ruthers

I don't know about the actual design except that I have one and have also opened it before. The aneroid capsule is the corrugated disc on the left of the picture. In fact it's a thin, sealed metal tin, evacuated inside. The dial that you turn on the outside of the device just screws a contact closer or further away from the bar which is pushed against the tin. It could be that when the dytter is below the set actuation height, there is no contact between the bar and some other contact point. When the device goes up through activation height, the tin expands enough that contact is made, and the beeper is activated. The device probably stays in standby until the device goes back down through activation altitude, whereupon the contact gets unmade again. Some capacitor in the dytter circuitry could supply power for the device to make the beeps as the contact gets opened. While the device is below activation height, there may be no contact and zero current drain. But better to hear it from L&B. This is just my guess at how it might be working.

yes, I figured it was probably the legwing. I guess I need to just keep practicing. Great video tutorial, thanks (also to Jarno et al.)

I'm a low-numbers WS flyer, less than 40 WS jumps. I fly a Phantom 2 at a DZ with few sport jumpers, almost all tandems, and few WS'ers. So I'm mostly soloing and have been concentrating on flying as smoothly and consistently as possible lately. I've done only a handful of backfly jumps and struggle to make the front to back and particularly back to front transitions smoothly. Often going from back to front I end up rather head down, which sometimes means a moment of instability before getting back to a nice front-fly. Does anyone have any tips for smooth transitions? I've watched a few of the two-way artistic jumps to try to glean how some jumpers make the rolls look so elegant, but feel like mine probably look sloppy at best.

I'm hanging out for CRW buddies down here in New Zealand and as part of the CRW withdrawal symptoms, I am curious as to whether there are particularly good DZ's or events for CRW dogs to jump at.

Hi Bil, So are you using the G10 just for stills or for video also? I agree, it is good quality for the weight. One extra point to watch out for are the two tiny screws either side of the screw mounting point on the camera base. On mine, one of the screws fell out and the other got loose (I was lucky to notice it before it fell out. I don't know if the screws were loose from manufacturing problem, or perhaps the vibration/torque of having it on my helmet worked them loose. In any case, make sure they stay tight, and if they are, it might be worth taking them out and putting a little dab of locktite (thread lock glue) on them when reinstalling. Even with one screw missing my G10's mounting socket still seems to be secure. One other thing worth keeping in mind is that it's not possible to remove the lens to clean the ccd. Normally for compact cameras this is not a problem. I did previously use a Ricoh R5 which I wired up for external triggering on a similar mount to that which I use for my G10. It was lighter and much less lag time than the G10, and had some nice intervalometer settings, but the image quality was not as good - pretty much run of the mill compact camera, perhaps even suffering a bit from noise and never really sharp focus. In short, a waste of helmet space! But I did learn a bit about using a camera, and about dust. I used it for some skydives, and it seems that the high speed airflow was able to blast a bit of dust deep into the camera and it landed dead center on the CCD. If it was a DSLR, I could have removed the lens and cleaned the CCD. As it was, I was sick of the substandard quality of the R5 and relegated it to the shelf. So if you use a G10 for skydiving, I'd recommend using one of the attachable lens barrels with a filter on it, as that will give protection to the retractable lens mechanism, the front element, and the possibility of dust ingress. I keep using my G10 for paragliding in-air use, but if I was making skydive photos (especially for money) there is no way I would use it as a primary camera.

I use a G10 with a blow-switch for in air still pictures while paragliding. I get nice pictures, and while the Canon choice of a simple 2.5mm plug is a godsend, and it is pretty compact (I use a home-made front of helmet mount, with cutaway) the camera has a number of other shortcomings for which I wouldn't recommend it for skydiving: 1. Shutter lag. even on manual focus, too slow. 2. shot-to-shot time. Too slow. Skydiving packs a lot of action in a short time. At full res the G10 struggles to get 1 fps. 3. The lens. Picture quality is ok, but it is a retracting lens, and just too fragile for the (hopefully minor) bumps that are going to happen either in the plane or in air. I guess one could put a lens barrel and filter over it, but by then it must be getting very close to the size and weight of a DSLR. What positives do you see in using a G10?

I'm not sure if I had quite the same problem, but on my 2006 DOM Vector 3 I was noticing the D ring tending to get loose (I have a wire ripcord, not spectra) and it seemed to me that the issue was that the two pieces of velcro are sewn all round to the webbing, which forms a sort of pocket. But the D ring has thickness to it, and with tension on the webbing, this was tending to pull the velcro apart just in the areas near the D ring. I asked a rigger and he came up with an elegant fix. He sewed a piece of velcro hook and a piece of loop back to back (ie. with the hooks and loops facing out). Note, it was not sewn to the harness at all. He just mated the piece to the existing velcro in the the D ring pocket. It doesn't work itself loose, and there's only the same area of velcro as was originally there. It's simpler than my description might sound, I can't think of a better way to describe it. Probably similar to the fix described as having been issued by UPT. If anyone's interested I could post pictures.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/detail_page.cgi?ID=96395;d=1 Lightning 193 for $400 http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/detail_page.cgi?ID=96396;d=1 Lightning 218 for $300, including a set of risers! They are pretty big, but they are proper CRW canopies and they are damn cheap! No need to turn existing freefall canopies into a dog's breakfast of adapted gear. If you want to jump with others, a wingloading of around 1.3-1.5 is probably a good place to be. Comments anyone?

