brettski74

The two jumpers in Texas swore that they felt the risers release and then dumped their reserves into the wad of crap. It is a very, very good idea to sweep the cutaway cables if they don't come out of the housings. Can you give more information, please? How far did they pull the cutaway handle?

I'm looking at buying my first camcorder. Based on my research so far, I think I'm looking for something like a Sony DCR-HC38, but reading the comparisons with other cameras on camcorderinfo.com, it sounds like the Canon ZR850 might give better bang for the buck given that it has a higher resolution CCD and can shoot widescreen footage - think slightly more future-proof. The question is how well it will work for skydiving. I know that some of the newer canon camera with optical image stabilisation don't work too well in freefall, but this one still has electronic stabilistation. Ease of finding a suitable box to mount on a helmet is another thing I need to consider. Is anyone using a Canon ZR850 or similar Canon camcorder? If so, are you happy with it's performance and durability? What helmet and/or box/mount are you using for it? Is it compatible with any standard boxes out there? I was leaning towards something from Cookie composites, and the specs suggest that it's very close in size to the HC38, so maybe it will just fit inside an HC38 box? Blues.

I don't know about your rig, but if I put my rig on and pull the cutaway handle to full arm extension, the long cutaway cable doesn't quite clear the housing - there are still a few inches left inside. Either way, do your emergency procedures the way you were trained, which should involve pulling your handles to full arm extension. Your goal is to cutaway a ball of shit and get a nice stable canopy overhead sometime before you meet the ground. You can worry about whether the handles came all the way out or not once the impending danger of dying has been removed.

You should also sign up on skysurfer.com.au. A lot more of the aussie skydiving scene hangs out there.

I had a similar experience a couple of years ago jumping on a CSPA solo certificate in Australia at 27 jumps - they just looked at my jump numbers and were happy for me to jump solo. Then again, I jumped in Latvia sometime later with over 50 jumps and an A licence and they wouldn't let me jump without doing a coach jump first. So yes, when you get to a "certain level" people will be happy to just let you jump, but that "certain level" varies from place to place. Just be prepared to prove your skills if asked before being extended the privilege of jumping at a new DZ.

First a disclaimer that I am not an instructor, but I have travelled to quite a lot of dropzones in various countries for my relatively short skydiving career, so this is based on my observations of training programs in various locations. The bottom line is that to be granted a licence or certificate of proficiency anywhere is basically the responsibility of whoever signs off on the paperwork. Given that there are general rules and criteria you need to meet, you'll need to demonstrate somehow that you can meet these criteria. That may be through examining your logbook and existing qualifications from other organisations or it may be through instructional and/or coach jumps. Contacting people in Australia will help you figure out what to do to be able to jump in Oz, but what happens when you return to the US or elsewhere will depend on the staff back at your home DZ and how far you get in your training abroad. Your best bet is to contact the staff at the dropzone where you plan to do training and find out what they will need from you. Organisations like the APF and USPA set the rules, but those rules are generally implemented by people at dropzones and it's them who will have to sign off on your skills in order to get you licensed. Note that while AFF/PFF programs are somewhat similar around the world, there are differences between countries and even between dropzones in how many jumps they may include and the training objectives for each jump in the progression, so a level 4 AFF student from one DZ may not be the same as a level 4 AFF somewhere else. Regarding Oz, find a dropzone near where you'll be that can offer you training. Note that there are many skydiving operations in Australia that only offer tandem jumping for tourists. You'll need a proper dropzone that can offer training and fun-jumping as well. Sydney Skydivers at Picton is probably the best known DZ near Sydney. I personally haven't jumped there, but it's the best one I know of in the area. Some of the locals may be able to suggest other good dropzones. Call them. Talk to their chief instructor (CI). He/she will be the one that will have to decide on what training you may or may not need to complete. With regards to what will happen when you get back, that will be a matter to figure out when you get back based upon how far you get. The further you get, the easier it is likely to be. Make sure you keep detailed logs that describe what you did on the jump and whether you were successful in the objectives for the jump and any notes for future improvement. Make sure it's signed off by your instructor. If you complete AFF in Australia, that will be a lot better than if you're only part-way through it. If you can get your APF A licence, even better. It's not like your student training done elsewhere will count for nothing, but you'll do a lot better with transferring licence qualifications than you will have with student training.

