azureriders

Someone has beat me to this, but I will repeat it anyway. This is simply not true. Digital readouts can fail in many ways. I have witnessed two Suuntos freezing up and continueing to read the same altitude from that point on in free fall. One of those were on my wrist at the time. I know a suunto is not made for skydiving, my point is simply about digital equipment, of any kind

with my snag-o-matic camera helmet, preferably 4000', as low as 3000' if the TI sucks it low. With a frap hat, 2500', no problem going to 2000 if needed for seperation.

From a post by TrojanHorse in the other thread: Sounds acurate to me, I work there but not in managment, but for as I know managment was satisfied with the "Action Taken" Further details just for the sake of conversation. The jumper was a female, not for sure of jump #'s but in the novice catagory. She was a memeber of a hoop dive and was to be one of the hoop holders. Early in the dive was having problems with her slot and elected to wave off, back out (and up I think) to lurk the rest of the dive. I think another jumper may have taken her slot. Her husband passed through the hoop and when clear of others turned to find his wife and witnessed the reserve pilot chute launch. She landed with a no incident slide in the main landing area and was out for a few weeks with whip lash from the opening. I was not on this dive but was there that day and these are the details as best I know them. The gear was a DZ owned rental, canopies unkown to me. From what I understand all Dz owned arguses where replaced, immediately and with out charge.

Not true, I know of one for sure, was there to witness the landing and gear inspection, argus mis fire at around 10,000 ft AGL

No rigger, but I do have one reserve ride in my wings container. No problems with the opening at all. And my rigger, although having nothing really bad to say, is not a wings fan either.

I did my AFF on a rig like this. The differences between that and the rig I thought (at 80 jumps) would be so great would be the addition of the crystal ball and the removal of the RSL shackle, no need for an RSL if you are pulling SOS, and all your options are open, one handle does all, one handle cuts away only and one handle fires reserve only. That was at about 80 jumps and my mechanical mind running wild. With a little more experience, I agree with you totally, too many moving parts to fix a problem that was not there in the first place. I just thought my ideas from the past were good coversation for this thread.

I don’t have the experience that some of these guys do, but I do coach and just as Terry has said, I teach both options and let them make their decisions. But for my opinion, there have been two very important things mentioned already. First > And the best answer for a particular person > at a particular stage may need updating at > a later stage, when they know more about > themselves, and start doing new activities, > and realize more ways that things can go > wrong. IMO, at your level you should be deployed (container opening) no lower than 3500’. At that altitude and at your current decision making level, your one size fits all EP’s should be fine and are actually what I would recommend to you. When / If you move your deployment altitude to the basement, you must keep your options open and there is absolutely no one size fits all EP and you should not go lower until you understand that. There again, that is just my opinion, others have theirs. Second > If you really want to simplify emergency > procedures and will cutaway from ANY situation > first you can get a SOS system where one handle > is BOTH the cutway handle and the reserve ripcord Again my opinion, but if you are going to the basement with a one size fits all attitude, an SOS (single operating system) is the only way to go. A TAS (two action system) gives you options, if you do not plan to ever use those options, why not go SOS? Warning, off topic BS below I don’t often reply to threads such as these unless I have a question, there are plenty of people around like Terry that have way more experience than I to give advice here. In this case, I have been where you are at and done some extensive research on the point at hand when I was at your level. I am a mechanical engineering based thinker and was more concerned with how the gear *should* be set up. A little off topic, but think of this, a rig with a SOS handle, placed where your reserve handle is now on the left MLW, a standard cutaway handle on the right MLW, and then a crystal ball type handle (maybe a little more grip friendly) for pulling the reserve only, however not connected to your riser as a RSL. Now your EP’s could be, in a fast action react now situation, pull the one handle that does it all, SOS. Crew wrap, slow speed mal with plenty altitude and a camera on your head, pull the cutaway handle. Below a 1000’, canopy collision, need more shit over your head, pull crystal ball. That was what I came up with then, and I talked to several people of experience here about it, talked with bill booth about it quiet a bit, there are a lot of pros, and cons. Now: Have I had a rig built with three emergency handles? NO. Do I think you should? NO. Make your decisions on the GROUND, and stick with them. One other important thing that Terry has already said, glad you are thinking about it.

