faulknerwn

Its not set in stone, and we don't know the exact dates yet, but it will probably be in Perris Valley, California.

Ah. I have no idea about Europe. Several of us are planning a Women's Record of a 36 way in 2005. W

For a vertical formation, I believe it is 16 set in the states in the early 90's. For a diamond, its a 25-way set in Perris Valley in 1997.

It does now. Who do I put to contact for more info? Kevin? W

Sounds good. Go to this URL for a CRW calendar of events. http://crw.boxofclue.com/skydive/calendar.html Wen

One thing in addition - Spectres and Triathalons work very well for doing CRW. There are usually a lot more of those at the drop zone, and they're very good for the basics. To go to camps and do big-ways, you'd want to get a Lightning, but 4-stacks at the drop zone can easily be done with a mix of modern 7-cells. (And while I DEFINITELY don't recommend it for beginners, its not hard to do CRW with Velocities and such. You just have to be more careful. )

[reply\ My thinking is that if you are passing 750' at high speed, then having a reserve out can only improve things. I don't think you should be concerned about clearing a wrap after a cutaway below that altitude, because anything but the shortest delay at that height would not allow for reserve deployment. . But my worry is not the best-case scenario you list above :-) An expert Cypres is designed to NOT fire if you have anything out at all - because otherwise it could fire during hook turns and other such maneuvers. So its unlikely that in a wrap situation, you would ever have enough downward speed to trigger it (although you might have plenty enough to kill you.) My last freefall spinning mal registered at just under 50 mph vertical speed, and I can guarantee you I was descending at a much faster rate than I ever have under a CRW wrap. My worry is the misfires that have occurred. There is proof they've fired at wrong times - on multiple occasions hand-held radios have caused a fire - can you imagine the mess that would have occurred if one had accidently fired in the 70-way? There is at least a couple cases where it really did fire high, and I know of another instance where it fired on a tandem at

What I've found is that most people pull too far down on their rear risers - so they tend to be riding it on the edge of a stall and they don't get back as far. I've never owned a canopy where I couldn't get back farther on rears, but you have to be very careful - most of my canopies 1/2 inch or so of rear risers gives me best glide. Never more than an inch. For people who aren't practiced at this however, deep brakes will work better. But in either situation - unstow your brakes first - rear risers combined with stowed brakes will almost certainly make your glide ratio horrible... W

What - you're not supposed to have toggles hanging out? Heck, you should see my rig - I try to keep at least a little bit of every color hanging out the outside. It really seems to scare the freefallers so its great fun! Heck - I know CRW teams who velcro their toggles to their main mud flaps so they can grab them faster for immediate steering... W

The story that follows was told to me by the tandem student in question, so quite probably he got some details wrong :-) I don't know who his instructor was. This guy and his wife went to the local dz to do tandems. His wife of course loved hers. Anyway they had been partying really hard the night before, and he admitted having a beer or two with lunch to work up his courage. So he's in the airplane and extremely scared. They get to the door of the Twin Bonanza and he is screaming no as he gets pushed out of the airplane. He's screaming on the video, and his body position is somewhat less than stellar ;-) (This guy is probably 6', 200+ lbs) On opening of course it hurt, and he had trouble with his legs going numb because of the harness straps. He doesn't feel good anyway, and can't get his feet up for landing. He pretty much was surfed through the peas on his face. He then promptly throws up. He's just laying there - can't really moving and they're wanting him to get out of the way because other people are coming in to land. So his friends end up carrying him off and back into the building. :-) (And he actually told this story on himself!) Other than a lovely hangover, there were no injuries... W

I completely agree. I know a LOT more non-jumpers than jumpers, but the number of deaths isn't even close. I've had friends die from getting entangled in their own parachutes, canopy collisions on opening, collisions on landing, hook turns, freefall collisions, a collision between a video guy and the guy he was filming under canopy (leading to a low cutaway), a collision with an airplane he had just exited, entanglement with a smoke canister,a plane crash and too many more to count. What I always thought was curious was that of 30+ people I know who were killed in this sport, 1 had a Cypres fire and it didn't help, and 2 might (but probably not) have been helped by one. The other 25+ it wouldn't have made a difference. Most years in the sport I seem to lose about 3 friends. That's way too many. This sport is not safe. The number of people I have known _ever_ who have died from non-skydiving related stuff is < 10. The numbers aren't even close. W

