Guinness_fr

It's a GLX.

Well, you'd have to ask Mel (check profile), here is its loft's website

On this french website, you can see some pictures of my RDS which I got from Mel in March 2007: http://wuza.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16975 I'm very happy with it, I like the lines in the middle because I only need one hand to grab the slider (the other hand is used to unzip my jumpsuit) and they facilitate the quartering of the slider.

PdF are still manufacturing the Electra, they even have a new (less than 2 year old) 110 sq ft which they call the electra XS which is a bit redesigned for more "swoopability"

Well I've been on a low pass (~4000ft) with some accuracy jumpers (I wanted to swoop) and this definitely is a problem: at 4000ft, some accuracy jumpers will take a 12 second delay and be opened much lower than you (with my velocity I don't like opening below 3500ft) and start spiraling down to 1000ft; you may land before them but they still may represent a problem in your pattern (I like to start my final turn at 1000ft) if you do not have two totally separated (e.g. by the runway) areas to land in.

There's no way I would ride down with a 270 over my head, that would be way too boring However you must know that groundlaunching is definitely not as easy as you make it sound!!! There's lots of stuff to know and to verify before you actually start launching, and doing your first launch from the top of a rocky moutain is a big no-no in my opinion. Please find someone in your area with a good experience in groundlaunching and take advice from him/her or you might get seriously hurt.

I'm not sure I understand the question but I as not talking about an emergency. I think it is a good idea to establish "rules" or recommendations in order to separate HP landing from non HP landing. Of course there will always be the case of someone not respecting the recommendation, either because of an emergency or simply by absent-mindedness, this is why swoopers will always have to look for unexpected traffic and abort when necessary, but if the recommendations are repeated often enough, decreasing the number of HP and non HP landings in the same area will have to decrease (not remove totally) the risks of collision between HP and non HP pilots. I personnaly think it is a good thing for swoopers to have a dedicated zone with a no fly cone as it will allow us to swoop more often.

I think option 1 is not good enough (so that makes option 3 the best, so far). One thing that annoys me in option 1 is this: If a HPL area is defined, a no-fly cone must be defined 1500 feet over this area. In other words, it is not good enough to say that jumpers not performing HP landings shall not land on the HPL area, they must also stay clear of the area when below 1000ft Since I believe not all DZs can have the luxury of defining such separate areas (and their associated no fly zones), I think that option 3 is best, leaving to each DZ the responsibility to find what suits them best.

I can do both and usually choose the one which leaves me more outs at the end of my turn in case I screwed up...

After having messed up myself quite badly on a failed take-off (broken kneecap which eventually required surgery), I now use protection every time I do GL (or speedriding). My gear is composed of a full-face helmet with no visor (BoneHead's Havok, which can be set to full faced at the last second before take off - I also use it for skydiving with regular sunglasses) and of a set of rollerblades' protections for my elbows and knees. Have fun, be safe, G.

I also hook them up using method #1. If you pay real attention on your slider quartering and position until you put the canopy in the bag the openings should not be fast. At least in my case they're not faster than with the stock slider. My gut feeling is that #2 might leave more room for malfunctions but I can't really explain why so it's probably best if Mel chimes in and enlightens us..

http://www.speedflying.ru/video/SpeedFlying_full.avi

Although I have no data to back it off, I will tend to disagree with this statement. To me, (if we disregard bad designs) a canopy with a steeper trim has more control range with the rears, i.e. it will stall later than a canopy with a flatter trim with the same amount of input. You should be able to get roughly the same glide with both canopies, the only difference will be that you'll need more input on the steeper trimmed canopy. I have no problem getting back from long spots with my velocity, my only issue is that I want to be 900ft high before I begin my swoop so I need to be more efficient in getting back than if I didn't want to swoop (or I can land out, which I often don't mind doing).

