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I predict that maggot will be laying off the posting for a good week, starting this Friday… Zoter: this may be hard to accept, but many basejumpers with lots of valuable experience are not very articulate online and do not especially care about how they are regarded in the forums. If you only learn from people with immaculate online presentation and a likeable attitude, you will be excluding most of the base knowledge and experience out there.

actually, I have done that through PMs, but Mr. Booth stopped responding when he didn't like my questions anymore I am not debating whether the skyhook works or whether it is a clever and useful system, it certainly works and it is a clever and useful system. I am not bashing Hydroguy for posting his experience, I am merely taking exception to his statement of 50ft from cutaway to flying reserve. What kind of a hard deck is 1600ft anyway for someone with 300 and something jumps? I guess it's OK because he's a basejumper and that somehow makes it safer for him.

well smart guy, let's see if we can help you make a rough estimate: first, find out what your descent rate is in half brakes, under the main canopy (I'm guessing anywhere from 10 - 20 ft/sec) second, find out what your descent rate is under your reserve with the brakes stowed (I'm guessing anywhere from 10 - 20 ft/sec again) now, you start at the descent rate under your main, directly after cutaway you will accelerate until your reserve has hit linestretch and bottom skin expansion starts, now you will decellerate to your descent rate under your reserve as the reserve inflates and pressurises so if your reserve descends at around the same rate as your main, you should be able to see that you will cover a vertical distance greater than that descent rate multiplied with the time from cutaway to flying reserve, and that does not factor in accelerating after cutaway and also disregards the gradual decelleration from reserve deployment so, with a conservatively low estimate of 10 ft/sec descent rate under your canopies with the brakes stowed, you will have covered 20-30 ft vertical in the 2-3 seconds you think it took to cutaway and have the SKyhook deploy your reserve that would be the case if you never speeded up due to cutting away and the reserve started flying the moment you cut away now obviously it will take more altitude than that, so you are left with 20 - 30 ft to get to linestretch (know how long your lines are?), get the reserve out the freebag and have the reserve deploy completely and start flying, if your 50 ft guesstimate is to be correct would you care to retract your 50 ft guess now? if you give me enough data on this (and we can easily obtain valid data) I can calculate the minimum vertical distance your deployment could have taken for you, as can anyone with a basic understanding of physics and math evidently you have neither so why don't you just say that it felt like 50 ft instead? instead you came up with the entirely brilliant: 'so whatever'

1. a BASE canopy takes more than 50ft to start flying from a PCA 2. you are descending under the main before cutaway, so you start with vertical speed I seriously doubt it took 50ft from chop to flying reserve and I wish people would stop claiming these ridiculous numbers for the Skyhook. It's a great device, but claims like these are undermining it's credibility.

OK, here's my pics the one where I bend the cover flap shows the shape of the stiffener inside, as I only bend back the unstiffened part there's a tab sewn around the bridle slack between the pins and this gets tucked into a little pocket between the pins my loops are long in these pics

Hey Pat. I’m still at work, but when I get home I will take and post pics of my Odyssey FX, as they do have stiffeners in the cover flap and the way they deal with the bridle is really very neat. That said, mine were made last year and I have not done more than a 6.5 on them, but I know many using them terminal and terminal with aerials with no issues. They have a specially shaped stiffener in the cover flap that allows for easy bridle extraction still, even at low airspeed and in a head high position. From my experience the FX is a really nice rig, but what do I know, I only have 211 jumps on my two. Cya Sam

Dude! You forgot about Pentecost, Parmesan and Pantyline!

Hey flckers! It was great meeting and flying with you all. Specifically I would like to thank Scott for organizing this, Robi and James for having my new suits done in time and letting me fly some of their personal suits, Ted for letting me use his V1 and Jason for making the coolest wingsuit smoke-bracket ever. I should probably also apologize to the people behind me on the V1 load for switching slots while wearing smoke: Sorry about that one, gave an entirely new meaning to the term ‘got smoked’… Here’s some frame grabs from my video: Z-FLock 2.0 Pics Here’s my view on the bigways: view from my slot I had a great time and look forward to flying with you all again. Until then, Flock on! Sam

OK Nitro, Cut to the important part: Show us the pin cover open, with pins, loops and bridle present. Also a few pics with the container open would be nice. Thanks dude.

Jason It was a pleasure. I even feel kind-of sorry for those poor suckers who landed downwind of us – bet they didn’t think the smoke would be lasting that long! Good thing the bracket had the canister cutaway, I landed, pulled it and kicked the canister downwind so I could pick my canopy up without choking on the thick cloud of white smoke still spewing from the canister…

This raises the interesting question of where this fits in: When doing a TARD (or TARD-over) you can do the ‘Mary Poppins’ and hang on to your magic umbrella for a delay. I have seen a 2.5+ sec delay from exit to canopy release and I am sure you could easily hold on longer if you wanted. At least one jumper I know has stated that they do not consider this freefall, but I have to tell you, the visuals are pretty much identical….

dude if you were jumping a vented canopy you might have cleared those trees....

heresy! How dare you even suggest selling a gadget while there is no better alternative available? I will certainly get a GPS soon, but I will hang on to both my protracks, as their primary function is to serve as audible altimeters. Selling one would mean I would lose redundancy on the audibles. My Neptune’s primary function is visual altimeter. I’m planning on picking up a serial COM – USB adapter as well as an IRDA – USB adapter.

