JackC1

I think I would have set up the questions where you have to assign odds to certain events differently. If I thought I had even a 1% chance of hitting the tail on exit or having a canopy collision or a high speed malfunction or being seriously injured on my next jump, I'd seriously consider quitting. 1% is a significant risk. As a rough estimate of the odds, I take how many jumps I've done and how many times these things have happened to me. The results are that for most of the events you list, the odds are generally much closer to 0% than they are to 1%, so I answered 0%. The odds are definitely not zero though so I wonder if the resolution of your poll might cause people to underestimate or overestimate the odds and skew the results.

Sure. Two scenarios I can immediately think of, you're at 500ft and: a) someone swoops through your canopy ripping it open or b) you've done an overly aggressive S turn and managed to induce spinning line twists. At this point you have 3 options. 1) ride in whatever bag of crap you've got. 2) dump your reserve into your main hoping there will be enough fabric out to save your ass 3) chop and pull silver. Hard decks are good things to have and you should stick to them, but if you find yourself deep in the shit you do whatever you can to save your own life. I have a Skyhook on my rig and it doesn't make me take any more risks than when I didn't even have an RSL. It's there for the occasions I hope I never find myself in and train hard to avoid.

I've found my Sabre2 to be a little unstable with the brakes set and is quite susceptible to harness input which means I can arrest and correct minor off heading openings. Mine is also very twitchy about packing. If my pack jobs aren't spot on, it will fling me around like crazy. PD produced a series of packing videos which might help. The first part can be found here. Using the method shown in this video has vastly improved my openings.

Arch from the hips not from the back. You'll fly better and your back will thank you.

How about a BSR that says no wing loading higher than Y at X jumps unless a recognised canopy piloting course has been undertaken and passed to the satisfaction of an advanced instructor/CCI? Anyone with more than X jumps can fly whatever they want. You could even scale wing loading as a function of jump numbers as per Brian Germain's chart if you want to get complicated. That provides a jump number limit for low experienced people and a way of assessing the skills of a jumper to enable them to bypass that limit, and it encourages people to get decent training and prove they are up to the job. The downsides are more rules, complicated ones at that, and more cost to get training for those who want to bypass the rules. Of course if BSRs are unenforceable or voluntary (I wouldn't know, I'm not a USPA jumper), you're wasting your time even trying.

I agree with AggieDave. Dodging canopies starts before you get on the plane, by assessing the wind and the landing direction, judging who's on the lift, the exit order, who is likely to swoop and where you need to fit in. Once you're open, the first order is not just to have you head on a swivel ready to avoid someone but to actively point your canopy in a safe direction so that people will find it much harder to fly into you. Once you've done all your busy work like collapsing sliders etc. sit on deep brakes and look for all the other canopies on the lift (you should know how many there are) and watch the landing order develop. If you adjust your decent rate by flying on varying amount of deep brakes you should be able to pick the point at which you want to enter the pattern and not have it dictated to you because you've been flying on full drive all the time. It's not guaranteed but it's the best I got.

I like both but it depends entirely on the club, the way they train and to some extent how good you are. Jiu Jitsu is hard work if you go to a club where they spar a lot. But you need to work on lots of technique before you can spar safely and that might not even break you out in a sweat. Kick boxing on the other hand is usually damned hard work from day 1. It doesn't take much skill before you can punch a bag, but try doing twelve 3 min rounds on a heavy bag and you'll be sweating like a PE teacher in a maths test. ETA: I've had way more injuries doing Judo than ever I did doing kick boxing.

You'd probably find this printed on the bottom of the slider.

It varies a lot depending on what canopy you're flying, the wind, how heavy you are, how good a pilot you are and many other things, but if you get it right landing is no worse than stepping off a curb. When you first start learning, you will get it a little bit wrong from time to time and for the maximum amount of wrong a student will usually manage you can expect something no worse than the impact you'd feel after running and jumping off a 4ft wall. However, if you get it monumentally wrong at several successive stages of the game and try really, really hard to fuck up as badly as possible, it could be a lot worse. Luckily, your instructors will train you to avoid this, they'll give you a parachute that it is forgiving of most mistakes and a radio with the aim of talking you down to a tip toe landing. Why not go to the DZ and watch for a day. You'll soon see how hard the landings usually are.