I have, but it ended up in just a premature belly to earth deployment, no big deal in the case at hand. Our DZ still has FXC's on some of their rentals. We have, I think 5 recorded saves, 1 premature, 0 incidents credited to the FXC's. Would I jump one, yes and do from time to time, when needing to make a turnaround load, that is atleast until my second rig comes in. I have also seen, in my very limited experience, an argus fire at 10,000ft agl for no reason, and I dont think it is considered outdated. Just my opinion

I know I "should" be able to find this in a search becasue I have asked, and was answered, before. However, search after search and one by one inspection of all my posts turns up nothing. It seems the old thread is no longer there Anyway, I do fairly well at spotting and have on multiple ocasions spotted an outter load from 14k due to GPS problems and have never landed anyone off. This has always been under somewhat moderate wind conditions and I am interested in the math behind spotting for more severe conditions. I know how to average wind direction and velocity and how to look for dog legs (however I would not mind reading this again if someone has a good link) but once that is done, what formula to you apply to get the horizontal distance from landing to opening to exit. I am almost positive the answer I got before used a constant of 25 for under canopy and 3 for freefall drift, but I can not find the formula that uses these constants.

People, please understand that what snivel1 is saying may be exactly what has happened in charlie's career, I can only post about what I know. I know this and you should also keep that in mind when reading this thread, or any other experience with thread. As promised, I am here to update on the status of my refund. I did recieve a refund in full yesterday. I still stand by what I have been saying: not answering emails, not shipping a product, lying about when it was shipped, and then only giving positive help and support once the customer posts on a public forum is not acceptable. However, I will also keep my word, so to Charlie: I have no hard feelings and hope your health improves quickly. tangledlines, man, you are out there. You set up an experience with thread that has no place for bad experience, you poke and pry and dig for good experience, almost to the point of begging. Then you try to keep any thing negative out of here and in private, you can call me, why would I want you to call me, if you have sometihng to say, this is your public thread, say it. Then not filling out your profile, well I have my ideas of who you are, but due to promises made earlier in this post I will leave that alone for now. In any event, your seemingly useless thread has served me well, I am now $120 less poor as a result of it, and I thank you for that.

In a message dated 1/31/2007 9:40:46 AM Central Standard Time, NITROCHUTE writes: dear joe, I apologize for the delay .Due to health issues at the end of December i sold the company and have been sortring everything out.i am sending you a refund for $120.Is postal money order ok,or do you prefer some other means of payment? Charlie My reply to this was: Charlie, I was not aware of your health issues, I hope everything is OK. A postal money order will be just fine, you can send it to: Joseph Courtney, PO Box 1212, Livingston, La 70754. Joe I still fail to see why Charlie had to read of my disgust on this site before he replied back to me with this message, if this not what happened then so be it, but the timing sure points that way. However, if when Charlie does as he says and sends me a refund, I will have no hard feelings left and will chalk this up as just another ‘no loss, no gain’ transaction. I will post an update as soon as I receive my refund. Charlie, I have no idea what kind of health issues you are having, but I assume it must be at least fairly serious if it has caused you to sale your company. I have been a business owner for over 13 years and could not imagine having to give it up. No matter what the final out come of this transaction, I do wish you the very best with your health.

It seems that Charlie is trying to make things right, but more on that in a minute. First off, you will not even give a name on your profile, but you want me to publicly document every transaction and word passed between Charlie and I. I think you need to man up (or woman up if that’s the case) and fill out your profile. As for the documentation I would have done just that, but now I have reason not to, more on that in a minute. Secondly, go back and reread my original post. Yes, it is short and to the point, but there is plenty there to let you, and everyone else, know that this has been on going for some time and is not the cause of some simple clerical issue. And Third, I do a good bit of Internet shopping and I try to refrain from publicly nagging about my mishaps. The two dot coms that were involved in this, one where I found the items and one where I made payment to the other party, have both been very helpful in this and all other matters that I have had with them. They do not need any negative nagging making their sites look 'unsafe for buyers', when that is not the case. "a thousand good deeds will be remembered by few and talked about by even less, but one misdeed will be remember by many, and talked about by all" No, I will not complete this poll as it makes no sense and has no use to other readers. Performance? Quality? Workmanship? Service? On-time Delivery? am I checking for good, for bad, or for the simple fact that I have experience???????? This is not very well laid out and could be very misinterpreted by someone searching for this info in the future that may only look at the results of your poll and not read this entire thread. Now I promised I would let you in on how Charlie was trying to make this right, but I am going to put it in the next post, this one is getting long and don't want anyone to miss the important stuff because they tired of reading my BS.

