davelepka

My guess is that most canopies will continue to turn if they are in an asymetrical line twist and no action is taken by the jumper. If you think about going into or coming out of line twists, the first third of the rotation to a twist generally wants to spin you back out of the twist. The middle third is somewhat neutral, and the last third tends to make you want to rotate into, or lock into, the twist. That's why when you go to kick out, there a great deal of resistance though the first part of the 'untwist', then it gets easier, then to completes the untwist for you. Without jumper input, a canopy is unlikely to put itself through that first, high resistance portion of the untwist. In reagrds to a canopy turning, it's all about the symetry of the twists and the stability of the canopy. A higher performance canopy which is more sensitive to harness input is going to be less likely to spin up straight and fly that way, especially if the jumper is not participating in the opening.

The new MotoGP is much friendlier than the old 500GP class it replaced. The new bikes have traction control and workable powerbands, while the 500 two-stroke bikes of the old class were anything but. Super peaky powerbands, and no electionic aides of any kind, made high-side and spectacular crashes part of every race. Multi-time 500 GP world cahmp Wayne Rainey is spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair as the result of a high speed get-off from a 500cc gp bike. Watching the old videos of Rainey, Lawson and Schwantz (espcially Schwantz) it looks like a rodeo rider on a bucking bronco, but it's at 150mph+ and it lasts for 45 minutes. Unreal. Not to detract from the new riders at all. The bikes are faster, more powerful and the competition is even closer. Faster is an epic film, and there was a follow up called 'The Doctor, The Tornado and The Kentucy Kid' (those are three nicknames of some of the top riders). I can't wait for the new one, and I just wish the US didn't suck so bad in terms of motorsports. I would love to see the new one in a theater, but aside from one or two special occasions, it's just not going to happen here.

Funny how nobody mentioned option 'C', buy the GTI for a good price, and fly and enjoy the suit. There's no requirement for moving up, getting a bigger suit, or being on the cutting edge of anything. Last time I checked, the GTI is a real wingsuit, and a new pilot could probably jump for a long time and have a ton of fun with. Look at the OPs profile, his profession is listed as 'student' and he jumps a Sabre1 as a main canopy. A $1000 jumpsuit may not be in his future, but a $300 suit might be just the ticket for him.

I jump with a one-armed guy, he lost his left arm at the shoulder when he was a teenager (a looong time ago). He jumps a standard rig, with an ADD and RSL, and a bigger Navigator canopy (docile student canopy). The only mod is for steering/flaring the canopy. He has a lanyard attached to the bottom of the right toggle, and a spring-type carabiner on the end of the lanyard. This all fits into a pocket sewn on the riser just under where the toggle stows, and is held in place with a single strip of velcro over the top of the pocket. Under canopy, he unstows the lanyard, and clips the carabiner to the bottom of the left toggle. He steers right with the right toggle, and steers left by pulling on the carabiner somewhere left of center, so even though it pulls both toggles, it pulls the left moreso, and is a shorter reach than going all the way to the left riser to grab the toggle itself. For flaring, he grabs the lanyard in the middle, and pulls straight down. The set-up on the steering lines is important because you won't be able to get the toggle 'all the way down' with this method. By keeping the lanyard not much longer than the risers are spread, you'll get the toggles down further, but even then you may need to shorten up the steering lines to get the full flare. It will be a fine balance between long enough lines that you're not flying around in brakes all the time, and short enough that you can get a good flare with a 7/8's flare stroke, but you can do it. Keep in mind, the conventional wisdom that you need slack in your steering lines, and that they should bow backwards in the wind at full flight is largely connected to the idea of front riser turns. You need longer steering lines to allow you to pull the front risers down with the toggles in your hands and not also pull down the tail of the canopy. However, if you're not doing any front risering, you can get away with shorter steering lines and still get full flight out of the canopy. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get one of the young hot-shots at the DZ to do some test jumps for you during the set-up. Pick a guy about your size, and have him test the lanyard length, the steering response, and the steering lines set-up to include single point flaring with the lanyard. The reason for the test jumper is that if they find something isn't right during the canopy ride, they can disconnect the lanyard and fly the canopy as-designed, and go back to the drawing board. Once you get up there, you're stuck with whatever you got. In terms of the reserve, practice flaring with both toggles in your hand, and shoot for as much flare as you can manage with a PLF. It's too much trouble to modify the reserve toggles, with the TSO and all of that. Alogn those lines, use a select group of packers who are very good, and familair with the mods to your gear, so maybe you won't need to use the reserve. Shoot me a PM if you want the email for the rigger who did the work to the rig.