Don't get the CRW toggles unless its a completely CRW rig. CRW toggles are generally MUCH larger and in general a pain-in-the-neck to get packed somewhere where they're not hanging out. Most CRWdogs just leave theirs out since we're not doing a long freefall, but you definitely don't want CRW toggles on a rig where you plan to be doing RW/freefly on. W

I'm with Bob. The bridle is almost certainly too long (most of them are). We did discover at the world record though that large pilot chutes did also cause this problem. The dancing pilot chute issue went away for a couple of our Dutch friends after they switched to a smaller pc. W

I normally take people up whenever they get 20 jumps and their own rig (non-student gear). My Lightning is compatible on small-ways with a large number of other canopies, so I typically teach students on their "beginner" canopies. Its never to early to start learning, and there are LOTS of extremely experienced crwdogs in California who can help you out. W

I was very pleasantly surprised at how not-hard (wouldn't go so far as to say soft!) my openings were out of the Casa. Generally by the time I left we were WAY high so I was trying to take 7-8 second delays, but the openings were still quite acceptable. Not sure how the pilots were flying though. W

The reason someone mentioned to me that you should not use a hackey is because of its size and shape - in a wrap its more likely to get locked into the v of lines and risers and not release. For throwouts orange handles are much lighter and more easily come out, but with the handle actually inside the pilot chute - its even less likely to get hung up. W

1100 feet once on a cloudy days years ago. In recent years 1300 feet when the Otter blew an engine. W

I've never actually has a line-over that was more than over a corner, so I don't have personal experience, but I have seen more than 1 cleared on CRW jumps. My thought is that anything you do to partially collapse the side of the canopy where the lineover is might help to clear it. Rear riser stalls are a lot less violent than toggle stalls, and since you're pulling down on the whole side of the canopy, as opposed to just one line, it seems like it would give a better chance to actually clear the mal. It is just a theory though :-) This does actually make me tempted to go try this though. I've got a tert rig where I could easily hook up my first main and pack a lineover. Play with it and see if I could clear it :-) Hmmm. Maybe if its warm out this weekend. W

Without a doubt! And I think anyone who's ever seen some of these videos would agree. Chico was dangling upside down, tied by one leg, while cutting lines. I'd rather be under 1 single canopy not entangled any day! I won't do any sort of skydive without a hook knife. There was a British girl with 20 jumps who used hers to cut her reserve risers when she was dangling from the tail of a plane. There's a video on this site right now of someone using one to cut free a guy dangling by a seat belt. They're not just for reserve malfunctions. My last reserve ride was just on Sunday from a spinning mal - I had a good reserve by 2800. Yes I opened high, but lots of people do. Would I have had time to fight a reserve mal? Heck yeah. And yes, pull altitudes for people can vary greatly depending on the jump. Low, I'd probably spend my efforts controlling the canopy and trying to rear riser stall the line free. Higher, I'd probably just slice both brake lines because the odds are quite good that it is a brake line causing the lineover. I don't jump reserves I can't land on rear risers. Wen

The wrap started at around 8k I would guess. By the time the first cutaway went, it was probably 7k, then the 2 main entanglement started. He fought that for a good while, and I think after cutting away didn't work, he probably dumped his reserve around 3, caught the freebag, tried to throw it into clean air, and was unsuccessful. That's when he had the main/main/reserve entanglement. He slowed down after some of his reserve came out shortly after that, mostly inflated, but was still spinning like a top. Then he started hacking lines since he was still hanging upside down. He probably got clear of those ~1k. The video is on the Rantoul '02 tape. W

And don't forget - what most impressed me was when we got all the canopies back to the tent and started untangling them, about 10-15 lines were cut on the other person's canopy - not a single line was cut on any of his gear. Now that's nice knife work!

