davelepka

I don't see any cause for flames or critisizm to head your way. All you did was remove one possible casue with your first-hand story. If you did the job properly, with a full swing of the handle and subsequent wiggle to ensure the pins were seated, then we know it wasn't user error. It's possible that the door was bumped by someone in your group, or a following group, on exit and the door just happened to drop 10 or 20 seconds later. It's also possible that the pins or mechanism was loose, and was not 'secure' even if you follow the correct door procedure. The up and down pitching of the aircraft as groups leave can load and unload those pins, and if one of of them was loose, or the handle was bumped, each group that leaves will get the door that much closer to falling. Thanks for chiming in and setting the record straight (or straighter).

It's essentailly a fire extinguisher that's built into the aircraft. It's there to give the pilot a chance the put out an engine fire in-flight. There are two handles in the cockpit, one for each side, that trigger the system. These handles are wired in place with a breakable wire that is there to prevent an 'accidental' pulling of the handle, but with purpose, you can break the wire. Pulling them releases the fire suppresant into the engine compartment. Re-setting these is not an easy or cheap job, not to mention cleaning up the mess made by releasing the fire suppresant into an otherwise clean and functional engine compartment. When I saw this thread, I was thinking about some stickers, or maybe even some kid 'tagged' the plane with spray paint. This is another story, and involves entering the aircraft, and making a deliberate effort to pull those handles. This act is a crime, including costly property damage, and I'm not surprised they're offering a reward to catch this guy.

There are very few difference between them, aside from the physical number of cells, that cannot be designed in or out of the canopy. 'Glide angle' is simply a matter of line trim, and has nothing to do with the number of cells. Aspect ratio is also simply a matter of design choices, you can cut up any apect ratio into either 7 or 9 slices. Look back in history, and you'll see where the 'myths' about these differences come from. Back in the day, most canopies were 7-cell F-111. When squares frist came out there were even 5-cell designs, but those fell by the wayside with 7 being the popular number. Then they started to produce 9-cell canopies, and in an effort to increase 'performance', they bumped up the aspect ratio. The added number of cells allowed them to make a stable canopy with a higher aspect ratio. Those wings would turn faster, and were more efficient to allow for a flatter trimmed line set, and still be able to get a good flare from the slower trimmed airspeed. Early on in performance, the goals were fast turns and flat glide, with the Stiletto being the 'end game' of that trend. What they found (eventually) is that the Stiletto didn't dive very well due to the flat trim, and was tough to control the roll axis on the flare because of how much it liked to turn. In time, swooping became the goal, so they went to steep trims for longer dives, less turn response to make those canopies easier to fly at (much) high wingloadings. Anyway, back in the day, there were some 'universal' differences between 7 and 9 cells besides the number of cells, but most of that was due to the idea that the 9 cells were the 'new' designs and the 7 cells were the old designs. However, that was a long time ago, and since then they have discovered that you can simply design those differences in or out by building the canopy the way you want. Now if you want to know the differences between specific canopies, then list the models and we can go from there, but what you're asking is like saying 'what's the differences between a car with a 4-cylinder engine or one with a 6-cylinder engine'? Twenty-five years ago, it would have been that the 4-banger was the slower, base level car, and the 6 was the faster, upgraded machine, but today it's not always the case. There are 4-cylinder cars that can out-perform 6-cylinder cars by a mile, and it's all based on the design choices when you build the car itself.

That is funny, but there is truth in there as well. Granny is sticking up for the TI? Who cares, what the hell does granny know about skydiving, safety, proper procedures, etc? Who made her an expert such that she can comment as to the 'quality' of service she recieved? Was the TI a nice guy? Could be, ask granny, she knows that. Was he funny? Ask granny. Polite? Repectful? Did he smell good? All things you can ask granny, and she will be the expert when it comes to those areas. His performance as a TI? With no previous experience, and no industry knowledge. granny is not the person to consult. Her survival, despite what she may think, is no indication of the TIs performance. We all know that there is a high degree of luck involved in her survival, so with that being her primary metric for judging her jump, you can't put much weight in her opinion. Show me the TV interview where Bill Booth defends the TIs actions, and I'll change my opinion of the situation.

Easy fix, have someone capable of working the door sit next to the door. The Skyvan is one of the easiest planes to move around in, so there's no reason not to seat a capable person next to the door. Even if that person is not in the first group out, it's no problem for them to walk towards the front of the plane after securing the door. The other aspect of that is an aircraft emergency. If the pilot gives the order to exit, the last thing you want is to have to wait for someone who is not familiar with the door, or who is afraid of the door and hesitant with it's operation. Your best bet for success is to have a clear designation of responsibility ahead of time, so there's no need to figure things out or make changes in the event of an emergency.