There's more to downsizing on smaller canopies (150 and below) then just the WL. Beyond that, a good rule of thumb in skydiving is only buy equipment you are qualifed to jump at the time of purchase. How about get yourself and your skills to a point where you are ready to downsize, and worry about it then? There's no telling what will be available or what the market will be like when you have another 100 or 200 jumps, so spend your money on jumps or a canopy control course, and worry about the downsize when the time comes. What if Aerodyne releases the Pilot2 next spring? Know what happens then? The used values for original Pilots will drop, and more of them will hit the market as people upgrade to the Pilot2. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but you get the idea. It's fun to daydream now about all the possibilites for your future, but leave it a daydream until you're ready to jump something smaller.

Hasn't this been done before? I seem to recall, maybe PD, maybe someone else in the Deland area putting out the call for long sitting reserve pack jobs, and tested them with actual deployments at terminal. I also recall the results were published, and it must have been in Skydiving mag. Again, my recollection was that all of them opened fine, all of them were within reasonable limits (maybe 300 ft?). The one that took the longest turned out to not be the oldest, but somewhere mid-pack, and even that wasn't that far off from the others. I can't say for sure what the age range was, but I'm fairly sure there were pack jobs over 10 years old, and probably upwards of 15 years as well. Anyone else remember this?

First off, understand that your ability to stall the canopy and the length of your risers are not directly connected. The direct connection to stalling your canopy is the length of your steering lines. The risers might have an indirect effect on the stall point as different length risers will move the stall point up and down slightly, but the recourse is just to adjust the length of the steering lines to return the stall point to the correct position. Riser length is all about personal preference. Swoopers prefer longer risers as they will increase the amount of 'dive' you can get out of your canopy. The difference between 18" and 26" riser would be noticable, while the difference between 24" and 26" risers might be more subtle. The underlying idea is that 'longer is better', so most swoopers go with the longest risers that still allow them to easily reach their slider/dive loops. You can measure your current risers, but keep in mind that you may sit differently in your new harness, or the attachment point might be different, with the end result being you being able to use/not use the same length risers you have now. If you're not a swooper, order the rig with 22s. Jump it that way for a while and see what you think. You can always sell them after 50 jumps for most of the price of a set of new ones. Scope out some older rigs on the packing mat, and find a guy with beat-up, old shcool velcro risers, and make the deal to sell him your 22s once your new ones come in. It will reduce the cost of the upgrade to $30 or $40 total. As a plus to the other guy, a set of fresh risers really makes you feel like your gear is 'newer' and upgraded.

