pchapman

20 mph might be scary, or it might be pretty smooth and steady. Depends on the DZ (obstacles & turbulence) and the weather (smooth winds or gusty?). If you were really comfortable with 15 mph, then that would be a good basis moving up and trying out jumping in 20 mph winds. But if you aren't really current (especially as a low experience jumper) then maybe wait until you get comfortable with moderate winds before moving up to stronger ones. 20 mph smooth winds shouldn't be that big a deal, as it is perfectly OK to be descending vertically to landing, and that usually takes even more wind speed. As wind speed increases with altitude, one might get in a situation where one is going backwards just a little when starting final approach, but get a little forward speed in the last 100' as the winds die down a bit close to the ground. Results vary of course by wing loading. I'm thinking of really big canopies here, almost student canopy size. It gets much easier once one is down to, say, a 190 canopy for a typical jumper weight. The higher winds aloft do make planning one's flight back to the DZ and in the circuit more complex. So you want to be on your game in understanding winds and not try to cluelessly fly one's normal pattern. You can't just effortlessly fly where ever you want, because the wind speed is close to your canopy speed, so you have less opportunity to fix mistakes. And one should know something about flaring in higher winds and collapsing one's canopy, so that one doesn't get dragged back on landing.

Bad luck that the the snap shackle apparently popped open. NickDG has the most detailed version of the story I've seen at http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1609006#1609006

Well, piisfish didn't identify the gear, didn't identify the gear's owner, didn't identify the riggers. It's all depersonalized. So I see no problem with him questioning a situation, whether his opinion is right or wrong. No different than so many other threads on dz discussing some event, issue, or situation.

Twatterpilot has it right. Whatever one wants to say about glide ratios -- and they are of importance -- one can't soar -- that is, maintain height -- unless the updraft speed is greater than the wingsuit jumper's downward fall rate in still air. So if someone could, say, sustain 30 mph downward speed (and I don't know the current numbers), they'd need the vertical component of the wind / thermal / updraft to be 30 mph = 2640 fpm = 13 m/s. That's well outside normal lift conditions for those in soaring sports -- although they are possible. So to speculate, where does one find extreme lift? To get that kind of lift, you'd need to fly into or just under a cumulonimbus thunderhead, into a gale blowing against an exposed cliff line, into unusually strong upper level winds hitting a high mountain peak, into a wave soaring aerial wave downwind of mountains, that sort of thing. Extreme thermals in the best soaring locations may have the updraft speed, but a wingsuit isn't going to circle tightly in one even if it could be located. So you'd need some longer line or region of strong lift to work with. So some pretty extreme weather conditions is needed to get the kind of lift to soar a wingsuit in. Can you find strong winds that aren't ridiculously turbulent? And how do you land? If you are trying to capture high altitude orographic lift (ridge lift, wind blowing up a mountainside), or wave lift, you might need to drop from 20,000'. Maybe launch from an aircraft above and in front of an isolated Alpine mountain on a very strong wind day and plan to land down in a sheltered valley where you don't have 60 knot winds? Among the choices for wingsuit soaring, that scenario actually sounds like one of the best. In the end it comes down to descent rate. You need better wingsuits to soar in more normal conditions. (And the question is always how to do that without adding rigid spars or rigid wings that over stretch the definition of "suit".) Or else you have to search out some extreme air. (Where there are some complications with turbulence and getting down safely afterwards).

Just an observation: In places like the US & Canada we have nothing like a Harness/Container logbook, so any mods or repairs to the rig are undocumented. That's not ideal.

FWIW, here's a pic of my custom NON-ratcheting device. Simple but usable, made from plate & rod, mainly made from aluminum, some steel, plus a few allen screws.

Para-Flite had no life limits. Basically, for personal skydiving gear built in the US, no companies have had life limits listed. (Some life limits that do exist: Sending back PD reserves for example after X pack jobs or Y deployments - but no calendar life. Strong Tandem rigs - Strong lifes them. And some companies now put life limits on pilot emergency parachutes.) While I like John Sherman's viewpoint, it is a very debatable point. If someone brings gear to a US rigger and the latest manual (not the original manual) says that that pilot rig has a 20 year life, many riggers are going to follow what the manufacturer says. Para-Flite reserves are fairly old fashioned in design. Solid enough, but a 20 year old Para-Flite is going to be worth much less than a 20 year old PD reserve. (Is it just the reserves that are lifed in Ireland? Just wondering how people would jump antique gear there.)

