SkymonkeyONE

What does "out pop" mean? Never heard that term before. *** Really? You mean you do not know what it means to pop up or drop down? "out popping" someone is when you are both cruising along and you both hit your max-lift position and one accellerates upwards faster than the other. The faster you are travelling forward, the more popping power you have. The ability to pop up is very important when you routinely train students and coach like we do. Students who typically do not fly very efficiently at first, but then figure it out and take off both vertically and horizontally. A larger suit with the ability to "out pop" the lesser suits we put our students in is very important to us. It's a quantifiable (by video) trait we look for in a suit. Both of the suits I am talking about have tremendous range in that regard. Chuck

Really? JP is an official/registered trademark/do not copy IBA instructor just speaking his mind.

Actually, it's not just the landing part; it's the entire canopy ride down. Nothing pisses me off more than when toggle-whipping morons spiral their canopies down through traffic in crowded skies only to then set up in deep brakes at 500 feet and sashay down right in the way of the guys under smaller canopies who would have easilly been first down and out of the way otherwise. It's not a race to the ground, people. PARTICULARLY when there is are a bunch of other people in the sky. Why not just open at a reasonable altitude, then let your canopy fly down at it's own pace, staying in your quadrant and making only gentle turns upwind to avoid other canopies until you are setup to enter the pattern? I will be keeping a very keen eye open this upcoming week during our big-way sequentials down here at Z-hills (and Flock and Dock running concurrently). I hope the axe is very sharp when it comes to dismissing people for stupid canopy tricks.

Jeff is going over there to organize; that's why he is going. I am going to be here jumping. Actually, two Finland people got here today to ramp up for Flock and Dock! We ought to have six-ways all day tomorrow. Jeff and I just got down from our first Mach1/Blade comparo. With me maxed out, Jeff could just rise up on me a bit on his back. With me on my back I had a ton of range, but I could not out-pop Jeff on his belly; his suit is simply much bigger. We recogn that the Blade has about the same surface area as a Tony Raptor. We will have to lay them down to see, but that's our closest guess. The Blade has much, much more wing than my V1. It's at least eight inches longer in the wing root. Neither Jeff nor I could really outdrive each other horizontally on this jump, but there were instances where both he and I could "out-pop" each other vertically on our bellys. To me it was speed dependant. We are going to swap suits tomorrow and see what he thinks of it. I have jumped a Mach1, but it was too long for me. We now have a Mach1 demo suit that fits me much better, so we will see how that one goes. As I think my shoulders are a bit wide and my arms are a bit long on my Blade, it will probably fit him better than me. The legwing is tremendously hard to shut down on the Blade. As it is airlocked on both sides, it just balloons tighter when you try to squash your knees together at pull time. By comparison to my other suits, the S6 legwing is much easier to shut down than my V1 legwing, which is much easier to shut down than my Blade legwing. Arms stay very inflated on the Blade at shutdown, but it's an easy reach to the hackey due to the shape of the wing. I figured out why the leg zippers are so short; it's because the wing root is so much longer. A simple fix would have been to move the zipper back one inch and it could then come all the way up to your butt. Right now it's pretty tough to get your feet into and out of the rig with your shoes on. Chuck

Correct! No, I don't have any reason to come to Sebastian. Do I?

I own my own tandem rig. I wanted one to travel to boogies with and one to help me facilitate my own, one-person tandem progression student program. I also own a brand-new AFF rig.

My personal colors have always been orange and blue, but my current two mains are yellow. Both are plenty bright. As a pretty-color-blind guy, I can tell you with total confidence that some people jump canopies that are nearly impossible to detect from above. I keep my head on a swivel, but still sneak up on people sometimes since I generally pull higher than lots of other people (AFF, tandems, swoop hop and pops, wingsuit).

You look like you are taking a break to take a poop! Lovely shot. Chuck

I actually have a few, but my most-used "secondary canopy" is a Sabre2 97. Much less of a handfull in traffic than my Velo 84. Chuck

143 seconds and a 51 average on the second jump on the suit. That was trying to fly very flat. Jeff just got here so we are going to go up again in a bit and try other stuff. The leading edge material is like heavy dacron sail fabric. Sort of criss-crossed reinforced packing tape. Shiny and crinkly.

