davelepka

The flare to a full stop is a good indication of flying the canopy to the end, and it is a good sign of control. My main point is that however you land, straight in, double fronts, all the way up to 270's (or beyond) the one factor you need to put first is control. If you are not feeling in control, you are in over your head. You need the confidence of being in command of the situation in order to be safe, and perform to your full potential. For example, I have turned low many times, and I simply apply enough toggle to bring me in line, and finish the swoop. It does take some judgement to realize you are low, and to give enough toggle to just pull out (too little=impact, too much=high speed stall). If you are not in control, feeling fear or other distracting feelings, you will not have your full brain power to deal with the problem. Of if you are swooping on a no wind day, and you do a 270 that has you swooping further and faster than ever before, are you going to be able to focus on shutting it down? How about if you are swooping so far that a fence you have never considered before becomes an issue, will you be able to take quick and appropriate action? Replace the fence with another jumper walking back to the hanger, you are in the same boat. Looking at things like distance or speed to judge your swooping is jumping the gun. The context in which the question was asked was using this info to judge the quality of swooping by a beginning swooper. At that stage of swooping. I think that being comfortable with your situation is far more important than speed or distance. As far as the term 'learning progression ' goes, I was referring to a jumper learning how to swoop, and following a progression such as double fronts to 90's and then to 180's and so on. Yes, the pros are always learning, but they are beyond a progression of any sort. They are refining an established skill. I am not learning how swoop my canopy, I did that 2000 jumps ago. I have no issue landing my canopy from straight in to 360's (or more), up or downwind. I am not learning those skills any more. I am, however, refining them with every jump I make.

***I may pull off landings where it would seem that I'm in full control when I'm actually on the verge of losing it, so in the end I am the only person who knows Thats the point I was making. Even if you turn too high, and loose some swoop, if you can handle the situation, you're doing good. If you should turn low, and can toggle your way out of it (with control) and have a good landing, that also shows control. Both of these scenarios would produce a less than optimum swoop distance, but would require some skill to achieve. If you are focused on a certain distance to judge the quality of your swoop (or the skill of the swooper) I think you will be looking in the wrong direction. Distance is a good judge of skill for the pro swoopers, but if you are in a learning progression, distance should be the last thing on your mind.

The distance info you are looking for won't help you learn to do correct and safe swoops. Winds, pilot, canopy trim, alt. of your landing area, temp., and bar. pressure will all vary the distance of a swoop with a similar approach. A better gauge is the amount of control you exhibit during your swoop. Canopy coaching is available everywhere. If there is a need, pool some people together, and bring a coach to you. Our DZ brings Scott Miller in from Florida twice every season, and the cost of travel and lodging is worked into the course fees. I'm sure there is a coach somewhere in Europe who would be willing to come a hold a course if you can get enough jumpers interested. Look for a coach who can train basic skils to the beginners, as well as the swoopers, you should be able to get enough people together.

I think he's talking about a multi-point attachment to the bag itself, thinking it might help with line twists or something like that.

*** I jumped my BASE rig from 900 feet off the lower wing of a Steerman. What sort of delay did you take? I did this out of a Cessna with a Fox packed into an old Racer (no d-bag) with a round reserve. I did around 8 jumps, all from 800 or 900ft with 3 to 6 second delays. Good fun for all.

It really is way faster than anything out there. If you jump it a big boogie, you will pass Super Otters on the way to altitude like they are standing still. I think time to 14k is 7 or 8 minutes.

With your experience, I would say forget about flying a camera for now. Literally. Concentrate on learning to fly what ever you want to be filming in the future (RW, freefly, whatever). Don't worry about prepping for video work, just learn to fly with the group. After several hundred jumps, learning the video specific skills will be a snap. If you never spend time learning the core skills, you will always be one step behind the jumpers you are filming.

***Thats why I got into Skydiving in the First place: The Money _______________________________________________ In that case, how do you explain the Dolphin?

***im sick of hearing about skydivers living in dog kennels and eating noodles in front of a cardboard box because they cant afford a tv. ---------------------------------------------------------- Cut your ear off ala Vince Van Gough, or quit jumping. Problem solved.

If you borrow a rig, once you leave the plane, it's your rig, they're your handles, pull them.

I think the idea is that you can follow the downind and base legs of the pattern. While on base, with your swoop lane to your left, the right 270 will put you on track. This way swoopers can follow the same pattern as everyone else. The swooper will blend with traffic right up unitll the 270, at which point a quick check of traffic will clear the space for the 270. If traffic should prevent the 270, you could follow the patterne and land straight in (or at least continue down the downwind leg and pull a 90 onto final for a little swoop). The setup for the left 270 involves flying against the flow of traffic on the downwind leg just before your swoop. I'm not sure of which is better. BUT. I will say that anyone doing a 270 should have the skills, expereince, and judgement to be able to go either way. I jump at an Otter DZ (not many DZ's flying anything bigger than an Otter), and once open, and clear, I begin to count canopies in order to account for the other jumpers in the air. Then I sit in brakes, and wait for the moderately loaded canopies (with moderately skilled pilots) to land first, making my only traffic the slower student canopies, and tandems (both of which are slow enough to easily avoid). This gives me some additional freedom in choosing my swoop. If you are not willing to flollow a similar plan, you have to be ready to forefit your swoop if traffic problems occur. If you are skilled enough to swoop, you need to be skilled enough to avoid those who aren't.

