parachutist

well.. 40 jumps from now he will be eligible to become a tandem master... if 500 jumps means that he is able to take someone else's life into his own hands, then I believe it should also mean that he is able at this point to be taught how to fly a high performance canopy. He does need some lessons drawn out on a chalkboard, + some 1:1 under-canopy instruction. Devil's advocate mode off

Well that can't be permanent... I'd suggest working down the line... like borrowing / demoing a Xaos 135, then a 120, then after you feel comfortable with openings on those, go on to the 108 blue skies, soft grass =] Chris

Gary, In this video it is apparent that the pilot of this canopy is watching the ground at first, then looking up to watch the canopy. For a brief flash the pilot's view passes over the horizon. He should have been watching the horizon throughout this entire opening sequence. All the way from the point of reaching for PC... watching the horizon provides a great indicator of correct / incorrect body position and allows the pilot to correct any errors. When you're looking up at your parachute you have no accurate way to tell just how level you are with the ground. you see lots of canopy and sky all around it. My 1 chop so far was about jump #300... it was my 3rd jump on a new canopy & it was elliptical (I spun it up). I was trying to blame it on the pack job at first... then a few months later I was down in Daytona FL jumping and I met the author of the Pack Like a Pro Video, and I asked him what could have been going on that caused my spinning mal. He told me it was not the pack job: spinning mals such as this could only be packing related if you packed a full line twist or two into the pack job. He basically told me it's all about body position and he gave me some great advice: Watch the horizon, not the ground. More info he gave me: The smaller the canopy, the more attention it will demand during opening. This has me wondering: What size was your Stiletto and what size is the Xaos? Chris Warnock

yeah.. I just read your reply to this in the Swooping & Canopy Control Forum. It's interesting that we're talking about the very same canopy at a similar wing loading but have completely different impressions of it. :) I think your packing technique does have a lot to do with it: All my pack jobs are CRW style Chris

The VX's glide is very flat when you give it some brakes... it can definitely get you back from a long spot. The openings are pretty snappy, so if you want a soft opening I'd say the VX is definitely not for you. I haven't tried a Velocity so I have no experience with those yet Have you considered a Xaos-21? It has a relatively smooth opening and can glide very nicely. Chris

ditto. I bought a Square 1 gear bag about 4 years ago & it's been to several states with me... in my car, on airlines, strapped to the back of motorcycle. Lots of abuse but it holds up very well. Chris

Then again, if you can't stall your canopy now, adding more slack to your lines would probably not be a good idea. That would put more of the flare potential out of your reach =\ Chris

A few months ago I bought a new Xaos-27 and I was experiencing similar bucking (it was making a loud WHAP WHAP WHAP noise too). THe problem was as you guessed: brake lines were set too short. - So I lengthened them, went for a jump & still had the problem.. - lengthened them some more, went for a jump & noticed the bucking was not so extreme now... - lenthened them again (this time the brake toggles were as far down the lines as I could place them) and now I noticed that I only had the problem when I'd get pretty deep into risers - So now I wanted just a bit more length in my brake lines, but I was at the end of those lines. So I called Precision and they sent me a longer pair

A few years ago I took a week-long canopy control course in Florida. It was some great education and I'm very glad that I spent the week down there. Some of the jumpers who were giving seminars / coaching / etc. that week are Perris locals. I suggest taking the course and seeing what you think of it =] Chris

CReW is the best way to get this experience... ask around your local DZ's & you can probably find a CRW Dog who will be glad to teach you some basics of canopy control as well as provide hands-on experience with flying relative to other canopies. Developing your ability to judge such things requires lots & lots of jumps. You're right on schedule & it's good that you have such concerns... it means that you realize you have lots more to learn. =] Some people are happy with mediocre canopy control skills and they make no effort to improve on those. Yes, and the formula I was taught years ago: Expect turbulence to extend horizontally 20 times the height of the object causing the turbulence (tree, building, etc.) and I've found that formula to be quite accurate. So if a hangar is 15 feet tall and the wind is coming over the hangar toward you, you do not wish to land any closer than 300 ft to that hangar. envision such things when you're on final approach... scan the area in front of you for sources of turbulence. Sometimes you can't avoid turbulence cause you can't be so picky when landing off ocasionally, but it's good to be able to predict where the turbulence will be so that if you have the option to avoid it you can. And if you're ever coming to Atlanta send me a note & we can try & hook up for some canopy practice :) Chris

I like the way Lyle sets up one of these events down in Sebastian: announces a hit-&-chug over the intercom. This pretty much opens it up to anyone... HP Canopy pilots go & swoop, and others who want to particpate without swooping just go for an accuracy run on the beverage. Everybody else just has fun watching from the ground. Chris

That's how I've always felt. About 50% of my 800 jumps have been hop & pops, most from 12,500 or thereabouts. Reasons for deploying right out the door include: Learning a new canopy, doing CReW, practicing maneuvers up high, cross country flying, sightseeing, landing last so that I know there will be no other canopy traffic (this allows me to make whatever approach I wish on the landing area...)

