JackC1

I've jumped planes with no door and for most side door aircraft, while not ideal, I'll do it if there is no alternative. But the one that really shits me up is the Antonov AN28. It's a tailgate aircraft, except there is no tailgate, just a gaping great hole in the back of the fuselage and if the fat bastards at the front don't shuffle up, there aren't enough seat belts left for the plebs at the back. That is a problem, especially when it climbs like the space shuttle. Litterally at 45 degrees straight after take off. Fuck that.

Because the advice on cameras seems pedantic and irrelevant as all it does is sit there and do it's thing and most people have never been bitten by a camera. Whereas the advice on canopy choice seems logical and sensible as most people have face-planted a landing or two and know how much they can hurt.

That depends. You should have a little slack in the brake lines at full drive. At that brake line length, some canopies are difficult to stall (bigger ones usually) without taking wraps which I don't much like doing. You don't absolutely need to be able to stall the thing anyway. Here's something to try up high. Let your canopy fly on full drive for 5-10 seconds and apply just enough brake to get the nose to go up, then hold the brakes there. The canopy will pitch up then recover and start to dive again. Then apply a bit more brake till the nose pitches up again and hold it. When it recovers, do it all again and again until you run out of flare. Depending on your canopy, you might only get two goes per flare, or you might get five. It should feel like your canopy is going down a flight of stairs, nose up, recover, nose up, recover etc... Try that as many times as altitude allows on as many jumps as it takes to get it. You aim is first to feel the stair case, then to try and smooth out the stairs by progressively applying the brakes to try and maintain flat and level flight (ie not losing altitude) throughout the flare range. Try and see how long you can get the thing flying flat and level before you run out of flare. Use all of your flare range, from full drive to the stall point, that's the point at which the stall starts to take effect, not past it where it turns into a bow tie and collapses. Make sure you know where the stall point is on your canopy (if you can reach it) before you do this. Then when you come into land, do the same thing all nice and smooth. Try and keep the thing flying flat and level over the ground for as long as you can until the canopy stops flying and you have to step onto the ground. If you time it right, you should be able to plane out and land as light as stepping off a curb.

you could take up Judo. It will increase your fitness and flexibility, build muscle mass, teach you how to fall from every conceivable angle, get you used to taking a knock, teach you self-defence and it's good fun. Although possibly the best way for a skydiver to protect his landing gear is by taking a canopy control course or three.

I've been warned by S&TAs at dropzones I've visited specifically not to eyeball altitude due to the fact that the fields in the surrounding area are much smaller than average and people who do eyeball the altitude often end up pulling low. I can't really see much reason for not using an alti. For most folk, I doubt the mk1 eyeball will do much better than +/-10% even on a good day in familiar territory. Take it out of its comfort zone and I bet it would do much worse. That's the exact reason altimeters were invented in the first place.

Nonsense. Nobody gets paid for having resumes on file. They get paid for placing people in jobs. I never said they did. You can't fill a job if you have no candidates.

I've dealt with recruitment agencies on both sides of the job market and without exception, they've all been a complete waste of time. All they want is your resume on file to make their portfolio look better. They don't have half the jobs they say they do and if there is a real job on their books, it will be advertised elsewhere. If you want a job they say they've got, dig out your resourcefulness and self-reliance, find out who the employer is, find their advert on the companies website and apply through that. If you can't do that, your first aptitude test will be graded with an F.

That's a surprising answer. Can we also apply this logic to wing loading and go pros?

Would you mind defining "master". Is that 100 flat jumps? 1000 jumps? Being good enough to get on invitational big way jumps? Breaking a 20 point average in 4-way? Winning the nationals in AAA? What?

You probably need to be aware that if you're in the UK, you'll need a B cert (that's an A cert + 50 jumps + JM1 + CH2 + packing) before you can wear a full face.

Not that I know of unfortunately. I saw it when someone dragged out an old copy at the DZ on a weather hold some years back.

