riggerpaul

And my apology to you, too. I thought you said that you had confirmed it with the instructors. But you actually said you talked to the students. When I read the post a third time, I noticed my own error.

I agree with every bit of that, but before we tar and feather them, let me clairify something that I may have mis worded in my original post. There is no doubt what so ever that what I posted is what the participants took away from the course. However, most Instructors will agree that you can teach the same class over and over and at some point a whole class room of people will misunderstand the same point. I normally chalk it up to them asking each other questions when the teacher is out. anyway, point is I did not hear this info being taught, I just know what the class took home in their head. Now you are confusing me. In your original post, you said you confirmed with them their intent to say that getting big for a tail wind would help come back from the long spot. Did they say that or didn't they?

To me that sounds dangerous in itself. Tracking contests are conducted completely differently from your common group tracking dives. Each person is a solo. The next person isn't out of the airplane until separation is adequate. Of course, you have to have people who can track in a straight line. Anyway, it isn't just a big group starting all together and seeing who goes the farthest.

Sure, that can happen. But, would it really have hurt him to do whatever they had told him in the first place? If so, in what way would it have hurt him? He'd have taken a few more jumps to get where he is? Is that really so bad? It is great that luck shined on him and he never hurt himself, but from the point of view of the dz that was not happy with him, at least he wasn't going to biff on their turf. Apparently he scared them enough that they said something. That means they were worried that they would have to watch him kill himself at some point. Who wants to watch that? Sure, they just let the possible problem go somewhere else, but from their point of view, that is success. They don't have to watch and worry. If he gets a lot of pleasure out of saying "I told you so", well, fine. He can do that. But his individual success (or, if you prefer, his lack of failure) is really no proof that what they said was wrong.

The seasoned CP-guys have already developed the eye-based skills, and are now working at the extremes of the sport. For them the difference of a few feet can be significant, spelling the difference between a successful swoop and a vert or an accident. The novice has yet to develop the eye-based skills, and developing those skills should be a primary goal. The difference of a few feet of altitude should not be critical at this stage of the game. Use the altimeter to get an idea of the situation while you train your eyes and brain to understand what they are seeing. While pinpoint accuracy in touchdown is a longer term goal, it is not essential at the start. A few feet high or low will have an effect on how long or short you might land, but you should still be able to land in a general area. Wind conditions will, to a great extent, be the dominant factor to determine your accuracy in the long run, and the exact altitude of your turns will be less important than the horizontal positioning of your pattern points. Choosing those points correctly is what you must learn to do, and while the altimeter can help you determine if you did what you planned to do, it does not really create the success - it only helps to verify it. Using an altimeter to assist to develop skills is fine. Depending on an altimeter to substitute for those skills is not so fine. This is a lot like other discussions revolving around the issue of undue dependence on certain bits of our gear. Taking advantage of the gear is fine; becoming unduly dependent upon it is not so fine.

Well that may be true. New bifocals certainly made a difference for a few landings. So, the really smart swooper would say, "New contacts - things are going to look different - maybe I'll hold off swooping until I am comfortable with the change."

Sorry to quote the whole thing. Now let's change things a bit. What do you do when your landing area is not the dropzone? You had a bad spot, and you are landing out, and the terrain and elevation are different from the main landing area. You need to be able to rely on different skills to handle this situation. And the skills you need are the ones that let you land with the input from your eyes alone. Of course, you need different sorts of input for different situation. If you plan to swoop, you need different input, or at least a different accuracy or something like that, than if you are just doing a standard pattern into the main landing area. But if you are doing demos into different places, or if you are landing out and the elevation is different, you cannot rely on anything but your eyes. You couldn't zero your fancy audible or digital altimeter for the place you are actually going to land. So those devices are useless. Or worse, they will give you incorrect information for your actual scenario and lead you to make incorrect decisions. When it comes right down to it, you need to be able to rely on your eyes to get you down safely.

The tandem instructor's technique of more or less flaring at 50 or so feet, then letting the canopy surge and using the surge to improve the bottom end flair is not the same as a braked approach that should be used if you find yourself rather low and must get turned around. The classic braked approach does not involve letting the canopy surge. The classic braked approach is slowing the canopy down to reduce the sink rate and altitude loss in turns to maximize the time you have to get the canopy turned for landing. The classic braked approach keeps the canopy directly above you for the whole thing. There is no surging, and there is a minimum of pendulum action during the turns. At the end of the classic braked approach, you might have very little energy left for a strong flare, and you should be ready to PLF. That surge maneuver is for experienced pilots only. The problem is that the timing is critical. You have only a small window of opportunity to do it right, and if you do it wrong, you could end up surging into the ground.

have you seen anything else on a more or less modern container!? Yeah, all the Wings containers seem to have the line outside of the bridle..., and I thought maybe some of the older Mirages but I could be mistaken? You must be talking about the short section of the kill line that is inside the deployment bag. I think you'll find that the fully enclosed kill line is the exception. Most kill line pilot chutes have some kill line exposed inside the d-bag.

Thanks for contacting SSK on this. Do you think you could get Cliff to tell us if the unit was expected to fire, and if it did or did not? The report from the experienced jumper essentially says it was expected to fire, and did not. I would hope that Cliff would be able to confirm or deny that particular point.

Thanks. That's about what I expected. I notice the manual shows a conventional brake line, as opposed to the flat tubular one you have. I wonder if your tubular brakes lines will make any difference.

Not if you are already married to the idea of one particular rig over another.

So how do you set the brakes? I don't have the manual you are looking at. Are there pictures? Drawings? Can you post them?