That's a good question. It is confusing, but if you read this excerpt from an article published in response to the earlier fine, you notice it does mention ignored inspections on portions of the wing/spar - However, it also mentions a time period ending on Nov 4, 2009. Now if you read the new announcment in the OP, you'll notice they cite a time period beginning on Nov 2, 2009 and going forward from there. To me, that leaves one of two possibilities. 1. The feds wrapped up their first investigation on 9/4/09, and then did not notify Bill until several weeks later. Looking back, they're making up for those few weeks where he continued to operate without the inspections. Personal opinion on this possibility - not likely. If the FAA uncovered an unsafe situation they feel is worth $664,000 in fines, they're going to put a stop to it the day they figure it out. They're not going to let the planes keep flying until things are fixed. 2. Bill didn't give two shits about the FAA and their fines, and flew the planes for a few more weeks after being notified on 9/4/09 before conducting the inspections. The FAA caught on, and is pissed. It might explain why the original fine was $664,000 for 18 months of ignored MX, and this fine is $269,00 for two weeks of operation without inspections. In either case, it's amazing what people are willing to accept for cheap jumps. These planes aren't getting any younger, and things like inspections and replacement of life limited components only becomes that much more important as the airframes age. Anyone remember that passenger jet that had a section of it's roof blow off over the pacific awhile back? It was traced to stress cracks in the airframe from years of use and pressurization/depressurization. Nobody ever thought it would happen, but age and use crept in and the 'unthinkable' became the reality.

I wonder what he meant by that. A reserve will have different opening and flying qualities than a main canopy, and in that sense the primary design of the reserve is just to open fast and land soft. In comparison to a main, which might be designed to open soft and be more 'fun' in the turns or the way it handles. However, none of that has anything to do with WL. Regardless of what a canopy is made for, WL is WL. Truth is, for the purpose of a reserve, you should look for a lower WL than your main. Two things are guaranteed anytime you fly your reserve, the first is that things have already gone 'off plan'. How that effects your performance or mindset differs from person to person. The other unavoidable fact is that you'll have far less experience flying your reserve than your main. As previouslt discussed, the main and reserve are different canopies, and knowing how to fly one doesn't mean you'll be as good at flying the other. There's two other possibilities to keep in mind. The one is that you might not be under an open reserve until you're fairly low. A Cypres fire will saddle you out (hoepfully) at 500ft. Even timely emergency procedures can have you open under 2k. In either case, you have less time to fly your canopy and plan your landing. A faster canopy would not be better. The other one, to go along with that, is that you might be landing off. A spot that's fine for flying a canopy back to the DZ from 3000ft, isn't going to be a good spot for flying a reserve from 1500ft. Now you're landing off after a short canopy ride after a cutaway. Do you want the 210 or 190 in that case? Don't bother asking the instructor anything, just get the bigger reserve. There's no harm in it, and you'll never land after a cutaway and say, 'I just wish the reserve flew faster'.

Most of your examples involve rigid wing aircraft where there is no concern of the wing collapsing (except I guess in severe turbulence, where the rigid wing might fail). In your paraglider example, you're talking about flight a little higher off the ground than the OPs example. A canopy collapse at altitude is no big deal. When it happens at 20ft, it can be a very big deal. According the OP, the pic was taken right off the deck in the LZ of that launch point. How about this - thinking you 'know' what turbulence will do or how your canopy will react, when close to the ground is a very bad idea and most likely will not end well.

Have you looked up the word 'turbulence' lately? tur·bu·lence   /ˈtɜrbyələns/ Show Spelled[tur-byuh-luhns] Show IPA noun 1. the quality or state of being turbulent; violent disorder or commotion. 2. Hydraulics . the haphazard secondary motion caused by eddies within a moving fluid. 3. Meteorology . irregular motion of the atmosphere, as that indicated by gusts and lulls in the wind. I added the bold to highlight my point. None of those words contributes to anyone 'knowing' what turbulence is doing. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you do.

