VectorBoy

Any wing can be stalled at any angle relative to the horizon and at airspeeds much higher than usual. Practice this at altitude, get screaming in a downward spiral to an airspeed so above your normal stall point. Grab your rear riser and pull down, see how little it takes and how much faster you are flying, play with this small transition point. Try it slow and try it abruptly. If this was your method to dig out of a bad swoop you will auger in one day. Some canopys don't like the dynamic stall so be careful even at altitude. The rear riser flare is mastery of the smooth technique.

Most canopys are somewhat tapered to fairly eliptical. Sabre 1 s and tri s are pretty darn square or really rectangular. But all of the newer designs are at least a little tapered even canopys for jumpers off of student status. The reason is aerodynamic efficiency. Most aircraft wings are tapered quite a bit, very few are an absolute rectangle. Paragliders have an almost perfect elliptical planform even the student models. The "radicalness" ( for lack of a better word ) of any given high perfarmance canopy or single purpose higher performance crossbraced canopy comes not just from its elliptical shape but from all of its other designs specs. Things like how its center of ballance is located via line lengths or its trim in neutral flight. Inlet shape etc, play an equally important role in how it will open, fly, turn, dive and flare. And the VERY important heavy wing loading that they typically fly at. Load an original sabre that high and you will see some performance, although thats the wrong way to go about it today. And like someone said above the highest performance canopys really aren't that elliptical. So to answer your question in a word its efficiency. The sabre 2 performs better than the orginal and it even flys faster than some canopys that have more taper and are considered higher performance. Many canopys perform different from one another. Try them all keep the one you like the best.

Does this have anything to do with Liz?

At WFFC after the last jumper exits Mike mullins king air he puts the thing in a head down attitude. I tried to follow in my S3 wings completely collapsed. I was stable but it wasn't long before even my collapsed wigs were beating themselves up pretty bad and he had doubled my earthbound speed. I opened and swooped away. It was amazing visually for a few seconds. He had a young lady as a ride along in the very back seat near the door and for once I was jealous of the folks still aboard the craft after jump run. There was some "G"s pulled there, at least initially.

So do share... what did you learn? Talking to Jari about it later I learned that you have to be in a perfect flight attitude immediatley. Wings open legs out on go and to get above the craft the angle at which you hit the relative wind is critical. You also have to be solid as you go through this turbulence and not have it change your heading or attitude. Since I was going from 0 to 200 I was trying to be slower and smoother on my exit. I waited a split second until after I passed the boundary layer to open up, I did ascend but only partially back to where I started. The Herc was really moving away from me by this time. According the Herc crew there is a really nice low pressure area that flows along the bottom of the tail. They claim to have seen many regular freefallers get up in this stream and get high although not above. Its in the center above and behind the ramp. I practiced flying solidly through the rough boundary layer on a few 145 mph Casa exits after this without success. Tailgates rock! Jari makes surfing the slipstream look and sound easy but give it a try and let us know how you do.

I so badly wanted to soar above the HERC at rantoul. I thought it was a sure thing in my S3 using the offered 200 MPH pass. It wasn't to be. Talking after with the HERC crew about where I needed to be on exit and to Jari about body position during exit if I want to get above the aircraft I think I have a better understanding. Should have done my research before my flight. That is a fantastic picture of human body flight!

Well then its decided I'll just have to fly YOUR camera for you ( as I offered at wffc ) for some shots of the RBS3 lets say at how does eloy sound? We did agree that Phree's footage wouldn't be available until this time next year as to viewing it I am not so sure. I've seen their technical staff and well ....I don't know.

What day did you and all those birds jump the HERC? That looks like a nice flock. Please tell me you guys opted for the 200 mph high speed pass? Wished I could have afforded to jump it more than once

Nice work! You need some pics of the Red bull S 3. Now whom do you suppose would have some of those?

