danielcroft

I thought safety was 3rd? (Joking - I enjoy your segment Brian)

I don't think it was mentioned earlier but couldn't the FlySight be configured to give this kind of feedback? The pitch and rate of beeps could give speed and decent and it would be constantly beeping so you'd know if it'd failed. Just a thought.

Thanks for posting, glad you're ok. I was at the Invasion, didn't see this happen, when was it?

When I was looking to buy an elliptical canopy, I was told by several experienced jumpers to keep an eye out for where an XF2 was made for the reasons that EppyNephrine mentioned. Issues could range from innocuous to kinda sketchy from what I was told.

That's what's generally taught to students so that they don't risk stalling one side of their wing by being deep in brakes and then trying a flat turn by pulling one toggle past stall point. At least that's how I understand it.

Nice work on a successful cutaway, there are a lot of things that can cause a toggle fire but if you're using a rig for the first time, it's worth checking to see if the toggle keepers are actually in good shape and that the toggle is held tightly in the keeper. You did way better than I did on your cutaway, well, I did a standup landing. Mine was jump 12. As far as stowing toggles yourself, I always do it, mostly for the health of my lines - so that they don't get twisted up during the day. I also make sure my slider and pilot chute are cocked and ready to roll. Personally, I think packers should do that but I think that it's something I should be well and truly aware of. It also gives you the opportunity to check your gear while you're doing it. I don't usually get packers though so it's kinda moot.

Especially when the license requires nothing (well, except those two night jumps...).

-------------------- Hi Guys, I just wanted to drop you all an email to thank you for listening to concerns raised by myself and other skydivers regarding the "US Demo Team". It's a good thing that the governing body who represents all skydivers takes the time to listen to our concerns and act on them appropriately. I appreciate the decision being communicated and explained. I would also suggest that some of the ideas being put forward for the US Demo Team could be transferred to existing demo teams who could potentially assist. I understand that Mr. Hayhurst had some pretty good ideas, how about the USPA work with existing teams with these ideas? I hope that this will mark the beginning of a new chapter of membership involvement in USPA BOD decision making. Perhaps a more flexible polling system on the USPA website might also allow for the membership to vote on simple matters and may also provide a way to make suggestions. Thanks again, Daniel Croft D-31103

I'm impressed at everyone's staying power here but it's getting pretty ridiculous. Benefits of a night jump: - Requires more focus and training to complete successfully - that's a good thing - It's really fun - It's an interesting challenge that allows people to break the mold and learn something - Learn more about FAA requirements as they intersect with skydiving Advantages of having said night jumps associated with attaining a D license (but any license): - All of the above but allows someone who has achieved the highest regular license to understand possibilities - Makes people work at getting their D, otherwise it's just a checkbox next to "has 500 jumps/6 hours air time" Disadvantages: - No clearly useful defined criteria for success except "hey, you didn't die" - Other than "expert" designation, no clear reason it's associated with a D license and not any other (I'd guess it's safer to put this requirement on a D than say a B license because you'd hope someone would have developed some judgement by then) - Potential for injury Several people in this thread who've done night jumps have stated very clearly that they've been on regular loads where, by the time they were given the go ahead to jump, they were left with the choice to make a night jump (possibly without meeting FAA lighting requirements) or land with a plane that they feel is more risky. They tell you that it's the same but you disagree and see that as a reason to dismiss that outright I'm not sure why. You don't have to get a D license if you don't want to. If you do want a D then you can get a waiver if you don't want to do the night jumps for safety reasons. To me there seems to be a lot of reasons why people feel that night jumps being a requirement for the D license is useful. The contention against is that night jumps have no value and that seems to be the core of the issue. I think they have value, I've done several including New Years jumps into ZHills a couple of years ago. Excellent experience. Going through the training, the pre sunset/twilight training jump was actually useful and taught me things. You can say you don't think it's useful but just outright denying other people's opinions but holding your own to be immutable is pretty myopic.

I'm with Ron on this one, I'd also like the required jump numbers to go up for all licenses. I have a coach rating and a pro rating. I've competed in 4 way and FF events locally at my DZ (not saying that counts mind) but I'd be happy to meet a higher standard in order to get the "new D". I'm not much for the competition side of things (I can be an ugly competitor ) but as long as there were some skill requirements that non-competition people could meet to satisfy the requirements then I'm all for it. Actually, I'm all for it anyway, screw me if I can't meet the requirements. Another alternative that I have a feeling won't be popular would be to add another license after D with much stricter and more difficult skills requirements and leave the other licenses as they are. That way we can keep all the lame requirements for the existing licenses and say the "E" license would require some serious commitment to get and genuinely be an expression of skill.

