Scrumpot

A MINOR has no capacity (under the law or otherwise) to fully cognizantly, and rationally make those decisions. Nor should ANY reasonably responsible adult (parent or not) have the audacity, nor do they truely have the capacity to simply waiver that away either. Trading that off for the sole benefit of potentially head-start "grooming the next workd champion"?? ...TOTALLY NEGLIGENT, and not reasonable by any stretch, IMHO. BS, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

An RSL should NEVER be a replacement for staying current on EP's or EP practice/training, period, -EVER! IMHO this is not a valid reasoning, or decision tree factor at all for choosing to jump with an RSL or not. The pro vs. con factors/considerations involved in having an RSL on your rig in fact are completely negated in total if you allow this to be your "mentality". There is NO SUBSTITUTE for proper training, consideration and currency, as it relates to EP's and EP practice/consideration period. I know several jumpers who have gone literally thousands of jumps without a cut-away. Does that mean that they should jump necessarily with an RSL? Where does an RSL particularly affect (positively) either currency, or lack of EP's experience/practice? I submit that lack of currency/knowledge & the mix of RSL potential detriment factors could even possibly be a negative, if you take this statement as a "given". Reliance upon any BACK UP device IMHO is a mistake, and a dangerous mentality to even consider, let alone accept, and accept as a "substitute" for instead keeping current on one's EP practice, considerations and training. My added .02, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

IMHO, you have then chosen precisely the "worst of 2 worlds" scenario, and w/be acting directly in conflict with rational decision-tree reasoning as to the benefits vs. detriments of the RSL altogether! Think about this... When is the time that the RSL becomes most pressingly and appropriately needed? (stipulating of course that you have already decided it has value, and is desirable) Now, why would you disconnect it? coitus non circum - Moab Stone

In all seriousness though, Jan... You are overlaying YOUR PERSONAL perspective, training, experience and expectations with that of a simple definition of rules for a bb discussion forum ...within which by-the-way these "incidents" (as they are being defined SOLELY for the purposes of forum posting rules) are being posted pursuant to those definitions and rules, for purposes of stimulating awareness and conversations. Why is it that you think your own personal definitions and those of these board's simple posting rules for these purposes should necessarily match? Hmmmm.... You are dumbfounded? coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Indeed. Must be it! coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Maybe the Perris DZ Management themselves should compare the 2 up alongside of each other and come up with some sort of clearly NON-DISPARATE printed/published "policies"? Bottom line is, one is clearly in contradiction to the other, and this just does not make any sense! I know I am probably beating a dead horse here, and I hope that I will still be welcome at Perris during my next So. Cal. excursion ..but what is it that one is supposed to do, or assume if one "picks up" (or is nearly forcibly given ...as was the case on Sunday) one of the "policies", or one of the OTHER ...or heck, even both?? Someone IMHO needs to reconcile these 2 together. Mixed messages serve no-one's either best interests or needs at all in this regard. Again, hope I will still be welcome at Perris during my next west coast "guest/celebrity" tour! Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

So how then did you find yourself handling the very clear & very DIRECT CONTRADICTION to Perris' Safety-Day printed/published official safety guidelines that actually MANDATES the 45' rule be used?? Just wondering. BTW too, on Sunday ...out of 3 "hop-n-pop's" I witnessed personally out of Perris aircraft ...total # of jumpers who even bothered to even GLANCE out the door (let alone even look, rather than fixating on red-light, then green... GO!) before exiting?? Answer: NONE! GPS is great, but it certainly can't tell you if for instance maybe one of them ultra-lights that routinely fly out of the south side of that facility might not have just strayed blindly underneath your GPS "spotted" Otter. Food for thought? coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Interesting Bill, that I was just at "YOUR" dropzone over this past weekend (Perris Valley). On Sunday, they were handing out to every jumper out of manifest, presumably as a follow-up to Safety Day, Perris' (presumed) "official" safety guidelines. Take a look at page 2 (the back page ...double-sided copied) under EXIT SEPARATION: and I quote: "Exiting groups should wait until the previous group has achieved a 45' angle from the aircraft before making their exit." This is apparently, the Perris now PUBLISHED policy! Like I've said before, it is interesting to me how the only place I have aver actively heard this was there. -Perris! Now again, just coincidentally during my only maybe 1 - 2 times per yr actual visit there yet again. Hmmmm..... So, what gives? I'll presume you had no input into what was just being put out there yet again just this weekend too, eh? And you wonder how this MYTH seems to get perpetuated. Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