[replyThe wrong way to handle this - set a price cap. Every station that opens will be bombarded by traffic and will run dry within an hour. Lines will be incredibly long, cars will stall there in line and block everyone else, and there will be cases of gas-line violence. Exactly the same thing happened during the 1970's gas shortage. You'd think we'd learn. And it happened in that movie with Mel Gibson "road warrior". I'm pretty sure I've seen some of those most violent looking characters......on the DZ!

didn't jump at all-partly because i was packing and partly because i was just too scared >> no excuse you still owe me a bird-man rodeo! Get you a rig and its on. got run over by a golf cart by one of those fat beer tent bitches (my foot is still sore) >> The only one that wasn't fat was that bead haired transexual looking one with all the piercings or was that just another ugly midget? kept my virginity>> Hey me too! good on us! had a fabulous time and met all sorts of fun people. >> I guess thats why we went after all, I mean besides getting a look at transexual midgets.

This is exactly what I do also, another thing that helps is loosening your chest strap all( not undoing it) the way. Look at pictures of luigi doing this in this months parachutist. There is no place for the slider to go but stay down. Your chest strap may not be this long but every little bit helps.

Ramon is that an H-mod your cobalt is sporting?

happy birthday girl! Too bad you didn't get to do the wingsuit rodeo at rantoul, but hey maybe Eloy will provide.

M and her friends Are easy to spot on the DZ and @ the party, Very noice, fun party chix that can rock in the sky too!

Yah how many fingers am I holding up?

15 minutes to perris, 40 minutes to elsinore, hour and a half to otay.

Did it unzip from the end to the middle or just blow open in the middle? It really shouldn't your suit is spanky clean and new. Oh BTW did you maintain proper WS airspace and flight patterns this time? Have fun, ya ya I know you are.

There are riggers and lofts that do mods for the vector2 for freeflying and for crew. RWS will not do them and will recommend you get a vector 3 or other modern gear. Some mods include riser tuck tabs although I've never seen them just people keeping the velcro fresh. There is a mod to make the reserve cover tabs longer, I've never seen it installed. There is a crew mod that some people use that tucks the reserve cover into a slot to keep it from becoming a suspension line snag point, never seen this personaly. Another mod is a bridle cover going from the last main flap to near the BOC much like the javelins. Most of these mods I've not seen only heard of them. Some require a great deal of rigger labor and cost. What I have seen is people who freefly and do crew in the old vector 2. They keep the rig in good shape with fresh velcro. Before I got my modern rig I would do anything in my V-2. I have kept it to do dedicated crew in. One proplem with my rig is that after a decade of people "slapping" the reserve cover closed it has split just where it contacts the pin. It is not stiff and readily comes open in a sit. Don't slap your gear around!

Chuck is that the same Howard that went on a few wingsuit jumps with us, hung out with the jumpshack raskals at WFFC? And now back to our regularly scheduled topic: I've got 200+ jumps on 5 different cobalts at wingloadings from 1:3 to 1:6. Even one of the offending canopies in the inventory spoken about above. They all opened as good as my old spectre, had more bottom end than the sabre 2 I demoed. will get me back from some very long spots. I use them for wingsuit jumps, night jumps etc. Have had line twists a few times that the canopy readily flys out of easily. But it is a fully elliptical and it must be deployed and flown accordingly. Non symetrical deployments will provide unwanted suprises. In defense of Dominic, I truely believe many of his customers do not like the cobalt. In attair's defense I believe the reasons are more personal than aerodynamic.

QuoteYou actually drank a beer during the ride back?? Haha...wow. I got strange looks when I developed a roll of film of exactly this type of high alti hop and pop canopy beverage. Its just good they didn't see the video of us doing crew , a beer in one hand and disposable camera in the other.

All of them.

Only a level 4 shucks, and I was hoeing for a level 42.

You got some footage too Lou, is it viewable? Are you gonna make a disk? I have yet to see it.

Andi which one of you guys are active or both? You are correct about the land tank drivers, they even like to t-bone other lanktankers. Just be glad you are not in the extreme northern teir. Then your paper would read driving your snowmobile without a helmet while over the limit is dumb, we have lost too many airmen to non helmeted drunkin mobileing this must stop, etc.