faulknerwn

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Everything posted by faulknerwn

  1. faulknerwn
    I don't know anything about these harnesses, but I know what fixed the SS slipping on my leg straps on my sport rig was putting a small piece of gaffer's tape on the middle piece. That provided enough friction it never slipped again... W
  2. faulknerwn
    Definitely low cut. I know that wearing removable shoes has saved more than one cutaway on jumps I've been on since the lines often slide right off once the shoe is gone... W
  3. faulknerwn
    Dozens! For a while I only lost right shoes - at one point I had like 6 lefts and 1 right.. Then Cheryl tried to send me 2 shoes for Xmas, but got confused about which I needed and sent me 2 more lefts :-) Then later that year at the freefall convention, she brought the right mates to the shoes she had sent earlier. Course at the convention I then lost only lefts! Course the last time I lost shoes was in a downplane and the guy took em BOTH! I could barely land I was laughing so hard...
  4. faulknerwn
    I look at big, bulky guys like myself having to wear huge wings to stay with tandems and really working above that four way, then i look at the girls running around the dz and think, wow, they actually have the perfect build for camera. I'd love to be at your dz! We seem to all have frigging big-boy tandem masters and big-boy tandem students - I'm hoping I can only have to wear 10-14 lbs of lead to stay down! I'm REALLY REALLY confident I'll never need a wing suit here to video tandems!
  5. faulknerwn
    I had Lasik - drove 4 hours to a conference the next day. Took a month off but that was easy because it was winter and we had awful weather anyway :-) I LOVE my Lasik. I went from blind as a bat (couldn't even read my alarm clock at night or the big E on the chart to 20/20 vision.) Don't rush back to jumping but I've known a bunch of skydivers with Lasik and they all loved it... W
  6. faulknerwn
    Its funny - I packed a 1986 Raven 1 this week with Kevlar lines. As a new kid on the block as far as rigging goes - that gave me the creeps! Course I also packed a Swift 5-cell reserve with frigging dang funky brake lines this week as well! Is it just me or do we get all the old stuff in Texas? W
  7. faulknerwn
    I'm gonna have some soon I hope! Any ideas for CRW shirts are welcome since I'm running my own gear store these days :-) W
  8. faulknerwn
    2 people went out on reserve, everyone else went out mains. AADs weren't an issue as the plane never got to 1500 feet so the Cypreses wouldn't have activated anyway... W
  9. faulknerwn
    You're gonna pass right by my dz - Skydive Temple just north of Austin TX off of I-35. Stop by for a visit! W
  10. faulknerwn
    I've used mine a couple of times on friends tangled-up CRW retract system bridles. It eased the tension and saved em a cutaway.. W
  11. faulknerwn
    I once exited an Otter at 1200 feet because of an engine problem. The pilot could maintain altitude but didn't want to land with a full load. He turned the green light on early on the downwind jump run because he thought people would be low to exit. We all landed off :-) What scared me though is how few of the people - many with hundreds of jumps - knew how to do a head-high stable h&p. As a CRWdog I didn't blink, but I saw some interesting unstable deployments. As far as me - a freefall rig is different - but I wouldn't even blink an eye at dumping my CRW main at 500 feet...
  12. faulknerwn
    I think just like the other thread - the bridle went down the left side of the pin instead of the right. We think when the pc was thrown that it caused the pin to gp through. W
  13. faulknerwn
    Its the Triathalon CRW bridle. The part attached to the canopy is dacron, the rest is Spectra. W
  14. faulknerwn
    One of the guys here had an interesting malfunction here last weekend. He has a hybrid Triathalon but took it on a freefall jump this load. He experienced a pilot chute in tow, and on the ground, the pictures show what we discovered. Somehow, when the pin rotated up after he threw the pc, it pierced the bridle and locked it close.. The pictures are a tad blurry, but you can see the pin extending out the other side. What's also interesting is that the closing loop was quite tight - the grommits were lined up before the jump. The loop stretched considerably.. Just an interesting fyi - we think running the bridle down the left side instead of the right side of the pin was a contributing factor here.. W
  15. faulknerwn
    I prefer the small metal ones. The long ones are way too awkward to mount on a chest strap for freefall, and for someone small like me, pretty awkward to mount anywhere even for CRW. I always carry a metal hook knife (never plastic) on all jumps.. W
  16. faulknerwn
    I once had a tension knot on my Lightning 113 CRW main. Since I opened at 12k I had plenty of time to play with it. What I finally noticed after a few thousand feet was that one of the lines on my links was slack. So I reached up and pulled on the slack line, and poof, it cleared itself. I had done lots of stalls and such without luck before I noticed this... W
  17. faulknerwn
    Yeah I want a guy who's taller than me. But I'm only 5'1 so it leaves me lots of options! W
  18. faulknerwn
    Why? Because when soft links fail (and they have failed) its a catostrophic failure and a definite malfunction. Metal links may malfunction like this but still hold the lines the vast majority of the time... You could not pay me any amount of money to put soft links on my reserve.. I've had soft links on and off on mains for years but the catastrophic failure mode just scares me too much for reserves..
  19. faulknerwn
    Its possible but I would get the factory to do it... Triathalons fly very well with Lightnings on casual CRW. And I recommend them to tons of people who can't commit to having a whole separate CRW rig... A hybrid Triathalon that you can take to terminal is a great compromise..
  20. faulknerwn
    He's pretty anal retentive about such things and said his closing loop was really tight. I can't vouch for the pin being fully seated tho - I didn't check his pin beforehand...
  21. faulknerwn
    I have a little over 4000 jumps - 6 rigs - some pullout some throwout. Most rigs I got used so I'm not particularly motivated to convert one system to the other so I just left on what it came with. I've got about 2000 jumps on each system.. I definitely think the pullout is a safer system. If I bought a new rig I'd put one on it. Just last weekend on an RW load, we had a guy with a relatively new Javelin, get his main pin bumped loose during a funnel on exit. As I'm diving to the formation, I see his whole main container wide open. It turned out ok once we got his attention to pull but he easily could have had a nasty horseshoe that would have been just a premature deployment on a pullout. W
  22. faulknerwn
    I'm not even sure of the situation in question - but unless his hands were tied up - he could have saved himself by pulling a reserve - just like the vast majority of Cypres fires. A Cypres will save you from your own stupidity - but what worries me more on the original post is how much he will change his jumping for the weekend without the Cypres - I have nothing against the Cypres - I think that AADs are a great inventions - but I truly think if you won't do the jump without the Cypres - you're not ready to be doing it with it... W
  23. faulknerwn
    Our dropzone flat-packs all tandem and student mains....
  24. faulknerwn
    Basically I run a gear store in Texas, and I had a request from someone with a hundred jumps this weekend for a basic RW video. He's not on a team or anything else, he just wants something to watch that explains basic stuff. I know there used to be Kinesthesia - not sure if that's still around or current.. Not sure if there's anything out there about the Mantis position..
  25. faulknerwn
    Are there any RW instructional videos out there? I'm looking for something which teaches good RW techniques - not necessarily hard-core team stuff.. W