Well put. People need to consider the rate at which canopy design is progressing, and realize that if the training doesn't progress at the same rate, there will be a problem. While I have seen the emergence of some canopy control courses, widespread advanced canopy training has yet to catch on. So the problem is that we have canopies which are beyond the capablilties of the jumpers who are trying to get thier hands on them. Does anyone really believe that the canopy training provided in the first jump course provides sufficient information for a jumper to be free to select any canopy they please? Probably not, but for many jumpers, that represents the whole of thier canopy training. I have said this before, but jumpers seem to spend quite a bit of time and money working on honing thier freefall skills, while paying little attention to thier canopy control. Load oragnizers, video, debriefs, and tunnel time are all well and good, but those freefall skills will do you little good if you sideline yourself with an injury under a fully functioning parachute. It happens all the time. We need to catch on that safely operating a modern parachute is complex and dynamic situation. Understanding the theories and principals involved becomes increasingly more important as the canopies themselves become more advanced and capable. Jumpers who aren't willing to persue the training needed to operate these parachutes, need to rely on W/L restrictions as related to jump numbers to allow them to sneak up on proficient canopy flight through shear jump numbers. On the other hand, jumpers who are willing to dedicate the time and money to seek out the training (which will become cheaper and more prevalent as the interest in it increases) will discover a steeper learning curve, a safer persuit of advanced skills, and will be jumping faster canopies, swooping further, and doing it safely much quicker than they had anticipated.

Judging by your height and weight, you won't need much wing at all. What you do need is some some solid practice filming smaller RW jumps to acclimate yourself to the camera. If you have already dome this, do more. You only have 200 jumps total, how much practice could you have? Then get a suit with a small wing, and do RW video with that (at least 50 jumps). Then you can approach tandem videos being a practiced, confident, and safe camera flyer. Seriously.

Don't forget about the pilot chute as well. A worn pilot chute, pulling a 280 out of the container, possibly combined with uneven stows (both in size and rubber band tension) will cause line twists. The slower time from bridle extention to line stretch allows the bag more oppertunity to dance around on the way up.

Thats kind of what I was getting at. The combination of ZP, smaller size, and shorter lines will add up to much higher performance than you're used to. I would reccomend some time on a ZP 170. Maybe 100 jumps or so would have you in good shape for a 149. You could sell the 149 to buy a 170, or buy a 170 and shelf the 149 untill you're ready. Also, if you happen to know a jumper with a 170 looking to downsize, see if they would trade you. Good luck.

What were you jumping before? Most F-111 canopies are consierably larger than 149 sq ft. I would be cautious with rapid downsizing, and you might give some consideration to jumping an intermediate sized canopy between your previous canopy and the 149.

Would a tandem canopy (EZ maybe) be a better choice for him? They are available used, and have reserves to match, much like the military gear he is using now. My guess would be that the tandem canopies, designed for experienced TM's, might perform better (openings, landing, etc.) than military gear built for, well, the military where guys don't make enough jumps to really know the difference between good performance and not.

I got wet on a sunset load in July. Temp was like 90 that day, so it was refreshing. I've actually seen the video from that swoop meet. It even looked cold on the TV.

I think that if you don't get wet at least once a year, you're not trying hard enough. Actually, if you don't impact the water, but just come up short of making the other side, it's kinda fun. (This is the kind of landing I'm reffering to in the above statement, by the way).

Please do not learn how to back track while leaving a formation. If your technique is poor, your separation from the group will be inadequate. A two way with another tracker on thier belly will provide a reference for heading, and give you an idea of actual distance covered. Make sure to do this perpendicular to jump run to avoid conflicts with other groups. Once you can consistantly back track with heading control, and forward speed similar to a belly track, you can practice during actual formation break off, as you can ensure adequate separation.

The area of the of the strap you have altered is on the non-load bearing side of the friction adapter. It should not cause a problem. Is it really that hard to thread through the buckle?

Some other big dude did several jumps in Moss Point, MS. I don't know how close that is to Baton Rouge, but this other guy flew in from San Diego, so at least you're better off than he is. The folks at the DZ can tell you all about gear, and other big guy stuff when you do your actual jump. Good luck, get video and stills, and post some pics of your skydive.

***Shit happens I don't think this statement is quite in line with your earlier post. Two canopies out is shit happening at its finest. I thought you could 'easily' avoid this. So what is it?

*** I am not currently concerned about how the two canopies will "play" togeather, because having two canopies out is easy to avoid. Wow, thats quite a statement. I would say two canopies out would be the result of some sort of gear malfunction. If you can avoid a gear malfunction, why not go without the reserve altogether? Think about how small your rig could be then! If you would be willing to convert to a spring-loaded ripcord deployment, you could hook up a Cypress to your main, just in case you expereince a skydiver malfunction.

I got the same show last month. I think they were using my building for the turn around point also. My guess was that they were no more 200 feet up, so if you're at 120 ft., you've got to be really close. I was judging their altitude from ground level, and seeing how close they were to an adjacent building for a reference. I thought doing video on the weekends was a cool job, but those guys have me beat hands down.