There's others of us in here reading Kel. We've just thus far been sitting on the sidelines kinda marveling! At your experience level Kelly, once you have already made the decision to jump with an RSL, as you clearly have, IMHO there is absolutely no reason short of having a 2-out situation where you may have to chop, where IN FLIGHT you should be disconnecting your RSL! Think about it. It is precisely that area BELOW 2,000 feet that you state, that the RSL actually becomes MORE IMPORTANT/EFFECTIVELY APPLICABLE! Again, assuming you have already decided you want and already have one at all. Relative to ever witnessing a tandem having its reserve inflate on the ground after a high winds cut-away? No, I've never seen that. Never seen it ACTUALLY HAPPEN (all the way to deployment/inflation) on a sport rig for that matter either. Although I have seen one unstow several lines as the bag tumbled and appeared to approach the point of line stretch. Winds were close to 40MPH in this instance and although it could be argued that at some point it "may have" ...(I can see how one think it may have looked that way, as we all watching as well viscerally thought it would too), but I can aslo add that in fact in this case no-one was able to "tackle it" either, and yet it did NOT extract from the freebag. I have 9 yrs in the sport now, FWIW. Maybe someone should ask Bill Booth or Morrisey what they think/their observations on this are? coitus non circum - Moab Stone

This is dangerous and foolish advice, and should not be heeded by anybody who does not fully understand what it is they would be potentially doing by executing this! Huh? A slower speed than what? You need to qualify your statements. I'm not sure what it is exactly your are trying to say, but again: This is dangerous and foolish advice, and should not be heeded by anybody who does not fully understand what it is they would be potentially doing by executing this! -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Why should you get any crap? A step through is when your rig (or you with your rig on) "steps through" one or more of the suspension lines. This "twists" the line groups, usually just on one side/set of the risers so that they are not independently in free & clear sequence without at least one group (and sometimes more) wrapping over another. Most times this is caught just by starting at the links with your lines & placing your fingers in sequence between each where it attaches, in order then running them up to the canopy to assure all are free & clear, while also making sure there are no twists in the risers ...they are laying flat after you have done this properly one on top of the other. If when you do this they are not, or you get 1/2 way up your lineset to the canopy & the lines seem to twist up in a bunch before you get to their attachment points at that end, and you can not shake them loose, ...ask somebody. Chances are you have a step through! Under load, after opening generally your suspended weight forces the lines to untwist themselves down to their lowest connecting point (your links) which results in an awkward looking twist to your risers as you reach up to unstow the brakes. If you've been unlucky enough to step through an entire dual set of lines from BOTH front and rear risers, AND somehow entirely miss this during your pack job (which I personally don't see how it could happen ...but it has!) then you will most likely have a hung slider and a fairly assured required cut-away. Prudent packing procedures normally preclude either of these scenarios, but the 1st one is generally not that big of a deal (as you've read from some of these previous posts), so long as it is corrected & not either ignored or compounded. Step throughs generally occur for instance, after you have landed, and you either inadvertently "step through" a set of suspension lines lying on the ground before you, before you get them all gathered up. Or have you ever seen when a canopy just falls all down around you when landing, and the lines just seem to drape everywhere? If you happen to step over one (or more) thereby going between them, THAT is a "step through". Apologies for being long winded. I just started typing free-form thought flow & my fingers just wouldn't stop! Blue Skies (PLEASE!) -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

No offense taken. That's a valid point! Actually though, my position on this was simply that if he did not like my suggestion of hanging/inspecting it, then potentially hooking it up as a main for a test jump to either confirm or dispell his fears, then I would have been happy to do that for him. Of course he does not know me, and neither do you (I think), but what I would have done had he taken me up on this offer (and perhaps I could have been more clear ...had already started in with the green ones before that post I'm afraid ) is reported back to him what I had found, and given him the opportunity then to do whatever he thought was best, based on the results. No PM back from him yet though, so I guess he is probably as skeptical as you are. Which I agree, is not necessarily by-and-large I suppose, a bad thing. Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Well then fine. If your gonna just throw it in the trash I'll take it from you. Feel free to PM me. I'll be happy to pay the shipping. -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