Keep in mind that's 200 skydives to get to wingsuit jump #1. Then you need to make wingsuit skydives #2 thru #200 before you're 'good' with a wingsuit. Base jumping is seperate from skydiving, so you also need to make base jump #1 thru #200 before you're 'good' at base jumping. So in reality, you need 400/500 skydives and 200 (or more) base jumps before should be mixing wingsuits and base. Also, a bumch of those base jumps should be big wall jumps because that's where you need to be to wingsuit base, so that means 50-100 of those jumps will need to be in Europe. Might take more than 7 months. That aside, head down to southern California. Perris and Elsinore are both big, busy DZs where you can make a ton of jump, and they're only 20 min apart. Go visit each one, and check out the school. Pick the one you like better, and get your license. Then spend the rest of your time fun jumping between the two DZs. Perris has a wind tunnel in the parking lot if you need it during your training, and you can use even if you're training over at Elsinore.

Another quick thought, how about a wind tunnel? It's like skydiving, it's fun, and it's quite a bit safer and easier to 'sell' to the wife. If you don't live near a tunnel, wait until the baby is born, and take the wife on a vacation somehwere there's a tunnel. Orlando and Hollywood both have tunnels and are popular vacation spots. The tunnel is a half-day activity, the rest of time you can do 'couples' stuff. Maybe she would even try the tunnel?

Yeah, don't jump. No joke, but with 2 kids and 1 on the way, I can only assume that your existing kids are younger, so what happens if you break a leg on your jump? Your wife is taking care of 2 your kids (and soon a baby) and you, all by herself. Let's say everything goes great. With 3 your kids at home, when do you predict you'll have time and money to dedicate to jumping? At a minimum, it's a couple thousand dollars and 20 trips to the DZ to get a license, and then another couple thousand dollars for gear and money for jump when you do get the DZ. Do you really foresee that sort of time and money in your near future? Without the support of your wife? Maybe you just want to make one jump, for a 'bucket list'. Ok, great, wait until the kids are older. Ditto if you want to presue jumping as a hobby, wait until you have the time, money, and support to be able to actually persue it. I have two kids, 14 and 10. By the time my son (14) was born, I had about 1000 jumps and was working full time in the sport. I never stopped jumping, but I also didn't start any new, dangerous hobbies when my children were young. I thought about it, and wanted to do some different things, but held back for all the reasons I stated above. Time, money, and the young kids being priority. With my daughter being 10 now, my mind is starting to wander a little, but the point is that life circumstances will eventually change (especially in terms of young children, they won't be young for long).

No shit? In that case, the Aerodyne website will have specs for the Pilot 170, and he can measure his canopy against those specs.

Does the label appear to match the canopy, or does it look newer? There's a chance the canopy was sent to Aerodyne for some sort of service, and the original label might have been old/damaged/unreadable, so they replaced it, and the Pilot label was the closest thing they had available. The easy way to find out, is to measure the canopy. The Pilot is semi-eliptical, and the Hornet is square. So measure the chord (the distance from the nose to the tail) at an end cell and at the center cell, and compare the two. If they are the same, the canopy is a perfect rectangle and is a Hornet. If the end cell is smaller than the center cell, then the canopy is semi-eliptical, and is a Pilot.

The problem with listening to what she says is that's way after the fact. This jump happened sometime last year, and the video didn't go viral until one of her relatives posted it online. So you have a woman who made a jump, was unharmed, and felt like she had a good time and was well taken care of. In her minds eye, everything went according to plan, and she held those beliefs for a year. How many tandem students have you seen who are scared shitless in the door, and only end up jumping because they are too scared to even protest the process of moving to the door and exiting? These same jumpers will land, and then proclaim that they had a great time and that they loved every minute of it. There's something about standing safely on terra-firma that tends to 'alter' their veiw of how it all went down. Forget about the interview on the Today show, or anything else you heard about this jump. Let's say that the woman did fall out of the harness, so all you had to go by was the video. Does it appear that she is a willing participant at the time of exit?

The ad does say that the tickets are valued at $179 each, so these might be 'AFF jump tickets', not 'sport jump tickets'. Think about it, when was the last time you saw a DZ that would print up such a large and elaborate jump ticket for a fun jumper? The bigger question would if Gold Coast allows transfer of those tickets.