It's not what you think it is. There's no danger added over making a 'regular' landing, it's just done to a tighter tolerance. Airplanes usually fly a 'stabilized' approach, which means they're configured for landing, on the glide slope, and at the proper airspeed for 'awhile' before touchdown. They do this for two reasons, the first is that it usually prevents new or shitty pilots from doing stupid things on final approach, like diving for the end of the runway, or making low turns to line up with the runway. Beyond those pilots, a stabilzed approach is used to smooth the flow of traffic into an airport. It gets all the pilots flying the same pattern, at a slower speed, and makes eaiser to sequence planes into (and out of) an airport. The problem with a stabilized approach is that it involves flying slow and low and in a straight line, so basicaly a perfect target for an RPG or small-arms fire. The solution is the type of approach you described above, but it's far from the 'thrilling' event they make it out to be. Look at the video of Fat Albert. You can see that the touchdown is at the normal speed and in the normal spot on the runway. They slow way down, dive toward the runway and get back up to a 'standard' apporach speed, and then land. Any of these 'tactical' or 'combat' approaches all involve manuvering to avoid being shot at, followed by an 'abbreviated' stabilized final approach. Probably more fun that 'usual' approach (minus the threat of RPG or small-arms fire) but no different than some of the hijinks I've seen at DZs over the years. If you ever see your jump pilot wheel around a low turn and level out just in time to plant the wheels on the runway (happens more at private strips than public-use airports), then you just saw a 'tactical' approach.

Here's whats funny about this post, when you wrote this - - I thought it was an 'old school gear' dig at the Batwing canopy, as-in you would need an outdated deployment system to jump an outdated canopy. Then I read on - - and had a similar moment of confusion to the others, but it clicked a minute later that you were talking about a rigid structure wingsuit. For the record, the Batwing was an answer to the Stiletto, and never caught on to the degree that the Stiletto did. Still a good canopy, and I woulnd't be surprised to see one in the air anywhere. I'm sure there are a bunch of them in closets just waiting to be sold off for cheap. That purple-camo everyone keeps talking about was some sort of printed-on ZP fabric they used on some of them. It was called 'Cosmic-something' because if you looked close, the purple background was like outer space, and there were little stars, galaxies and planets printed all over the place. Pretty cool, but I don't think it lasted as long as the plain ZP, and even then not all ZP was created equal in those days. PD had the best stuff, but even they had a run of 'bad' ZP when there were offering metallic silver (and I think gold) as color options. The rest of the canopy would be fine, but within a few hundered jumps the silver or gold portions would be badly faded and noticably thinnner/weaker.

That was my first thought. Don't tell a jumper about a safety concern because it might make them nervous? How about DO tell them about a safety concern because it might make them dead? I'd take nervous over dead any day. Besides, if this guy couldn't figure out to just take the helmet off or ride the plane down (if he was worried enough that his nerves were going to effect his performance) then he shouldn't be jumping a camera in the first place. Jumping a camera will introduce new problems to a skydive, and if you can't see though them and figure out that job #1 is a safe skydive, and that getting it on video is a distant second, it's time to shelf the camera helmet.

That wasn't what was suggested. The idea was to put a couple hundred jumps on a couple of smaller, non x-braced canopies. This will get your WL up to where an x-braced canopy makes more sense, and get your jump numbers up to where they should be before going to a small x-braced canopy. 800 jumps is not a lot in terms of high performance canopy flight. About half of those probably had nothing to do with HP canopies or HP canopy flight, so toss those out the window. A couple hundred jumps on a lightly loaded Katana does not make you a HP canopy pilot.

First off, all the DZs that are advertising 'free' video on student jumps are equipping the instructor with a camera, and they are recording whatever happens on the jump. It is not the angle that includes you and the instructor, and the instructor cannot manuver around to show different angles, it's simply whatever their camera picks up. Using an outside camera flyer adds too much cost to the jumps for the DZ to provide it for free. That said, for free, the instructor based video can be a big assest, and most of the time you can see some useful info on that angle. If you are interested in outside video on every jump, with a dedicated camera flyer fliming the interaction between you and the instructor, check with the DZ for pricing info on 'training' video jumps. The $100 video they sell to tandems and AFF-1 includes documentation of the gear up, the ride to altitude, the freefall, the landing, and an interview. Sometimes that includes a CD of high rez still pics, and it always includes an edited DVD, generally with titles, music and a fancy case. For training purposes, all you need is footage from exit to opening, and ideally the landing. It amounts to about 2 minutes of actual footage, and doesn't require a still camera. It's way less work for the video guy, and should cost way less than the 'first timer' video. Beyond that, you don't need the fancy edit or burned DVD, just bring a thumb drive to the DZ, and they can drop the jumps on there after you see them. A fair price for a 'training' video is in the area of slot + $20, so depending on the price of jumps at your DZ, about $40 - $45 each. You might be able to get a deal for slot + $15 if you find one video guy who agrees to shoot all your jumps, and gives you a quantity discount.

