pchapman

That size reserve is pushing it a bit. It is a risk others have taken though. It would be really nice for you to get some more experience though, until you've downsized to a 170 and are really comfortable with it, landing it in your paper towel sized LZ in any conditions. Then the 150 would be only one size down, not such a big deal even if it still wouldn't match Aerodyne's or Germain's recommendations until you got a bunch more jumps. At only 30 jumps it isn't so much about slightly more speed under a small canopy, as the potential to do something really dumb. So you want to have good flying sense in general before downsizing a bunch.

As others have said, too many changes to isolate the role that one change played -- in one video of one opening each. Were those 'typical' openings? Would the evidence be different over more jumps? (If that was a balloon overhead seen in one jump, yeah maybe the jumper wasn't knocking out 10 jumps a day.) Was the better opening with the 32" PC better because it was both larger and of a pulled down apex design presumably adding more drag? And thus because it extracted the bag more positively so that it didn't partially twist before the canopy extracted? Or did a perhaps slower extraction allow the bag to hang lower relative to the jumper and have the canopy actually open worse when perhaps towards the edges of the burble rather than more in the center? Or was the one opening somehow better because by not using a kill line, it maintained drag on the center cell even after the canopy was out of the bag? The second opening was an interesting view of one of those cases of a canopy inflation being really unsteady when in the burble (or edges of it) of a large wingsuit. But it is still an interesting video to see and better than none at all. (At least for those of us like me who haven't watched tons of back facing wingsuit jump deployment videos.)

I'll agree with "The FAA would just screw things up and take forever" or that "our sport is a tiny market compared to others" or even that "a helmet can't save you from a steep dive into the ground". However, it is still reasonable for a newbie to wonder about certification. Not to say that a helmet has to 100% save you, just that someone could wonder why "anything goes", why there's not even some standard a company could voluntarily certify to if they wished to position their product that way. In Europe, you can buy a nice quality open face paragliding helmet for $120 (I just checked prices), that is certified to both EN 966 for air sports in Europe, and also has a second certification, EN 1077 for skiing & snowboarding too. A nice quality kevlar based full face helmet with visor -- air sports certified -- goes for $300. So even prices for multiple certifications, in a relatively new sport, that is relatively small (but stilll probably big vs. skydiving), can be pretty reasonable. Not everyone needs to wear a certified air sports helmet though, depending on where you are. Don't know the details, but it started to be required in some international competitions. Thus one can understand someone new to skydiving wondering, "So, a totally uncertified skydiving full face helmet goes for $370, and that's even sometimes just plastic not composite?" Certification is a complex subject. I don't want it mandatory for skydiving, but I'll at least I'll partially defend those who come to skydiving and ask what's with our sport.

So as I saw it: Wingsuit, spinning mal, reserve deployment on back, initiated with an RSL with Skyhook (the latter released quite early). Jumper has video from his front of helmet GoPro, while the reserve system snags temporarily on the other more rear mounted, back facing GoPro on a longer stalk. The mount actually does break off. It's a bit of an issue between "reserves actually do open pretty well in any attitude with an RSL or MARD" vs. "an unstable reserve opening with snaggy stuff on your helmet isn't good".... even if it breaks off. (I found it interesting that one guy wrote in a comment that in France, the RSL must be disconnected for wingsuiting. Then someone else commented that others having messy mals during wingsuiting would have been dead without an RSL. I don't know the truth of either of those statements.)

Sorry about your old friend. As for Howard White, he was a great contributor to this forum but he passed away a couple years ago. (There's a Blue Skies forum thread.)

Traction kite flown down from a high (900m) paragliding launch site. I was wondering when someone would do an intentional high flight with such a kite. It was a big 14 sq. m. one. (But I think they use projected area, not laid out area, so it is a lot bigger than the equivalent 150 ft sq suggests.) Interestingly, one of the sponsors of the experienced kite flyer is Ozone, that makes kite surfing kites / traction kites. They also make paragliders.

It can be hard to confirm exactly the type of mal someone had, and I can see that someone might call a mal a line over when the cause isn't clear. Sometimes it takes a still from a video to confirm one way or another. Of all my reserve 'saves', there are plenty of generic 'spinning with line twists', a few reported tension knots, and a few reported line overs. On the face of it, I have at least not been seeing massive over-reporting. As for the thesis that line overs were rare with flat packing, that's an interesting idea. How true is that? I do know that POOR pro-packing can greatly increase the malfunction rate. I knew a DZ with 2 C-182's at the time, and static line progression, that tried pro-packing all its student gear for a period in 1991, but the technique was so new and poorly understood that they were having a student mal about every second weekend. They went back to the old way for a long time after that.

Non-Americans: Cute. Yawn. Some Amurricans: Oh, the humanity! What about the lawyers! The whole industry will die! Pull their ratings! Waterboard them! At least going drogueless prevents anyone from dancing around on the tandem's back, holding the drogue bridle. See, it's for safety.

