brettski74

And in this regard I disagree with Vigil. I don't buy an AAD to fire when it meets some air pressure parameters that some guy in a design lab over in Belgium came up with. I buy it to deploy a canopy over my head if I'm in freefall at a low altitude. That's the requirement for an AAD. My requirements for an AAD have nothing to do with air pressure measurements. Again, I disagree with Vigil here and prefer the CYPRES behaviour. This wasn't a freefall scenario. CYPRES identified that this was a situation it was not programmed to handle and shut down. That's exactly what I want my AAD to do. If it doesn't know what's going on then stay the fuck out of it. An AAD is a backup device. I rely on my main canopy. I rely on my harness. I would even say that I rely on my reserve. I don't rely on my AAD. Hell. I've never even had a cutaway, let alone an AAD fire and sure I only have 125 jumps, but I know at least one guy with thousands of jumps whose only cutaway was an intentional one for training purposes. I have an AAD as a backup device, just in case. I know of at least one fatality due to an AAD misfire, and if I'm not mistaken, this wasn't the only AAD misfire during a high performance landing. It was just doing what it was designed to do - firing when some pre-determined parameters were met, but somebody still died. An AAD should have enough smarts in it to know that a freefall skydiver is extremely unlikely to exceed a vertical acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. Similarly, if the air pressure suggests an altitude more than a few hundred feet below expected ground level, then again, I'd wager that the device really has no idea where I am in the sky and should stay out of things. You could probably set similar upper bounds on vertical velocity. I'm not saying that any of the AADs out there are perfect. None of them are. The sport of skydiving is constantly changing. Today swooping seems to be the big issue in trying to build a better AAD. In 10 years, it may be some other completely new discipline that once again challenges the AAD designs of the day. All I really expect of my AAD is to deploy that canopy when I need it and it there's any uncertainty as to whether that's what's required, then do nothing. Imagine if you will this scenario... You're on a pressurizable plane with a bunch of other jumpers all sitting back to the wall. There are four other jumpers between you and the door. Around 10000', your buddy checks your pin. Shortly thereafter, the pilot mistakenly pressurizes the plane. Your AAD fires, but because of the noise and your weight holding the reserve container closed against the wall of the plane, nobody notices. The door opens. You lean forward. Your reserve PC pops out and catches some wind. You get dragged out the door by your reserve, hitting people as your dragged past with yoru feet and your head. The reserve wraps the left horizontal stabilizer of the plane. Things get progressively worse from there... Sure. This exact scenario hasn't ever happened, but neither did your story (nobody ever jumped on that load) and either way, I'm pretty sure that I'd rather be jumping out of a plane with 300 other experienced RW jumpers than jumping out of one that's about to crash because a canopy has wrapped the horizontal stabilizer.

The canada.com link doesn't seem to work. I just get a page saying that the specified article was not found. I didn't look too much further than that. There's a awful lot of text there on the Transport Canada page and it's difficult to locate all of the changes. Can someone identify specifically what are the points of major concern? From what I could ascertain from skimming over the text are the following changes: - clarification of some rules for exhibition jumps that apply to aircraft also apply to parachutes/parachutists. - addition of some text that seems largely lifted from the CSPA's BSRs published in PIM1. - addition of some sections which state that parachute training and student parachuting should be conducted in accordance with rules and requirements set out by a recognised national body such as the CSPA. Did I miss any? Please don't flame for the following questions - I'm just trying to understand the nature of the concern here. The first difference seems immaterial to me. The second difference to me seems to be a reprinting of CSPA's BSRs into the CARs. It seems to me that it would have been better to say that parachuting activities should be conducted in accordance with the rules and regulations of a recognised national body, such as the CSPA, rather than reprinting their rules. After all, the BSRs are mandatory under the CSPA. Is this essentially the point here? Is the concern here that if BSRs are codified into CARs, then the rules may not be able to adjust to future changes in the nature of skydiving quickly enough? The third point seems similar to how I understand CASA and the APF to co-exist from a legal perspective in Australia. This part seems to be explicitly saying that the industry will self-regulate student and training operations - it's simply deferring the rules to CSPA, USPA, CAPS or other approved national bodies. If we're going to start a letter writing campaign, then it would be good to discuss logical reasons behind why the proposed changes are bad. For one thing, it will give us all more credibility. For another thing, the size of the skydiving community in Canada is a pitifully small proportion of the whole population. I find it difficult to believe that we'll get the appropriate attention on numbers alone. Hell - I don't even get a vote, since I'm just a permanent resident rather than a citizen. Just my $0.02 worth.

