LawnDart21

This thread is disturbing. I'm as guilty as the next jumper aspiring to be a swoop monster, I went from a Sabre 150 (loaded at 1.5) to a Vengeance 120 (loaded at 1.875) at jump number 375. And while it was overall a relatively smooth transition, I'll be the first to say, it could have ended my skydiving career. Just like some other jumper(s) on here, I didn't want to listen to the "you'll get hurt eventually" advice, I just shut them all out and did my thing. I stayed current all winter, talked with as many people as I could to learn about what I was doing, before and during my transition, I went to Evolution Canopy School to learn from the best pilots on the planet, and I can fly a canopy as good as anyone I have seen with my jump numbers, but.........with all that, I was and still am very cautious and treat the canopy like a loaded gun, which essentially it is. This "I am not going to get hurt" mentality is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Acknowledge the risk, look at the statistics, even if Rhino is the clone of Clint Clawson, you will eventually, un arguably going to get caught in the corner someday and whack yourself. Every canopy swooper out there has taken themselves out of their sneakers atleast once. Unlike you though, I expect that landing and fear that landing on every jump, in hopes it will keep me safer. I'm not knocking you for your choice in canopy or your decision to tempt fate, just your "I will not get hurt attitude." Your a skydiver landing a HP parachute....it will happen, just give it time. The difference between walking away from it and being carried away from it is being ready for it and accepting it as a reality. Invincibility is just a word. As for whether someone with 300 jumps should jump a canopy loaded 2.0 or higher? Being able to land a canopy at 2.0 does not make a good pilot. Just because you could, don't mean you should. Everyone, myself included sometimes is in such a big rush to grow up in canopy flight, we fail to realize the risks and dangers involved, add to that an over inflated ego, it's a recipe for disaster. I was lucky, I didn't get banged up in my transition, except for a few grass stains and a bloody nose once. And I attribute my relative success in the transition to my willingness to be taught and more importantly, to be criticized by those around me that care about me and shared their knowledge, (most of the time I didn't even ask for the advice/criticism, but accepted it anyway). As a foot note I also want to say that being able to land a highly loaded canopy and swoop it does not mean someone is necessarily a great pilot. There is a HUGE learning curve to be gained from getting the most out of larger canopies, something I missed out on by downsizing too quick. To illustrate that point it is the general concensus of some of the top swoopers in the world, that most non competitve fun jumpers jumping VX canopies and other top line cross braced canopies aren't even flying them to their full potential, because they don't know how. Sure they can land them and swoop them, but they don't fly them to thier limits because they don't know how. I's like buying a Ferrari and driving it like a Honda. Why spend all the extra money if your not using what you paid for. Rhino, I wasn't trying to flame on you, you were just the lead opposition to my opinion in this thread. I wish you nothing but complete safety and a long career as a swooper. And again, this is all just my opinion, and we know opinions are like assholes.....right? Stay safe everybody. "Safe Swoops to all and to all a good flight" Tom

That's cool Clay, I wasn't flamin' ya, I just feel terrible for Kerry. Like you, every jump, my first reaction, good canopy/diving spin/etc, is to grab the rear risers and level out. It's ashame that Kerry had to learn the hard way. "I live to EFS" Tom

I met Kerry at Quincy 2001 and talked with him about his skyboards for about an hour one day and he came across as a very intelligent person, he's not a yahoo. Remember too, he only had a couple of hundred jumps too, which would attribute to his improper reaction. everyone has a different learning curve, I mean, I just hit 500 jumps last week and I am still learning every time I jump. I think he probablyjust panicked becuase he was so low. It's easy to say "Oh I would have grabbed a rear riser", but none of us were in his shoes at the time to know or to see what was going on. And if he made a rushed decision out of panic, that's not necessarily an act of stupidity if it was done out of reflex. Kerry is a good person in a bad spot right now, commenting that what he did was "stupid" is ill spirited. You were in a similar situation and you reacted differently and you were okay, he made a bad a choice, leave it at that. Keep in mind, anyone with under a 1000 jumps is essentially a newbie in this sport and we are all prone to make mistakes. Let's all just focus on the positive by learning from his mistake and sending positive energy his way. "I live to EFS" Tom

