brettski74

Whatever rocks your cradle. It's your milestone.

This is not true. More or less drag does not have a direct relationship on stall speed. Case in point, extending flaps on the wing increases drag, but allows the aircraft to fly more slowly during takeoff and landing by lowering the stall speed of the wing. Conversely, spoilers also increase drag, but they interrupt the airflow over the top of the wing, killing the lift and increase the stall speed of the wing considerably. The intended meaning of the author is as Spence noted above. Sticking objects, such as humans, on the outside of the plane increases drag. In the absence of any other factors, this will cause the plane to slow down, which in turn reduces the airflow over the control surfaces, which reduces their effectiveness.

While I can see you you might have interpreted it that way, I think he's trying to say that his first canopy was a PD 190, his 2nd was a Triathlon 175, his third was a Triathlon 160 and now he's on his 4th canopy, the Safire2.

Seriously? I mean, yes, you will often hear people joke around about the "f-word", but that's mostly joking around. There are several reasonable beer lists to be found on the intertubes. As a general guide, beer-worthy events are usually: - significant firsts (eg. first cutaway, first 100-way formation, first 4-stack) - milestones (eg. every 100th/1000th jump) - licences and ratings (eg. A, B, C, D, Coach, AFFI, Tandem) - screw ups (eg. busting the beer line on landing) Also, think of it as a chance to meet new people, learn from others and pass on what you have learned as well. That's the whole point of the beer tradition, although getting ripped with your new mates doesn't suck, either. I think that AFF fits in there. First jump on a Wednesday wearing mismatched socks? If you really want to buy beer for everyone for that reason, don't let me stop you, but don't let anyone try to convince you that's a beer-worthy first. And remember, while it's always good form to buy beer that people are likely to like, it's your beer. Buy whatever the hell you like and if people don't like it, they don't have to drink it.

So obviously you're feeling neglected that you didn't get pied. I'm sure someone from Chester will notice your post on here and remedy the situation in good time. There is no statute of limitations on pie. My 100th jump pieing came almost 2 weeks and 30 jumps later. The most recent pieing at my home DZ was almost 2 months after the jump - mostly because he buggered off and didn't come back to the DZ for that long.

In addition to what everyone else has already said, that statement right there is over-simplifying the situation. I've only had one malfunction and it wasn't particularly violent, but it took me a couple of tries to find my cutaway handle because it wasn't where I expected it to be. If your friend is under a violently malfunctioning reserve, finding that knife may be harder than you think. Grabbing the lines and cutting them may be more difficult, too. Even if you have a malfunction that's not terribly violent, just something you can't land, don't expect that canopy to keep cooperating as you start chopping lines. The more lines you cut, the less stable it will become. I'd hazard a guess that by the time you get halfway through cutting away those reserve suspension lines you're gonna start having a real interesting ride.

??? Perhaps you mean (imperial) miles, nautical miles or kilometres? I thought it was 80 to 90 knots, which is nautical miles per hour - at least for the cessna. The King Air is a faster plane and exit speed is usually higher as I understand. It certainly seemed to be a faster exit when I did exit one. A nautical mile is roughly 1.125 miles, and roughly 1.8km.

It's more fun finding someone else's bed to sleep in, especially if she's cute. [Wink]

You're driving down the highway in thick fog at 120mph. You slam on the brakes and do an emergency stop. As long as there's nobody behind you, that should be perfectly safe. There's a reason that we clear the airspace above and below outselves at deployment time. I can't comment on anyone else, but at at least one dropzone I've jumped at has a rule that you are required to follow which states that you will not open inside a cloud unless you are at the hard deck. If you go there, you'll be required to read and sign the cloud jumping rules, too, and they were developed by people with a lot more experience jumping through clouds, and jumping in general than either you or me, so I'll defer to their judgement. For a start, they shouldn't be deploying inside the cloud for exactly the same reason that you shouldn't. Secondly, if they're exiting right before you, you likely have the same or similar deployment altitudes in your plans. They may have a more or less snivelly canopy than you do. You might have a malfunction and have to cut away. The same points may apply to the group behind you as well. If you're so unsure about your horizontal separation and whether the airspace is clear, are you sure you want to be opening somewhere where you can't visually clear the airspace? Thirdly, it is horizontal separation that we rely on to avoid people colliding at or near deployment time. If you have difficulty with judging your exit separation and planning your jumps to maintain adequate horizontal separation, I suggest you speak with some of the folks at your dropzone as to what you might be doing wrong. See, you do understand after all. You don't know that the group behind you aren't trying to kill you, which is why both you and the groups before and after you are going to wait until the hard deck or some clear air before they deploy.

