pchapman

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Everything posted by pchapman

  1. There's that idea that the first low hop and pop is scary for the AFF trained jumper. One instructor I know has said that it wouldn't be so bad for the students if they just went ahead and did it. Some students don't get all that worried about it and perhaps just focus on the exit, not on the ground looking closer than usual. But when others on the DZ hear of a student about to do their first hop and pop, some start telling the student about the low & scary aspect. My friend feels that it wouldn't be so low & scary if students weren't filled with ideas about how low & scary it is supposed to be!
  2. I understand that. If you do have a small pilot chute that's getting worn out, yes a hop and pop will tend to be when you first notice a hesitation in the pilot chute and an uncomfortably slow deployment sequence. Generally though, on a hop and pop it may feel like the opening takes longer than normal, which it often is, but you are starting from zero vertical speed. So the impression is that after you are open that the plane is "right there!" -- the plane isn't that far above you, and you haven't lost that much altitude..
  3. Oh, that works now in many places in the US & Canada. But there's that thin end of the wedge thing -- in some places in the world you have to drive to a whole new country to get away from the mandatory AAD rules. And the situation is getting worse all the time. The DZO's can make their rules, and I can fight them. Both are legal.
  4. Just my opinion, not about your DZ, but in general for DZO's making AAD's mandatory: To me it smacks of a DZO trying to reduce his liability by forcing people to buy expensive gear. He forces his jumpers to sign waivers, showing that he has very limited responsibilities to them -- yet then expects them to spend a pile of money to keep him safe. If it is all about saving lives, why not open a restaurant instead of a DZ? And of those 22 saves, 12 were students or tandem, not really relevant to the issue of mandatory AAD's for licensed jumpers. Of the rest, some may have been in a real bind through not a lot of fault of their own, while others were just plain stupid. We might differ on whether people making big mistakes should bounce on your DZ. I just don't want to be forced to buy expensive gear because someone else was stupid. (FWIW, I do have a Cypres 2 on my main rig, but no AADs on my spare/accuracy/CRW/specialty rigs.)
  5. To expand on what riggerrob wrote: For Canada, into 2000, requiring a "C" for video meant 100 jumps minimum. After the new license levels were applied, "C" meant 200 jumps. Then somewhere around 2007 the "B" became the minimum, dropping it down to 50 jumps minimum. Among those I know, the change down to a "B" came out of the blue. Although there are clear risks with camera jumping, I'm guessing the issue just didn't come up as enough of a problem to put in place relatively restrictive rules.
  6. @ DSE: I don't know what was going on in the Photography forum, but this is a good thread & discussion to have somewhere. And it isn't as if there aren't any other skydivers with an ego. For the thread: People always end up focusing on jump numbers (or licence levels) because it is pretty clear whether someone meets that requirement or not. It is simplistic, but avoids having to laboriously evaluate someones' skills. In the Canadian rules example, it says that the jumper must be experienced in the discipline they are filming -- but people will focus on the B licence requirement as the absolute minimum.
  7. Let's be careful in this side issue of canopy inflation whether we are talking about bottom surface inflation (spreading of the canopy) or cell inflation (filling cells with air). Beatnik I think is talking more about cell inflation while the heading issue will be affected first by how the canopy spreads. We also have to be careful when comparing openings with sliders and without (eg low speed BASE with a tailgate). I'm not solving any argument here, just saying be careful what exactly it is one is discussing.
  8. This has been a great thread to see that people do not all route the seal thread exactly the same way as shown in Poynters, that there's some flexibility in the field. A big difference is that in the Poynter's method, 'both sides' of the whole loop of seal thread go through the lead seal, versus putting just one side of the loop through the seal. I've used both, although the former does add strength due to more connections, making it perhaps less likely for a thread to break and leave the seal dangling loose. I've long stopped using any sort of knot. I don't think the thread even needs to go in one hole and then loop back through the other. If it is through the seal, and the seal is well crimped, the thread will break long before it can pull out of the seal. Some routings do make it easier however to snip off the thread at one side of the seal (rather than at opposite ends), or to snug the whole thread up to the desired amount of slack.
  9. Agreed. The first couple times I tried psycho pack, and on a small crossbraced canopy, I had slammer openings that I wasn't normally getting. So much for soft psycho pack openings. I don't know for sure, but figure that hidden within the wrapped tail, the slider was getting squeezed off the stops.
  10. There have been a few threads about how to make tube stows. Great, but the problem for some people now is finding a source for silicone tubing. Does one look online for some industrial supplier? Medical supply store? Local 7-11 convenience store?
  11. That's the classic RedBull Blanik to Blanik glider transfer. Well publicized. Done, what, maybe a year ago. I've only had a single Blanik to play with when I jumped off the wing of one.
  12. In the video: A table total is shown. The lead seal can be seen pulled into the top grommet. Jumper thinks the seal thread was routed through the eye of the closing loop.
  13. Please re-read the manual. The noob is actually partially right. For the Cypres 1 & 2, in Student mode they can activate at 1000', for speeds between 29 mph and some higher speed Airtec won't tell us. For freefall speeds, the regular 750' applies. Activation may thus be "up to" 250' higher. And so when it comes to flying around under an open 190 canopy, activation altitude is indeed 250' higher than for a regular Cypres. Edit: Airtec does not show the student mode altitudes and speeds in any sort of clear table with numbers standing out. One has to read a paragraph to sort out what they are trying to say. Not user friendly.