Ok, so who is going to be the resident techno-geek-gadget-freak at Z-Flock? I will find myself with 4 data capturing devices that will run out of data storage space during the course of the 3 days of Z-Flock. (I just couldn’t justify lugging my ancient laptop along with all the rigs and things I have packed) I know it’s a silly obsession with data, but I know it is shared by some others too. So if you have an interest in data from the Z Flock, I will gladly share all the data I capture with you in exchange for the opportunity to download it. These are my toys: 2 Protracks. I have the download cradle and software. Hardware required: serial COM port. 1 Neptune. . Hardware required: IRDA port. Software Required: Paralog 1 Suunto X6. I have the download cable and software. Hardware required: serial COM port So now that I have outed myself as a techno-geek-gadget-freak, feel free to take your best stab. My flight is scheduled to depart in 6 hrs and 10 minutes – I’m feeling the excitement!

Jimmy, you rock! Guys like you are the reason I like making the trip to Frontier to jump every now and then. Everyone out there is just so friendly and helpful. I will have to come visit again soon. PM sent. Cheers Sam

M1.4 is the metric thread size x 1.4 means it is 1.4mm long it is a countersunk phillips head screw and if I'm paying $5 for a fastener it had better be very special, like Titanium-special and these are not... Luke - you're a dirty bastard for posting that while I wrote this!

Now that I have your attention. I am missing a few of those annoying little screws, that loosen frequently, from my SONY DCR-PC105. I called the nearest SONY service centre and they want $5 each. This is either a M1.4 x 1.4 or a M1.7 according to the guy at the service centre. Does anyone know of a source with REASONABLE pricing for these screws? I recall seeing someone post in here who said the worked for SONY, but couldn’t find them with the search function. I’d like to hear from them. Thank you! Sam

dude I was totally going to do that anyway! Just ask anyone who has seen the ‘Ho-Bag’. I will happily send experienced jumpers the footage, along with an essay on why it’s bad idea. I won’t be the first person to have done static line aerials, though…

surgeon's knot is what is traditionally tought the only reason I can think of why, is the security of the knot and the low reduction in strength due to the knot water knot looks good too I've done an overhand knot in some. I even girth hitched the loops of breakcord directly to hole in a metal plate on the object and that worked too. If anyone is exceedingly curious about some static line testing, I will be in the Twin from 21-29 April and one of the things I am going to do is play around with some static line techniques. Let me know if there is any test jumps I could do that would be of interest you. FWIW I have been using two different sized loops of breakcord on all my static line jumps from Oct 05 and have not noticed any ill effects. The extra loop does give me that warm and fuzzy feeling when exiting, though.

May I ask why you are interested in this information? I’m pretty sure that for a standard BASE static line breakcord loop set-up with a surgeon’s knot, you will see the loop length increase in size more due to the knot tightening up than due to the elongation of the cotton tape. And by standard I guess I mean breakcord loop 1 to 3 inches in length between tie-off and link.

Dude The solution is simple: Bring felonie along to Twin later this month and she can embarrass Dear Abby with her mad skillz. I hear he only does 2 ways these days. And only with a rubber ducky. You never get to see the rubber ducky, but you can tell he’s along for the ride by the way Dear Abby walks waddles…

Shouldn’t we be asking you that question? As the physics professor surely you have colleagues and/or acquaintances with access to a materials testing lab and it would be a 15 minute job to run 20 or so samples through a tensile strength tester. I have no data to offer, but I do support the qualitative answer of: ‘not very much at all’ based on some uninstrumented testing I have done. I hope somebody actually tests this and posts the answer, I’m curious now.

Thank you for a very useful reply! Now I would like to know which data sets on your graph correspond to which instruments?

I have a question about the Foretrex 101 and 201 for wingsuit use. According to the Garmin website, neither of these units have a barometric altimeter. So my questions for people who are using the Foretrex 101 and 201: -What kind of accuracy have you been getting from the GPS based altitude? -Does this compare favourably with barometric altimeter data from another source (like your Neptune or Protrack or such)? -Are there any features offered by other GPS units that might make you change to them from the Foretrex? Then for people who are using GPS units with a barometric altimeter (like the Etrex Vista): -Does your unit capture both barometric and GPS altitude data? -If so, how do they compare? The more I research GPS units, the more I think I’m going to get an Etrex Vista… Flock on!

Holy crap dude. That area is really steep and rocky! I once missed the start of the trail and ended up climbing up that because I was too stubborn to walk back down. I would hate to try and land on there. Cya Sam