True 'quick eject' hardware, the type where you pull up on the buckle and it pushes the shackle out isn't really in use on sport harnesses. They do use them as the lower attachment points for tandems. More common (but still not common) are B-12s, where you have to open a gate and manually pull the shackle out of the buckle. You can have B-12s added to any sport harness, new or used. It's a bit of a job on a used harness, and will cost $100/$150 min for the labor to open up the old harness and install the new hardware. If you buy new just specify B-12s on the legstraps, and if you buy an old enough rig, you might find a used one with B-12s, and if not, just pay for the conversion. If you do use a step-in harness, one trick some of the 'older' guys use is to set the rig on a chair, and then back up to the chair and step one leg at a time into the legstraps, then pull the rig up onto your shoulders.

You are so caught up in your hissy fit with Chuck that you can't see the forest from the trees. Great, nobody ever suggested that you don't wear hearing protection in the plane. It's a far longer and higher dB exposure than a 50 second freefall. I wear earplugs on every plane ride, and they've become part of my gear check before I walk to the plane. Rig, helmet, goggles, altimeter, earplugs, and I'm good to go. Unhitch your horse from this wagon, you made a mistake. If you catch your mistake and conceed early on, you're just the 'new guy' and it's no big deal. If ride it into the ground and keep kicking, you turn into shithead.

Much less than you think. You fly a high performance canopy differently then a beginner canopy. When you fly the fastest canopy in the sky, being overtaken from above is much less of a concern than paying attention to where you are actually going. Furthermore, if you read the OPs comments, you would see that he was aware of the position of the lower canopy well before the landing. Anoter aspect of high performance canopy flight is counting canopies, and once you have accounted for them, there's no reason to look in a direction they couldn't possibly come from (above). Something for you to think about is the concept of the whuffo, because right now you are a whuffo in terms of more advanced skydiving skills. Your non-jumping friends may watch a deplyment on video, and ask 'why do you go back up when you pull the cord'? You, being a jumper, realize that it's just the relative motion of the camera falling away from the deployment. They don't understand those details, and have a different impression of the events they see. Similarly, you are taking your level of understadning, and applying it to a situation that is different that are familiar with. Your non-jumping friends watch TV all the time, know the difference between up and down, and see the jumper getting further from the camera, so they beleive they know what's going on. You know how to fly a certain type of parachute in certain conditions, and now you believe that you know what's going on. You and your friends are both wrong, neither of you know what you're talking about. You were correctly trained for the type of canopy flight you are doing, but that's not the same thing we see in this video.

This sounds like an offshoot of the Elsinore incident, based on the fact that it was military related, and that nobody from the DZ is talking about the incident. The difference between that incident and your example is that if you're just driving by, you have no relation to the military base, it's operators, or their financial bottom line. Skydive Elsinore is a private enterprise, and holding a military training contract represents additional income. If that military entity asked the DZ to not comment on the incident, then out of respect for their customer, they would most likely comply (to include the employees also keeping quiet). As for the fun jumpers, we all know that fun jumpers often times have loyalties to their home DZ, and in almost every case, a jumper will have loyalties to any DZ over the press. They'll be more likely to 'serve' the DZ by keeping quiet then 'serve' the press by granting an interview. In terms of the actual incdident, it appears that it was a canopy collision, and as such represents value in the area of training or prevention. We all know that canopy collisions are bad and need to be avoided. Not commenting on the details 'most likely' is not putting the community at-large at any additional risk. If the incident was caused by a flaw being revealed in a popular pice of gear or method of jumping, I would expect the DZ to step up and reveal the details in an effort to stop a repeat incident, but that is not the case here. It was a canopy collision, and those are already a prominent topic of conversation these days, and simply adding the details of another is not going to change that.