Very sad. Gary came over to Australia a month or so ago to a CRW seminar at Toogoolawah. We had some great jumps.

thanks for the reply Wendy. So the "pocket" is just a free-hanging, single surface flap off the back of the trailing edge seam and not a folded pocket, and the lines are not covered? Or is it pretty much the same as the normal tailpocket (with the bottom and top surfaces, and rubber band attachement points on the lower surface of the pocket), but only sewn to the canopy at the trailing edge? I guess my main question is : are the lines on your tailpocket design covered by anything, or is the purpose just to provide somewhere for the lines to be rubber-banded, and not be a big stack of freestowed line asking for trouble on deployment?

Hi All, I have a lightning 126 which is currently set up for D-bag (but usual retracting bridle). I keep getting little nicks in the top surface from the fabric getting caught in between the retracting bridle rings and the d bag grommet, even though i am pretty careful to make sure it's not in between them when packing. So I want to put a tail pocket on. I have a tail pocket on my other lightning 143, so I could just get the local rigger to copy the design, but just in case, does anyone have a spare tail pocket, perhaps on an old unairworthy canopy that they are not using?

yes, I suppose that did sound a bit whiney, apologies. On the other hand, if this was a case involving a certified aircraft with its wing falling off or if the incident had instead been a fatality, I would have thought that a detailed investigation would be carried out to determine if the wax had definitely degraded the material or if it was coincidence and there might be another defect (potentially latent in other aircraft) to blame. The testing wouldn't cost much, it could be done on single fibres at loads of grams. I was intending to propose it as a possible research project for materials science students at a local university, but my friend passed away and I lost motivation. Having found the information about spectra and parrafin, and with the thread topic of parrafin on frayed lines, I thought it was worth posting. Cheers, Hamish

I was doing some research about possible wax degradation of high strength fibres after a friend experienced a total line (dyneema lines manufactured by Liros) failure on her paraglider (thankfully successfully deployed her reserve). Subsequent strength testing by the manufacturer indicated only about 25% breaking strength in the lines (i.e. they had lost 75% of the rated strength!) I was interested to discover that parrafin oil (which seems to be a fairly generic term for a light mineral oil?) is used as a solvent in the production of spectra. I never got around to doing any testing to determine if the archery wax which said friend had applied to her lines to prevent fuzzing, which included parrafin wax as a constituent, had perhaps contributed to the line failure. Incredibly, the manufacturer just wrote back to say "obviously applying this product has caused the damage" but they never did any proper before/after testing or experiments! High strength fibres such as kevlar, vectran, spectra (UHMWPE) are usually remarkably resistant to chemical attack by acids or alkali. But if parrafin oil is used as a solvent in production of spectra, using it for lubricating spectra line doesn't sound like a great idea to me. AFAIK, Spectra feels waxy to touch mainly because of the inherent chemical structure of the material, not because of added wax. Anyway, I wouldn't put ANY chemical on my lines without recommendation from the line material manufacturer.

There was a CRW accident at my local DZ about 18 months ago on a 2 way. The pair exited together, one was to pull first and the other was to wait until he saw the first guy delay a few more seconds and then pull. The first guy had a PC hesitation or canopy snivel, not sure which. The second guy just saw that he pulled, waited a few seconds, then pulled. Don't know if he lost sight of the first guy or not. The second guy's canopy open straight away, the first guy hit him with either just pc or with sniveled main out. The first guy suffered concussion and ripped major ligaments in his leg, might have lost consciousness for while, I don't know. Thankfully he woke up under canopy (in a lot of pain) and landed himself ok (but injured from the collision. The second guy was bruised but ok. If the guy who had the PC hesitation had instead had total due to for example bridle misrouting, and AAD could be a life saver. Of course, there are other ways to avoid the situation, but that doesn't negate the example that an AAD could save a life on a crw jump.

Thanks all for the replies. Yes, I forgot about kill cones, will get one made up. Blue skies all, Hamish p.s. a bit of a crw gathering will be happening at the Full Moon Boogie at Nagambie (victoria, Australia) in late November in case anyone's heading to Oz a that time. Would be great to have some visitors! Summer is nearly here!