Interesting point you make about AFF. I actually did my first tandem jump over 7 years ago when I was still living in Oz. The DZ in question had a reasonably good discount on AFF if you paid for it all in one hit - enough to make me go away and start saving - I think it was about $1500. Less than a year later, I got sent to Canada for work and skydiving fell to the background of my thoughts as I explored this new land and tried a number of other things. It wasn't until about 18 months ago that I was changing jobs and as a result had some time off and some residual money lying around that I rekindled that fire and spent the time and money to become a skydiver. Maybe if I'd been sold on IAD or static line, I'd have been jumping for the last 7 years. Who knows, I don't want to discourage discounts, because I like discounts, but maybe even without that discount, I would have started spending my money on AFF back then. I was younger and I believe that my wallet at the time had a hole in it. Coming up with $200 to buy my next AFF jump would have been much easier than $1500 for the entire course.

When you're in Toronto, come down to Skydive Burnaby. It's a fun dropzone with a full-time Twin Otter during the summer. I'm not sure what's happening in June, yet. The events list on the website hasn't been updated for 2007, yet, although I do know of a couple of things happening later in the year. There's plenty of people head down from Toronto for the weekend - I usually hitch a lift with someone else since I no longer have a car. It's a fun bunch of people and we usually have bonfires and parties every friday and saturday nights. You should have fun.

I assume that you're referring to the fact that you merely need to notice the approximate location of the needle on the face rather than register and interpret several digits on an LCD screen. This is why I went with an Altitrack for my dig, rather than a Neptune.

In the event that I was referring to, there were both CYPRES and CYPRES-2 units in the plane. None of them fired. All of them determined that it was an abnormal situation and shut down, so I think it was more than just luck. The CYPRES units also made a decision. It was just a different one to that made by Vigil. I'm guessing that the CYPRES includes some limits on what are realistic altitude/velocity/acceleration values to deduce for a freefalling skydiver. Yes, it is an exceptional situation and in fairness, I can't think of a situation that may be similar enough to what would have happened here and where a misfire would lead to any kinda of safety risk. It's mostly an annoyance because you have the cost and inconvenience of a reserve repack and replacing a cutter.

There were two points. One was that they failed and/or refused to answer my question. They were more interested in trying to convince me to not refer to it as a misfire. As far as whether it's a misfire or not, I buy an AAD to deploy a canopy over my head when I am in freefall at a low altitude. Whether the device uses air pressure measurements, GPS, a pyrotechnic cutter or pixie dust towards fulfilling those requirements is immaterial. The skydivers were neither in freefall, nor at low altitude. The device fired when the user did not want it to do so, therefore, this would be a misfire. CYPRES units, which also use airpressure measurements, were in the same aricraft at those times and did not fire, but instead detected it as an abnormal situation, shut down and were ready to go again after being restarted on the ground, so without needing to know what the exact air pressure readings were, it seems that there must be some way to distinguish this from a life-threatening freefall scenario. I went away from Vigil not because of technical reasons. I wasn't overly concerned about these particular misfires, and it wasn't enough at that point to make me not buy Vigil, but their response suggested to me that they were more interested in marketing spin than either answering my question or technical improvements to their device. Their latest statement about some more recent misfires comes across much better.

You have one fifth the number of jumps as me and I still consider myself a newbie. It's good that you recognise that you don't know much, but even when you think you're starting to know a few things, you probably still don't know as much as you think you do, or you'll forget it in a pinch. Pain and white-knuckle fear are great teachers that will help you never forget, but there are more pleasant ways to learn that are less likely to hurt or kill you if you take your time. According to PD, wing loading is the biggest determinant of speed of the canopy. Other design factors will affect things like turn rate, glide angle, etc. All of these will affect your likelihood of safely landing the canopy in a pinch, but the faster you're going when you make that mistake, the more it's going to hurt.

True, but a higher WL will probably mean you're going that much faster when you make the bad decision. A lower wing loading may help turn a fatality into a few months off, a fracture into a sprain, or a sprain into a bruised ego.

Hmmm... My communications with them actually gave me the opposite impression. They were more interested in trying to convince me to not call it a misfire when a Vigil fires inside a pressurized aircraft cabin than they were in answering my question which was whether they were working on improvements to avoid such misfires in the future. Up until that point, I was impressed with the Vigil and planning to buy one, but that attitude switched me back to CYPRES. I'm kinda curious as to what improvements this Vigil2 will include. One of the statements on their website suggests that the new model will deal with these kinds of situations better, among other things. I just wish they could have told me this when I asked, instead of wasting my time trying to convince me to not think of it as a misfire and telling me nothing of what they plan to do about it. Does anybody have any details about this Vigil2 that's coming? Sounds like it might be worth a look.

I'll second that. It's the only altimeter that I've owned and it's great. Note that it's fully digital, though. The needle on the front is moved by a stepper motor in the device, so there's no analog altimeter to speak of really. I've had no problems and am very happy with my Altitrack. You should probably look at getting an audible, too. I have a Solo, which works great for what I do.

Not sure which coach you're already talking to - there are a lot of good flyers down there. I haven't personally worked with Mick, although I've seen him fly in the tunnel. I worked with Punisher when I was there. He was a great coach, a great flyer and very professional in his coaching. I'd highly recommend Punisher to anyone who asks about coaching at SVAZ.