My Z1 is pretty quiet. Probably best if you can borrow one to try first though.

One thing that can occur if you don't flake is that constantly whipping fabric past lines during opening over 100's of jumps can put friction burns in your canopy. But packers may not be overly worried about that.

Hop out of the plane facing the tail with your back to the relative wind; bring your knees up, look up and back and do a back flip. When you see the planet come around again (or again, or again), arch.

I visited a DZ once where the CCI explicitly told me not to eyeball the altitude. He said the fields around here are a lot smaller than people are used to and people who eyeball the altitude usually end up pulling low. The Mk1 eyeball may be useful, but it ain't fool proof.

This An28 had tailgate doors at the back of the fuz under the tail which you couldn't open in-flight so they just took them off. This is the hole out of which you exit. There was a half-screen in the back that was held closed with a couple of bolts of the type you might find on someones bathroom door but that's it. The thought of losing a pilot chute out of it didn't worry me nearly as much as the thought losing an unrestrained skydiver at 150ft, especially as the thing climbs like the space shuttle. As you can imagine, I'm in no big hurry to jump that particular ship again.

Side door aircraft aren't so bad but I went to a boogie where they had an Antanov An28 which has a tailgate, or more accurately a permanently open hole in the back of the fuselage. Try sitting at the back of that, with no seat belts cos the fat fuckers at the front hogged them all and staring out of this gaping hole at a concrete runway because the pilot thinks it's funny to climb at 45 degrees right after take off. That is a total puckerfest.

Your best bet is to call the DZ you plan to do your consols at and ask them. But in my limited experience (and it is limited), provided you have all of your paperwork up to date, including a fully signed log book, medical forms and BPA membership, you shouldn't have any major problems. You might expect to do a review of your EPs and maybe get followed out by an instructor for the first jump if they don't like the cut of your jib. The cut of your jib will be much improved by giving correct and timely answers to the instructors when asked about your training or failing that, by the ritual offering of beer at the end of the day. Play safe.

A well trained and educated eyeball. How can I educate and train my eyeball? Mine only recognizes three altitudes: up high, nearly there and oh shit. My main alti is a Viplo FT50. I think the face is clearer on the FT50 than an Altimaster Galaxy and it's just as tough.

If you wear polarised glasses and view an LCD screen at certain rotations, it will appear black. All polarised lenses will do this.

Now you'd think that would have been covered in Helmet Design 101.

You could always open your visor under canopy.

Meh, it's just banter. I was the only freeflier on a lift the other week and copped plenty of crap for it. It was all in good fun. Freefliers love belly fliers really, how else are they gonna find a stable 4-way base to hybrid off?

According to the manual, the resolution is 10ft and the accuracy is +/- 20ft.

I'm a bigger guy and I've had my share of sinking out problems but in my experience, tunnel time doesn't help. Maybe it's only the tunnels I've been to but the artificially fast fall rate in a tunnel means I actually have to arch and that never happens in the sky. The problem is the tunnel operator looks at your body position and turns the fan up until everyone has a nice arch and the small guys pile on the lead to keep up. For a big guy doing larger formations, a nice tunnel perfected arch is frickin useless. The trick is to maintain your altitude on exit, spread out, de-arch and get good at flying like that. If you swoop in and get to the point where you think you need to put the brakes on, it's already too late. When it comes to sinking out, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. My personal plan is to not get low in the first place but if I am, I'll slow fall my ass off until 2k above break off and if I'm still way low, track flat and straight and don't stop until pull time. If I'm close enough or can get close enough so I can be sure the formation will see me, I'll stick with the formation and break off as normal.

+1

Aerodyne Icons also have the Skyhook as an option. If I was looking for a brand new rig, I'd be buying a something with a Skyhook too (in fact I did, a Vector 3) but I wouldn't buy new for a 1st rig unless I was made of money.