Hi Everyone, I jump a lightning 143 with non collapsing pc, the standard retracting (3 separate rings on the top skin) red cord bridle, tail pocket and mesh slider and have about 80 crw jumps of 270 total jumps. while packing I have noticed that the pc is often a bit tangled up on the bridle between the rings. I was previously advised that my bridle was a bit long and the pc was fluttering around on the top surface a bit, so I shortened it enough (about 15-20cm) for the pc to be pulled a little into the center ring of the retraction system. Before then, the tangling was a little worse. Does anyone have any advice on how to get rid of the pc tangles, can they be ignored? So far they have not caused any problems, and I'm not too worried about it, but thought I might as well ask. The pc is sitting pretty much flat on the top surface and not inflated (I was jumping another canopy while a friend jumped the 143 yesterday, so I could get a look at it), but I suppose during sashays or other manouvres it might be getting more mobile. Cheers, Hamish

I used a kayaking helmet during the Australian 36 way week. Sarge (who was on the 100 way record) was using and recommending a gath RV helmet with the full visor, on the basis that during a full wrap, fabric and lines might be held away from your face. He said this was indeed the case during a wrap on a training jump for the 36 way. I've since bought a gath RV but am not that keen on the minimal eva-type foam padding. I'm thinking of buying one of the d3o beanies to rip out the fancy foam and install it in the helmet. From what I remember, a significant number (but not a majority) of jumpers on the Australian 36 way were wearing no helmet. Cheers, Hamish

I carved a block of styrene foam to match the curve of the helmet I use for skydiving, and added a small plastic box to the front and mounted my Ricoh Caplio R5 in it. Here's one view of the setup: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/OCPss34C9cD52aOQ2FZTaQ At first I just set the camera on "interval", so it just takes a photo every 5 seconds, I was using it for some CRW jumps. http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/6nz79ynMK8lv5xISx6xoXw Good things: - 28mm lens on the camera - nothing to think about while jumping. - I built in a cutaway handle which disconnects the camera holding foam block from the helmet (it's held by four loops, a bit of cable threads through them, the purple knotted cord under the block is the cutaway.). - very light. Total system weight adds only 300gm to the helmet. - foam all around the camera so it poses no hazard to other jumpers on rel jumps. bad things: - actual image quality on this camer is poor. Low dynamic range and noise, typical of small point and shoot camera. - the 5 second intervals mean of course rather random results but some occasional nice shots for no mental load. Subsequently improved it by adding a blow switch which I built inside the foam block. I had to open up the camera to attach extra wires to the shutter switch, brought them out to a phone jack expoxied to the front of the camera. The phone jack connects to the blow switch. I used the blow-switch setup for all the photos in the Canungra paragliding gallery (see first link), with auto bracketing switched on, so the camera takes three shots (under expose 0.5 stops, normal exposure, over expose 0.5 stops) for each puff on the tube. Good things: the caplio R5 has quick shot to shot time. 3 shot burst is about 1.5 seconds. Bad things: as above, the basic camera's image quality is so so. But I get some nice shots with a very light setup. Could also run the camera in video mode, but I like stills so haven't done this yet, and there is no possibility of a tally light. Cheers, Hamish

There is a team out of Austria doing CRW on paragliders. Their name is the Renegades, and they are sponsored by Skywalk paragliders. Google them and you'll find them. They have been doing some pretty cool looking 3 way downplanes, which is quite tricky when you consider the aspect ratio of their wings is at least twice or even three times that of a Lightning. I think it would be worth replacing the center A lines with fatter line material than the standard (very thin) lines to get around the obvious line burn risks of paraglider micro lines. Since the Renegades are sponsored by a paraglider manufacturer, they are probably flying gear that is non standard with CRW-appropriate extra strengthening and fat lines where you need them. I've been flying paragliders (non motorised) for 18 years, and have never done CRW on them, but have started doing CRW on skydiving gear and would be interested to do some on the paraglider. But the problem is, you really want to have a cutaway reserve system to deal with a bad wrap, and such systems are very rare in paragliding circles. I guess it would be possible to use a standard skydiving harness-container and make up some risers with the appropriate 3 ring systems to use with the paraglider. Might want to modify the legstraps also for comfortable flying.

Apologies in advance if people think this belongs in the safety forum, but it's relevant to the discussion of the thread, and the reason why I asked the question in the first place: Regarding paragliding reserves and nasty landings, in the paragliding season 2006-2007 in Australia (ie. northern hemisphere winter) we had the world championships here, and with 150 or so pilots thermalling under the same cloud, there were numerous mid-airs (i.e. wraps). With that, and other incidents, we had about 12 reserve throws for the season in the country, all non-cutaway pulled-apex round canopies. Of those, one injury - a pilot landed under the reserve at the top of a 12 ft high road embankment and tumbled down, breaking her shoulder. Last year we had one injury under reserve - a compressed vertebrae, not sure how many throws there were, maybe 8 or so? So it has historically been about 10% injury rate under the rounds. For a worst-case (double mal) contingency, I think that's a worthwhile save rate. As far as snag points, I think that it should be possible to design a snag-free system, although an option I'm thinking of would make donning and doffing the rig a little more cumbersome. Cheers and thanks for the input everyone.

Thanks for the replies. There are some super compact paraglider reserve parachutes available these days which are possilbe to make with modern materials at about 1.5kg and very compact. I'm just getting into CRW and read about the accident on the 100 way and though that another chance might be nice to have in case of an unfixable wrap or a main-reserve entanglement.

Do any CRW jumpers use tertiary reserves these days, and if so, what sort of container and reserve?

I ordered a jump suit and they were less than 3 weeks getting it out the door from when I confirmed my measurements to them. Good service. They have a skype address which you can sometimes find them active on - look on the website. Cheers, Hamish