Let's make all our licenses just based on jump numbers, that way anyone can get one. They're mostly pointless now anyway, we just keep stripping away anything that people don't like and wonder why there are AFF/Is who tie shit to student's rigs, why we have people who can't spot (I'm one of them, I spot with a GPS telling me it's ok), why we have skydivers of all levels flying themselves into the ground at a rate that would suggest it's more than just human error factor. Our canopies are faster, our free fall is faster, our planes are bigger, everything has taken a step forward and meanwhile our training keeps going backwards. People don't respect their elders in this sport because they haven't earned what the experienced jumpers had to, they were given it. It's really pathetic that so much angst goes into something like night jumps in the D. You're going for a damn D license, if you can't see at night get a waiver, if you can, get some balls.

Target the lowest common denominator, that way everyone gets a prize!

Both. I have copies on my desktop of all my tunes. On my work laptop, I access my tunes over the net and don't have to download them. As far as DRM goes, they're all DRM free, however, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of songs left that haven't had the DRM removed, I know I still have some. It really depends when the work the licensing out.

Absolutely but, failing some kind of eye condition that has been mentioned before, I think people should do them.

The vast majority of the music I have is legal, I have a bunch of music that I ripped off CDs which isn't in iTunes. I feel like it works pretty well in that it pulled everything up that it didn't have and gave me back better quality version of what it did. I've noticed a couple of issues with iCloud (the two are one and the same) in that it thinks I have duplicates and wants me to remove them but then tells me that they're missing from my library. There are some things it won't take up like movies, digital booklets and audio CDs btw. I think the main benefit of Match is that you can make most of your library legal and if you don't re-up, your library is still legal so if you have a bunch of music you don't technically own, it's a great deal and a smart thing to do. I didn't but still think it was worthwhile as now I can stream my library from the cloud to my work computer. So, for me, yes, I think it's worth it. Not sure I'll keep it but for now I'm happy with it.

Yep, I got it but only after I read the fine print saying that even after you stop paying for the service, you still get to keep the files you have.

Personally, i think that licenses should be an expression of merit and not seniority. Maybe a combination of the two but right now there's way to much emphasis on jump numbers and not enough emphasis on skill. If they turned my D into a C and there was a really serious test of skill to get the D, I'd be down for it.

How many of those with 1k+ jumps downsized too quickly as a 25-X00 jump wonder and never learned the skills required which resulted in their incident? The point of WL limits is to help protect newer jumpers from canopies that are inappropriate, to help change the culture in the sport (it's not changing itself apparently) and to help people have some constraints to help the learn over time. To follow up on what Baksteen said: This is important for me, we definitely don't see someone watching every opening to make sure someone isn't pulling low but when someone pulls really low, they will get a reputation and instructors, DZOs, S&TAs will then have the option to do something with the backing of a BSR. Same goes for WLL, if you're 0.03 over the limit, who cares, unless you're doing stupid crap. If you strap on loads of weight, they'll hear about it and kick your ass. If you gain weight after your birthday and go over the limit for a couple of weeks, they should have the discretion to do something or not but at least they'll have the weight of a BSR to ground people who are being idiots.

You forgot to mention buying booth space, how can you possibly be any good at something if you don't have booth space?

I don't think that'd make any difference in this case. It didn't make any difference to Sangi did it? I think the saddest thing about this incident is that there was a lot of calculation that went into where Denis pulled and the only mistake was that he sniveled through AAD firing height a little too fast. He's just playing everyone by saying "I learned to pull higher". He kinda did but not the way we're all assuming. It's pretty obvious that we all learn about hard decks as students and minimum pull altitudes "pull higher" when you are sailing through 2k glancing at your altimeter isn't really a case of "I lost altitude awareness". I'd love to say you guys got through to him but he's just another Sangi waiting to go splat.

Thanks for your response. So you're saying that all BSRs are the responsibility of the DZO to enforce? If part of my 1st jump and A license training is wing loading limits and I buy a canopy outside those limits, at what point does that become the responsibility of the DZO? Where in the BSRs does it say that the DZO is responsible? These aren't rhetorical questions. On the front of taking away responsibility leading to carelessness, I can see that, I personally think that's the case but it's a trade off isn't it? We already separated landing areas which means that people are way less engaged (IMO) and pay less attention. I guess I feel that introducing canopy WL limits is a way to tell people that canopy is important. As we introduce more guidelines around canopy (making it part of the licenses, etc.) that could achieve the same results but I personally think that WLL are an example of good regulation and so I don't object to it. People will still have choice, they'll still be able to buy something that suits them but will just be limited on the size (or whatever is decided) rather than (like motorcycles) being able to go buy whatever they want. I think the example of other countries implementing limitations successfully should show us that we actually don't have much of a leg to stand on. I think if our concerns are around liability, I feel that the lack of pointers on WL could be construed as not giving newer jumpers information that is so clearly important to them and their decision making process. How long before someone sues because their relative wasn't told that their canopy choice wasn't safe?