Provided you stop for required maintenance as needed, you could literally drive that car all day, every day, for hundreds of thousands of miles. The car doesn't know if it drives 100 miles a week, or 100 miles a day, it just knows that it went 100 miles, and wears out accordingly. That said, the Honda is a great choice for a high-mileage lifestyle.

Slightly? That's hilarious is what that is. Last summer, the guy can't figure out how to lean forward in his harness, 15 months later he's calling out a member of the PD Factory Team as to his skills or qualifications. Sounds like a classic 'mall ninja' to me.

Don't buy new gear your first time out. What do you really know about what you want or need from a rig? You may have read or heard things, but in terms of actual experience, what do you have to go on? The student rigs you've jumped? One or two sport rigs you may have borrowed for a jump or two? When you buy new gear, it's like buying a new car. If you try to sell it anytime in the first year or two with very little miles (jumps), you're going to take a big hit on the resale price. It's like throwing money out of the window (or door of the plane). The other thing that happens is that you don't end up jumping as much as you think you might, and then you end up with a rig in your closet that's 10 years old with 100 jumps on it, and again, it's not worth what you hope it is. So the solution is to look for used gear. If you put together a nice used rig that is 'mid-life', say between 5 and 8 years old with 500-700 jumps on it, you'll be able to jump it for a year or two and 100-200 jumps, and then be able to sell it for most of what you bought it for. You might end up losing $100 or $200, but that's about it. On top of it all, you'll end up putting up less than half of the cash you would if you bought new. During that year or two, you'll learn a ton about jumping and gear, and will be in a mch better position to make an informed decision about your next rig purchase. There's a fair chance you'll end up buying another used rig because you'll see the value and flexability that it gives you. Just for reference, I bought a new container last time I bought a rig. The reason was that I knew exactly what I wanted and that I would be able to get some good use out of it without wanting (or needing) to switch. That was in the spring of 2005, and I'm still jumping the same container and have 1500-ish jumps on it. In that case, it made sense to buy new beacuse I knew I would be able jump it to the point that I go tmy money's worth out of it. Duriung that same time, I've had two different canopies in the rig, and I bought both of them used because I knew there was a good chance I'd be wanting to change out the main after a couple years. It didn't make sense to buy new. Just remember that any 'modern' rig that passes a riggers inspection is going to be 'safe' to jump. What's more important than fancy gear with all the options is that you have the cash to jump all day long on every sunny day the props are turning at the DZ. Put together a nice used rig for $3500, and then spend $3500 on making more jumps than the guy with the $7000 rig. The jumps are what it's really about, and what will make you a better skydiver, plain and simple. There's no replacement for air time.

As previously mentioned, there are many variables that come into play when making that type of call, and it really depends on the overall situation. That said, there may be times where a no-input, brakes-set landing might be the best option available, and it should be in the list of possible courses of action. One thing I will say for a jumper with a dislocated shoulder or broken arm (really any situation where they only have one arm available), if they do choose to unstow the brakes to fly and land the canopy, always unstow the brake opposite your good arm first. This way, if it turns out you cannot reach or unstow it, you're not spiraling to your death with the other brake already unstowed. You're more likely to be able to reach the brake on the same side as your good arm, and also more likely to be able to slove a 'problem' on that side should one arise. If you blow the brake on your 'good side', and then find you cannot reach the other one, you've just made way more problems than you already have. Another point along the same lines, if you are trying to flare and land with one arm, don't be hung up on the idea of a 'full' flare. You'll have more control and better leverage on the toggles with a half or 3/4 braked landing, and this should be more than enough to allow a PLF to offer you an injury free landing. Pulling the toggles down to right in front of your face/neck will give you more control and better allow you to protect yourself on the landing/PLF. Trying to get the toggles all the way down and remain centered might prove to be diffucult, and introduce some 'turn' to your 'flare'.