That does make a big difference. The way you originally described it gave me the impression of a bunch of canopies all in full flight heading towards what they thought was the sun. Full brakes does make the suggestion sound a lot more sane - at least to me. You are right, as long as what the jumpers believe is the sun actually is the sun. If it's just a bright spot caused by a relatively thin part of an otherwise thick cloud, well... I will concede however, that if you find yourself in such a thick cloud, another question worth asking is what you're doing there in the first place. I see your point about the slow right-hand spirals causing potential collisions. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what is an appropriate type of spiral, and I get the impression that some people's ideas would have them flying a very large circle over the ground, potentially large enough that two adjacent such circles could intersect. At the very least, you've given me something to think about. I can see pros and cons with both approaches, but for the moment, I think the best approach is to follow local rules. If the local rule says full brakes and try to head towards the sun, I'll give it a go. I don't think it's as fool proof as you've suggested, but if that's what everyone else is doing, I think I'll be better off doing the same than doing slow spirals. On the other hand, if the local rules say slow right-hand spiral, again, I think I'll be better off doing the same as everyone else in the air and slow-spiralling down.

I've done around 200 jumps on my canopy, a Sabre2 170 which was bought new and is loaded at about 1.2. I've had a couple of "brisk" openings on my old canopy early on, but my new canopy has always been relatively soft opening, although sometimes a little wild due to end cell closures inducing turns and such. The very last jump I did on it was by far the hardest opening I've ever experienced, left my neck a little sore from the whiplash and garnering a lot of comments on the ground from the sound, including several people who asked if I was testing a BASE canopy. Upon getting back to the hangar and inspecting my gear, I noticed two rips in the slider. I neglected to take a photo before I got it repaired, but one rip was about 5 inches long, parallel to one kill line and about half an inch outside the seam and starting about half an inch inside the tape around the edge of the slider. There was a couple of pulled threads by the rip and it did not appear burned in any way. The other rip was a dog-ear, about half an inch in each direction. The point of the dog-ear was half an inch outside the seam for the other kill-line and about half an inch from the reinforcing tape around the edge of the slider. I also hung up the canopy and inspected it throughout and there was no damage or any other marks on the canopy of the lines. I'm trying to figure out what happened to cause such an abrupt opening. My first thought was maybe I forgot to un-collapse the slider, however, based on photos and articles I've seen, that would most likely damage the slider by friction from the kill line burning through the slider fabric, however, as noted, the damage appeared to be a rip, not a burn and was outside the seams which surround the kill lines, so it's not possible for the kill line to have touched the fabric. There's also the fact that I religiously un-collapse the slider on the landing prior to gathering up my lines because I find the kill lines get in the way and annoy me if I don't. Basically, I think it's an extremely unlikely explanation. Another thought was about the jump immediately prior, which also had an odd opening. That one I felt the bag lift off and reach line stretch, but there seemed to be a momentary pause before I felt the canopy out of the bag and starting to inflate as I do on a normal deployment. My rigger suggested that perhaps the slider could have gotten caught on the slider stops or somewhere similar, and I'm thinking that maybe the rips actually happened on the prior jump and the hard opening was caused by the large rip in the slider letting more air through. I'd like to think that I would have noticed that, but I will accept that it's something that I could have missed in a typical pack job if I was distracted or in a bit of a rush. However, another rigger at our dropzone thinks it unlikely that the slider got caught on the slider stops and to be honest, looking at the slider stops, I'm having trouble seeing a point where such a slider hangup could have occurred and caused a rip like the ones seen. Beyond that, I'm out of theories. Has anyone heard of similar damage to the slider, and if so, do you know what the cause was? I'm curious to figure this out, because it would be nice to avoid that kind of an opening happening again.

Probably not. On the standard settings, it needs about 3 seconds in freefall before it's sure that you've exited the plane rather than the plane hitting some turbulence or doing an abrupt dive. It's very probable on a very short delay that the freefall time just isn't long enough for the device to believe you've left the plane. If you set the jump type to STU, then it will detect much shorter freefall delays. If can't be bothered changing the settings on your Alti-Track but still want it to register your hop-n-pops, then give yourself at least 5 seconds out the door before you deploy.

You can do that directly on the device. Just go through the setup menus and you can set the total freefall time and jump number right in there. No need to mess about with cables and a laptop.