First impression - EVERYONE should watch and learn from the first 8 seconds of the video. Note how the jumper LOOKS at his toggles and insures that they are stowed properly and that his hands go through the toggles and only the toggles. This is how you avoid a simple problem with unstwoing your brakes from ruining your day. LOOK, GRAB, LOOK, GRAB, UNSTOW. Beyond that, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see. I'm guessing it has something to do with the canopy that slides in low and to the right on final, but I'm not sure what the point is. Yes, the guy flew under you, but the rule is that the low man has the right of way. How he came to be lower than you might be a topic of discussion, but he was there and took the left side of the LZ as was his right (no pun intended). Of course, it wasn't cool of him to do that, and he should have noticed you high and to the left, and stayed more toward the center. The other side of the coin is that a whole bunch of you were shooting of the only speck of grass in sight. What did you expect, wide, open spaces between canopies that were all going for the same patch of green? One idea might have been to hold in brakes and let the 'crowd' land first. If you look at how you overtake the red/orange canopy you overtake after unstowing your brakes, you can see that you easily catch and pass him. A Velo will do that, if you let it. It will also float around stay up with just about any canopy out there. The advantage to waiting is that you're only left to deal with other jumpers who are also holding in brakes. Furthermore, when dealing with those jumpers, you have more time to deal with them as you're both under canopy for a longer period of time. If one or the other just adds or subtracts a touch of brakes, buy the time your low in the pattern, that difference has opened up a nice gap between the two of you. It's the classic case of 'it's better to land out and walk 500ft, then to land close and be carried 50 ft to the ambulance'. +1 to popsjumper, good traffic scan.

That's why I said that the radio isn't a replacement for training, it's in addition to the training. It's the same thing as freefall hand signals, you don't tell the students, 'Don't worry about what to do in freefall, I'll just give you hand signals when we get out there', you teach them the dive flow, make sure they know and understand it, and then you also tech and use the hand signals during the jump. There's no way to beat that type of real-time training, customized for each jumper and each moment of the jump. The radio is the same thing. It allows you to communicate with the jumper in whatever capacity they need. Using an audible over a radio is like replacing freefall hand signals with a pre-recorded message on an iPod that says, 'Arch, legs out, relax, arch, legs out, relax, arch, legs out, relax' during the entire skydive. It's providing good information, but not necessarily the information that student needs at that time. I never questioned the reliability of the audibles. Both them and modern radios are highly reliable, on the order of above 99% reliability. The idea that any device can or may fail is not a reason not to use it. It's a reason to use high quality, well maintained devices, but not a reason not to implement a device into a training method. In the end, audibles for canopy control leave a lot to be desired, and this is why they're not the best idea for student training. In freefall, an audible has value because the vast majority of freefall jumps go as planned with regards to break off and pull altitudes. Once you leave the plane, garvity is a highly reliable source of propulsion, and very little will change the idea that you want to break off at 'x' and pull at 'y', and an audible is a good reminder of that. Even when something occurs that does change that plan, such as an injury, collision, gear problem, etc, the change itself is evident to the jumper, so the device does not need to be able to recognize and adjust it's perameters. The jumper knows at that point to act outside of the device. Under canopy is the exact opposite. The effects of wind, weather, the spot and traffic on canopy flight are profound, but suttle. The end reuslt of a 5 mph wind increase is significant by the end of a canopy ride, but very hard to recognize early on. The things you're using an audible for could, and probably do, most certainly change mid-jump, and the audible has no way of adjusting for that. The problem with teaching students to use an audible right from the start is that they also have no way of knowing how to adjust for that. Proper training may prepare them to make on-the-fly adjustments under canopy to their patterns and LZ selection, but being students, you have to be ready for when the trainign either doesn't get through or the student just brain locks, and the radio is the tool for that job. Just like a freefall hand signal, it let's you give your expert adivce to the student in real time, customized to the situaiton they're in. Ask yourself, would you ever consider doing a freefall training jump in which you didn't use hand signals, look at the student, or communicate with them in any way? That's what you're doing with the canopy ride, and the canopy ride has proven (even for students) to be the most dangerous part of the jump. Hell, at least you have an AAD to step in and 'save' the day if the student should take no action what so ever in freefall, so you almost could take a student out and ignore them the whole time. Under canopy, there is no such device, and if the student wanted to just look at the pretty clouds from opening to landing, you have no way to intervene. (Relax people, I'm not suggesting anyone relies on any ADD, it's just an example)

