davelepka

Zero, yes. Katana, yes. Vengeance, I'm not 100% sure came out after the Velo. Anyone know the release dates on those?

Buy some gear (instructor guidance and assitance highly reccomended). Look into the various disciplines, RW, freeflying, CRW, canopy piloting, accuracy, etc. and see what appeals to you. Ask around your DZ to see who's into what you're interested in, and ask them how to get started. If DZ.com has a forum for that discipline, ask in there for tips on where to begin or where to seek type-specific training. Maybe just go to the DZ and jump? Have fun and make some friends? Spend another small fortune on skydiving?

West coast would be the closest, Perris is always a safe bet. Lots of planes always flying, on-site wind tunnel, on-DZ bunk house and restaurant. An hour-ish from LA when you don't want to jump, and 20 min from Elsinore when you want someplace else to jump.

Yes, Eloy has a couple and Deland has one for sure, I didn't mean to make it sound like Spaceland has the market cornered on Skyvans. Isn't there one in Perris, too? Maybe one that lunched a motor in-flight a couple years ago? Anyone?

The Skyvan pilot uses a cowbell to signal two minutes to jump. The same guy was out Otter pilot when the cowbell skit first came out, and soon afterwards he was using one in the Otter. I guess it stuck, and now he has one in the Skyvan.

You're going to want to get licensed and knock out a good 80 or 100 jumps before you venture off into private airstrips, and renting non-jump planes being flown by non-jump pilots. There are a variety of considerations to make when jumping away from an established DZ, and you will be the skydiving 'expert' among all involved, so you might need more than the 25-jump basic A license to pull it off safely.

All over the place, I think. I don't think there's one at any DZ, but the guys that bought out Fayard still have one or two you can get for boogies, but I've heard it's not easy (or cheap). Spaceland does have at least one Skyvan, I jumped out of it last weekend. I think he was headed to Chicagoland for a week or two, and after that your guess is as good as mine. Nice plane if you need more cowbell.

In exotic locations? In the US, you've got 182, 185, 206, maybe a Twin-bo, Beech-18 (turbine conversion for sure, maybe a radial), DC-3, PAC 750, Porter, Caravan, King Air, Twin Otter, Skyvan, and a Casa. I'm sure I missed at least one or two, but that's a fairly complete list.

That's fair, but let's put your statement into the proper perspective - you have 31 years in the sport and 5000 jumps. According to your profile, you jump a canopy much larger than the average jumper, and if I'm not mistaken you still jump a ripcord and a spring loaded PC. You are far from the average jumper in that you have more time and jumps than most, and to add to that your canopy choice will limit your altitude loss in the case of a partial malfunction. I'm not sayng that a Tri 260 cannot spin and dive, but it certainly cannot do it as quickly as a Pilot or Sabre2 170 (which is about as average as I can imagine). So if you are a long-time, highly expereinced jumper flying a larger than average canopy, taking the time to have a look might be OK. If you are a more average jumper in terms of experience and equipment, time is of the essence, and you should move through your EPs in short order. Let's face it, you tried to deploy your main because you wanted the jump to be over. In the case of a malfunction, you failed to stop the skydive and stopping the skydive is job one. If you have conducted yourself properly and tracked to a clear area while scanning the area ahead and below as you tracked, you should be assured that nobody is below you. In the case of any 'higher' speed malfucntions, including spinning mals, you are not covering much ground horizontally, so if the area below you when you tracked was clear, it's still going to be clear for your cutaway. Pull your handles without delay.

