davelepka

I hear what you're saying, but it common knowledge that smoking pot is illegal in the US, and therefore it's directly implied that you're not allowed to smoke pot. Also, seeing as the entire article was about trying to connect the fatality to smoking pot, I think that too implies that it's a no-no. Sure, but at the same time there's always the outcry that we need to befriend all the students (tandems included) and encourage them to hang out after hours, be a part of the 'family', and spend some time around the bonfire. What do you think the excessive drinking, nudity, and general pyromania does for the reputation of the sport, and the DZ? I'm not even counting the other bonfire activities that come up - guns, explosives, fighting, passing out, throwing up, breaking things, throwing things, and grab a helemt in case there's a golf cart, scooter, motorcycle, atv, or pretty much anything with an engine nearby.

I don't think you have a 'solid' case. You might be able to previal in small claims court if everything goes well - the right judge, you're batting 1000, and the truck company sends a retard to represent them. Regardless of that, I would keep the pressure on the company as if your case was airtight. See if they're willing to make a deal, just to stay out of court and keep things simple. If you haven't done it already, be sure to mention the 'terror' your wife felt when this happened, and that she 'could have been killed' because of their 'careless behavior'. Maybe you get lucky, and end up talking to the guy who can cut you a $500 check just to get you off his back.

Just to be clear then, is it OK if everyone on the load is high? Or how about if you're getting out on a low pass all by yourself, or maybe just with your 'safe' friends? What of half of the laod is high, and half just shotgunned a beer or two? Does that work? How does coke fit into this whole thing?

Aside from building the same canopy from both materials, then loading them the same, and flying them side by side, what would else would you do to test this theory? What sort of criteria would you have in place to produce results that you would consider valid?

If you quoted the complete passage, you'd see that it is not similar. The two canopies in question were identical, with one being F-111 for use in the reserve container. A Stiletto and Raven are not the same in any way. Furhtermore, the example he gave proving his theory was a HAHO jump. High Altitude High Opening, where the LZ is a good distance from the exit point. The canopies are used to glide the distance into the LZ. A far cry from you chopping your Stiletto on a sport skydive where you were in close proximity to the LZ when you opened.

I've seen this scam on TV before, and the lady is probably getting scammed too. They find a go-between, and then have them cover the cost to ship all the stuff. They promise to repay them, but of course, it doesn't happen. My guess is the stuff is going overseas.......could it be.......I don't know......maybe.......NIGERIA?????

Nope, and you're fooling yourself if you think it does. Your toggles have a greater range, not just in motion, but in terms of the stall speed compared to rear risers. You throw out more drag, slow down more, and enact more change to your canopy with the toggles. The decreased range of the rears, combined with the stall characteristics make them a very bad choice for an emergency situaiton. It is much easier to over control, and induce a high speed stall with your rears. Additionally, the toggles are already in your hands, where you have to reach for the rears. You eat up valuable recovery time just making the reach, and god help you if you miss one or both of them.

Yes, he would swing forward at a higher speed, but that higher speed is only relative to the speed at which he was already swinging forward under his canopy. The increase in speed would be only along the arc he is traveling under his canopy, and would not represent a higher speed of the entire canopy/pilot system in relation to the ground. In truth, that higher speed along that arc would only serve to pitch the nose of the canopy up that much faster (aka shortening up the recovery arc). The more your canopy can pitch up before impact, the more you shift your energy from the vertical to the horizontal component. More skipping/sliding, less impacting and crushing. I think the last thing you can control in this type of situation is your exact body position at impact. There are too many variables, and things happen too fast. The one thing you can alwys count on is the reflex action to stab those toggles (if you have that reflex, something you need to develop before trying to go fast with a parachute) and the overall loss of energy that will provide. Best case scenario would be to do both, apply full toggle input, and manage your body position at impact. Oh yeah, don't hold your risers down at 20 ft.