Yeah, what Fred said

On Time Delivery? How about NO DELIVERY AT ALL, then after a few emails and promises that they were sent and sorry they did not reach me and they were insurred so we will just send you some more...........still no hats and now THEY WILL NOT ANSWER MY EMAILS. Oh, and yes I have experience with them

Have one ride on mine and can not say enough good things about it. I am also impressed with their weight limits under the newer TSO-23D. When the new TSO allowed manufacturers to rate their reserves to whatever weight they choose, I think every one went down a notch, the Smart went up by around 10lbs. May not be a big deal, but I thought it was impressive, even more so since my exit weight is about 264lbs.

Ok, flame away as I probably deserve it for offering such an opinion without having the liberty of discussing the details, but please do not do this. The short story is that in a perfect example of "Airport Access Defense" our DZO was told by the USPA that his was a "tenant / landlord" case and nothing they could do, or even help with. My question is, what example of "Airport Access Defense" could not be considered "tenant / landlord"? What is the point of the fund?

I don't know about that, but as last out on the last load I have shut the otter door on the way out before the pilot made his two hour flight to deliver the AC for maintenance

I agree, kind of like why tomleone would think at 90 jumps that he could turn 180, track, slow down, and deploy with adequate horizontal separation while falling only 500', or why DSE would be sitting by an open aircraft door with a rig and a seat belt on.

To add to this, I find that the wings main trey / D bag is wide and not very thick. I find that if I pack to match this, don't try to get your coccon quiet so narrow, that the baged canopy will better fill the outer edges of your container, the rig will be EASIER to close, and you can shorten your closing loop considerably. Hope that helps.

Nice work but is it really a joke? A bullet cam on the horse's brow band would not be hard to set up, and the cable to the saddle bag would not have to be disconnected each time you dismounted. A video from the horses perspective may be neat, although possibly scary in some of the cross country riding I have done In this case a pommel bag may even work better: shorter cable and easy to get to.

Ha, if you fly anything like your brother you are going to need more than luck. Nah, just joking. Joking to you anyway. Oh well, while you are training we will be throwing a party to see Brad and beautiful ms Jennifer off, so no matter how the weekend goes for you, it will be a success. There, see, relieved all the pressure for you. What the hell, good luck anyway.

Yes, at higher altitudes the Neptune I would agree is more accurate than most/all analogs. However, that has zero to do with how reliable it is at pull time. As for as the battery incident, that happened about a month ago. That battery was put in the Neptune by a factory rep, at the same time that he updated all my software to the latest version, only a couple months before the incident. I am not bashing the Neptune, I still jump mine and will continue to jump it and I like it very much. That said, it is still my opinion that a digital is not as dependable as an analog. I am not even saying that the original poster should not be buying a digital, just that he should consider it in his risk assessment. I have seen more than one digital altimeter fail, and experienced one. I have also seen one analog altimeter fail. I think that we should all remember that these are secondary altimeters and we should not let them replace our primary ones, our I's

Tim, I have probably 200+ jumps (hard to say as I pay for packing sometime) in which I have packed exactly as you have described. This is on a spectre 230 loaded at 1.2 : 1. I have good openings and have had no negative wear and tear that I can tell at all. Hope that helps.

Our main landing area is not huge, but it is in the middle of 195 acres of peanuts or wheat (depending on the season) and that is in the middle of farm country so outs are aboundant. 1 super otter and 1 182. Almost no air traffic and all the locals are real friendly. OH, and did I mention that we are open all year round.

I use a Neptune and really like it. I know nothing about the Viso but I do know some that Jump the GFX and do not particularly like it, I dont know why. I also prefer the digital display, but keep in mind that they are not as reliable as an analog. I Once had my Neptune battery completely die without any low battery indication. I was under canopy and it was a non issue, but I believe that a digital altimeter increase the chance of one day looking over and having no altimeter at all. However I also believe that this is a chance that everyone should be prepared for.