Well unless you are wearing a neptune, then you will be able to tell exactly what your decent rate is...[Smile] Ah... Don't quite understand that. Lets say your steady state descent rate is doubled due to broken lines or a partial mal. At 2000ft it's very hard to tell the difference between 20ft/sec and 40ft/sec. Once you get down to 500ft or so, you have a frame of reference due to your proximity to the ground. One other thing to consider is that if your canopy is descending faster due to any of the above reasons, it is likely that it won't flare with as much power and or will stall at a higher airspeed. Doug The neptune display has decent rate in ft/sec. it is displayed underneath the altitude. I don't have a Neptune, but if I recall correctly from the ones I have seen, during freefall, it switches to freefall mode which displays just the altitude in giant numbers that fill the screen and nothing else, and when it is in a mode to display additional data like descent rate, it's in tiny little numbers at the bottom of the screen. Ever wonder why runners watches have big, giant numbers on them? It's cos the numbers on most digital watches are too small to read while running due to vibration. During a high speed malfunction, I really doubt that your arm will be steady enough to read those tiny numbers.

Just to clarify... Was it a "hard opening" as your third sentence implied (ie. bruising, bleeding and/or other mild blunt-force trauma signs), or was it just a deployment that was hard to deal with due to the line twists pinning your helmet? Your post sounds like you're assuming that line twists is a side-effect of packing. While a hard-opening is going to be due to pack job, line twists are just as likely to occur because of your body position during deployment. Have you ever taken some jumps to concentrate on what's going on with your body as you deploy the parachute? I rarely get line twists, even when my pack job is a little rushed. On the few occasions that I do get line twists, it's usually on a jump where I'm a little distracted (eg. analyzing a bad jump, excited from an awesome jump) and probably more sloppy during deployment as a result.

You forgot the link to the aforementioned video for those of us who may have been living under a rock for the past little while.

The change of angle of attack is the change you're applying to the canopy. The effect I'm talking about is the effect on your flight by changing the shape and/or orientation of the wing in such a way. The increased rate of descent in a toggle or rear riser turn happens as a parasitic effect of the banking induced by the turn - ie you have less lift directed downward and less drag opposing vertical movement due to the changed orientation of the canopy. The change in AoA that you're applying when you pull rear risers or toggles is actually the opposite of that required to induce a dive. My point was that when you pull down the rear of the canopy, a turn starts because you've increased the drag on that side of the canopy causing it to slow down and creating the turn. This speed difference then induces banking in the canopy. When you pull the front, you induce the banking first, which, in turn, causes the turn.

There's more going on then you might think. As a student, I did 360 front riser turns on a Navigator 220. Use two hands. It's hard work, but you should be able to do it. In regards to the load on that riser, don't think that a smaller canopy will necessarily have lighter front riser pressure. I currently fly a 210 square foot PD 9-cell and can hold a 360 front riser spiral with one hand. I've also flown a Sabre-2 170 - a full 40 square feet smaller, but there's no way I could do that on that canopy. The front riser pressure was significantly heavier. Different fabric. Different glide ratio. Different canopy design (eg. aspect, nose shape, etc). There could be more factors here than just size, but I think that's kinda been covered already. Also "G forces" implies inertia or similar effects. I think you'll find that it's drag that increases the forces on risers or toggles as the turn continues and speed increases. I'm not convinced that any centripetal forces induced by a fast turn would act counter to your inputs. In terms of why a canopy turns right when you pull on anything on the right side, well, I haven't read Brian Germain's book, but this is how I resolved it for my own purposes. I make no guarantees that this is 100% accurate. If you pull on the toggles or the brakes, you induce a turn because the dominant effect is that of slowing down that side of the canopy. The lift on the slower side of the wing decreases, and this induces the banking you get in such a turn. Front risers cause the canopy to dive, which increases your speed, however, you still turn the same direction, so the change in speed is obviously not the dominant effect because that would induce a turn in the opposite direction. What also happens is the dive - ie. when you pull the right front riser, you cause the right side of the canopy to fly lower than the left, banking the canopy and thereby inducing a turn in much the same way as the ailerons on a plane induce a turn, by creating a horizontal component to the lift induced by the wing. I hope that helps.

It sounds like you never unstowed the brakes. Am I reading that right? While I'm not for a moment suggesting that a rear riser flare will be the same as a toggle flare, leaving the brakes stowed will have a lot to do with the poor performance of your rear riser flare.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can see the prop wash having any effect on deployment would be if the pilot chute was already out as you exited the plane and I'm pretty sure that's one of the things that belongs in a category named Things that can make any day much worse.

It's been a little while since I registered, but at the time, I seem to remember that there might have been a 2 day delay between registering your account and when you were able to start contacting sellers in order to help stop buyer scams in the classifieds. I may be mistaken, or this may have changed since I signed up. Perhaps HH or a greenie might be able to confirm?

Compared to belly, too? Belly is much less work than back flying.