It can't. Who ever came up with that idea in the first place is wrong. Any amount of brake input will create drag, which will eat some of the energy built up in the dive, energy which the jumpers body won't be using to leave a divot in the LZ. Additionally, by impacting at a more shallow angle, more of the remaining energy will go into skipping the jumper across the ground, as opposed to pile driving the jumper straight down (as demonstrated in the video). To anyone who had any doubt - flare your canopy as much as possible before you hit the ground in any unusual circumstance. As much as you can. Really.

You clearly have the wrong idea about canopies. A 'powerful flare' does not mean it will stop on a dime regardless of what's happening. Any canopy needs to be flown in a proper manner, and flared with the pilot hanging in the nuetral position under the wing. Furthermore, a Crossfire2 189 would be a poor choice for anyone under 240lbs. There is no benefit, and several problems with jumping a lightly loaded high performance canopy. The Crossfire is a HP canopy, and until you have the skill ans experience to jump one at 1.5 or more, you should not be on that wing. Proper canopy selection is not limited a reasonable wingloading, the selection of the type of wing is just as important. Case in point would be the video that started this thread. That jumper was at a reasonable wing loading for his jump numbers, but clearly the canopy he chose was too much for him to handle with his skill level.

Are you fucking kidding? You WORKED second shift. I don't know what you did, but I know it was harder than that fuckwads job, and I know that it's way harder then whatever he was doing last night from 5PM to 2AM, when regular folks were out working second shift. You I feel for. I worked second shift for a very short while, and it was a bear. Asston is a tool who I don't feel sorry for in anyway. He's so fucking tired, but he had time to put on a hat for the camera? "I had to wake up to the sound of hammers pounding at 7:30AM..." How about the guys who had to wake up at 6:00AM to get to the job site, who are actually making the hammers pound, how do you think they feel? Asston is a bigger tool than the hammers that woke him up.

Great, if they're getting 20% why do they need to raise the dues? Are they planning on doing away with the GM fees, or is the DZ going to pay the fees plus 20% of the students the USPA brings in? Why would any DZ go for this? Thanks to the general memebership the USPA has some deep pockets to make the initial investment in advertising and marketing that they could corner the business. I'm sure it would pay off for the USPA, but the DZ would suffer by losing 20% off the top of a good number of their students. Doesn't this sound a little bit like Skyride? We'll book your tandems and students, but we get a generous cut for every one we do? I guess Skyride used unsavory business practices to succeed, screwing over the DZ who chose not to participate, but according to this, the USPA wouldn't be too far off of that description. Limiting the participation to GM DZs? What will that do to the business of non-GM DZs? Is that good for skydiving? Charging GM fees so a DZ can lose 20% off their tandem and student business? I guess this is a good time to remind everyone that tandems and students are what pay the bills at the DZ. Fun jumpers generate the revenue that pays for the free beer and pizza that occasionally pops up (if your DZ doesn't serve free pizza or beer, it's becuase the fun jumps don't cover that cost). Attempting to be one organization who has control over both the regulations, and the flow of business to the DZ? That doesn't sound good for anyone.

I hadn't even thought of that aspect. You always hear about the dismal turnout of the general membership at the meetings, but this would certainly take care of that. I recall the last meeting when a good number of Dz.com folks went down, and I know that good number of people were eagerly following the updates and videos that were posted about the proceedings. Additionally, this would allow the board members more time at home with their families, and less time away from their 'day jobs'. Overall, did these people run for a seat because they were really concerned about the membership? If so, then this is a no-brainer. If this was a business, and cost of this meeting came out of the owners pocket, you can bet that he or she would be all for anything that could save tens of thousands of dollars. Here's an example - the video dept where I jump is run separate from the DZ. The guy who runs it makes money off of every video shot at the DZ. Of course he makes the most on the videos that he personally shoots (and gets paid to make a jump to boot). Anyway, there are times where the video work is slow, and he'll pull himself from the rotation and let the video staff take the jumps he would have done. He still makes a few bucks on our work, and it keeps the video staff in the air. It's clearly more beneficial for him to make the jumps himself, but for the good of the overall video dept., he 'takes one for the team' and sits out a few rounds. So when does the BOD take one for the team, and give up their face-to-face meetings?