I've always liked the old batwing mosaic-type color scheme they had on the canopies they made back in the early to mid 90's. Pretty unique. coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Here's another suggestion. Maybe your right turn had something to do with something you didn't even realize at the time (severe harness shift comes to mind). Have a rigger at your DZ hook this canopy up as a main then jump/evaluate it. If you hang the canopy 1st and can determine no out-of-trim aspects to it, it almost has to be something else that may have just been unique to this one jump/circumstance. By flying it once or twice as your main, you then don't have to worry about being in a position where this has been your last hope, and maybe you can dispell (or confirm) a bit of your concerns before you turn what may be a just fine canopy into otherwise just a car cover. At worst I would still send it back to precision. If they tell you they are gonna charge you to "correct" anything about it, and you decide not to & just let it go, you are still no worse off than just throwing it in the trash. My .02, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Here's another one for you. The link would require a subscription, so instead I have cut-n-pasted the entire story: From "Avweb", aviations e-news magazine Controller Linked To Crash Murdered... Random Act Or Revenge?... On Tuesday, an air traffic controller who worked for Skyguide, the Swiss airspace agency, was stabbed to death in his home in Kloten, near Zurich. The victim had been the sole controller on duty in July 2002 when two airplanes collided in Swiss airspace over Lake Constance, killing 71 people, many of them Russian schoolchildren. He was a 36-year-old Danish citizen, a father of three, and was never publicly identified in connection with the crash. Police said a dark-haired man in his 50s rang the doorbell at the controller's home. When the controller answered the door, a fierce and brief argument ensued. The controller was stabbed and the attacker escaped on foot. Yesterday, some news reports said the police think the suspect is the father of one of the schoolchildren who died. A group based in Russia representing the interests of victims' families expressed dismay over the attack. "The relatives understand that one can't return the victims of the air crash and the death of the dispatcher would only harm negotiations with the governments of Germany and Switzerland," Yulia Fedotova, a spokeswoman for the group, told Pravda. "We don't want to think that the death of the air traffic controller was connected with the investigation into the causes behind the crash, but it is possible that he became yet one more victim of the catastrophe." ...As Midair Investigation Continues Yesterday, Skyguide scaled back flights by 40 percent in Zurich airspace, to help ensure security and out of consideration for its workers. A quarter of Skyguide's Zurich staff did not report for work. Skyguide had been heavily criticized in the wake of the midair collision. Investigators found that only one controller was on duty while his colleague took a break, a collision-alert system was down for maintenance, and a phone warning from German controllers never get through. The Russian pilot of a Bashkirian Airlines Tu-154 was told by the controller to descend, although his onboard anti-collision system was telling him to climb. The pilot obeyed the controller and descended, colliding with the DHL cargo plane, a Boeing 757. The DHL flight with two pilots on board was also descending. Two weeks after the crash, the controller said in a statement that network errors had been to blame. Yesterday the company said in a statement, "Skyguide employees are in a state of shock and fury and are deeply shaken by the murder of their colleague and friend." Officials have stepped up protection for the second controller who was on duty the night of the crash, as well as for other Skyguide staff. The official report on the crash is expected next month. coitus non circum - Moab Stone

THANK YOU!

Looking at these pictures Bill, even jumpers who adamantly believed in "the 45' rule" I think, would NOT just automatically GO at these points, even if they actually did recognize these AS 45' (which I doubt they would in the 1st place) and this quickly, as illustrated. ...At least I would hope not. Funny though, how it was precisely the last time I was out THERE at Perris in Nov. that I happened to hear somebody on jumprun invoke this mystical "make sure we are 45' out the door before you go". Hmmmmm.... Personally, I think what we have here is something which has evolved from some instructor somewhere, probably dealing with some just off AFF soloists who, as we know sometimes haven't yet learned to manage that open-door adrenaline surge who were having difficulty in accurately counting, so this was 'suggested'. Somehow it has just proliferated from there, but never meant to be LITERAL. Just an aid in slowing some of those nubes down. How or why it has now somehow gotten picked up by some as "gospel"? Kinda like the urban legend phenomenon maybe, methinks. Nice work & actual, real-world illustrations put forth here. -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