No, he couldn't see you, but you really think he would be able to hear you? It sounds like you're starting to worry about things you cannot help. You won't have much control over anything in the event of a malfunction, that's what it's called a malfunction, things are not functioning properly. Any sort of safe-guards that are typically in place may just have gone out the window. You won't have directional control, and in the case of an RSl or Skyhook, you have no control over when you reserve will deploy after a cutraway (which is for the best). Dsiconnecting an RSL is not an option. Once you are under a malfunctioning main, do not attempt to clear the airspace below you, or disconnect an RSl or Skyhook to allow for a delay. Simply follow through with your EPs and hope for the best. Your time is very limited in these cases, and there is no gurantee that things will go as you hope with reagrds to your EPs, or your RSl, Skyhook or AAD working properly. Let's face it, your plan for opening your main has already gone to shit, so there's no reason to expect the rest to work out as planned. Get to your EPs ASAP, to give yourself the most possible time to deal with any further problems, or at best, more time under your reserve to do some practice flares. The video I posted is a very specific example. In that case, the lower jumper made a critical error by not tracking far enough, and then flying back under the center of the formation. It is common in RW video for the camera guy to dump right at break off altitude, and right in place. That's what it means when they say, 'The video guy gets the center'. The idea is that if everyone tracks away from the center of the formation, that space is now clear for the camera guy to dump in. Most camera guys will pull right at break off, while the jumpers in the formation are still tracking, creating vertical seperation from these jumpers. However, for reasons we see in this video, the center should remain clear well beneath the break off alititude, to allow the camera guy to suck it down, or have a mal. In this instance, the camera guy had several advatages, the biggest being that he did pull right at break off, which was probably 4000ft or higher. Due to this, he had the altitude to delay the reserve pull until he went by the lower jumper. As with most camera flyers, he was probably not jumping an RSL, so no disconnection was needed. I am willing to bet that he did not even see the lower canopy until after he had cutaway, and that canopy played no role in his plans while he was spinning under his main. Once free of the main, he could see that he was going to fall clear of the lower canopy, so that's what he did. If he had dumped his reserve immediately, he might have sniveled into the lower canopy, as you have no directional control over your canopy during the snivel. The key point to remember is that the guy pulled high, and had the altitude to pass the lower canopy, and still get his reseve out at or around 2k. The situation here was the result of using vertical seperation, not something most jumpers do outside of video flyers. In a regular skydive, if you pul at a normal altitude, and cutaway with a canopy below you, that canopy would have to be from another group and would most likely much lower than the canopy in the video. if you attempt to fall clear of that canopy, you would be under 1000ft by the time you went for your reserve. Not good. The video I posted was just an example of something close to what you were asking about, and not intended to be an example of how you should react in a malfunction situation. I was posted more as an interesting video to share.

Nice job genius, try reading. She clearly states in her first post in this thread that the three remaining ads in the calssifieds were for the last three units, and she left the ads up because she was waiting on a wire transfer from the UK. Your 'guess' that she would rather just sell to the US is wrong. For the record, I also sent an e-mail about these Cypres, and recieved a one line reply later that day. Two days later, I sent another e-mail, and they were sold. I didn't throw a shit fit, or trash the store, I just realized I vastly under-estimated the used Cypres market. If you look at the AAD section of the classifieds, you'll see that used mid-life Cypres are very rare. Few of them make it to the classifieds becasue I think that everyone who has one for sale already knows 5 jumpers looking for a cheap AAD. There is no US based conspiracy againt the the rest of the world where we try to keep the good gear for ourselves. The market is what it is. If you have the money available to buy what you want at the right time, you'll get what you want. I didn't offer payment immediately for one of the Cypres, and I lost out, not because I'm from Ohio, but becasue I was slow. I see that the first contact from the OP was on the 14th, while the ads went up at least two days prior. If the guy wants the gear so bad, and DZ.com is his best option, he should check the calssifieds more often.

Is this what you're thinking about? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dTFDqXe90s

That's pretty much it. Long before the fabric is toast, the lines will either start snapping, or be so far out of trim that the openings and flare will begin to suffer (and in turn the jumper begins to suffer). At that point you'll need a reline, and if the fabric passes the inspection that goes along with the reline, you're good to go. I jump in Ohio where it's grassy and dust free, and I've only seen one canopy that was jumped to the point of canopy failure. Now I've seen many that blew up from repeated hard openings, but the one I'm talking about was a Stiletto that always opened soft, and was jumped for a decade (or more). The fabric was noticeably thin and very tissure paper-like for the last few years it was alive, but it was still going stong up unitl the last jump, at which point it was just over.