My new Mirage showed up at the DZ yesterday. I think I've finally finished buying gear. Phew, I'm exhausted. I kept my old set up (Mirage, w/ Vengeance 120, sans cypress) for pond swooping. And now I have this new Mirage with a KICK ASS Cobalt 135 for work jumps and skysurfing. Can anybody spare a nickel, my freakin credit cards are maxxed!!!LOL "I live to EFS" Tom

I heard bits and pieces of a story yesterday about a C-130 that was dumping fire retardant on a forest fire that went down yesterday or the day before. Does anyone have any info or links to any stories on it? Thanks. "I live to EFS" Tom

I just got our DZ to stock Go Fast!! next to our Red Bull display, and the Go Fast!! is totally out selling the Red Bull. I got the Go Fast!! number from the website and called them. I spoke with Troy Widgery, the owner of the company directly. (How cool is it that the owner answers the phone), I put him in contact with our food vendor, and the rest is Go Fast!! history. Red Bull is too corporate, Go Fast!! is a product for skydivers made by skydivers. "I live to GO Fast!!!! Tom

Go Fast!! is way better than Red Bull. It tastes better and the "buzz" that you get is nice and smooth, a gradual pick me up, which stays with you, and then lets you down easy. Red Bull on the other hand is like slamming on the gas in your car from a dead stop, then jamming on the brakes to stop. Plus, the skydiver that created to company/drink also created Sky Systems, we need to support our own people!! "I live to EFS" Tom

Well the answer I was given, altitude permitting of course, is grab your hook knife, (say it's in your left hand), grab the right sider riser in your free hand (your right hand in this example), then cut the left riser/ring loop on the front of the riser just above the small ring. (I guess that is one of the prime reasons for the nubby hook at the end of the knife, to fit in that gap created by the loop and ring). Then as you fall away from the left riser, you are already holding onto the right riser, so you don't have to go looking for it, cut the right loop, then pull the reserve. Sounds like a lot to do, but hey, again, assuming altitude is available, it would make sense to free your self from yoru main before firing your reserve into it. Of course, bottomline, the more fabric over your head the better, so if it ain't working, firing a reserve into an open and spinning main, is better than not firing it at all I guess. "I live to EFS" Tom

Here is a question that has recently come up alot, and since my last post about diving line twists is a precursor to this mal, I thought I'd throw this question to you guys and see what responses I get? "You deploy at a decent atlitude, say, 3500ft, you open up with diving line twists, you make the decision that it is unrecoverable, and initiate emergency procedures. You grab your cut away handle, you peel, you pull, but nothing happens. Turns out the line twists include your risers, and the pressure is so high, you can't get your cutaway cable out of the housings, becuase they are twisted up in the risers. Now you can't cut away with your handle, what do you do? I'd like to hear people's ideas on how to deal with this. When I first heard the question, I wasn't sure how to answer it. After hearing the "correct" answer so to speak, I was pretty surprised, so I thought I'd throw it out to you guys (and girls). I figure more of us are jumping hp ellipticals and even with hard inserts, we might still find ourselves in this unfortunate position. "I live to EFS" Tom

LOL

My saturday will go something like this: 12:00pm, wake up (ONLY benefit of bad weather, sleeping in) 12:05pm, get some 12:45pm, fire up the barbeque, open first beer 1:00pm, finish second beer, throw in "Swoop, 2001 Pond Swooping Nationals 2:00pm, throw in "Dirt Water Dirt" and drink more beer. 3:00pm, take a nap 4:00pm, get some 4:30pm, drink more beer and take shower (preferably at same time to save time) 5:00pm, should be drunk enough to enjoy Cutaway. 5:30pm, start talking to myself in the 3rd person, referring to myself as "Red Line" 5:45ish to the end of the movie, say all of Red Line's lines with him. 7;00pm remove Cutaway from VCR and convince myself (yet again) not to throw it away. 7:15pm, put on Bonehead Mindwarp 7:30pm, couch diving from the staircase 8:00pm, turn grill back on, time for dinner 9:00pm, pull out the tequila (It's now time for Terminal Velocity) 9:15-10:00pm, shots of tequila 11:00pm, if not passed out yet, go to bed. 4:00am, wake up and take off Bonehead helmet while at the same time saying to self "what the fuck?" 4:15am, back to bed. Sunday: REPEAT I HATE THE RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!! Tom

In a perfect world, i would have been given an extra vacation day for my efforts.............