To add some further info, and use the same format for convenience: Consider these maximum CERTIFICATION weights: R-MAX 288 = 317# PDR 281 = 300# So this time around the R-max looks better and stronger. Recommended weights tend to be something that are pretty subjective, so unless one is super squeamish about liability from anything on paper, or has actual user experience to go with, then I'd guess the student weight number differences shouldn't mean too much. The factories might have some opinions though.

Indeed. And does she have experience with fast opening canopies? (E.g., some F-111, unmodified Sabre 1's, etc) A skim through other Raven related threads suggests hard openings are sometimes talked about although not a widespread concern. It is normally the landings at higher wing loading that are a concern. Questions of hard openings go back to the era of the Dash M service bulletin and whether one of the guys who blew the unreinforced line attachments was technically within the certification envelope or not. I don't recall what the consensus was on that, and that's a whole other more complex situation. One of my reserve packs was used by a jumper who was a regular BASE jumper too. His first reserve opening, on a nice PD reserve after a baglock, still surprised him a little -- reminding him of a BASE canopy he said. Even those used to a little snappiness aren't always used to their reserves at terminal. Still, occasionally an opening can be too hard for good functioning. A buddy ended up smacked hard on his Glide Path Cricket I think it was, at high speed after a pilot chute in tow. But he had full video & stills gear on his head. He was somewhat groggy under canopy and sore for a couple days.

For what it's worth, there was a Raven reserve pro packing video. Not sure when it came out but it was available by 1990 when I started to rig, when Ravens were perhaps the most common reserve. Although I was just starting at the time, I got the impression that it was the cool new thing, a video to be watched very carefully as few jumpers had any exposure to pro packing. But yeah Precision never has been too good with updating manuals or making them easily available.

They were lucky the instructor deployed quickly. Paragliding reserves are not intended for freefall speeds and are very lightweight if one looks at them. (They're designed for super fast inflation at the low end of the speed range too, e.g. by having a pulled down apex for a small inflated volume.) So if you have a massive canopy failure that is beyond the normal 'spinning under a tangled up collapse', then one has to be fast in getting the emergency canopy out before the speed picks up too much -- and the instructor in the video was fast. I'm not current any more in paragliding but recall the test standards were pretty low. The latest standards (CEN) seem to usually be for 40 m/s, about 90 mph. And that's the actual test speed, not a lower recommended speed. (In skydiving one typically never tests to under 180 knots or about 210 mph.) (I'm guessing the guy might have been using two regular reserves instead of one big heavy tandem reserves for convenience, but as I said I'm not current so could be wrong.)

@pixieUK Yeah there's no definition of different levels of ellipticity. Aerodyne tried providing a mathematical definition but it never caught on. So in an era when almost every 'regular' canopy is non-rectangular, whether something is lightly- or semi- or fully- or highly-elliptical is just a judgement call among skydivers, more about canopy behaviour and overall flying qualities, than anything relating directly to the amount of taper of the cells.

I have found that some canopies have reduced directional stability when the brakes are still set. That is, they are more sensitive to starting to turn, and staying in a turn. So for example one canopy comes out of a harness turn easily with brakes free, but with brakes set and in a spiral, it seems that it stays in a stable spiral even if the weight is balanced again. But that tended to be on a couple smaller, higher loaded canopies. I haven't tried it out on enough canopies to know how universal that is or not; nor have I puzzled through the physics to try to explain it. Still, there's a chance that that's similar to what you're seeing -- once in a spiralling turn with brakes set, it tends to stay in the turn without a quick recovery.

Did they actually change anything significant with the packing? (Other than stowing the skinny ends of the reserve pilot chute that hung out from the side of the bottom reserve flap. For years in newer manuals they had forgotten to include instructions on stowing it, so an FAA rigger would have had to leave the pilot chute hanging out in the breeze, if they followed instructions as they were legally supposed to.) I've only skimmed the new manual so far. Looks like plenty of added tips and techniques for fine tuning the pack job.

Chrysalis! I think that's the spelling. Surprised that it was built as late as 1987. So was it by Para-Phernalia?? That I don't know. Cool, that's a rare one. How did it work? Cable pulls out of loop, freeing the two side plates (attached to riser) to flip up and away from the triangular plate (attached to harness side). Something like that. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1988-Paraphernalia-Northern-Lite-Parachute-Rig-w-Reserve-and-Record-Log-/391005450255?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5b09bdb00f Hey, looks like Terry Urban (councilman24) packed it in '97.