You're making a big deal out of the X-braced (and beyond) market, but you have to remember that those canopies represent just a sliver of the overall sport parachute market. If you design an even higher performance canopy, chances are it will be more complex and therefore more expensive, that wing would hold an even smaller market share. Take PD for example. Since the Velo was released, it has produced one higher performance canopy, the Comp Velo, which is really just a Velo with some factory mods. In that same time, they have release the Pulse, Storm, Sabre2 and the Optimum Reserves (did I miss anything?). It shows you where they put their R&D time and money, and it ain't the leading edge of hgh performance. There might be ten better ideas out there then X-bracing, but finding someone to develop them and build them into a canopy that jumpers can afford and want to jump is the real trick.

Except for the guy a few posts up, who insists he has done it successfully several times on serveral different skydiving canopies, and that he was able to because he's 'tall' and has a longer reach than the rest of us.

Let's re-phrase that. You should be looking where you're going, and while you're tracking, down and out is where you're headed, and where you should spend the majority of your time clearing. However, when you go to pull, you're new direction of travel (relative to other freefallers) is up. This is why you also need to take a look over each shoulder to clear that airspace before pulling. Low man has the right of way, blah, blah, blah. If everyone looks out below, than anyone above you will see you a take action, blah, blah, blah. If everyone was perfect, we wouldn't need reserves and we would neve have accidents, but that's not the case. The person above you should look out for you, and should see you, and take some sort of action, but nobody's perfect. Take a look before you radically change your direction of travel (in a relative sense).

Nice video. Anyone notice at 2:20 and 4:00 the guy with his crazy-ass CRW toggles flying around in freefall on the tandem formation jump? Safety first. (On the upside, the other toggle looked like it was ready to unstow as well, so maybe the opening would have been symetrical)

What type of incidents are you referring to? It sounds like you're talking about a floating handle, which is not an incident if it doesn't result in a deployment. It's bothersome, and annoying, like line twists, but if it doesn't result in a deployment, it's not an incident. What I'm talking about are times when the handle fails to operate properly, as-in the jumper is not able to easily grab and pull the handle. The only ones I can confirm that this was the case were the ones that did not result in a fatality, because the jumper was alive to confirm that the handle was the cause of the delay in pulling the resereve. To me, that is an incident. You continue to reference RSls and AADs as the solution to the shortcomings of a soft handle, but as we have seen repeatedly, these are not to be counted on. There have been an assortment of fatalities involving low cut aways where the jumper did not reach AAD firing speed with enough altitude remaining to allow for a complete reserve deployment before impact. In these cases, an immediate reserve pull might have made the difference, and when that is the key, the D-ring is the superior handle. RSLs have also need known to fail, and again, in a case where you lack the alitude to deal with a soft handle, your life becomes dependant on the RSl to preform correctly. I would prefer to have my life depend on myself performing correctly, and when that's the case, quick is king and the D-ring is the quicker alternative. None of this is mentioning the current hub-bub about reserve containers not releasing the freebags rigth away. Again, another case where losing a couple hundred feet making a second or third grab for a handle could make the difference between a fully open reserve at impact, or something less. What you're doing is taking one short coming, and justifying it by embracing another shortcoming, all in an effort to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. It's taught in the FJC that RSLs, and AADs are back-up devices only, and that you the jumper need to perform in full to ensure your safety, but a soft handle may impair your ability to perform as such. Consider that the 'problem' you're attemtping to solve has been present on the majority of jumps made in the course of history. Very few components have endured thoughout the the entireity of skydiving, but the VAST majority of jumps have been made with a steel, loop type reserve handle, and premature deployments have never been enough of a problem for it to be changed. Hell. Bill Booth even got rid of the ripcord itslef, replacing it with a length of Spectra line, but the end of it is still attached to the same D-ring that's been in use since Wonderhog #1. My final point, is that the soft handle doesn't even solve the 'problem' you're looking to solve. There was a video posted on this site of a jumper accidentally pulling another jumpers cutaway pillow in freefall, and coincidentally, the ecaxt same thing happened at my DZ less that two months ago. Soft handles, if not properly protected, can also be accidentally pulled. The real soltution is to protect your handles, and jump the handles that give you the greatest chance of survival if you should need to use them. Edit to add - I have a vauge memory of soft reserve handles being outlawed somewhere in Europe, can anyone confirm is this is true, where it is, and why this was done?

