nathaniel

Those are fascinating theories. The consequences I was thinking of were of more women not being able to do serious CRW until a later point in their careers, much in the spirit of faulknerwn 's posts. You know, the consequences of having a chart. Maybe it's an intended consequence, perhaps someone who knows how it was designed can tell us. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Perhaps by chromosome, instead of by sex? Weight is causally related to sex in humans, although clearly not as tightly correlated as chromosomes. It's valid to consider the resultant consequence by sex. According to wikipedia, the mean weights of north american adult women and men are 137 and 172 lbs, respectively. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's a chart, so it might be hard to get it paginated correctly using the forum software. May I ask, in the vein of councilman24, but with a slightly different angle: What's the derivation of the numbers? What makes a chart entry not one size bigger or smaller? What makes this table more correct than one with all values shifted to the right one notch? (and allowing the leftmost column to stay the same) My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Not me directly, but on a 2 way the fellow I was jumping with experienced a spin on his Firebird. He apparently had a brain fart and exited a porter with a right-side door as though it was an otter with a left side door (ie, facing backward) He wound up on his back, spinning and sinking and not catching any air. After a couple of seconds he balled up and rolled over, instantly he was out of the spin and flying. I dove down to him and the rest of the jump was uneventful. 1. Birdman firebird 2005 2. exit 3. 200-300 feet 4 no 5 no idea My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It looks like they're serious about this http://flickr.com/photos/karensandler/73837502/ My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Unfortunately this is a real problem. It's just not safe to trust any link to a website that comes in your email since just about everything that comes in your inbox can be spoofed, in many cases including your full name, your account number and other things you don't consider to be easy to guess or track down. It gets worse because a lot of companies don't realize this and have started going about emailing links to their websites that people might actually want or need to click on. And many times they even contract out to marketing and customer relations companies that have no ostensible relationship to the website in question...making it all horribly, horribly impossible for ordinary folk. Bottom line is don't trust any link in any email. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You don't point a gun at your own head in order to save your own life. Whereas you do operate a parachute on yourself in order to survive a fall. Your analogy is misleading. Can we dispense with analogies and use reason? What reason do we have to give inaccurate advice whenever someone asks to fly a new canopy? I speculated about a reason in my first post in this thread--we prefer to give advice that minimizes the recipient's risk in defiance of their interests because it minimizes our own risk. With a presumption being that people who post on this board are seeking to minimize the risks they incur by posting. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

How does the ordinary logic that works everywhere else in the universe apply differently to skydiving? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Alright I edited the quote since you didn't like it. The bit I originally cut out was the bit that got me thinking. There's two concepts from statistics that are useful in classifying ordinary every day errors. * bias, or accuracy: Telling people they should always go large is an example of inaccuracy / bias. * variance, or precision: Telling people we're not quite sure what they should jump because we don't know them or their gear is an example of variance. Sometimes by changing the way we think we can eliminate or reduce one or the other of bias or variance without changing the other. And it is almost always desirable when we can. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It would be foolish to err if we could avoid erring altogether just by working with the poor guy instead of dictating someone else's preferences to him. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Who chooses the spot on an AFF3? At my DZ it's the instructor. edit to add: and just so you don't think I'm pawning off responsibility again, I explicitly take responsibility for his decision. It was still my idea to show up, pay the bill & step out. It's really not that uncommon for us lightweights to end up in a situation where we're flying backwards under large and not-so-large canopies. It happened to me a few times under my 150, even. I'd generalize the contention to anytime that you are flying backward (edit with conditions) in moderate winds and/or at a < 1.0 WL(/edit) you're probably better off with a canopy one or two notches smaller, if you're not already on the edge of your ability to land the thing. a 190 with 160 lbs underneath it does not have a fast forward speed. Well maybe compared to a 230 that's moving backwards. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

How nice would it be to have one of these on one of those 95-degree, 100% humidity days at the WFFC? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