It's been mentioned before, but what about an 'e-meeting'. There are several services that provide online meeting capability. I am 100% sure that any BOD member who is not equipped for such a meeting has a jumper local to them who would be willing to handle the tech end of things for them. Even if you had to buy one or two board members new computers, or hook up a high-speed line or two, you still come in way under $25k for the fisrt meeting, and once those things are in place, the savings for future meetings would only multiply. Once those members are off the board, cancel the DSL, and reposes the computer. You seem like a pretty technical guy Bill, does this seem feasible to you?

How about buy the mount, and let the helmet builder put it together. The helmet looks pretty good, so the builder has the skills to put it together, and probably do a pretty nice job of it. If he's looking to expand into building mounts, an opportunity to work with an existing mount and incorporate it into his own helmet would be a valuable learning experience.

I'm replying here to my own post (#17) and I'm going to post the PM I got from Prodiver, the guy I was responding to in post #17. It's clear he's defending his post, and while he maintains he has done nothing wrong, as I re-visit this thread, I see that he has deleted the post in question, and several others??? Huh?? I'm going to resist the urge to pick this apart line by line, by my favorites have to be - When you do exceed your abilites, it's called an accident. Nobody ever plans on having an accident. I'm also a fan of - You hear the same old lectures, because the new guys make the same old mistakes. Do you think we like to repeat the same old lectures? I don't. In the end, you are as wrong as can be. When you're talking about a guy with 100 jumps, and a guy with 1000s of jumps, the guy with 1000s of jumps will always know more. Just surviving though 1000s of jumps, and the years it takes to make them is why they know more than the new guy. Finally, while I do appriciate your military service, it does not make you a better canopy pilot. You will never catch me attempting to lead a division of men, advising anyone on how to lead a division of men, or anything remotely close to that. You're a military man, have a little respect for the chain of command. I'm not saying respect me as a person, but as a canopy pilot I have the experience, skill, and expertise to speak at length, in detail, and with a very high degree of accuracy.

How many jumps on the Tri? On the Pilot? Aside from that, the Tri was not known for great landings, or handling in general. It was intended to be a sport canopy that you could also do CREW with. It never really caught on in that sense, but there are a ton of them still around, and generally for a low price. It's no surprise that the Pilot flies better. It's not the WL, it's the canopy. In terms of the OP, and the question you were responding to, as canopies get smaller, the lines get shorter and accordingly the roll rate increases. 1.3 on a 150 and 1.3 on a 135 are two different things, and require two different levels of skill and experience. Anf really, you seem to know that you are out ahead of the norm, why the hell would you advise another person to do the same? Let's leave out the fact that you seem to know very little about what you a saying, just from the perspective of personal responsibility. Do you really think the 'right' thing to do is encourage others push the limits like you are? You got health insurance? Also, don't be surprised to see this post come back and bite you in the ass if you ass ever ends up in a hospital bed after trying to land a perfectly good canopy.

Was your camera helmet desinged for this mount? My guess is no, so this is a custom application. It will require some fabrication work to make the two fit together. If you want a 'cookie cutter' helmet, purchase all of your mounts from the helmet manufacturer. Even then, expect toi make some 'adjustments' to make it work for you. Between all of the different types of cameras, the different places you can mount them, and different types of mounts available, you have to be 'creative' when you put it all together.

You're pushing it. The WL is on the high side, and any canopy under a 150 will have shorter lines which speeds up the reaction of the canopy to control input. On the surface this may sound good, but in practice, it makes it easy to over-control the canopy. It's been said before, if you push the WL things will be fine, as long as everything goes according to plan. If you should encounter some sort of problem on a skydive, now you have to deal with a canopy that's a few steps ahead of you, and whatever the problem may be. You got health insurance? Good health insurance?

