sniper1rfa

Right, which means you don't actually end up spinning at all, you just contort in an amusing manner. A diver (and a cat) can only change the direction and speed of the rotation they have upon leaving the diving board. At all times (assuming they aren't going fast enough to use the wind) they must conserve angular momentum. If dropped with no rotation whatsoever, the most skilled diver in the world would be powerless to rotate until they caught some wind. Likewise, if you dropped a cat perfectly evenly with its back to the ground, it would not land on its feet. In the diver's case, the appropriate rotation is gained from the diving platform, and the cat relies on the complex, chaotic nature of the universe to insure that it will have some angular momentum to work with when it falls off things. :) Now, if you had a fast canopy, you might be able to help yourself by sticking alternating arms out, much like doing a barrel roll in freefall.

A view from an inexperienced, outside observer on this issue: When we were taught to spread the risers during AFF, it immediately struck me as an odd, counter-intuitive idea. Think about it as if you just have a weight hanging from two strings. You don't pull the strings apart at the bottom, shuffling the twists upwards - that just makes the system tighter. You pull the strings apart above the twists - that gets the weight spinning quickly and easily. I also suspect that kicking does nothing - you have nothing to kick against, which means your displacement at the end of the action should be 0. You can't contort yourself in such a way as to cause translation or change in momentum unless you're in a heavily curved section of space-time, such as near a black hole for an object human-sized. :) Moreover, I've had two linetwists severe enough to need work, and neither time did I feel that my actions did anything to speed up the natural progression of the twist - and I typically have a extremely good feel for that sort of thing. EDIT: also, sorry about the apparent necropost - I've actually had a couple conversations about this issue recently and wanted to throw my $.02 in.

mcmaster carries vectran and spectra, without ratings though.

Turbine AFF baby checking in. No problem getting out at 3500, but I actually did my H&P at 3500 - a lot of the guys at my DZ this year ended up doing the "3500" quite a bit higher. I'm new, though, so I don't like going much lower, mainly because I've never had a mal and would like plenty of time to deal with it should it occur. From freefall I like to pull at 4k minimum. Don't have anything to prove, and the extra 5 seconds isn't that tempting. I also really like my canopy time, and probably wouldn't get on a load if we weren't going to get 5000 or better.

:) In hindsight, of course, I see better ways to deal with the same situation, so i don't think it was the correct decision - merely not the worst decision. For example, I could easily have transferred it to the other hand before pulling, in which case i would've been under a good canopy with an altimeter, or under a bad canopy with a much more compelling reason to ditch it. Ah well. I'm here still!

Newbie here, going to throw my hat in the ring... At SNE this summer we had a skyvan for a day or two, and I boogied up there for a chance to jump from a tailgate plane. Got on a load for my 12th jump or so, IIRC, and obviously wanted to do a giant cannonball for my first tailgate jump. Got out, felt awesome about the exit, then got belly down and checked my alti, which was now hanging by the loop on one finger. For some reason I grabbed it with my other hand, waited until I was below the cloud deck, then chucked it and pulled. I was under canopy at something like 7000ft with no altimeter.