The typical main pilot chute is generally constructed of two flat circles of material. The top circle is a fully woven fabric, the bottom is mesh. A flat circular parachute of this size does not have much shape to it, and will catch very little air. So there are "apex tapes" inside the pilot chute that create the shape needed to inflate and maximize drag. If you look at an inflated pilot chute, it is not a round ball (like a tandem drogue), but it is actually much more triangular. The mesh forms a conical shape, and the top fabric has a rounded shape with the center pulled down. The apex tapes are what pulls the center down. You will find that the apex tapes pull the center down to about the same distance from the base of the pilot chute as to the rim where the two circles of fabric are sewn together. Another way to describe the shape of the top skin of the pilot chute would be like half a bagel, but without the hole in the center. No matter how you like to describe it, the apex tapes are essential to the function of the pilot chute.

You said you have test jumped many canopies like this one. What canopies were those? When was this particular canopy actually made? A substantial number of my early jumps were made on Django Pegasus, Glide Path Fury, and Paraflight Cruiselite canopies in mid to late 80s. (Django became Glide Path became Flight Concepts.) These are all 7 cell "F111" fabric canopies. Compare them to any 7 cell ZP canopy and they will likely come up short. So I wonder what you have jumped and if it is really as like this canopy as you might think.

A CF lineset will have the center A & B lines direct, without cascades, from the risers to the canopy. Sometimes the outermost A & B lines are also direct. Sometimes these lines will be of a heavier material and they may be colored for easy identification. There are no particular issues with packing just because of a CF lineset. There is no particular issue with taking the canopy to terminal just because it has a CF lineset. My Spectre with Dacron CF lines is a joy at terminal. There can be CF canopies that are much more specific to serious CF, and they may have issues with terminal openings. But these canopies would have other special equipment like mesh sliders and/or pilot chute retract systems and/or tail pockets for stowing lines for bag-less deployments. You didn't say what canopy it is, or if it had any more exotic CF modifications. But, if it is a regular Spectre, for example, that is simply sporting a CF lineset, you should have no particular reason not to buy and use this setup. Always have a used canopy evaluated by your rigger before purchase.

Just to be clear, I don't care which way the decision is made. Count the jumps or don't, either is fine. What I want is for the rules to reflect the current position on the question. As they stand now, they do not. That's a problem, because it is nuts to think that someone has to look at old BOD rulings to figure out the club rules. The SIM should have changed when the BOD made the ruling. Then there would be no question now.

I think I made it very clear, obviously not for you. It is not happening with any frequency that anyone with any intelligence could point a finger and say "this is because people in Europe have bad tracking skills". The last two incidents are just coincidences not a reoccurring theme. When was the last time this happened for each country? How often does this happen world wide? You can usually find a few people with poor tracking skills at just about any DZ, whether it's in Italy, the UK or North Carolina. Actually, there really is room for 2 questions here. First, is this a coincidence? Yes, I think it is. I certainly agree with you on this. But a second question can still be asked without saying this is anything but a coincidence. The second question is "Are there different techniques taught/used elsewhere?" Or, if you prefer, "Is tracking and separation taught the same way somewhere else as it is here?" Even though the incidents are coincidental, it might still be good to understand if things are done differently when you go somewhere else. If the answer is "No, they teach and do things the same as we do", then fine, let's drop it. But if things are done differently somewhere else, I'd like to hear about it.

can you show us a photo of what the deployment brake setting provisions are? Is there some sort of cat eye somewhere out of frame? I used gear where a daisy chain was used to secure the deployment brake setting, but we still had a cat eye.

Am I the only person who got a PM like this?

FYI the SIM sections and text refer to the 2009-2010 SIM. This is the most current SIM at the time I am writing. It seems to me that the question comes down to the notions of "applicability" and "compliance". Though I will accept the ruling by the BOD, I don't agree that it is in concert with what the SIM says. The way I see it, the question of "applicability" determines whether non-compliance is considered an actionable violation according to the bylaws of the organization. That is, since SIM 2.1.A.1 says the rules do not apply to military jumps, conduct that violates a BSR during a military jump will not be an actionable offense. That does not say that all military jump are automatically considered to be in compliance with the BSRs. It only says that we don't care about military jumps that fail to comply. SIM 3.1.B.4 stills says that only jumps, even military ones, that comply with the BSRs will be accepted. If 2.1.A.1 meant that military jumps are automatically in compliance, we would not need 3.1.B.4 to tell us which military jumps can be counted. So, as I see it, the very presence of 3.1.B.4 is a clear indication that not all military jumps are to be counted. If the BOD really means what they said in the meeting whose minutes Mark Baur mentioned, they need to fix or remove 3.1.B.4 from the SIM.

Please tell us, how old is your older javelin?

So, I got this PM from a "sarasmiles23" asking me to sign a petition to save someone on death row somewhere. New user account, just registered. No information in profile. I think this is an abuse of dz.com. Please take appropriate action. Thanks! -paul

That's funny, I've got about 400 freefly jumps and a total of 1500 jumps on my 1994 Javelin and I've never had a riser cover or flap (main or reserve) open. Each case is different I suppose, just trying to point out that the DOM isn't everything. What do you do about the non-tuck reserve cover flap? You must be doing something to keep it closed in a sit, no? Bridle protection isn't particularly good either. While DOM isn't everything, there have been a lot of improvements to the rig since mine was built. I don't think those improvements were completely unnecessary.

Please give us some more to go on. Your profile says you have a Mirage G4. How old is your "older Javelin"? The Packing Data Card should include the Date Of Manufacture information. Depending on how old it really is, it might not be one of the more freefly friendly systems. For instance, I'd never suggest freeflying my 1994 Javelin.