manseman

Another reflection: Did you understand how low you were when you finally deployed and why didn't you deploy your reserve instead of your main?

Safety before fun is removing the camera. No ego? Everybody tells you that you're not ready to wear it, yet you insist it's no problem. Heh.

Probably, but you'll still want to try before you buy unless you're very sure of exactly what you are buying.

There might be some wiggle room i.e. if your leashed dog is attacked by a loose dog and just defends itself, but hardly in this case. Whatever your dog does you are responsible for, period. It doesn't matter that you weren't able to control the dog for whatever reason.

Do you live in Sweden? If so, you are always responsible for any damage your dog does, even if your dog is on a leash and the other dog isn't. And I guess you can't even claim that your dog was attacked, so it seems to me like she may very well have a case.

Are you sure this was a skyhook activation at all? It sounds like this might simply have been the plain old RLS doing its thing... Until you're experienced enough to be able to make a rational choice not to jump with some kind of RSL equipped the safe option is to get one, imo. If in doubt, get one. If not, no problem.

Say someone has 20 skydives and 300 hours of tunnel time. He'll be a total badass in some aspects of a skydive and in others, not so much. Does it make sense to give this person ratings for skydiving activities with less jumps than normally required? Being super skilled in one or several parts of the whole doesn't really make up for being a beginner in others.

A bigger canopy of similar model and condition is definitely going to be safer to learn on than a smaller one. Also keep in mind that you are not just learning to control and land your canopy. Awareness, traffic patterns, getting back from bad spots, picking safe locations for landing off etc. This is all stuff that's going to be more difficult and dangerous the faster you go. Anyway, why not get a container that fits both sizes and simply get a new canopy when you're bored with the 210?

Spend some time talking to/hanging with instructors and other students before you start preparing for the jump. It helps A LOT not feeling alone and out of place when you're about to do something scary. Knowing your gear is good, but you can _definitely_ trust your instructors with making sure that your gear is safe. Don't worry about the gear, but don't hesitate to ask questions either. Breathe, relax and remember your emergency procedures. The rest is pretty much a bonus.

If the pilot has control of the aircraft and there's altitude to spare I'd definitely want to ask/tell him before jumping out. That said, I would never land with the aircraft given a choice. If everything is spinning I'll probably just try getting out. If it looks like we're going to make an emergency landing in a forest or other obstacle filled area I'm probably getting out as well. Burning to death is on the top of my no thank you list.

I like the idea behind this, but I really wonder if there's much statistical significance for some of the analysis given such low numbers? Sure, landings are obviously more likely to kill you than getting hit by the plane but I would be very careful when attempting to draw conclusions from numbers such as 2 vs. 4 for events that happen very, very rarely.

Yeah, that would definitely be the way to play it safe. And the student doesn't even have to do anything stupid to deploy over the tail if the static line for some reason is too short. Which has happened in the past... I'll definitely be an advocate for, if possible, not mixing students with tandems and possibly other jumpers as well. At least not without some consideration. Another argument is that on a windy day it's quite possible for a light weight student dropped on a low jump run to still be in the air when the rest of the load gets out att full altitude. But I guess separate student loads are not going to happen when there are two students on the DZ and nobody else wants to go low. And when there's more tandems waiting than we can handle, well, in reality it's never going to be a simple decision. Unfortunately, safety will probably always be traded for convenience (and money). Anyway, I did mail Airtech regarding the original question and I did get the expected answer in case anybody else was still not convinced: "HI Måns, Your conclusion is absolutely correct, once you pass the arming altitude on climb to altitude, cypres is armed and keeps armed until the landing elevation (+40m ) is reached at end of jump/flight. You can descend into lower than 900m it will remain armed. Always clean openings, Jürgen Sennert"

Also, full face helmets sometimes fog up under canopy and this can be quite distracting to deal with, especially if the visor is fixed.

Well, this "if I understand it correct" is the problem. I would also guess that this is the case, but I'm looking for information.

I'm guessing that the person who raised the concern in the first place got the impression that the Cypres might disarm itself or something like that if the arming altitude is passed while descending with the aircraft and that this could happen to a Tandem Cypres on a static line jump run. Nobody was confident enough to dismiss the concern.

At my DZ, somebody raised a concern that something funny might happen to a Tandem Cypres if the aircraft drops below the arming altitude (900m). This is not a terribly unlikely scenario on a jump run with several static line students. I've read the Cypres manual and can't find anything that suggests that there should be a problem (unless of course the take off elevation or set landing elevation is passed) and I'd just iike some confirmation that sinking back to the arming altitude isn't an issue.

I started out with a very tired pd210-f111 loaded 1:1. On low wind days my bones hurt the least when I stabbed the toggles hard and late. Not that it made much difference from not flaring at all. Your canopy is likely in much better shape though, so you might want to experiment a bit on a normal wind day to find out what works best. Or borrow or demo a decent ZP canopy and then decide if you really can't afford one.

They don't build the Sabre's what anymore? Oh! The Sabres!

Sure it is. An already cutaway main may not even leave the bag before the risers clear the harness. Better or worse? More or less risk of entanglement? Don't know, but it's clearly two different scenarios.

Isn't that exactly what the OP asked for? Pilot 168 vs Tri 190? I don't have a lot of experience with either canopy, but both are easy to pack, both open nicely, that pilot will likely feel more responsive on toggles and have a higher forward speed as well. The pilot didn't give me as much lift in the second half of the flare as a Sabre2. Don't remember enough about the Triathlon landings to do any sort of comparison, but it is a fairly old 7-cell... Anyway, I'd try the Pilot for a few jumps and go with that if it feels ok mainly because you will probably not get bored with it as quickly. edit: just noticed you did that, sorry for spamming :)

My first main was an old PD 9-cell with 6-700 jumps on it. It's a miracle I never broke anything during the 75 or so flare-less landings I got to experience. I would definitely spend more money on a safer canopy if I could do it all over. The rest of the rig was pretty ok, a reasonably fitting used Javelin container with RSL and a Cypres-1 AAD.

Oh, that's not quite what I meant. Student jumps are by all means real jumps, but you have to jump through more hoops to actually get in the air. The restrictions on max wind are harder, you have to find student gear that suits you (not always easy on a busy day) and you need to get hold of a JM who has time to brief, debrief and kick you out the door. I've simply assumed that you're required to jump the DZ' student rigs during the entire course, maybe that's not true. There is however a big difference in wing load restrictions between students and a-license holders meaning that it's not really practical to buy a student size rig unless you want to keep jumping that even after getting your license.

I've just recently earned my A-license by completing an SL course in Sweden. I didn't have an easy time deciding between AFF or SL and actually finished most of my ground training before I finally made my mind up. The main reason I picked SL was that I really wanted to become self reliant quickly and also to get as much time in the sport and everything around it as possible before being let loose on my own. I get the feeling that around here, AFF is considered a superior method but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that most AFF students do complete the training and most SL students don't and perhaps not so much about the quailty of the skydivers the respective methods produce. I guess another concern of mine was that I didn't know if I wanted to pursue this sport until I tried it and I felt that AFF would force me into a decision sooner than I wanted. Having said that and knowing what I know now I'd pick AFF without thinking twice as that would have allowed me to actually jump for real most of the season instead of grinding through what felt like countless training jumps in student gear. So I guess my point is that if you know what you want and one method is significantly faster than the other, then that's a decent argument for that method. Now, I don't know how things generally work in the US, but if you're required to do 25 jumps no matter which method to get off student status and you get the same attention from your instructors regardless then just forget this post. :)