This is almost a stand still. You should have given the group 15 seconds. At least. Since he said that he didn't know what the uppers were doing, I think he took this to mean the speed of the ground winds, not the horizontal speed of the aircraft relative to the ground, but yes, do a search and read up on exit separation. I'd also say that since you were following a two-way, your exit separation probably should have been closer to 7 seconds at a minimum, anyway. You need to give more space to groups to give them space to track away from each other. Can someone perhaps put the guidelines that are posted in the SkydiveAZ planes on here? They seemed to be a pretty good basis for exit separation based on what I've read so far, unless someone has some better guidelines that can be reasonably implemented by a human standing in the door of a jumpship.

That's getting way too serious. Why can't it just be some bored millionaire that wants to do it for shits and giggles - someone like Richard Branson.

Perhaps you've heard of a guy called D. B. Cooper. Oh - and if you put URL tags around your URLs, that would make life much easier for all us lazy webophiles.

Wasn't that in Hot Shots or something where the character involved catches the vertical stabilizer in the nads?

Based on a few rough calculations, at about 200 knots, I'm guessing that you're initial angle of departure once you release totally from the plane would be roughly 25 degrees below the horizontal, which seems to clear the wing and engine housing tidily, however, I've taken significant liberty in arriving at such a conclusion. Basically, I've assumed that you're exiting in a poised position arching into the relative wind and have terminal velocity of around 120mph in a normal belly to earth attitude. At 200 knots (around 230mph), that would likely be difficult to do. I think you're more likely to tuck into a ball and therefore probably drop a bit faster, increasing your safety margin. Using the same logic, I think you'd need to be going at least 380knots (440mph) to have a hope of clipping the engine housing after exit. Note that I'm ignoring any effects on the ariflow in that vicinity due to the intake for the turbofan. I have no idea how that will affect airflow at airspeed, but I understand that on the ground, there is a non-trivial danger area in front of the turbofan where you may be sucked in. I'd imagine that size of this region may be reduced at airspeed, but I'd be surprised if it was negated totally at such a relatively low airspeed for a jet. Aside from the obvious "because I can" reasons and the kudos that may go to someone attempting this, I can't really see a lot of plusses. Very few skydivers actually own a 757 with which to try such a jump and they're probably not a very cost-effective jumpship. Oh - this also comes with the standard disclaimer that I'm not qualified to give such advice and if you do happen to have your own 757 and choose to try this, you do this at your own risk/peril and should obtain independent expert advice before doing so.

From my understanding, the L-1 design can accomodate either indoor or outdoor flight chamber construction. Outdoor is cheaper for sure, but in terms of learning potential - especially for new tunnel flyers - I think outdoor is much more difficult. When you're learning and screw up in an outdoor tunnel, you tend to fall off the side and have to start again. When there's a wall keeping you there, you can keep flying and take a few seconds to figure out how to stop doing what you're doing. I'm curious to try the L-1 tunnel, though. I've flown Aerodium in Latvia, and while that was cool, the airflow was not as smooth as Bedford or SkyVenture AZ. I'd like to know whether L-1's design does a better job of smoothing out the turbulence from the prop - not that Aerodium does a bad job of it.

I'm assuming that this is after you have removed both canopies, AAD, pilot chute, ripcords, etc. That's an important step that might warrant mentioning. Personally, I won't be doing this unless I'm a rigger - which I'm not.

I have a Solo mounted inward facing inside my Velocity helmet. I've been jumping it for over 9 months, now, and I've never had a problem hearing it in freefall. I even flew with it inside SkyVenture Arizona one time and forgot to turn it off and had no trouble hearing it over the noise of the wind tunnel going at sit-fly speeds - much to my annoyance. I'd say try it out on a higher jump, but the thing is loud.

From what I'm told, you're looking at 7.5 million for a recirculating SV tunnel. I'm guessing that the 5 million if more like what you'd pay for an open-ended one like Orlanda or Arizona. If you're thinking of trying to do this, you probably want to figure in some operating capital to get you through the first year, also.

Nothing that's going to be useful to you for PFF. I know of people talking about it, but I don't know of anybody who is both talking about it and actually has the money to make it happen. I wouldn't expect to see anything operational in Canada within the next two years. The closest tunnel to Canada that I know of is in New Hampshire. You'll be fine. Plenty of people have gotten through PFF without the need for coaching in the tunnel. DO your PFF in the summer, and then go to Arizona for the Canadian Invasion next January and play in the tunnel there.

How do rigger ratings translate across international borders? If you obtained a Rigger A rating in Canada, would you be able to legally work as a Senior Rigger south of the border, or elsewhere, like the UK or Australia? Or do you need to re-obtain the rating under the local system, first?

To be honest, I found the tongue skills video that showed up in the list of more great videos on the right to be far more entertaining!

I'm thinking about getting my rigger's ticket eventually, too, but if your profile is up to date, you may need to hold off on those plans to cash in on that spring rush you envisage. According to the PIM, you need a B licence before you can become a rigger.