Remember, you said you were coming back across the pond for Flock and Dock, too! Come on back! Chuck

Super, super back inflation is an understatement. Lots of pop and available slow/fast speed range when backflying and that's what I yearned for most after so many jumps in my S6 (which of course does not inflate on it's back). I had a lot of range on my back in the older suit, but not nearly as much as Jeff and a couple of other guys (like Omar and Matt). Legwing is much, much wider than my S6 and wider than my V1 as well. Same width as a V2 and Mach1. Wing root is much lower too. My only gripe so far is that the leg zippers are much too short. They stop just above the knees and make it impossible to "cheat" your knee to the outside when you are putting on your booties. I have to stand straight up and bend over to get them on in this suit. My wing cutaway handles do not appear to have stiffener material in the tabs either like on my S6. I will fix that myself or just see if my S6 handles are long enough to swap over. Overall, I liked the way it flew. I had better range than CakeBoy did in his Phantom, but I will reserve real performance comparisons until Jeff, Scotty, and the rest of us all get together in all our big suits. One thing is for sure: it looks fucking great! Chuck

My new Blade was waiting on me. I am on a 15 minute call to go flock with CakeBoy.

It was a good Thursday, considering how bad it looked it might get weather-wise! I got six in: four birdies and two bigger-ways with Carl Doherty's group. Yes, I know I spelled his last name wrong, so fuck off. We christened our "official boogie shirts" today. They are awesome and I am sure someone will post pics. You can get as many as you want FOR FREE! We have a lot of damn wingsuits here for people to jump. We had seven loads out of ten with wingsuits on them today. Lot's of "me TV" video provided by myself, Hushpuppy, and Jeff Nebelkopf. chuck

There were seven loads today here at Dublin with wingsuits on them. The second load of the day had a seven-way flock. Ward Hessig, the Mirage marketing boss, did his first two wingsuit jumps today. He killed it. Yes, it will be in the boogie video. We have nearly thirty demo suits here at the boogie already, so there is no excuse for anyone with over 200 jumps not to come and bust some birdies with us. Z-flock is in full effect. Chuck

I totally agree with Max, but maybe that's because we are routinely put in situations where you simply cannot let stupid mistakes slide or people end up dead. I have been accused a bunch of time of being a total asshole and I really don't care. If something truly demands attention, I will gladly step up and be the bad guy. Most of the time you end up getting thanked by the person for setting them straight. Chuck

Hey, Chris, are you going to be there too? Nice. Everybody: see you there this afternoon sometime.

She will probably be paddling motherfuckers around the fire on Saturday night.

Possibly the dumbest reason I ever read for buying a canopy. The JVX is a wonderful canopy. There are a few of them here at Z-hills and guys are ripping it up under them. In my opinion, though, there is simply no excuse for what I consider to be "manipulation of numbers" in order to quantify a "smaller" canopy and a trend towards "higher wingloading." Listen, you are not loading that "smaller" JVX higher than the guy under the larger velo. That inaccuracy would actually fuck you if you jumped at some dropzones with wingload restrictions. Ultimately, I definitely don't think it makes anyone cooler just because they run around spouting stuff like "I jump my JVX at 3.0 wingload." Personally, I don't care what your or anyone else's wingload is; I just wish all canopies were measured the same. Someone also mentioned aspect ratio. I will repeat myself by telling you that a JVX 70 has the exact same dimensions as a Velocity 79. That's total size, both span and chord. Chuck

Yes, there is free camping on the DZ. Yes, we have a big shower/bathroom facility for such people. Yes, there is a lively crowd at the bonfire every night. Yes, the bar is back open and newly-redecorated. Yes, you can jump your ass off here seven days a week. Yes, you can demo equipment from the Sunshine Factory gear shop right on the DZ. Yes, you can actually walk to Tony Suits factory and Sunpath (Javelin) in under five minutes. Come on down! Chuck

Jumped ship? You are funny, Glen. Every single one of my rigs (including my tandem and AFF rigs) has BirdMan logos embroidered all over them. That does not mean I can't and don't own other suits. You pot-stirrers are in full gear these past few days! Don't be so narrow-minded, guys.

Mark, you are at least the third person, including myself, who has done the "lay on top" drill. JVX's are definitely placarded MUCH smaller than PD's (and everything else measured like PD's). Again, a Velo 79 is exactly the same size as a JVX 70 by our comparison here at Z-hills. Chuck

Dude, if you had bothered to make more than five skydives since I got here last July you would know that I am down with all kinds of wingsuit flying and fly on my back at least as much as I do on my belly. Please tell me you were just fucking around by even questioning what Jeff and I do here. Chuck

He's not going to be staying in your trailer is he?

There have been a total of two decent renditions tonight on American Idol. Still, House sucks total ass and I would much rather watch a re-run of American Idol than suffer through that drama.