I guess all those kind of detail rules don't have so much to do with practical utility in committing crimes, but that it isn't necessary for hunting. If a gun looks like something people might hunt deer with, it's OK. If it looks military, then it is glorifying violence. The device is designed for killing people and has no other purpose. People who want to own such devices are looked on with suspicion. Efficient devices for the killing of people are to be reserved for military and law enforcement. Such a device is seen as totally unnecessary for any practical use in civilian hands. The combination of dangerous + unnecessary = ripe for being banned. (This argument does leave out the self defense side of things, but even then, I suppose the trend is more to buy a hand gun than an AR-15.) I'm not arguing how things should be; just saying the way I think things are perceived.

Just came across the news by accident -- apparently a preliminary NTSB report on the prop strike is available. One news source http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/pilot-tried-warn-lauren-scruggs-propeller-accident-report-175124831--abc-news.html;_ylt=AjbZZiei1ljtFgnaXSVGWdbNt.d_;_ylu=X3oDMTRvcWdnM2V1BGNjb2RlA2dtcHRvcDEwMDBwb29sd2lraXVwcmVzdARtaXQDTmV3cyBmb3IgeW91BHBrZwNhOTYxZTc3NS03NTI3LTM3YmEtOGIxMy0wYTYwYTNiODJmOTcEcG9zAzEEc2VjA25ld3NfZm9yX3lvdQR2ZXIDMWZiMmU4ZmMtNDEzOC0xMWUxLThhZTgtMWNjMWRlMDM1MGY2;_ylg=X3oDMTNoMHZmZWwxBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDNzAyZWYyYzItOWEzZi0zMDZmLWI3NGItMmU4ODI4OTAzZjYxBHBzdGNhdANwb2xpdGljc3xkZXN0aW5hdGlvbjIwMTIEcHQDc3RvcnlwYWdlBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3 stated: Edit: The NTSB's language is slightly different:

If something is settled out of court, then I guess it just becomes a contract between two parties, just like any business contract, with no requirement for anything to be made public. Whether or not it makes sense, I sometimes wish there were rules against going private on court cases. If you start something in a public court of law, you would have to report the results in the end, whether the dispute finished in court, though some official mediation, or privately. Otherwise society is left hanging with no answers. One side says the product or service was at fault for injuries or death, the other side says not, and in the end, we don't know. You get all these cases where there may have been a payout, maybe big, maybe just a small one as a sop, but with no liability or fault admitted. People then clam up because they say they are bound by the terms of the out of court agreement. If it was a part on an aircraft that failed, as an engineer and pilot I'm going to pissed at the legal system that the truth (as best is known) was not made public. Whether I have any right to know the truth, that's another matter.

There were threads way back about how to make your own tube stows. Apparently the silicone tubing is grippy enough and tight enough that if one end is wrapped over the other, it'll hold. At least that's what I recall. I never tried to figure out where to find the right tubing though.

Exactly!

Don't think it would be a problem. BASE jumpers are already seen as death defying people living on the edge. Someone getting hurt out in the countryside is no big deal. It's like if you hear that a climber died in the Himalayas -- nobody is surprised. If a jumper were downtown hucking off a building, and fell and killed some 'civilians' below, THAT would hurt opinion.

I haven't been around enough cases to know, but a couple years back at the DZ we had two cases in one day, both female. Both were fairly large & fat. It may not have helped that it was a hot summer day, 30C, with the students in coverall jumpsuits. Both passed out fairly late in the jump, under 1000', and recovered quickly afterwards. We have had one S/L student go unconscious and land on the paved road next to the DZ. OK other than scraped knees. Not sure of the cause. A local DZO told me this tale of an IAD student who landed unconscious: Student hits plowed farm field, soon wakes up, spits dirt out of his mouth. DZO gets to him. "You blacked out -- has that ever happened to you before?" Student: "Yes." DZO: "Why didn't you tell us before???" Student: "Because it never happened to me skydiving." DZO: "But this was your first jump!!!"

