Guinness_fr

6.7 m/s tailwind (actual run) = 730 ft 0 m/s wind (hypothetical) = 543 ft 6.7 m/s headwind (hypothetical) = 356 ft 108,5m in 6,7 m/s headwind still impresses me! :-)

Man I love those discussions, especially when non-swooping skydivers look down on us as some front-risers pulling monkeys If only they knew how much care is given to scrape every further inch out of our swoops Keep it coming guys !

I'm with Dave on this one, my best terminal openings (though I don't do terminal jumps lately ) have always been when fully stopping my tracking motion and trying to slow down my vertical speed the most I could. I'd never suggest to open a velocity with any kind of motion other than straight down (you might try with a sideway motion once if you want to experience a cutaway, I have, it works ).

I agree with the fact that you need slow down more after a freefly jump. You might also want to make sure that the front side of your slider "stands out" of the nose of the canopy (at least a little) when packing. And watch out for that stuff (rsl?) flying freely around your head

I see some really good flying in this video, congrats! PS: Downwind speed runs are a blast, eh?

Well, first, it simply is silly to do as your finance tells you to. For instance you would delay chopping a bad canopy with that reasoning I agree with others who said to jump the hell out of your canopy: after almost 1000 jumps on my velo90 I have recently found (thanks to Pablo!) that my canopy at that loading could go faster than what I thought was its max speed (without even changing the number of °, and I had always started with slow double front risers - in other words I already thought I was doing the turn right). One way to know that you're going faster is the sound of the wind: when you're getting closer to max speed, it should sound like a balloon jump where the sound of the wind keeps increasing until almost freefall speed. You can train up high but you should be exhausted after 3 or 4 attempts (I know I am). Good luck and stay safe! Edited to add: PS: Someone asked me in PM (but doesn't accept PMs back) what I changed to gain more speed but I'll just say that it's about harness input once the risers are being pulled off your hands (which I was already doing - albeit poorly) without getting any more specific as I'm not really comfortable about posting details on how to kill yourself on the Internet PPS: Doing that kind of shit requires in my book that you are on a swoopers-only pass (and I have been guilty of swooping in traffic and got lucky a couple of times - both times with someone else doing an HP maneuver at the same time); I know that's another discussion but I don't post much so there you have my opinion even if you don't want it

Terrible loss !!! Eli, you left so many fond memories of you everywhere in the world with your eternal smile and extraordinary enthusiasm in the plane before any kind of jump... Warm toughts from France to your family!

Great answer! Next time just try to make some paragraphs for better readibility, because freeflyers are never gonna read such a huge block of text. PS: It's so easy to make fun of freeflyers in the Gear&Rigging forum, they never read it! PPS: Before being flamed by some humorless freeflyer: I freefly in competition (well ok, I suck, so that probably does'nt count; plus my rig is mostly black so I guess I suck even more)...

Also, thickness will be hard to measure on some vectran/HMA lines whose shape is not cylindrical (although there are also some cylindrical HMA out there).

On some harness sizes, the D-Ring handle can be squeezed between the chest and hip rings and be pushed out of its velcro. You then need to re-secure it. That's what put me into the good habit of checking my D-ring handle at all times.

I also have one of MEL's, but with the much bigger rings, and I'm also very happy with over 500 jumps on it and it still looks brand new!

I think this explanation makes perfect sense.

Well it's probably too late if you already placed your order, but, given your competition experience I think you might be happier with a JVX 77, essentially because this is roughly the same size as a velo84. If you had chosen a velocity, then 84 would probably be the size that you're looking for given what you've posted, but for a JVX I'd go a size smaller. Take all this with a grain of salt as none of us has seen the other fly...

Exactly: Just zippy piloting I don't mind Stilettos but in order to learn swooping my first choice would be Sabre2 and a shitload of jumps on a given size. You'd be amazed what can be done with this canopy when properly handled.

I would have to disagree with the above: remember that the question is about speedflying hence over snow, and even if you're good your canopy will be in contact with the snow at some point. One thing that you really want to make sure at the end of the day is to hang your canopy to dry in a heated room (but not near the heating surface) because humidity will make your canopy wear faster. That and the obvious don't let your ski anywhere near your lines (which you sometimes cannot help in case of a failed take-off, been there done that ). Groundlaunching and speedflying will wear your canopy faster, unless you are extremely cautious (as you should be).

I have a BoneHead Havok helmet and people often mention Darth Vador when I wear it. Dunno if that helps. Use the force Luke

Me too, I finally understood why that was wrong when I first discovered this forum and started reading all the existing threads, 5 or 6 years ago... You're right that making yourself big can be useful when trying to fly with another canopy: it does alter the way you fly but usually by decreasing the performance of your wing.

This has probably been beaten to death a thousand times in this forum, but the thing is that you are flying within a mass of air, the fact that this wind is moving relative to the ground changes your trajectory accordingly (i.e. add the vector of your flight within the air mass to that of the moving mass of air to have your speed relative to the ground). Now making yourself big increases your drag but does not make your canopy fly any better, does it? In other words: in still air, when flying in brakes, do you stay longer in the air by making yourself big or is your wing less efficient due to the added drag? If you do not stay longer in the air by making yourself big (which I presume is the case), then it doesn't matter whether you are upwind or downwind: when you are flying the wind is never pushing your back, never, unless you're in a stall. Does that make sense?

Damn crazy paragliders!!

Unfortunately, this is wrong: When you are flying do you feel the wind in your back or coming from in front of you? The answer to this question shows that by getting 'big' you are increasing drag, which hinders the performance of your wing: in all cases you should always try to reduce drag when trying to glide further... Edited to add: Even in deep brakes you will never eliminate your forward speed in the relative wind, unless you're stalling of course, but that is not the point of this thread...

Yup what they've said: I guess you are using microline as a reference (shiny white even after many jumps) and comparing it to vectran. Please do a search on this forum for differences between line types, and especially what to look for as signs of wear for each type (for instance microline will usually be replaced way before it is worn because of the canopy becoming way out of trim, whereas for vectran you must actively look for signs of wear, like checking if the inner fabric is dirty).

I second that: try a SabreII 107 and you'll be amazed at how much distance you can cover in a swoop. Once you've passed the 1000 jumps mark, come back again for the Katana or the Velocity, this is especially true because you will have to unlearn some of the habits you acquired with the stilleto. The longer you stick to a canopy, the more you will learn how to fully exploit it (anything under 400 jumps with a good canopy is not enough to be bored with it).

Until you get very proficient at detecting what angles you can outfly in different wind conditions, I'd stick to flying over terrain where you can land anytime. It would really suck to be forced to land that velo in a field of x-feet sized bouders with some wind coming from above or behind. Go small first and increase the challenge only very gradually, you'll stay uninjured or alive longer

I do not think either that it causes hard openings as long as the locking stows are good enough. On the other hand, I think this is not recommended as it may up the chances (or rather misfortune) of having a line looping around a closing flap. I know there has been multiple occurrences of that on all types of containers (although some designs, like smaller Omegas, were more prone to this than others).

To put it in another way: The fact that you need to adjust your turn height is because you haven't been able to correctly adapt your setup point to the wind conditions and you are trying to compensate this during your turn because you are being blown off course, resulting into a slower or faster turn This is a mistake everyone has done at some point in their swooping career. Being able to correctly calculate how to adapt your setup point in strong (esp. cross-)winds is a quite difficult skill when you are performing long carving turns. It does look simple on paper though