People talk a lot about the 'snag hazzard' of a D-ring reserve handle, but I have never, ever once had either a cutaway or reserve handle come loose or get snagged in freefall. Furthermore, I'd be interested to hear, even anecdotely about instances where a D-ring reserve handle was snagged, resulting in a reserve deployment causing injury to the jumper, or other jumpers. I know FOR SURE of about a dozen stories of hard pulls on pillow type handles where the jumper eventualyl got it pulled, but they took several tries to get it out. One of them ended up under an open reserve less than 150ft from the ground. These are confirmed by the surviving jumpers who all switched to a D-ring afterwards. I also know of at least a dozen fatalities involving low reserve deployments where a soft handle was suspected to be the cause of the delay between the cutaway and the reserve pull. You simply cannot beat the mechanical advantage of a handle you can wedge in between your thumb and first finger and pull with no grip or hand strength required. When it comes to a 'must have' handle like the reserve, you take every advatage you can get. Your main PC - optional. The cutaway pillow - optional. The reserve handle - not optional.

If you never completed level 3 in the course of 8 jumps, you need to start over from the beginning. The truth of the matter is that you only successfully passed level 2, and it's been more than 30 days since your last jump, so you get bumped back to level 1. It's pretty straightforward. Last time I checked, AFF lv 1 includes ground school, which covers things like malfucntions on sport skydiving gear, proper use of sport skydiving gear, aircraft emergency procedures for sport skydiving, and the dive flow for your AFF lv 1 jump, all things your military jump experience have no relation to.

That line you see running spanwise toward the rear is the D line attachment point, and where you 'lose control' of the canopy with no steering lines. That portion of the canopy becomes useless in flight and provides zero lift/drag when you go to flare. Keep in mind that section of the canopy provides the majority of the flare in a standard configuration, and you can see what you give up by tossing your toggles.

It's not your line stows. There are bags with only two locking stows and a pouch you stuff the extra line into, and those pack jobs open fine. The pouch puts zero tension on the lines, let alone 8 pounds. Work on your slider and make sure it's quartered and firm against the stops when you bag the canopy. It helps to use a packing weight to keep your lines tight while you pack and bag the canopy. When you let the lines get loose, things inside the pack job (like the slider and/or slider stops) can move around and then your openings suck.

If you have an established career, look into flight training during your off hours, and be prepared to never see a return on the investment. You need 250 hours to get a commercial rating before you can make dime one, and even then it's going to be $10/load flying jumpes in a 182, or $20/hour towing banners or as a CFI (if you add that rating). Either way, you're a long way off from 'making money' flying, and things may change in the industry in the meantime. If you're really serious, you can get into a 'professional' flight shcool, and for $30k get into a job flying cargo or for a regional carrier making $16k per year. It would include odd hours, and possible relocation. It's a tough 'career path' given the regs and the way the industry works. You might be better off to call it a 'hobby' at first and work your way into making some side money flying jumpers or teaching at a local flight school. It will get you 'in the game' and building some experience. You might stumlbe into a turbine gig at a DZ, or a corporate flight department somewhere. Just go log a few hours in a 172 and see what you think, it's a pretty fun time.

At the risk of derailing this thread - Expert level canopy, expert level wing loading, novice level of knowledge.

If this is a true story, then you are a tremendous asshole. First of all, if you spent $120 on a bag of weed that would fit in your BOC, you got ripped off. If you didn't get ripped off, and you could fit the bag in your BOC, then your BOC is waaay too loose. In either case - tremendous asshole.