Hi Wendy! A buddy used his Cricket after a crw wrap about 3 years back. I saw his landing and it looked OK to me. He did a big flare, toggles right down - I know that as I have a photo. Can't recall exactly what the touchdown was like, but I don't recall any complaints. His weight has always been 180 or slightly more, so he was loading it heavily enough for a pre- PD-Reserve design. The numbers I've seen on canopy volumes show the MR 135 is quite a bit smaller than the Cricket (147) -- eg 305-315 in^3 vs. 365-385 on the Jump Shack volume list. (But Poynters says 350 for the Cricket as a reserve.) [Edit: changed to MR 135 numbers, not 120] The Cricket is also the next size down from the classic Firelite. Only did a few jumps on them but I thought they flew fine. Let's see what others remember about them.

Looks like the RCMP are making good use of available tools to ensure the greatest possible percentage of newly prohibited arms are removed. A gun registry is after all designed to track where guns are (whether or not 100% effective). And why track guns if you can't control them? It is interesting to know who can change the list of guns allowed (RCMP), and how fast they seem to be able to change them. Sounds like a gun owner can buy something one day, and have it prohibited the next. I don't mind the idea of registering guns (just like, say, airplanes) but am not a fan of being subject to sudden rules changes, whether or not I'm into that particular activity. "Attention swoopers, your activity is now deemed to be dangerous. Please hand in all your crossbraced and sub 100 canopies within 30 days for destruction."

I agree - while some caution is advised, it isn't as if (a) every canopy is perfect out of the factory, and (b) no jumpers ever experiment with brake settings or sliders. For example, as far as I can tell, the Icarus FX (at least of a particular size) has had 3 different slider sizes installed by the factory over its early years, and had the brake settings changed once. And there are slider pockets of varying design built by riggers in the field for different canopies. Slider sizes are probably getting better though, as companies pay more attention to getting what are considered good openings. Jumpers who have had Spectra lined canopies have brake lines shrink. If a rigger changes the brake lines, it is tricky to decide how much shrinkage to compensate for, because the rest of the canopies lines are also out of original trim. So the canopy will be jumped with effectively different brake settings over its life. It's another example of the average jumper 'testing' different configurations. I also noticed that the latest Velocity line trim chart, for example, shows standard and optional slider sizes. The standard one is the same size all the way from a 75 to 120 canopy, while the optional sizes vary, often being 1 to 2 inches smaller both in span and chord than the standard size. So it isn't as if there's one magical, God given perfect size per canopy size & model, even if in a particular case a company may have done a really good job at finding a good slider size.

Attached is a graph I made to show the actual pack volumes vs. canopy size on one graph. According to manufacturers numbers, and assuming they both use the same 'modern' sizing method (as opposed to the older PIA method): The Speed 190 packs up as small as an Optimum 160, or a Speed 135 like an Optimum 113. The two canopies don't share any common canopy sizes, but one can interpolate with the graph. Up to about a 170, the Optimums are typically about 40 cubic inches larger, not changing much across sizes. The absolute difference starts to rise for larger sizes. The percentage difference is that the Optimum is very roughly about 15% bigger for the smaller sizes. Both designs are certified to 150 kts, but maximum weights vary. The Speeds are all certified to 254 lbs, while the Optimum is also 254 for the 113 to 143. Above that, the Optimum can take more weight than the Speed. Below that range, the Optimum is good to 220 lbs, in a size range the Speed doesn't offer, but that's offset by being able to buy a slightly larger Speed that supposedly packs up at least as small as the smallest Optimums. The other attachment compares canopy sizes, volumes, and maximum suggested & TSO'd weights, ordering the canopies by size for better comparison. It would still be interesting to know what riggers in the field find when comparing the canopies. (And it would be Europeans who have the most experience with both.)

As for getting sucked low, opinions can differ. Does it show a "bad" or "negligent" instructor, or just one who screwed up once? I've known a couple apparently decent instructors in my region let themselves get low (and get a 2 out) over the years. But standards locally probably are lower than at some US mega-DZ. The instructor pulling can indeed be a great signal to a student to pull. Maybe that works great if facing each other, but if the student is already struggling with a main pull, he's focused on that, maybe turning or tumbling, and may not even notice an instructor pulling. So for a situation like the one that started the thread, a timely pull by the instructor is not so much trying to help the student as officially abandoning the student as per the rules, to save the instructor. Getting sucked low, despite definitely being a screwup, could actually play well for a court -- "attempting to the last moment to save the student, despite the rules." Edit: Here we sort of get at the definition of heroism. If you charge the machine gun nest alone, you're probably an idiot. Unless you actually destroy it singlehandedly, in which case you're a hero.