That is nasty! (and borderline on TMI IMHO ) In all seriousness, if you haven't already you probably SHOULD go get that checked out. Looks like you indeed came down pretty hard. Without having been there and seen it, by the way you describe, I can still almost 100% guarantee that you rear riser stalled. Otherwise, had you put just the "proper" amount of rear riser input in, the canopy would have leveled out & still continued forward. A rear riser flare is not quite a "flare" as I know you would be conventionally thinking of it, or expecting. Instead of deflecting only the trailing edge (which a toggle flare does) you are instead more or less "leveling" the entire planform. Remember that rear risers also have attached to them your C & D lines. Your loss of speed instead of being in BRAKES would be predicated only on the amount of windspeed you were facing into & for how long. That's why it also takes some patience and BALANCE (ie fortitude) in holding the rear risers at ONLY that amount to keep it planed-out whilst bleeding off that speed and planning to PLF upon 1st contact. Next time out at the DZ, see if you can't get an instructor or the loft rigger/packers to maybe hang a canopy for you. Then take a look at the difference between what pulling toggles, then pulling just rear risers does, to help you envision this. It is very easy to stall the canopy quickly & nearly without warning on rear risers! If ever landing on rear risers again, remember the feeling and the temptation that I know exists to "flare deeper" to slow down, then (if you have already levelled off) DON'T DO IT! With more experience (and practice up high) you can gain a "feel" for when the canopy is going to stall, and the "trick" with rear riser landings is to be flying almost right on top of, but not over that threshold. Hope all this has helped. Heal quick & return to us more learned (and experienced), eh?! Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Absolutely! I'd also recommend a practice rear-riser only landing, flat turns to final and perhaps even a few mildly downwind landings. Doing each of these in a planned/ideal environment can most certainly help you be more comfortable with them should the UNPLANNED need ever arise! Please talk with your S&TA (or equivalent) at your DZ before doing each of these and get input/instruction on the ground first as well. coitus non circum - Moab Stone

If you truly did a pull-up on the rear risers, as you describe, I would think that your canopy probably actually stalled, dropping you nearly straight down ...as seems to be supported and as is indicated by you landing square on your ass. (I've seen this happen before) What was the size of this canopy? ...Wing Loading? What is your experience? ...# of jumps, etc.? Glad to hear that everything (relatively) worked out okay for you. Here are just 2 quick observations/questions for now, just for starters: #1. Did you practice any "riser flares" up high before getting to this point? #2. PLF, under the circumstances should have been the FIRST thing you were thinking of, and should have been planning on after having decided you were gonna land "toggle-less". With a little more details maybe we can provide a bit more directly pertinent feedback for you, and maybe even some further items to perhaps think about as well. ...Did you pack this canopy yourself? Was it your own gear? What sort of pre-jump gear inspection did you do (whether yours or rental)? Visible line wear/how many jumps on line-set/what type of line material was it) etc. etc. The more detail you can give, the better. Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Re: Potentially steering or guiding the opening with rear risers... Why not? Please explain/elaborate for me if you would. THANKS! -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Okay, I'll do that. Your profile says that you have a current grand total of only 54 jumps, yet your are also under a wing loading of greater than 1.3-to-1. Care to explain? coitus non circum - Moab Stone

Well then, what do YOU think Mike, in response to this? ...You got the letter, and then you posted it here. But I haven't seen your response or further thoughts yet as to it all. Are CReW dogs and sub-say 300-400 jump total jump wonders mutually incompatable based upon what Scotty is saying? What would the alternatives to taking a 150 jump, jumper who wanted to do CReW and putting them under a lightning 126 at 1.3x-1 be? Do you guys otherwise routinely have some instead "upsize" canopies for yourselves handy so that the low-time jumper can match-up better with you in the air (understood to be ideal ....but is it also critical?), so that they are not faced with dealing with that loading when potentially landing in an otherwise potentially non-ideal situation arises?? Are CReW dogs as a result otherwise inherently putting lower-time total jump # jumpers in greater potential peril than they need to be in? You are right. Scott seems to be making some valid observations here specifically as it relates to the handling of these jumpers by already EXPERIENCED CReW dogs. I am not a CReW dog, which is why I am now asking you. What is your honest assessment and I guess reaction/input as to those observations? How do we then deal with and further then learn something from this? Is the answer an established minimum # of jumps and/or perhaps some sort of canopy compitency (or landing) standard needing to be evidenced BEFORE being able to participate in CReW as such?? Your CReW experienced perspective on this and inupt would be appreciated. Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone

What excess concern would you have for a cut-away slider stowed vs. slider not with your set up, Mike? I don't think that I see any there at all. So instead, why wouldn't you just then recommend a set up similar to what you have? What might I be missing here? Enlighten me. Blue Skies, -Grant coitus non circum - Moab Stone