But it's not a question of a 103 vs a 230, it's a question of a 230 vs a 190. A 230 which put me ~1.5 miles away from the dropzone, whereas a 190 would definitely have gotten me closer. Hell the other guy just weighed more than me and he ended up closer to the DZ by way more than his separation from me...I could see the distance between us growing under canopy facing back to the DZ as we were being blown backward (he was an AFF1 on a similar 230, and exited after me). It's not a linear system by any matter--in all likelihood I would have broken my leg or something on a velocity 103 instead of a sabre 190 or a PD-230 or whatever it was. wmw999's question was whether there was any way a smaller canopy could be better than a larger canopy for a student, and I stand by my example. Sure. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I can come up with some ideas * a smaller canopy wouldn't have flown faster (probably still backwards tho) in the headwind * a smaller canopy wouldn't have descended faster through the altitudes with high wind * I wouldn't have been able to spiral on a 190 (I could barely on the 230--I'd done pullups on the risers in AFF1 or AFF2) * I would inevitably have hooked it in if I had the temerity to fly a smaller canopy that than someone on this board recommends but I can't agree with any of them. ^^ important edit up there. oops My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Go on, tell us why it is bullshit. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I also didn't say it was a Sunday, it was the afternoon, and the winds aloft were from the West...how is any of this relevant? What other fact am I admitting that I am also concealing? Maneuvering it close to the ground is not relevant because the winds were low below 3000ft or so and my approach was sound. I was at less than 0.7 on the 230, it would have been reasonable by anybody's measure to go up to 0.8 or so on a 190. In fact I wound up flying a 190 a couple jumps later. A smaller canopy would have provided a larger margin of error in which to land on the DZ. Landing on the DZ is broadly safer than landing off the DZ, all things considered. Do you have any more more Monday morning calls? What else did you see when you were not there? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Who's blaming the canopy? I was the one who stepped into the harness, it was my responsibility from that point forward. Using a smaller canopy would have been brighter tho. Getting out of the plane 1.5 miles after everybody else could also have done the trick. Landing in a tree farm /was/ an out, since the trees were small. It was that, corn, or houses and a row of trees, or a road with low voltage power lines. The tree farm and the corn were outs. Go go gadget monday morning quarterback! And in this case all common sense pointed to going ahead and jumping. At least 4 AFF instructors and the manifest staff thought so. Previous loads hadn't had a problem, tho they most likely opened at or below 3000ft, and so didn't experience the winds. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I agree with you on this, only I think that it's a good idea to take the student's preferences as an input to whatever black box process it is that leads to a recommendation. The same 0.8 that makes your day could stifle some else's. Even at the expense of a degree or two of safety. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Tell me then, why does the SIM bother requiring the designation of landing areas that are free of obstacles & of sufficient size / shape, if there is never any excuse for hitting them? It's not a bright thing to do but the point is not to feel sympathy for me but to understand that a smaller canopy would likely have been a wiser decision under the circumstances. The general case of landing off is less safe than landing on, can we agree on this? Or perhaps the main reason for designated landing areas stems from land-usage rights? Not jumping at all would not be a satisfactory answer because the SIM criteria for student jumping had been met. There was no reason not to jump, and there was every reason to jump in that I was a student and I wanted to learn, and the DZ was right there and they were willing to teach a student. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Easy. There is a too large. Probably something close to one or two thousand square feet. You'll lose your ability to control the thing and choose where it lands. A plausible example is in my case the 230 I was given on my AFF Level 3 jump. The winds had died down on the ground enough for students to jump. The winds at 3-5k were still blowing strong, however, and this wasn't known till another student and I got blown more than a mile off the landing area. I landed in a tree farm. Fortunately the trees were only a couple feet tall. Safety is not the only consideration. Buying too large is a waste of time and money that could instead be spent on jumping and building experience. This is an absolute loss, even if it is small compared to hurting / killing yourself on a way too small or way too large canopy, or not jumping at all. It ought be measured against an correct choice, not against another poor choice. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think that's the default, since it's a statement of an unknown. And I think it's not entirely implausible that it may yet be an OK canopy depending on a lot of factors. I know that I was put on a 150 when I had not many more jumps than 25 with the assent of my AFF instructors, and I was/am neither an excellent canopy pilot nor particularly aggressive in my canopy preferences. Although I am lightweight. I ended up buying a 150 when I had around 60 jumps. If (and this is a big if) this guy were in a similar circumstance I think it'd be entirely reasonable for him to buy a 150. Maybe not a stiletto 150, but who knows, maybe. Now, whether I'd actually go out and tell him to buy a particular canopy or not is an entirely different story, knowing neither him nor the gear. Nobody wants to stick their neck out and have this guy make a bad choice and hurt himself...but being overconservative is also a bad choice. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Pity. This sport is mired in mythology and oral history. Jumpers that post on this board are just as fallable as everybody else, if not more prone to making false assumptions and leaping to unsupported conclusions. Famous names and the number of people that subscribe to their narratives are no insurance--with no offense intended to the accomplishments that make such a person famous to begin with.... I'd just as soon people forgot about who I might be and concentrate on skydiving. We're really getting into soapbox material here....but how much of a statement is it that we're not capable of evaluating a proposition outright but have to rely on its pedigree? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Everybody knows this, how do they know? I'd say with equally scarce justification it's a bit (a lot) more fluid than that. It's hard to talk about particulars of this case since the OP provided next to no information that could be used to give him advice, so instead we all start making gratuitous assumptions. So we should start by asking him questions before giving him advice. Questions about his physical dimensions, like others have asked, and questions about what he's interested in. Tell me what is wrong about that, besides that it's "generally regarded", tell me why. Can you? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I don't write down my numbers here because I'm not interested in a pissing contest over jumps. I've actually stopped keeping track. You have an opportunity to tell us what you know or you can just boast about your delightful experiences. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Gah! I didn't mean for that to be an endorsement...I'll remember to use the sarcasm tags next time. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?