Swooping in the desert does not guarantee that you will have a traffic-free area. The idea behind a swooping-only area is that it shall be strongly discouraged to fly over that zone under 1000ft. When swooping in the desert, you have to be at least as much if not more focused about where everyone is... Also the desert is not always quite as friendly as the grass when you want to drag your feet on the ground...

I kind of assumed that by starting a 450 below 1500 ft I might be safe. Thanks to Stu I am now reconsidering this.

Thanks for sharing this because Airtec talks about multiple 360s and I thought I was safe by doing "only" 450s (which I still probably am when I am not wearing any weight as my wingloading is closer to 2.0:1). Since the regular Cypres 1&2 activate near the 78 mph speed, I'm more and more thinking about migrating to the speed cypres; hopefully they can perform the upgrade (on a cypres2) during the first revision, I'll just keep switching it off when wearing weight for swooping until then..

I've been flying (from France) to Eloy every year for the past 3 years in order to practice with my FF team (~100 jumps each for each trip). If SDAZ does not come up with a plan that allows to perfom HP maneuvers on regular loads then I will start looking for one who does propose an alternate landing area for HP landings. I like to perform HP maneuvers at least as much as I like to FreeFly, in fact I like HP landings even more but because I'm in a FF team I also need to work on my FF skills (when I'm not training I almost only do Hop&Pops from various altitudes or CRW). I left Eloy just before they implemented their new pollicy; I agree that some changes are desperately needed: I can't count the number of times that I've landed in the desert or switched to a more conservative approach because of traffic. I've been lucky this year when doing HP landings in the desert because more than half of the time someone was there to pick me up as soon as I'd picked up my stuff (and I much prefer a 5-10min walk than not doing a HP landing), but landing all the time in the desert will cause your gear to wear prematurely so it shouldn't be a long term solution. I really hope that the local swoopers from SDAZ can come up with a plan with the management there so that HP landings are not banned but rather moved to another area: They made an area next to the tunnel for the military (which weren't using it very often btw), why not make another area on the other side of tunnel or next to the farms in the north? I applaud SDAZ mgmt for finally coming up with a plan to stop the chaos in their main landing area (although for the plan to be effective they should implement a strict 90° rule, not a 180°!), but unless they come up with an alternate plan for swoopers I won't plan on visiting them again anytime soon. PS: they have a small swoop pond too but it is way too close to the main landing area to be safe to swoop on regular loads (although I've been guilty of that many times ) -- edited to add that their policy should be 90° not 180°.

Grabbing one riser will allow one half of the canopy to stay inflated, this can still lead to injuries Untangling your canopy does no harm and is good practice

Both the canopy and the lines are coated with products that may behave badly under certain temp/humidity conditions. If you think that you can store your canopy in a humid cold environment simply because someone demonstrated that it won't physically freeze your canopy, please think again. I think the physic argument is valid to answer the OP's question; but I certainly don't want people to start thinking that it's ok to store your rig in a cold, humid environment.

In terms of physics you're definitely right, but what about chemistry? The products used on our canopies and lines do react to humidity and temperature. That is something that cannot be left out of the equation and which probably explains the previous example of a stuck pilot chute.

You're right! At least that's my take on it: as I waiting for this product to be released I noticed that they dropped the audible feature before releasing the product, I then bought an optima instead because the audible was mostly what I was looking for (it's great to have your eyes off your visual alti most of the times).

nice way to put it... mwahahaha....

In my experience, this was a sinus pain due to the increasing pressure during freefall. Avoid jumping the day after some heavy drinking or if you have a cold.

Yup, voted true with that definition.

Well you don't like to walk down but do you like to run downhill? Because depending on the wind conditions you might have to run quite a lot before take off... You never know what the wind conditions will be up there when you get there, if the wind is not coming from the right direction or if it's too strong you won't launch so you'll have to carry everything down. Plus what he said about the landing; that's the part where you can get seriously hurt (although in my case I got hurt while fucking up a take-off)... I'm not saying you can't do it (but then start with the lower WL; 1.3 is good enough), but do not think that there is no risk...