Nah, I reckon that would be Fester and the Vomits in Wally Gubbins The Movie c1985. http://www.adventurearchive.com/data/books_videos/wally.htm

I did static line and early on, it scared the crap out of me. It's normal. After my 3rd which felt like I was walking out to face a firing squad I basically just decided that I wasn't going to let fear dictate what I did in life. I took to visualising the perfect jump, from getting on the plane, the ride up, exit, deployment, flying, landing, the lot. With a focus on performing all of that in a state of zen like calm. I visualised while sat on the khazi, in the bath, at work, at tea breaks and in the plane on the way up. It didn't stop the nerves altogether but I never again felt the need for a blindfold and a last cigarette.

I'm sure it's written down somewhere, although I forget where. I just wrote down Newtons second law for the system. The bit that causes the mixing (and the confusion) is the drag term which is -0.5*C*A*p*V^2. Drag doesn't care what direction the wind comes from, it just goes with the magnitude of the velocity squared, where V^2 = vx^2+vy^2. You then resolve this into x & y components by multiplying by the cos or sin of the angle, which is vx/sqrt(vx^2+vy^2) and vy/sqrt(vx^2+vy^2). If you state in your boundary conditions that the initial horizontal velocity vx=0, then the whole lot simplifies to: dvy/dt=g-0.5*C*A*p*vy^2/m Which is just a=F/m where F is gravity (g) and drag (-k*v^2)

Sorry, they are wrong. I forgot to resolve the drag forces into their x & y components. These are better, I think. dvy/dt = g - 0.5*C*A*p*vx*sqrt(vx^2 + vy^2)/m and dvx/dt = - 0.5*C*A*p*vy*sqrt(vx^2 + vy^2)/m

Sorry, you're wrong. The differential equations you need to solve are: dvy/dt = g - 0.5*C*p*(vx^2 + vy^2)/m and dvx/dt = - 0.5*C*p* (vx^2 + vy^2)/m You cannot split these equations up into x and y components so the drag caused by the horizontal velocity (vx) actually slows the acceleration downwards (dvy/dt). It makes a difference, even for a bowling ball although lift from body position would probably make a bigger difference. Then write the density (p in the above) as a function of altitude and solve the equations again. You'll probably need to do that numerically. I doubt an analytical solution would be possible.

To do it properly you need to solve two coupled differential equations but if you ignore the fact that the plane is flying horizontally (which slows the acceleration downwards due to the horizontal drag), you can simplify the problem to a single differential equation. The answer you then get looks like this.

I hope you're not suggesting that free fliers revert to belly when their dive goes to shit. Corking isn't a safe option.

In my experience, IP law isn't much help to the small guy. Unless you're a big enough company to actually fund litigation when someone breaches your IP, you're better off ignoring the whole process and hoping to fly under the radar. If you are big enough to warrant having patents, you still don't want to get into an IP war because the only people that get rich are the lawyers. As with most law, he who has the deepest pockets and the least scruples wins.

The first thing I do after I've got a good canopy is point myself in a safe direction away from anyone else. Only then will I'll stow the slider, pop the brakes and loosen the chest strap, in that order.

Didn't they teach thermodynamics at engineering college?

As a matter of fact I did know that. It's the kind of thing an engineering professor picks up during the course of a long career. I read a book where Chuck Yeager said that was bollocks, made famous by the plot of a 1952 film by David Lean called Breaking the Sound Barrier and somehow making it into urban myth. Apparently control reversal is mostly down a lack of torsional rigidity in the wings so that air pressing on the aileron flexes the wing thereby counteracting the input from the pilot. But what do I know.

You mean like relying on your speedometer as you drive across town so you don't get a ticket for speeding?

I have no problem using a speedometer in my car although I can drive just fine without one. An audible is no different.

Engineering is a fairly tough subject. There is a lot to learn and it requires a lot of work and aptitude on the part of the student. Degrees are meant to set those that can, apart from those that cannot. In my view the standards should be high, very high, and they have already been dumbed down far too much. Ever heard the expression "reading for a degree"? They call it that for a reason. The professors are there to help you in that reading but they are not there to spoon feed the entitlement generation with Engineering for Dummies and bestow gold starts on students for answering a question correctly. When you're at the big boys school, you're expected to act like a big boy. If this is too difficult or challenging then there are many soft option arts courses available where all you need to do is master the phrase "do you want fries with that?".