The question was - why not take as much risk as possible out of the equation? Are you always going to jump a student canopy? Helmet? No RW, no freefly, no CRW? After all its about making it safe right? I own a Toyota Corolla. Its got front airbags and seat belts but that's about it. I could have bought a vehicle with front air bags, side air bags, anti-lock brakes, extra-expensive tires, and a bunch of other stuff to lessen my risk. But it probably would have doubled the cost of the car. I chose to take the risk and buy a car with less expensive stuff but that was within my price range. Not one of my 4 rigs cost me more than $2000 total. A Cypres for each of them would be $1200 each. That's over half the cost of what I paid for the rig. $4800 is a lot of money for what is probably a 1/50,000 chance (if its that high) that I'll be knocked unconscious. I've got 3400 jumps and 14 reserve rides - I'm pretty good at keeping situational awareness. I'm really not that worried that I'll forget to pull. I probably will buy a Cypres at some point (I used to jump with one for a good while) and put it in one of my rigs, but if I find myself choosing that rig purely because its the one with the Cypres, i'm going to take a good hard look at what I plan to be doing on that dive. Its insurance. Its expensive insurance. They save lives - the vast majority of which are people being stupid. I might be stupid someday and need one, but for me right now, I just don't see the risk as being great enough for me to spend the money. I also choose not to drive a Hummer - even though I'm probably a hell of a lot less likely to get killed in one than my Corolla. I know I'm an awful lot more likely to get killed on my Cobalt 75 than ever needing a Cypres - a small mistake flying that canopy could easily kill me - but I choose to jump it anyway. Its all about risk management. Some people have different levels of risk than others. I have no objections to anyone jumping with a Cypres. Their view of risk is just different than mine. Just like a whuffo's view of risks is different than ours. There are a lot of people out there now jumping sub-100 square foot canopies. Look at the incident reports - how many people jumping those sorts of canopies are dying from not pulling (or being saved by a Cypres) versus how many die under a perfectly good canopy? But thousands of people choose to take the risk of the canopy. That's their choice. Its their own comfort level of risk. W

Hmmm. I've done so much CRW - there's been plenty :-) Let's see - some of the highlights - have landed 18 miles off the airport twice - on one of the jumps most of the CRWdogs landed at a different airport than we took off at! Landed in tall corn in Dallas - thought it was just me and the video guy, but when we got to the edge it was like Field of Dreams - jumpers were coming out of the corn all over! Done a McDonalds parking lot, a baseball field. Landed in a tiny back yard in Sebastian with about 15 fellow jumpers once. Landed in the projects in Lake Wales last week with about 50 kids out cheering us on. Landed beside highways numerous times - once was picked up by a really nice RV and given a ride back to the airport. Been given lunch and beer by people at Quincy. Was given beer while we packed after landing at a rodeo once. I once got a ride back with a father and his son (on separate occasions!) in one day. Landed on a golf course in Michigan, a tiny schoolyard in the bad part of town in Perris. Have landed all over Perris Valley in winds that it was almost impossible to figure out which way was upwind until too late! Landed in someone's front yard in Kapowsin. I've met more cows than you would ever know - including one not-so-friendly-looking bull in ZHills. Landed so far out once on my home dz - after long unsuccessful efforts of trying to get the pilot of our CRW formation to turn around - that I didn't even recognize where I was - and one of the guys had lost a shoe. It was Mother's Day so no one was home so we could use a phone. There's no way anyone at the dz could ever have found us we were so far out! The guys took turns walking with 1 shoe (my feet were too small) because the pavement was so hot! Starting to think about it - I can't think off the top of my head a single drop zone that I've ever jumped at that I haven't landed off! Kinda funny that :-) I'm an ambassador of the sport meeting the neighbors :-) W

Yeah - 20 minutes sounds a LOT more reasonable than 45. This summer I was bored and did a jump on a 375 sq ft canopy. Opened at 12k, took me ~22 minutes to get down - not spiraling. And I only weigh 130 lbs... W

Are you talking about something more than a traditional stall? W