Well, a typical "Lawndart" jump (for me anyways...lol) usually includes any of the following: 1) Nude jump (much to the dismay of the tandem students on board) 2) Kiss pass with my g/f (any female will do for your jump...) 3) Nice soft canopy opening 4) A 40 yard surf, accidentally carving it into a 10ft wind blade. Take your pick, any of the above will qualify for a lawndart number............LOL "EFS Unlimited" Tom

I had a funny experience at lunch today. A co worker and I are walking back in from the parking lot after lunch and he comments that he hears a plane above us and it must be close. (It is overcast right now with about 3000-4000ft ceiling as I can tell. I casually said to him it sounds like a single engine piston, probably a Cessna, flying under 4000ft, probably out of 270. He looked at me and said "how the hell do you know that?" I just said, wait a second, I bet we see it come out (pointing to 270) of the clouds just about the cloud base. Sure enough, I was right on the money, a Cessna came puttering out of the clouds. He was half impressed/half disturbed by my accuracy.....lol........... "I live to EFS!" Tom

Rain bad/sun good!

I'll be rowing myself around the dropzone this weekend with all the freakin rain we are supposed to get. Get some for me Michele! "I live to EFS" Tom

What the fuq? The weather this season up in Boston blows. We get rain one day. We get winds the next day. We get rainy winds the next day, and so on and so on and so on. I could count on 1 hand the number of full days we have been able to jump on the weekends since April 1. This sucks! Just venting as this weekend is gonna be another wet one....... "I live to EFS" Tom Shirley Manson is obvisouly not a skydiver................

501 jumps without a cutaway (yet) and it was my first spinning/diving malfunction. Ya know how you normally get pulled upright on deployment? I got pulled upright and then immediately right over on my back. I can remember my old sabre 150 would occasionally decide it wanted to travel backwards on me, but at a 1.5 wingloading, it all happened so slowly and kind of just lumped along, I could see it happening and had plenty of time to react. With the Vengeance at 1.9 (which normally opens beautifully for the record), it was a split second thing, one second deploying, next second spinning like a pin wheel.....LOL Thanks Chris, it kind sucks to raise my hand and say to the e-world "Ya, I fucked up, without any rational reason to do so, and I'm lucky I didn't make a dent in the landing area for being just plain stupid." But I figure it's better to share and look stupid than to keep it to myself and not offer the experience to others. Like Michele said, who knows, maybe some else will read this and not make the same mistake. "Safe swoops to all and to all a good flight!" Tom

No prob Diverdriver, no offense taken. As my jump numbers got higher over the last two years, so too did my deployment altitude. In retrospect, I think it was the "I dumped high, I have a few seconds to work this out, I only see a few twists, let's give it a try" that got me. What I should have been thinking is "Vengeance = GROUND HUNGRY, 360 degree spin = 800ft drop". The reason I posted this is because prior to the jump and after I landed, I always knew the right answer "don't fight diving line twists", but for some reason at the very moment it mattered, I didn't stick to the game plan. That made me think, if it happened to me, it could happen to others, so I wanted to so share it with everyone. I am veyr current, averaging about 40 jumps a month, so it wasn't rusty skills, I knew the right thing to do, but still chose to try and get out of it anyways. That spooked me out a bit so I thought I'd share it to give others something to think about too. "I live to EFS" Tom

"Gravity and the ground, neither one gives a shit about you" Right? "I live to EFS" Tom