Great photos Chris, I always like seeing a complete breakdown of impressive stuff. thanks!

My off-heading openings and line twists were solved (pretty much... I'll still have a 180 every now and then, but few & far between) after I read a PD article. It explains that you should not just let an opening happen to you: you control the opening. This article is written about the PD Velocity but the section at the bottom, "Additional notes on heading control during opening" applies to opening of any ram air canopy. Very good info: http://www.performancedesigns.com/docs/velocity.pdf Chris

I have approx 800 jumps total so far, so as of yet I have not put anywhere near 500 jumps onto 1 pair of risers. So far I have seen only minor wear & that's fray from the velcro toggles.

That loading is perfect for your experience level. At such a low wing loading, however, your surfing distance will be greatly affected by the amount of wind. Even a 2 mph change in wind speed will have a noticeable effect on the amount of surf you'll get. Aside from that: Your brakes toggles do exactly what they suggest: Besides flaring your canopy they slow it down. So the part you mentioned about planing out the canopy is pretty much correct... you want to give just enough *brake* to keep you off the ground. Any more will slow you down and decrease the length of your surf. So after you plane out, you'll start noticing that you surf a little, then start sinking toward the ground again... so keep feeding just enough brake toggle to continue to keep you off the ground. Then when you're out of brake or near your canopy's stall point (don't stall it though).. it's time to put feet down (or always PLF is you're uncertain about the safety about putting weight on legs.. though you shouldn't have much problem with this at 1.2 wing loading while you're not inducing any extra speed) Chris

That's the first I've heard of Vet Wrap weakening webbing. I just added some wrap to the rear risers of my freefall rig a few weeks ago, with nothing between the webbing and the wrap... is this really a problem? Chris

Hey Ramon =] I haven't had nearly enough opportunities to jump the 92 sq ft. Xaos-27. I was in your area a few weeks ago for the Ballunar Festival (doing CReW stuff). I wish I'd had more time to do other things in the Houston area while I was there, but my schedule was packed... I still want to try your swoop pond one of these days! My impression of the Xaos-27 so far: First, the brakes were marked *way* too short from the factory. I ended up mounting the toggles a full 6 inches below the factory markings... so the first few jumps I spent adjusting them to give enough slack. This canopy has a very shallow glide during full flight compared to the VX. I am still not sure whether I like that or not. Also the recovery arc is WAY shorter than that of the VX, which is taking some getting used to. It's more Stiletto-like... do a 90 front riser turn and let go of the riser... canopy comes out of the dive and planes out all by itself pretty quickly. Unlike the Stiletto, I can maintain a good bit of the speed achieved during the dive by getting heavily into both front risers. I do miss the VX's long dives, but this Xaos is going to be a good learning tool for aspects of swooping that I wasn't capable of learning with the VX, particularly rear riser approaches, transitioning to brakes for a longer swoop. The Xaos has a good bit more travel in the rear risers than the VX, seems like the Xaos is a little more forgiving in that department. Openings on this Xaos are a little softer than on the VX, but more squirrely... VX always seemed to open on heading no problem to me, the Xaos wants to turn. How are you liking that VX? blues, Chris

Judging from your experience that you described, I think trasitioning from a 150 Spectre to a 135 Stiletto is a conservative move that you can handle... should be no real threat to your safety as long as you are made aware of the differences between a square vs. elliptical canopy and as long as you pay attention to those differences while you are learning to fly a Stiletto. I believe that when you are learning to fly a Stiletto there will be one thing that may surprise you because you have very little or no experience with it: flying your openings. Square chutes open relatively on heading pretty much no matter how lazy you are about body positiong during deployment sequence. The stiletto, however, requires a great deal of attention to body position: A good practice is to look out at the horizon when deploying, not down at the earth. This allows you to see the horizon and keep the horizon level and stationary (not turning), which means that your body is level and stationary. Then after you deploy pilot chute and you feel the canopy inflating you'll be stood upright as canopy inflates. At this point you have a good bit of control over the rest of the canopy's opening sequence. It's either going to A) finish its inflation into a spin that you will have to correct or B) it's going to finish its inflation into an on-heading opening. After the canopy has stood you up, you want to keep the horizon level. So keep looking out. If your right side starts getting higher than left then put some weight over onto the right side to force your body to be level again (as it was explained to me.. if you feel the right side getting pulled a little higher than the left, "sit on" the right side & this will shift weight to that side). Same for left side if the left side gets high. continue doing this keeping everything level until your canopy is fully inflated and this will keep your canopy on heading (or very close). Flying the opening is the aspect of flying a Stiletto that took most of my attention when I first bought one a couple years ago. THe rest of flying a Stiletto is pretty straightforward and easy to understand I think. Open high, find the stall point, don't rush into landing using front risers: this canopy lands fantastic doing a straight-in approach. Ease into more aggressive maneuvers only after you feel that you know the canopy very well =] And don't just rush out to buy one, get a demo of course! Chris