Australia is a big place. Depending on where you'll be based, you might be 1000's of miles from any one DZ or another, so you need to be more specific. Beyond that, I'm not sure it's going to be that easy to get a DZ job (or a good DZ job). Do you really have 4 pack jobs? It's going to take more experience than that to get a packing job. Despite what you might think, those are good paying jobs on the DZ, and you need to be skilled and fast to get a spot on a packing mat. Some DZ require you to be a rigger in order to pack for them. You might be able to get a job in manifest or grounds keeping, but those are generally low paying hourly type jobs. Packers and jumpers get paid 'piece work' in that the more they work, the more money they make, but most other jobs on the DZ are close to minimum wage. Without some experience and references, you should not expect much just walking in off the street. If you were to hang out and jump for 6 months or a year, and they got to know you (and your skills/abilities) you might get an opportunity, but short of that you'll be lucky to get a slot moving the lawn or cleaning the bathrooms. If you do end up working hourly, you might see if you can take some it out in 'trade' for jumps. If they want to pay you $10/hr, maybe you can get $12 or $14/hr put on your jump account in trade. You can get cash for half of your hours, and jumps for the other half.

Not having heard of any problems alone is not a good reason. Combine that with tens of thousands of jumps wearing a Big Bird on your chest, and you have the makings of a sound argument for the safety of jumping with a Big Bird on your chest. Name a piece of gear, and I can dream up an obscure malfunction that it could cause. Give that piece no history of any problems over a massive number of jumps, and I'm willing to accept that it's 'safe' to jump. Your story (or assumption) is incorrect. In the aftermath of the student falling out of the harness, many stories came out of TIs who had students slip or shift in the harness in the same exact way that allowed the frist student to fall out. These examples never made it far enough to allow the student to fall out, and either the TIs didn't recognize the potential if they had slipped further or didn't want to admit to the mistake, so they never reported them. Either way, the potential existed, and it did manifest itself in several 'near misses' that were not reported. The difference between that, and wearing a hoodie, is that wearing a hoodie that caused a malfunction (or near-mal) doesn't put a civilians life, or an instructors rating, at risk. For a TI to admit that he almost lost a student is a big deal, while a solo jumper admitting that his hood got stuck on something is not. Cocheese claims that just because nobody posted a story here in a couple days doesn't mean it didn't happen, but the truth is that there's a good deal more data that's not being considered. Sure, it hasn't happened to me, or anyone I personally know, but it also hasn't been posted here in the last 10 years that I know of. We're not just dealing with what I know, or others on this thread, it's also what's been posted here over the last decade, and there's nothing there either. Not one person who posts here ever saw or heard of such an incident, or surely it would have been posted. Think about it - let's say that it happened, and the jumper came out of it OK. That's a great story to post, and the kind of shit that people love to read about. On the same note, let's say it happened, and the jumper was injured or killed. Now it get's posted as a warning to the community, as a matter of jumper safety. In either case, it would end up here sooner or later. Either directly in the wake of the incident itself, or later on as an anecdote in another thread. There are a number of threads about various entanglements with other peices of clothing, you don't think that someone with knowledge of a clothing related incident wouldn't post that on one of those threads?

The first hurdle with any used gear is that it needs to pass a riggers inspection for being 'airworthy'. It doesn't matter how old a rig is, if it doesn't pass the inspection you won't be able to get the reserve packed. Your best bet is to have the same rigger you expect to pack the rig do the inspection, because not all of them have the same definition of 'airworthy'. Let's say that everything you're looking at is airworthy, the problem you run into with age is the function. Not all rigs in 1995 were 'freefly friendly', meaning that they don't work well for anything but RW. Back before freeflying, pin covers and riser covers weren't designed to to stay shut against the direct and extended exposure to the high speed airstream. If you attempt to freefly with these rigs, you stand a good chance that the covers will blow open, and then who knows what could happen after that. Some rigs were better than others, but you really need something a little newer to be sure that it's going to be freefly friendly. Even if you don't plan to freefly, the increased protection provided by a freefly friendly rig is worth the extra money. Pretty much by the year 2000 all rigs were freefly freindly, so if you're looking at anything older than that, make sure you ask your rigger before you have anything shipped to him for an inspection if the rig is even worth the trouble and cost of the inspection. It terms of the main, you can jump anything you want. There is no inspection required for a main canopy, but keep in mind that a new set of lines can run you $300, and holes or worn areas on the fabric can also be expensive to patch, so an inspection is a good idea. Also, there were some canopies that were 'not that great' over the years, and it would suck to get stuck with one of those, so again, check with your rigger early on in the process to make sure you're looking at 'good' gear.

