbs/sq.ft and I am using the stock brake settings. I use the full range of my toggle stroke. If they were any longer then I would not be able to finish my flare. So to say that small canopies have a short toggle stroke is just plain wrong.

The benefit is that it makes the event more difficult so that skill is more likely to trump luck.

yup, i think this is the way it should be. Don't you wear weights, Mark? I don't agree with this at all. One of my favorite things about the CPC Championships was having to deal with changing upwind/crosswind/downwind conditions. I also don't understand why you would advocate eliminating crosswind or downwind landings in zone accuracy but not for speed or distance.

And both of you have conveniently ignored my question: If you don't know your maximum vertical descent rate how can your argument be based on the premise that everyone should?