Yeah she knows her stuff.. good choice, Sangiro Chris Warnock

Hi Mike... I'm definitely going to be there for some portion of the Lake Wales event... hopefully the whole week. Glad to see you're back online. Chris Warnock

Yeah someone came up with a way to use this security hole to your advantage... just cut this line & paste it into your IE web browser & it will delete the file that allows malicious users to delete stuff from your hard drive =] (if you haven't already installed SP1) hcp://system/DFS/uplddrvinfo.htm?file://C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\System\DFS\uplddrvinfo.htm So afterwards no more security hole. Full story here: http://24.78.2.184/helpcenter.htm Chris

I've done a bit of CRW with Lightnings & Prodigies (around 350 CRW jumps) ... and after receiving much training about what to do in case of emergency... I figured I'd try some 2-way high performance CRW with a friend: My VX + his Velocity. The 2-stack was very unstable and both parties had to fly in pretty deep brakes just to slow the thing down so that we could think as fast as the errors that were trying to occur. I docked my VX onto the FX.. and since the FX pilot was in pretty deep brakes, he could not use his hands to dock... he had to look down & hook his feet through my lines. At this point, my VX kept trying to fly past the Velocity that I was docked onto... so the front center of my canopy would crumple and my wings would go in front of his legs.. so I'd grab some *more* brakes to slow down more... but this was making me float up on the top guy. Having the Velocity on bottom would probably have helped this issue, but we were unable to accomplish such a dock on this jump. After this jump, with high speed errors trying to occur: neither one of us was rushing to try it again. I did receive complaints on the ground from the Velocity pilot about the amount of pressure he felt on his ankles when I docked, especially when we tried a 360 turn of the 2-stack (this 360 attemp was cut short early because of the amount of pressure it placed on his ankles). It was high pressure that was applied by two thin strips of Vectran... if something goes badly wrong in such a situation and thin lines get wrapped around appendages, and lots more pressure exerted on these points during a wrap: I really think body parts could be severed. Using high performance canopies to learn the basics of CRW would be a very bad idea. The Velocity pilot and I have both done a good bit of CRW with CRW canopies, so we were able to recognize potential errors that were trying to occur... and during this particular dive we corrected them before they became serious. However, we both also recognized the high potential for problems that we do not have the skill or experience to correct. If you learn CRW using big slow CRW canopies you will have a blast. It's a whole lot of new information to absorb. If you ignore the warnings against learning CRW using a high speed canopy that has tiny lines, you will very likely end up injuring yourself, or worse: a friend gets injured and you then have to deal with the conscience. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the issue... If you're ever in Atlanta area & want to try some CRW, contact me... we have several CRW canopies laying around here. =] Chris Warnock

Well I thought I had an answer about why there is actually more lift produced on windy days near the ground that on no-wind days... but then I did some research & found out that "ground effect" is not really the correct explanation. I believe that air pressure is greater near the ground on windy days because the air is flowing across a solid wall surface (the ground). Can anyone elaborate on this? I'd like to know a clear definition here too =] - Chris

>NOT PUTTING MYSELF IN THAT SITUATION AGAIN Aside from that outstanding point ... a good PLF is a very useful skill. You can turn some potentially serious injuries into a few minor bumps & scratches by spreading the impact and just rolling with it. So far my worst injury in this sport has been a sprained ankle & the reason for this sprain was: I tried to stand up a landing that I knew I should have rolled into. I had been "in the corner" after a swoop, then given too much brake toggle which pulled me out of the corner, then gave me some lift... and left me sailing foward 5 feet above the ground at 25+ mph with no flare left. I saw the bad landing coming and I should have reacted properly, but I tried to stand it up... *crunch*. Luckily I didn't break anything . A PLF would have left me healthy with a dusty rig and suit to clean off. - Chris