I agree with SBS, while I was at Perris at the Evolution Canopy School, they emphasized that alot of people get mained and killed trying to land on rear risers. Forgive me if I butcher the explanation, but as I remember it, it went like this: "Landing on rear risers requires very little input, yet jumpers are conditioned from their first jump to give big inputs with toggles, so they transfer that same big input philosophy over to rear risers, which is completely incorrect. Over amping your rear risers will result in a rapid change in the angle of incidence of the canopy, causing it to take on a nose high/tail low attitude, which causes a drastically higher stall speed of the canopy during the swoop. So, instead of a toggle stall at say 8 to 15 mph on a high performance landing, the same landing on a botched rear riser attempt, the canopy stalls (touches down to the ground) at 30+ mph, too fast for the jumper to run it out, hence the maiming, etc, really nasty tumbles. For any aspiring pro swoopers out there (myself included, emphasis on the "aspiring".....lol) check out Brian Burke's Canopy Flight essays on Skydive Arizona's website, it's free and it deals with angles of incidence/angle of attack, camber, etc and has a section dedicated to high performance landings. (Chapter 5). Wow, that was a marathon post!! "safe swoops to all, and to all a good flight!" Tom

So, this past weekend, I made 16 jumps in two days. I normally try to make 8-10 jumps a weekend, so this weekend I was above my normal average. The result, I started to get complacent. On a jump late in the day, I deployed normally at 3500, resulting in diving line twists, ya know, the kind that puts you on your back diving behind you. Well, I jump a 120 elliptical loaded about 1.9, so I was moving fast. My first thought was "I can get out of this" and my second thought was "I haven't heard my ditter's hard line, so I'm still above 2000ft. My wrist altimeter was covered by my slider slapping on the risers, ie, no visual altitude references, not even the ground as I was on my back. Anyways, long story short, I got out of the twists and regained control at about 1600ft, just above my decision altitude. The moral of the story is that my audible never went off, so conceivably I could have kept fighting the twist all the way to the ground. My instinct was to cut it away immediately, then the thought "I don't want to lose a brand new main" and "maybe I can get out of this", popped in my head. Had I had it to do over again, I would have (and will in the future) chop it first, then think about what I could have done better. The moral of my story is that as canopies get smaller, the "maybe I can fix this" idea becomes less and less of an option. This time I was lucky, next time I'll be smart. The odds are better on being smart! "I live to EFS" Tom

The funny thing is Jason, after I read your post, which I guess I incorrectly interpretted as a flame, and posted my reply, I read a couple of your past posts on swoop competitions.......I started laughing at the very same thing. "Welcome to canopy flight......lol" Oops. Anyways, yeah, we were talking about canopy line sets and how the correct size line sets are very important and what can happen if they are too short. That wasn't to say all canopies with short line sets would absolutely experience buffetting, but that it was very likely to occur, especially in turbulent winds. Anyway, misunderstanding resolved, my bad. "I live to EFS" Tom

How do I know this? Hmm, let's see, it was part of the Evolution Canopy Flight School ground school that I attended. The person that stated the info on performance of canopies with complete line sets being too short, not just brake lines, was Jim Slaton of Icarus's Team Extreme, and arguably the best canopy pilot on the planet and the most knowledgable test pilot around. The car analogy was his directly. As for what you personally have experienced, all I can say is welcome to canopy flight, most, if not all manufacturers have their "stock" brake settings shorter than what would be appropriate for riser turns. It's safer that way. That is why you see so many high performance canopy pilots lengthening their brake lines. Because "hooking" on front risers with standard brake line settings, almost always results in slight tail closer from lines not being long enough, and when the tail starts to close in a dive, you get buffetting. Go flame somewhere else dude and keep your ego in check. I only have 500 jumps, but I took the time to learn from the best. "I live to EFS" Tom

well, I did a tandem June 19th,1999 and according to USPA (I called them awhile back) that counts towards my three years in the sport (necessarly to get a tandem rating). I am taking the AFF cert course next month, and if God willing, I pass, the course will end on my 2 year anniversary of sport jumping. so that is the immediate goal. Then in august I will persue a tandem rating. Then spend two weeks this winter in PA with Dave DeWolfe to get my rigger's ticket, and then I'll (hopefully) have all the rating I set out for on my goals list. "I live to EFS" Tom