But when was it trademarked? Well, wikipedia has a long enough article on the 12th man tradition as it exists in different sports. It mentioned It isn't clear from the article though, whether the concept was known in sports before 1922, or whether it all came out of that one Texas A&M game. That would be an important factor in how people judge this whole thing. Laypeople are often sceptical about patents, trademarks, etc., whenever something already existing or obvious is 'appropriated' and one group then gets more rights than others for an idea. It appears that it isn't as if A&M are trying to stop ordinary people from using the term; only that they don't want other commercial football teams in the US from officially capitalizing on that particular concept. One can get some correspondence associated with the trademark at http://tdr.uspto.gov/search.action?sn=74560726 but so far I didn't see any detailed statement justifying the trademark, nothing like one would have for an actual patent. All that there is are statements basically saying "we used the term for athletic events in interstate commerce as early as '22, and were selling items by '89, and here are photos of a few ways we marketed it in recent years". But it doesn't seem to address how anyone else may have used the idea or anything similar at the time -- somewhat unlike for patents. It's more like "we used it commercially in a particular industry" and unless someone else can say they did that earlier, it's A&Ms to use commercially.

Ok, Yves Rossy in '99 when he was still flying the Mirage. Guess the skydivers managed to stay below the tip vortices of the Mirage flying by overhead & to the side.

Hope that means "Ok, fine, we'll refund your last jump." Instead of relatives suing DZ's, wouldn't it be funny if it worked the other way around with excessive lawsuits after a fatality? We'd sue spouses for letting the person jump, or sue parents for having a kid who screwed up so badly that day.

All that you said seems reasonable. Just like I don't know the cops or whether they'll mess things up. The cops may be interested in knowing whether it is a crime and have some sort of duty to check that out, even if it seems laughably improbable to a skydiver. (Maybe it is a terminology issue. If it were an incident scene or investigation scene, that sounds reasonable. Maybe terms like those are actually formally used, but when everyone just calls it a "crime scene" when 99+% of the time there's no crime, it just looks really stupid and leads to misunderstanding.) Although having some duties, cops may have no duty towards the furthering of skydiving aviation safety. Quite possibly there's a reporting & recall bias, that over 20 years, I've heard more about & remembered more clearly a 'few' or 'some' cases where the cops seemed not to care. Maybe they call the FAA or NTSB and hear back that those groups aren't all that interested, so who else do they know who can investigate? They can't be sure if we can't be sure what procedure to follow either. Who is independent enough or knowledgeable enough to collect data? How much supervision is needed when there are issues of conflict of interest, as there often is even if at a minor or perceived level? No simple answers.

I think there was a thread about that sort of thing recently, where some actual numbers from the user manuals (available online) were quoted. Those numbers are not perfect of course, so rigger opinions may differ. Forgive me for being cranky, but why do people obsess so much about a few cubic centimetres difference on their back....

Someone's gonna tell you there are no guarantees in skydiving, tough luck, you know the risks, don't be a whiner, the sport is OK as it is. (An argument I think I'm just getting into in another thread.) But you have a good point, even if there's no magical legally binding regulation that they've broken. Even though line sets can be changed, it would make some sense that a non-freefall Competition Triathlon would be identified as such on the label. (If is is the original line set, were any rules broken? Maybe PIA data panel standards? It's a voluntary organization, but I don't know if member groups have pledged to follow their standards in any way.) As you said the data panel says it is good to 130 kts, right there, in writing from the manufacturer. Or maybe that means the CANOPY is good to 130, not your spine. Usually a non-terminal CRW canopy would be assembled with a mesh or spider slider or whatever they are using, etc. If it has a regular sail slider, someone has been changing things before it got to you. That's an important link in the chain of events -- one particular thing that would make people think it was being used at terminal and OK for that. Now that you've checked with Aerodyne by canopy serial number, you know. But how else would this have been caught? Depending on other details of the canopy, I could see plenty of riggers missing this. "Looks like it has some CRW mods, plenty of Hybrid Tri's are like that, but it has a sail slider, looks like you are good to go to use it like a normal canopy." Certainly if a rigger were unsure, there's always that serial # and phone call to the manufacturer thing. Is there some particular feature that a CRW expert would know identifies it as a Comp Tri in particular, rather than just a freefall capable Hybrid Tri with all the mods? (E.g., tailpocket?) While there are all sorts of issues, and things we don't know about the canopy, on the face of it, Aerodyne may have done a poor job of labelling the canopy.