I picked up on that too, and thought it looked a little aggressive for a student landing. However, if watch the video, the student does indeed hook it, and speeds up considerably before hitting the pole. Ouch. Now I'm not a doctor, but medically I have to adivse against speeding up before hitting a pole.

Pilotdave- No it's not different at all. You equal your airspeed with the wind speed, and your net result is zero ground speed, the canopy sinks straight. Aerodynamically different would be if you pulled a string that cloed off the nose, and turned into a round. That would be different. Gravitysurfer - I agree that there are differences in many factors between accuracy canopies, and others, but none of these differences are exclusive to accuracy canopies, which is what makes them the same as every other ram-air canopy. Here's an example - take a Velo, and a ParaFoil. -different number of cells - different line type -different aspect ratio -different line trim -different thinkness of the wing See, all of these things are different, however if were to look at the same facotrs in comparing a Velo to a Katana, you find that all or most of those differences still appear, even though the Katana is very close to the Velo in both design and intended use. Accuracy canopies don't poses any 'magic' that make them any different in their operation than any other canopy. They have design features that lend them toward better performance in one area or another, but they remain ram-air canopies, and operate on the same principals as every other ram-air canopy.

Different? Yes. All suck? Also yes. How about this - if you built me a 103 sq ft Para Foil, I would not try to sink it in. Why? It lacks the feature that I am proposing makes an accuracy canopy 'sink-able' - it lacks huge-ness.

Why? All ram-air canopies work the same way - the incoming air pressure inflates the cells, creating a wing than can be steered, braked and flared, and possesing a min. air speed for maintaining pressurization and flight (aka the stall speed). This description fits everything from the Para-Foil to the Velo. There are differences between accuracy canopies, and other canopies - aspect ratio, number of cells, line type and trim, but those differences exist among all types of ram air canopies. Any differences between accuracy canopies and others are not exclusive to accuracy canopies, they are differences that are common among all canopies. It is the square footage (and the accordingly slow stall speed) that makes it possible to 'sink in' an accuracy canopy. Come in high over the bullseye, once you are centered up, apply brakes until the wind speed matches your air speed. Now you are going straight down, "sinking it in" down onto the bullseye. Even with the generous square footage, the impact upon landing is not slight. This would work with any canopy provided you had enough wind, and a soft enough place to land.

Accuracy canopies are designed to fly like every other canopy. The primary difference is that they are huge. There is no magic that allows an accuracy canopy to sink in. It's simply a fucntion of the huge canopy being able to fly slow enough that even a moderate wind is enough to give the canopy zero ground speed with a little brakes. They still land like shit in brakes, hence the accuracy tuffet. For those that don't know, a tuffet is a giant round pad with the bullseye in the center, and is in place to keep the jumpers in one piece as they thunder in with little to no flare.

I agree with that. I also agree that you have to be aggressive, and use every inch of toggle stroke, but the problem is that you need to be extra careful to avoid a stall when doing this. Half brakes in final will have the nose of the canopy pitched up, and you will be hanging forward of your normal position under the canopy. Both of these factors put you closer to a stall than full flight. Those factors will reduce the amount of time it will take the nose to pitch up enough, or your weight to come forward enough to stall the canopy. A jumper will be used to a certain magnitude of pitch up, and forward swing when flaring a canopy on a normal landing. When you begin from half brakes, you'll stall well before this magnitude of change is reached. It would be easy to honk down on the toggles, and expect the degree of change/time of change you're used to, only to be dropped on your ass twice as fast as you expect. The lesson is to fly your canopy around in half brakes at altitude. Work on turns, flares, flare-turns, stalls, and flaring stall-turns. Know how things work, inside and out before doing it right next to the ground.