In a thick cloud you won't necessarily be able to tell exactly where the sun is, since the water droplets scatter the light and create a large area of relatively similarly bright light. What's more, your perception of differences in the intensity of said light can be as much to do with the composition and thickness of the cloud in that direction as it is on the direction to the sun. Needless to say, your idea of "towards the sun", while already taking you further out into the middle of Lake Erie or some other similarly large hazard, may also lead you into a collision course with your buddy's idea of "towards the sun". The most common advice I've been given, and the advice that makes the most sense to me is pretty much what billvon said - slow right-hand spiral, make noise, listen and look. I'm also wondering what altitude you threw your pilot chute? I'm imagining at your jump numbers you are still pulling pretty high. Did you think about maybe freefalling a little longer to get through the other side of the cloud where you can see what's going on? If you do this, just remember that regardless of what happens, you will always pull at or above the hard deck, so make sure you're watching your altitude first, and the cloud second.

You may want to go and re-check your PIM 1. An exhibition jump rating requires less than 1000 jumps, but you still have a few years to wait, I'd imagine.

As others have said, very slow to climb. Also, when I was in Latvia, I heard rumours that AN-2s may not be able to fly in the EU for much longer, as they do not meet current aviation safety standards and will be forcibly retired from service in the next couple of years. The places they are currently flying in the EU are typically left over in eastern block countries that are now part of the EU, such as East Germany and Latvia. The only reason they're still flying today is to allow a transitional period for existing operators to find a suitable replacement aircraft.

I think what you're trying to say is that *he* doesn't have the authority to dictate that to others. On the other hand, the pilot in command has the authority to require that you wear a seatbelt when directed to do so and the dropzone management and/or aircraft owner can require this through the authority of their pilots while in command of the aircraft. It's your personal choice as to whether you ride in that airplane if you don't like the requirements regarding seat belts. That goes both ways - ie. you can choose not to because you don't like the draconian seat belt wearing policies, or you can also choose to not ride in because of a lack of such policies.

Australia completed a 25-way CRW diamond under guidance of Chris Gay. This was at Skydive Ramblers at Toogoolawah last year. I'm not sure of the exact date, but it was before I got there in April 2007. I think that all of the Aussies from the world record were part of it, so they could give you more information if you need. Canada completed a 21-way CRW diamond a month or two ago out at Eden North, organized by Lyal Waddell.

I see the problem now. You're confusing humour with attacks. It seems you may be the only one who doesn't get the joke. You'll get these same kind of jokes at the dropzone. Maybe you don't understand this style of humour. That's fine, but a lot of us do, so don't expect the community to change overnight, if ever. With regard to the profile... sure, nobody is forcing you to fill it out, but if you're willing to tell us a little about yourself, you'll have a lot more credibility in here than you will as an anonymous poster with fuck-know-what experience post flying fuck-knows-what, fuck-knows-where.

I think you're misunderstanding what he has written, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but Mark is hardly the skygod type. He's saying he needs someone there to help facilitate the communication when he has made a mistake and the organizer wants to discuss it with him during the debrief. I think your post seems a little harsh.

I'm assuming that this is someone other than the movie director John Woo... you never know, though. This is California.

Ok. I can see how the firmware has no way of knowing whether the variation is due to a faulty sensor or actual air pressure variation. Are there steps that users might take to avoid triggering a false error during the self-test? Things that I'm thinking might cause such a rapid pressure change are wind gusts, or placing weight or stress on some part of the rig or reserve container during startup. Thanks for the explanation. It's this kind of straightforward and open answer that I hope will see you go far in this community.

Sounds like a firmware bug or something that should be solveable within firmware. Is there a firmware upgrade coming that should resolve this problem? It's all fine and good to say that unplugging the display should solve the problem, but if I open the reserve container to resolve the problem more quickly, I'm then going to need to find a rigger and pay for a repack or if I'm lucky enough to have the rigger who did my repack standing by, maybe he/she can open and close it without doing a full repack. Either way, not really convenient solutions. The other option of waiting several hours and hoping that it sorts itself out doesn't sound appealing to me, either.

I couldn't tell you about the Argus, but I can tell you that according to the manufacturer, the Vigil has a life expectancy of 20 years, contrary to what you were saying about no limit. See http://www.vigil.aero/faq.

It's normal to feel some anxiety either in the door, or perhaps in freefall for a while when you're just learning. Some people get past it easier than others. Maybe you'll get past it in 10 jumps or maybe it'll take you 100 jumps. I can't recall ever having anxiety in freefall and I'm not sure how long it took me to start to consistently have jumps with no anxiety in the door or on the ride to altitude, but I'd guess I was at least at about 50-60 jumps by that stage. Even now, I'll get some anxiety from time to time - usually if I'm doing something totally new and that's more performance anxiety than worry about my safety, but you just take a deep breath, move past it and do the jump. Like one of the previous posts said, knowledge dispels fear. The more you jump, the more you'll know that you can look after yourself in the sky and the fear will slowly fade away.