I think that's where the DZO/rigger misrouted the reserve closing loop (outside the Cypres cutter) and a student went in with a fired Cypres and a closed reserve container. The DZO might have pulled a gun on a jumper in the aftermath. The whole thing seems like a moot point because if it is that DZ, the DZO closed up shop not long after the fatality.

Not to plie on, but if you're overweight and approaching 50, the weight loss is all that much more important. If you start skydiving, you WILL have a hard landing at some point. The amount of weight you're carrying around will dictate the amount of energy your skeletal system will have to absorb when you hit. More weight = more force, plain and simple. No offence to anyone at or near 50 years old, but your skeletal system's strength and ability to heal are not at their 'peak'. Skydiving is a young man's sport. There are older jumpers, and there are overweight jumpers, but rarely do you see the two combined. The older guys at the DZ are generally in good shape, and almost always tough as nails. The overweight crowd is generally younger, and typically don't last very long. I'm not suggesting you don't jump, just trying to give you the real facts so you can make an infomed decision about jumping, weight loss and how the two go together.

Full disclosure, I haven't read the entire thread. That aside, I think you might need them, because there is a jumper who started a thread called 'Flarrrrring' (or something like that), in which they describe their trouble with canopy control, they might have even been injured on a bad landing, and they go on to say the DZ does not use radios, but just started offering digital altimeters and audibles to their students. Is this your DZ? In some cases, this being one of them, the instructor is not the one who get's to say what does or does not work, it's the student. It's like a chef being told the food tastes bad by a customer, no matter what the chef thinks, the person the meal was made for didn't like the taste. Beyond that, the radio is the better training tool by far. Provide all the ground training you normally do, and then provide modern, reliable radios. They'll work 99% of the time or better. The radio allows you to give real-time advice and training to the students during their canopy flight. They also allow you to give real time advice when conditions change and the student would be better served not following their pre-determined flight plan, and using an alternate plan. A radio also allows you to tailor the amount and type of help each jumper gets according to their needs. A smart, heads-up jumper who seems to do well might need little to no assistance by jump 3, while a dim-witted or more timid jumper might need guidance up through jump 10. Each person is different, and the radio work well for all of them. You can arugue the semantics of the 'best' training method all day long, but you cannot argue the safety enhancement by being able to talk to jumpers under canopy. As we all know, just opening a parachute does not guarantee safety or survival, and there is no way to replace the keen insight of an experienced jumper on the ground who's keeping an eye on the entire situation. They see the student, other canopies, weather conditions in the LZ, approaching aircraft, or other hazzards that may have arisen in the LZ. To expect a student to be aware of, and capable of handling all of the above is asking too much. While a student might do well on their own if faced with unexpected problems, the better choice is that they get through it with help from the ground and they increase their chances for landing without incident. You may find out later on that they had no idea of the problem, or no idea how to handle it, and maybe you come to the conclusion that skydiving isn't the sport for them, but that's much better than finding out by loading them into an ambulence with a broken leg or worse.