Ok, but gloves have been linked to deployment problems, but people still jump them. Camera wings have also been linked to malfunctions, deployment problems and entanglements, but people still jump them. Camera helmets, ring sights, t-shirts, shorts, etc, all linked to actual incidents, and people still jump with them. Hoods on sweatshirts - no reports of any actual problems. On top of my 100's of trouble free jumps with them, I would suggest that there are tens of thousands of other trouble free jumps from jumpers around the world. I don't think a hoodie is an unusal piece of gear to see on a jump plane, yet there has not been one person to come forward with any type of related incident. Not even a second or thrid hand account, or even a 'a guy once told me about a guy he knew who met some dude who's brother....'. For the record, I started freeflying before there was such a thing as a 'freefly jumpsuit'. All we had available was street clothes to jump in, and we learned quite a bit through trial and error about what works and what's better left on the ground. At that time, hoodies made the grade, and 15 years later they're still performing well on skydivves all over the world. To tell you the truth, I think most of you guys are crazy for jumping full face helmets. I don't like the reduced peripheral vision (or the fogging) one bit, and I think it's a liability. Same goes for hand mounted altimeters, I don't want something attached to the back of my hand if I have to reach into a mess of risers, toggles and lines to clear a mal of some sort. Despite my personal feelings, I see that people are comfortable and successful with this gear on a daily basis, so I keep my opinions to myself, and make my own choices accordingly. Get over it people. One guy started a thread because he thought there might be an issue, and then for whatever reason just wouldn't back down when it appeared that his concerns were unfounded. His unwillingness to admit that he was wrong doesn't make his position any more valid.

Again, I would suggest inspecting actually wearing a hoodie and a rig, and you'll see that there's no way in hell that a hood could reach around to the front of your shoulder and even touch a 3-ring. Even if it could make contact, it would need to be able to reach the 3-ring and extend far enough past it to get stuck on something in order to pin itself down and obstruct the funciton of the 3-ring. Once more, try simply laying a hood over a 3-ring on the ground, and try pulling the cutaway handle, you'll see that the rings simply push the hood out of the way, regardless, the hoods on my sweatshirts cannot reach that far far around. None of this is mentioning the fact that the wind would be blowing the hood back, and not forward and down. Again, critical thinking is good, but at some point you have to believe that some people out there do have half a brain (sometimes more), and poses the ability to vet different ideas or techniques than what you may be familiar with.

It's way more than a weekend project. If you had a rigid container big enough to hold a round reserve, Cypres, and related hardware, you would have to weight it down with 'at least' 50lbs of lead to get it up to freefly speeds trailing a tube. I have a skyball on my desk that weighs in at over a pound (I'm estimating). It's a tennis ball with a 6 inch tail made from a pull-up cord. So it's naturally aerodymanic to start with, and is trailing very little behind it. Now picture the container for your 'bomb', think about the frontal area and how many times bigger it is than a skyball. Now add the drag of a the tube, which is 'significant', and you start to get the idea of what sort of weight you would need to get it up to speed. Next, start to think about the rigging. You would need a harness to connect the tube to the bomb, and then a way to release that harness and allow the tube to become a PC. The release would have to be a single point release, with something small enough to fit through a Cypres cutter. Once that's done, you need another harness to attach the round to the remainder of the bomb for the ride down. The easy part is managing the tube after deployment, just set it up with a freebag (diaper), and let it fall on it's own. Do you even know how to sew? Or rig anything? Or do anything except turn the water off and on all day long?

Funny you should mention that, because I literally never wear gloves. I don't even own a pair of gloves suitable for skydiving, and I haven't since my first year jumping. I picked up a pair of soccer goalie gloves my first year, wore them two or three times, and decided that gloves weren't for me. I like how he seems to think I'm not that bright, but somehow I've made it through 17 years of constant jumping totaling 5500+ jumps, and have recieved a USPA safety award from a national director based on my commitment to safety and the safety of others. I even tried to be nice, and compliment his attention to detail and the way he voiced his concern, and he comes back with insulting my intelligence. What a dick-licker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaxgbhkuxLc

OK, so far you have 10,000 jumps telling it's not what you seem to think it is. How about you just come out and tell us what you 'think' the problem is, and let people decide for themselves if it's valid. The thing is, the success I report is actual, based on making the jumps and not having a problem. I would esitmate that I have between 100 and 200 jumps (conservatively) wearing a hoodie without incident. Your concerns are all 'theoretical' at this point, and not based on any actual experience you have had while jumping a hoodie (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), just what you 'think' might go wrong. I applaud your thinking, and critical eye on even the smallest detail of a jump. Always, always, always voice any concerns you have about anything, because all you know is what you know, and not what the participant in question knows. Even a guy with 5000 jumps might have overlooked something. Along those same lines, learn to 'give it up' when it seems that your concerns are unfounded.