For me personally, the jury is still out on how much risk is added when one puts someone light on a small canopy. I've heard tales of people scaring themselves or getting injured (like DJL's example). But I've also heard tales that go the other way, that some small girl loved it when they got a smaller canopy that actually maneuvered and flared decently, that the heavier guys just didn't know what they were talking about, holding them back from a still moderate canopy loading just because the canopy is small. There was one good post about that from a female jumper recently but I can't find it at the moment. Every jumper is different in their skills and aggressiveness however. Skimming over other threads about small women and canopy sizes, below there are a variety of different opinions, usually from the smaller female jumpers themselves, to see what they thought. It's a bit of a literature review! It can still be hard to tell what size canopy is appropriate. Generally though, progressing one size at a time if at all possible is still a good test to see if a jumper is comfortable with the canopy in a range of landing conditions. (Although you'll see below there are still a couple cases where a jumper thought they were fine but one more size down was a little much.) For each opinion, I've paraphrased what that author thought at the time or what the lessons are: 'Even just one downsize got a bit scary'-- 'Small canopies can be dangerous even at a reasonable wing loading'-- 'A downsize even to .8 wing load for a light jumper was too fast - for someone just on their second or third jump'-- 'Being forced to stay likely too conservative due to applying downsizing rules that may be prudent but are not normally applied 100% especially at the novice level'-- 'Rapid downsizing helped at one point, but eventually the limits were reached and it became a problem -- and that's partially because factors related to skills, and not just jumps/canopy size/wingloading, weren't being taken into account.'-- 'It is about jump numbers too, not just wing load (by a male instructor)'-- 'After downsizing step by step, an unexpectedly small canopy was actually preferable'-- 'The problem of guys pushing girls too fast at times, and holding them back at times (once the girls have more jumps)'-- 'Guys holding girls back (once girls have more jumps)'-- 'It can be tough for small women to get the right sized canopies at some DZ's and that impedes having a steady downsizing progression'-- 'Over-conservative recommendations for small women'-- 'Small canopies are still small canopies (says an experienced male instructor)'-- (Note that it sounds like in some cases there was a visible clue that the canopy wasn't right for the jumper - they were having terrible landings)

Ooh, saying stuff like that will get your post deleted. "Take it to the classifieds". But you might well legitimately ask: Remember those Aqua Buoy floatation devices from the 90s? Does anyone still use them things? Does anyone have a source for them, if one needs a bunch quickly? Has anyone actually used one and had it actually help them avoid drowning, rather than just being a buoy to mark the body?

Re: $18.39 dies I thought the regular cheap dies will work fine for a Stainless Steel grommet -- when it is a little #0 one. Not for a commercial production line perhaps, but entirely usable at home. And if the die ever wears or chips or whatever, a replacement is cheap. Someone with more experience than my occasional #0 SS smacking may have a more informed and different opinion?

You're full of ideas on old stuff these days.

I was surprised until I remembered that the Cypres student mode activates at 29 mph*, unlike the Vigil at 45 mph. Still, if investigating this one would want to know if the student was behaving reasonably and the AAD somehow thought it was descending faster, or whether the student was spiralling down at pattern altitudes. Edit: To comment on other things in this thread, most DZ's emphatically don't want gear renters to start changing modes of their AAD's... *Or a higher speed between 750 and 1000ft.

Certainly nowadays with all the data loggers one should be able to get some better data than I dealt with!

Not sure. A decade back I did some tests at a DZ with FXC 12000's, for a DZO who was concerned about downsize rental gear. The Vigil student mode is set at the equivalent of 45 mph, while the FXC is more vague:"Descent rate faster than 65 fps (approx 45 mph) MUST fire. Descent rate slower than 40 fps (approx 27 mph) MUST NOT fire". So the FXC could fire at lower speeds than a Vigil, but the must-fire level is basically the same. I did a few jumps carrying 3 FXC's with me, and tried to do long, continuous, efficient feeling toggle spirals through firing altitude. I couldn't get a Sabre 135 at 1.3 wing loading to fire any FXCs, but a couple went off at 1.4 loading. But in the end I think it is more about renter behaviour than an absolute size limit. Rental rigs with student mode AAD's are generally not for doing lots of low spirals on.

Still got that on my Parafoil that was built in '98. I'm not current on the accuracy discipline, but traditionally it let one have a brake line with no bump from a brake eye, to give an absolutely smooth brake line when doing fine adjustments on approach. And considering that Foils didn't always open well, an might be jumped slow speed or terminal, one could fine tune (fiddle with!) the brake settings too. Daisy chain it wrong and it locks up or comes out out or wears the line quickly...

Not certain we're thinking of the same thing here. But if we are: At one time (~1980s), all risers were that way, without a keeper for the top of the toggle. Cat eye in the brake goes below the guide ring, pin it with the toggle, stick toggle to velcro. That's all that was ever needed because the velcro held the toggle in place, and sliders didn't slide down over the wide risers which were the only ones around. Dacron brake line was also too stiff for it to wiggle around easily and slide off the tip of the toggle, if the line was loose without tension. (On some reserve risers, unlike on mains, one would put a tack of seal thread through the riser and a bit of the toggle tip, just to be extra sure the toggle didn't move out of place and release the brake line prematurely.) Edit: Some main risers also had a loop that came up through the ring, one put the cat eye over that, and then pinned (pushed) the toggle through the loop. Like you see on BASE rigs, although there the brake line routing is a little different if the line isn't fed through the ring, when slider down to keep the brake lines releasable. Putting the toggle tip through the loop added more friction to keep things in place, and reduced the opening forces on the toggle tip itself, by dividing the force between the toggle and that extra loop.