faulknerwn

By what we found on the packing mat floor this morning - not sure I'm ever going to be able to pack again! Ugh!!!

Big Ravens are different than MicroRavens.. MicroRavens have a very high stall point. Last time I jumped one (a 120) I was probably 150 out the door, 143ish without my main :-) I was trying to hold brakes to follow my stuff down. 3 times! during the canopy ride I accidently did a full-blown end-cell-touching collapse of the canopy. Anytime where the toggles were at my shoulders or below it just collapsed.. I'm only 5' 1 tall. So while slightly overloaded, I don't have monkey arms! I also had ~5000 jumps on small 7 cells at the time. Big Ravens and other styles of Ravens are fine, but MicroRavens suck and do stall at a stupidly high stall point (shoulders.) PLF your best...

I still docked! Just was a bit late :-) And last time I did CRW on my reserve I nearly got kicked off the dz (don't try this at home kiddos :-)

We've done both at my dz. Had a couple more mals pro-packing than flat-packing but nothing that could be attributed to the pack job per se.. Flat packing did seem to give consistantly harder openings however..

Something to remember too - while it may be really easy to reassure worried family members that you have this magic gadget which will save your life if you are still in freefall at 750 ft, they might truly believe you. And that could backfire on what you might wish to happen if you did die. All it does is cut a loop. What happens from there is anyone's guess. Family members should understand that it just gives you one last shot if all else fails but is not some sort of magic gizmo guaranteed to save your life..

Somewhere on these forums is the notice USPA sent out telling people to check how their reserve comes out of their rigs. Some reserves may come out slower than others (A search should find you the letter they sent out to everyone.) Also if you've cutaway, it may take you a while to get back up to fast enough airspeeds for the AAD to fire.. I know of one AAD fire that was due to panicking after a cutaway. There have been numerous people who forgot the "Two Tries 2 seconds rule" on a total mal.. They spend the rest of their life trying to get their main out forgetting about their reserve. Others have gone in trying to get stable after a cutaway (one reason why RSL's are a good thing.) Generally if its not suicide it is loss of altitude awareness...

They always perform spectacular customer service which is why I'd buy nothing but their products.. They rock!

Freestowed in a standard PD tail pocket

I solved them once. I had opened at altitude for a CRW jump so I had tons of time to work with. I had a knot high up on my right side causing me to turn. I stopped the turn by pulling opposite riser while I worked on the problem. Pumping brakes and risers did nothing until I noticed one slack line. On one of my right connector links (forget which one) I noticed one line was slack and not pulled taut like the rest. I reached up, grabbed the loose line and tugged on it and poof the problem was cleared...

Ditto! 1994 44th week... My collection of Racers on Vacation without me...

The retract system would be too much I think, but I've ordered a new set of CRW lines from Aerodyne and put them on my Tris. All Dacron. Works nice.

Beautiful photo!

Definitely if you have a pillow handle. I do lots of crw and wouldn't want an rsl for that nor a pillow handle! I'd rather just have a handle I could pull Actually the funny part is the time I had to use tge pillow reserve handle was actually on a total so a rsl or skyhook wouldn't have helped at all. Only an aad

My only pillow reserve handle use showed me that not only was it harder to find but it was noticably harder to pull. I switched that rig immediately to a metal handle. The last thing you want after a cutaway is a reserve handle that is hard to find/pull. I would much rather have an obvious than have to rely on an AAD (which may not work in time especially after a cutaway.)

I've got 18 total. 1 chest mount reserve handle (yeehaw), 1 soft pillow, probably a couple of regular D-rings, and the rest low-profile metal handles... The low profile is definitely my handle of choice.

I also suspect that unless she was spinning violently (which the description didn't sound like she was) she probably didn't remember to peel the velcro before pulling. That makes it SO much easier to pull and I suspect that if she didn't have enough presence of mind to look at her reserve handle when she couldn't pull it, she might not have had enough presence of mind to peel the cutaway. A long thorough review of procedures (either method) would be a good plan for her..

All of our rental Galaxy's (8 or so of them ) are consistently 500 feet behind digital ones on the way up and 500 feet behind on the way down. We've had them come back from the factory after repair and the behavior is identical. The Galaxy's all seem to match each other, though curiously enough my old Alti-2 seems to match the digital ones better than the Galaxys. I don't know why but its pretty consistent with that type of altimeter.

If you find a way let me know. We have a couple riggers here looking to extend their ratings but don't want to have to travel to the other side of the country to do it...

Great stuff! Crazy canopies!

The times I quoted were to 10k. Ah I miss the days of 13k!

It will depend on the engine too as well as the weather. We're doing .5-.6's right now, but we have one plane with a bigger engine we've done .3's and .4's in on a regular basis when its a bit cooler. (that's .4 of an hour etc)

After an incident of my own about 10 years ago (after a CRW wrap up high luckily) I always teach how to find the handles if you can't.. In my case I was in a wrap and I needed to chop even though I didn't have a hand on my reserve handle yet, it was imperative that I leave now! I was at 5-6k though so it was high. My harness had gotten twisted from the wrap and my reserve handle wasn't there! There I was in freefall, not finding my reserve handle, thinking nothing more about what an idiot I was gonna look like in Parachutist for chopping at 5k and never pulling reserve! (Swear to god that's what I was thinking.) But something that had never been taught to me but I figured out was to grab my 3-rings, and slide my hand down the harness until I found the handle. And it worked. I always make sure I teach that as well - I had never thought about what I would do if I couldn't find a handle. Improvising worked for me but its far better to have a plan in advance.. Its very much worthwhile teaching rookies a good method of locating their handles if they can't see them...

I've got a split slider on my CRW rig, but just pull down the slider on my freefall rigs. They work just as well for allowing the canopy to open up, but the split sliders are more of a pain to pack..

Locarno Switzerland. The Alps on 3 sides and a lake on the fourth. Gorgeous. Twas funny tho - I was from Texas which is pretty much flat... Went there on business so just rented gear (including a metric altimeter). They told me not to pull above 1 (~ 3k) for some reason that was lost in translation. Doing a solo, mountains start rushing by at 6k (2 on the altimeter.) With nothing to do but contemplate the ground rush, I never ever made it past 1.5 before pulling (i.e. 4500 feet). Mountains had been rushing by for what seemed like forever and humming it to 1! - I just couldn't do it :-)

I actually hate wearing helmets, but only do so because I always seem to have a camera I need to stow somewhere :-) Anytime I'm not needed to do video, I much prefer jumping helmetless, but the only people you tend to see that doing that these days are the old farts.. The helmets many people wear are not much actual use in protecting your head in a collision (Gath anyone?) but are fashionable.. I actually practice defensive flying - I'd much rather miss a point or go slow and not get clobbered than take the kick in the head. I've got 7000ish jumps and never been dizzy or anything of the sort in freefall..