  14. I'm not worried about that aspect of marketing strategy. I don't think people will avoid buying a Cypres because it is somehow tainted by the occasional stupidity of some people who own them. A brief history: Up to December 12, 1992: AAD's are for students and other idiots December 12, 1992 onwards: AAD's are good, for almost anyone. (That's a reference to the death of Tommy Piras.)
  15. Rules for National Forest and National Parks can be wildly different, such as for things like camping or guns. The aerial delivery rules might only be for parks, but I don't recall off hand.
  16. Butler conveniently gets around the 254lb harness limit by having certified under the old C23b! To refine that, Butler also has some LoPo's that are supposedly cheaper than their premium HX line. The LoPo's have a slider too, although not as complex, and are certified for high weights in the largest sizes. So there's another option.
  17. Nah...I'm comfortable that it seems appropriately sized. Hey dumbass, I think I saved myself wasted time browsing dz by just calling Aerodyne myself: 23 7/8" by 14 5/8" is the spec for a Tri 99. That would likely be prior to sewing which tightens everything up a bit, so you'd have to stretch out a slider to get close to those number. So your '23 by 14' is likely original. Looking forward to wingsuiting with you next year.
  18. Which leads to the question: I wonder how many jumpers actually know the Pull signal? Or novice jumpers and coaches? If someone was AFF/PFF trained, or an instructor for such programs, yes they'll know it. Depending on the DZ, that may be most people or very few people. If it isn't commonly known, giving a big waveoff (and/or pulling) may be the way to get someone's attention. For someone without an AFF background, getting pointed at may not have much effect. I don't know what everyone else thinks, but for many, I think finger pointing may be interpreted as "look at that", as in "there's something wrong -- check your gear". (I notice the pointing Pull signal is really only in the USPA SIM appendix, and isn't in the Canadian PIM 2A, where the hand signals covered are more for RW coaching in general.)
  19. That says something when bonfire accidents are treated as something to discuss in a skydiving manual!
  20. I'm trying to get my facts straight on this issue in a discussion with a friend: What fatalities have there been from skydivers falling into a bonfire? I know there was one in the last decade, but am not sure if there was a second. There was the fellow who fell through a windshield of a car deliberately placed in a bonfire, at Crosskeys, NJ, some years back. Given how much skydivers like to play with objects in the fire pit, there are probably a bunch of less well reported injuries too.
  21. There seems to be no reason that drag mats had to die out. But I'm guessing that the greater amount of indoor packing helped do them in. No longer is everyone outside, keeping the rig off the grass & dirt, and then putting the mat on top of the rig to keep the sun off.
  22. Yeah! When teaching canopy control classes, I tried to avoid introducing glide polars, as that seems to be getting overly technical. But that whole relationship between headwind, tailwind, descent rate, forward speed, and glide angle just goes by people unless they have a mental framework into which to put all those factors together. So in the end I do show the concept of glide polars. Not as a dry aero engineering graph exercise, but trying to relate it closely to canopy flight -- a side view of how fast you are moving and descending. The concept doesn't say how a particular canopy flies, but it's a good start for understanding the age old question of how to make it back to the DZ.
  23. Now you say that the rigger did inspect the main canopy -- that's something that's often a separate job, and not done as part of a regular reserve repack. It might be easier to miss seeing wear below a cascade, because usually there's far more wear down near the brake eye and toggle, so that's the place one would look at first if considering whether the brake lines need changing. Look at the same spot on the other brake line, whether it is worn. "Just below the cascade" might be at the bottom edge of the finger trap at the cascade, a point that's naturally weaker in a line. So there may or may not have been anything that could have been spotted ahead of time on the line that blew. A friend had an explosive opening on a larger Triathlon, that was his regular canopy, that blew a brake line and another line, although that opening was hard enough to leave him pretty sore. It can happen out of the blue.
  24. The pin puller on the 2000 was a neat little device. Not in the same class as a loop cutter, but actually practical for experienced jumpers, unlike the massive mess of hardware for the traditional Sentinel on the reserve flap. Wasn't there a problem getting service on them, since they were supposed to be sent in for service every couple years? After Steve Snyder died in '99 that was the beginning of the end for SSE. For a while someone still serviced Sentinels (in Texas??), but I got the impression it didn't last too long. Why exactly did Sentinels not get supported more? I don't know when SSE actually disappeared or Alti-2 took over the altimeter line. At one DZ I was at, Sentinel 2000s were moderately popular in the mid to late 1990s. (A good selling point was a 4-way went low. All lived, but the one person with an AAD, a Sentinel, wasn't the lowest person open on the load. On the other hand, in later years, there was at least one misfire above normal firing altitude.) But when it wasn't possible to get proper, legal servicing on the Sentinels, they went out of use. All the Student gear with regular Sentinels got replaced in 2000 with gear with FXC's. Otherwise they might have kept going in use for a few more years as reasonably priced AAD for experienced jumpers, before the Cypres (1991+) slowly took over.
  25. So, if the Argus report is correct, the question is, why the device had a 1500' offset applied. That's not common, and certainly not expected for jumping around Chicago. Or was it somehow mistakenly entered when experimenting, without realizing that the altitude correction is retained after turning off, unlike for a Cypres?