Naaaah! That will never happen to me! [Sly]

Yes - I got the link to SDAZ. What I don't get is where Bryan said that swooping is banned. You can do 270s any time of the day that you want, as long as you let manifest know that's what you're going to do and as long as you do it from a dedicated low pass. How is this any different from high-pullers, CRW, wing-suiters. They all need to let manifest know what they're doing and coordinate accordingly with other air traffic to avoid creating dangerous situations. What would happen to non-swoopers on these days? There are a bunch of dropzones who banned hook turns a long time ago, but nobody made such a fuss then. It seems that now that one of the major dropzones has taken some steps to regulate when and where you can swoop, you feel the need to come on the internet and whine about it.

And I assume that this is in reaction to the new rules at SDAZ becoming permanent. Neither swooping or 270s have been banned outright. The new rules simply identify times and places when it is appropriate to do so. How is this in any way comparable to banning boogies?

That's a topic that I don't claim to have anywhere near the level of expertise to comment on. However, if that's how you feel, then maybe you should take it up with Bryan, as he's already said he's happy to ban 180s also if you feel they're just as dangerous.

This post illustrates my point exactly. The number of incidents due to swooping in the pattern, particularly from 270 hook turns suggests that this behaviour produces too great a risk of incident, injury or worse. The response, however, is not ban swooping or ban 270s, its ban 270s when and where they're not appropriate. When driving a car down a suburban road, due to the fact that there may be people around, kids playing and lots of property that could be damaged by an out of control car, it's been deemed inappropriate to drive at 100km/h in such areas. When driving on the highway, however, it's appropriate. In the same way, in Australia, there are places called "School Zones", which impose a lower speed limit at the times in the morning and afternoon when kids are being dropped off and picked up from school. Nobody said that you can't drive at 100km/h, just that you can't do it at times or places where that may pose too great a risk to yourself and others. Incidents at boogies happen most often due to someone doing something silly and/or more risky than they should be in the conditions. Accordingly, the remedy should be to address those behaviours, not try to ban the whole shindig.

Boogies are statistically higher fun events, too. Last time I looked, the main reason most people are in this sport is for the fun. On a more practical note, how exactly are you planning to "ban" boogies. In europe, you'd need to get agreement from how many different countries and national organisations on exactly what a boogie is and how to ban it. North America is not much better, since you have events all the way from central america north that are routinely attended by north american jumpers. Assuming that you even get that agreement, a boogie is just a bunch of jumpers getting together in one place and doing a bunch of jumps. Does this mean we ban visiting other dropzones? There are many aspects of this that might be similar to a normal weekend at a busy turbine dropzone. Boogies often have some skills camps or other training and such organized, perhaps with skilled coaches that the attendees might otherwise never have the chance to work with. So we want to ban training people to acquire better freefall or canopy skills? How will that reduce the risks of future fatalities? The only boogie I've been to so far gave me exposure to some of the best coaches in the sport, something that I might not achieve otherwise. Banning boogies would be a mindless, kneejerk reaction. It would be much more productive to look at the causes of the accidents and modify our behaviours when jumping at boogies to mitigate the risks we identify. The sad thing is that discussions like this might take people's time away from doing something truly productive in reducing the risks of future incidents. Boogies are not the problem. It's what people do at boogies that's the problem. We don't stop driving because of a spate of road fatalities nor do we ban freeways because they happened on large dual carriageway roads. We investigate the accidents and where applicable come up with new traffic laws, enforcement methods and safety standards to target the causes of such accidents.

You need to do exercise in this sport? I've only got a little under two hours of tunnel time in total, but the closest I've ever come to exercise is the post-flight cool down at the local bar. [Cool]

Do a search, or better yet, check with the place you'll be doing the course. I think I've seen one or two Brazilian jumpers post on here mention their own association, so they may not be USPA down there. In any case, I don't think it will make a lot of difference. Main thing is, get the licence, make sure your log book is complete, up-to-date and signed. Worst case, maybe you'll need to do some coach jumps when you get home, but most places I've visited around the world, you just show up with your licence and log book, get checked in and start jumping.

Well if you coming all the way over from Perth, I guess I'll have to make it out on the 15th, now! Is there a boogie on, or are you just in Brisbane for the fun place that it is?

Any Ramblers jumpers read here much? I'm coming to Brisbane for 6 months in a couple of weeks and think I'll probably make Ramblers my home away from home DZ, although I need to figure out a way to get to the DZ, as I don't expect to have a car. I get into Brisbane on April 10, and assuming that I find an apartment in the first week, I'll probably try to make my way out on the 14th and 15th. There's beer and/or fuel money in it if anyone can offer a ride. Alternatively, maybe someone knows where I might find bus services to Toogoolawah and I can wander out to the DZ from town.