This discussion is interesting even if only for a look into the "find reasons why not" mindset. This comes up time and time again (even for my relatively few years in the sport) and every time there's the "oh, don't restrict me" and "what about all these edge cases" talk. None of which actually offer any value but instead stifle constructive dialog. Dave said it upthread a ways, what's the harm in having WL restrictions? No one has said anything to refute that question (or really answer it at all) in this thread (or any of the many others that I've read). The reason is that there is no harm. Will it solve all our problems? No, of course not. Are we aiming to solve them all? Sure, that's a nice ideal but realistically, it's never going to happen. Any rule set down by the USPA will just be like any other BSR that the USPA sets. The majority of people will follow them most of the time and some people will circumvent them because they choose to. We're not going to be able to build a usable system of loading restrictions *ever* if we keep chasing people who deliberately ignore them. That line of discussion would probably be better off in a psychology class rather than here. In my opinion the answer is to take our best bet and apply it as a BSR. New students will be expected to adhere to it. People who already own canopies will be grandfathered in, i.e. nothing has changed for them. The best bet that's been tossed around most frequently that I've seen is Brian Germain's list. Let's just make that a BSR and we can tweak it as we notice issues. I'd happily go through any extra canopy requirements for my license if that's what was asked of me. I'd also happily participate in helping newer jumpers and talking to newer jumpers about what is and what isn't appropriate. I feel like all us A Type personalities object to restrictions but for the majority of the people here, there'd be no change at all and no restrictions. Again, as Dave said, it would change the culture (like the minimum pull altitude BSRs) over a very short period of time.

You're welcome, hope some of that is helpful.

There are much more qualified people on this forum than me to give tips but if you're asking me then I can tell you what I do when I get a new canopy to work out the flare. I think the people tend to learn muscle memory from whatever they're used to flying. When they practice flare up high, it probably feels reasonably good but in reality, when landing, the flare they've learnt isn't going to work or will need to be perfectly timed to actually make it happen. Generally speaking, I've heard two methods for learning a flare up high. One is to feel the seat of the pants, when you start feeling Gs. The other is to watch the leading edge of the canopy as you flare and see when it comes back to you (i.e. you're swinging under the canopy and level out). I use #2. Firstly, check where your tail deflects when you pull your brakes, that means clearing your airspace and then pulling down both toggles until you see deflection or, you can see that the control lines become (mostly) straight. You should have your hands there when just before you flare. This will be different for different canopies and will change when you have your brake lines adjusted. Once you've figured out where your deflection point is, clear your airspace again and look where the leading edge of your canopy is in relation to you. It should be ahead of you a little in full flight. Remember that when a canopy recovers from input, that recovery takes time, I've been told up to 10 seconds. I've personally found that PD canopies I've flown (Spectre included) like to have a 2 stage flare (where as Icarus canopies seem to work better for me with a single stage flare - YMMV) so I'll generally then do a quicker, shorter first stage to around my ears on the Spectre (IIRC) and then I have the rest of the toggle stroke, which is a lot for the Spectre, to actually flare and then slow down and stop the canopy. For me, the first stage of a 2 stage flare is used to level the canopy out, that's why I like to watch the nose of the canopy rather than "feel it" (but again, that's just IMO). So, once you've practiced this up high, checking for stall point of course and continually clearing your airspace, you need to actually land your canopy. Unfortunately, all the practice flares in the world won't fully prepare you to land your canopy. The practice flares are just to give you a feel for the basics and and ballpark inputs to give you the results you're looking for. Once you get on to final, you're going to then have to do all the hard stuff which is estimating the initial flare point based on speed and glide. You're better off flaring higher than lower obviously because you can hold the initial flare and the power out the rest if you need to. Outside video would be really helpful if you're really having issues, i.e. not standing it up. If you are standing it up but feel that you're rushing, or going too early, then you can adjust based on that. You can also have someone watch and tell you what's happening. Hope this helps, maybe some of the more experienced people can correct this where it's not right.