Jan. "Skydiving" (cover shot question)

[Mayberry 0]

I just got mine out of the mailbox & was looking @ the photo on the cover. It's a shot from the Oct. Empuriabrava CRW camp & shows a 4-way diamond with a stinger downplane. Please forgive my ignorance about CRW but is the guy on the bottom (stinger?) UPSIDE DOWN??? How is that done??? Is it a common/routine maneuver?? I am in total awe!! Thanks!!

Don

Here's to friends!

[faulknerwn 38]

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I just got mine out of the mailbox & was looking @ the photo on the cover. It's a shot from the Oct. Empuriabrava CRW camp & shows a 4-way diamond with a stinger downplane. Please forgive my ignorance about CRW but is the guy on the bottom (stinger?) UPSIDE DOWN??? How is that done??? Is it a common/routine maneuver?? I am in total awe!! Thanks!!

That's no guy - its a girl!!!! I love being upside down under canopy :-) If you look closely you'll see that my risers are twisted and I'm looking back at the camera as well!

Its basically the same technique you use for a dragplane, except with more canopies on top it makes the bottom one more vertical.. The way I typically do it is to have the top person climb down, I throw my legs up between theirs and they hug them to their chest. I then execute a 180 degree toggle turn and we're off to the races! Yahoo!

W

[Mayberry 0]

HOLY SHIT!!! I do well enough to keep right side up!! That's AMAZING!!! Can I have your autograph??

Don

Here's to friends!

[BillyVance 34]

Although I've never done a dragplane before (but want to someday), isn't it easier to do than a simple downplane between two jumpers (that I've done a bunch of times)?

At least having a few jumpers in formation on top makes that side more stable, doesn't it?

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[faulknerwn 38]

They're both easy. Its definitely stable - the more jumpers on top the more vertical it gets...

W

[John4455 0]

So how do you break off? Looks like you could just fall through your canopy.

How do ya like it Johnny?

[faulknerwn 38]

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So how do you break off? Looks like you could just fall through your canopy.

Normally you'll drop the bottom 2 people off into a downplane and they break normally. Even if you just drop the upside down person however, its ok because they'll swing around like a hook turn...
W

[teamhypoxia 0]

drop the downplane when you do it from a diamond. the rebound on the wings makes for a nice wrap

[faulknerwn 38]

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drop the downplane when you do it from a diamond. the rebound on the wings makes for a nice wrap

Who cares? I'm free :-) Actually we did drop the dragplane in the cover photo - but the wings and the pilot did a starburst countdown and released themselves at the same time :-)

W

[crewdog2 0]

Rumor has it that you are going to repeat this performance on the Women's World Record

[faulknerwn 38]

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Rumor has it that you are going to repeat this performance on the Women's World Record

Now that would be cool!!!! Hmmmm. I am one of the organizers .....

:-)

W

[dragon2 2]

LOL last year I got to do a dragplane... We had the annual Crew Spectacle at our DZ. I got my license stuff done that week (had to pick one discipline, picked crew). So after the "serious stuff" I wanted some fun! Me and my big mouth ended up rehearsing (yeah that's what it was, really!) the dragplane, I was on top of Gadget's back I think when Cato sidled over, This looks interesting, need a camera?
Yeah!

Did a 4way stack with me docking fourth and then went freeflying
Hmm, really should put in some more crew time this year......... Next thing on my list is a ghostplane (some crew people got annoyed when they found out in the airplane that I was going to intentionally cutaway and had drafted a guy to chase my stuff: why CHASE it if you can FLY it?! LOL as long as I don't have to...)

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[Levin 0]

what's a ghostplane?

[meandean 0]

It's what your left with when the pilot jumps out, to do some CRW.





(snicker)

[indyz 1]

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what's a ghostplane?

ghostplane

[AggieDave 6]

Holy shit.

I "play around" with CReW and don't find too many things squimish, but that one amazes me.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Andrelr 0]

The fun part is landing it on a hot and bumpy day...
You're so lightly wingloaded that every bump makes you feel the canopies are going to jump apart and put you into your own personal downplane.

[mccurley 1]

Best ghost plane I ever saw,
Strait over head at an Aussie Nationals about 82 or 83 at Corrowa NSW.
They built a four stack,top man gets down into second mans risers, second man somehow sitting on third mans shoulders and cuts away.
Top man flys away in a gost plan.
Third and fourth now go into a downplane with the second man sitting on top of them.
When the downplane splits, the guy sitting on top falls through the middle and dumps his reserve,
Kids do not try this at home!!
Sure was cool though.

Watch my video Fat Women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRWkEky8GoI

[faulknerwn 38]

I SOOOOO wanna do that :-) I would use my intentional cutaway rig though with my 3rd main ;-)

W

[mccurley 1]

I was pretty cool.
I was in the judges area, ground spotting the RW and Style for ground based video judging when they did it.
I only looked up in time to see the down plane at about 2 grand come straight down at us. When it broke off our first reaction was what the f**k is going on here.took a couple minutes to figure out what we had just seen and this was confirmed later by one of the participants.
Way Cool!

Edit to add
If you do do it I want vedio footage.

Watch my video Fat Women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRWkEky8GoI

[ArnoSchutte 0]

Is it possible to scan or direct me where i can find the picture on the coverpage on the net ? I'm from south africa and it's not possible to get the magazine here. Sounds really awesome, so would not mind to have a look at it... For Andre Le Roux here is some piccies of me doing 2stack over Margate with the CRW Dogs with the 135 Triathlons.

Regards

Arnie

[Mayberry 0]

If you go here there's a small one of the cover.

Don

Here's to friends!

[Andrelr 0]

Nice pics, Arno.
I'm in Dubai now and off to the DZ (it's Islamic weekend here) to put some more jumps on my new Tri. No one here to bash canopies against, though!

[TVPB 0]

You are referring to the manouvre commonly known as "Drop the Bomb". It was also done at Picton DZ a few years ago for a British TV show. I was the Bomb.



The guy who I climbed upon had never had a cutaway before. Whilst we were in a loving embrace (sic), I asked him if he could pull my cutaway handle when I gave him the signal so that I could have both hands free to hold on tighter. I also told him that if he dropped it, it would be $50. When he pulled the handle, . . . . . . . . I told him he owed us all a carton of beer for . . . . his FIRST cutaway.

Procedure we used:

- Build a 4 plane.
- 2nd person climbs down to the third (i.e. 3rd person pulls the second one down).
- 2nd person gets best possible grip (don't just hang off the front as your weight will pull the third person down when you cutaway).
- Pilot puts feet in risers of 2nd person at the front / rear riser join. This bit is real important. A poor foot grip will cause the cutaway canopy to possibly fly off one riser at a time and potentially cause a wrap for the thrid guy OR it will be real hard for the pilot to get his feet out for landing. You have two options for the ghost plane. One is to make it a 2 stack that you intend to land. The pilot must lock his feet into the risers and somehow get their weight forward. The idea is to keep the cutaway canopy loaded so that it does not fly backwards with your feet caught in the risers. The second option is to allow the cutaway canopy to fly up so that the pilot is parallel to the ground (lying horizontal) and the cutaway canopy trails the pilots canopy. This one looks real cool. I'll try to dig up some photo's of this if I can. I THINK THE PILOT HAS THE MOST DANGEROUS PART IN THIS MANOUVRE.
- 2nd Quickly gets on the 3rd persons back after the cutaway and takes a good grip.
- 3rd & 4th then form a downplane.
- make it more interesting by performing 360 downplane / horizontal turns and see if you can make no.2 dizzy.
- when the downplane is broken off, 2nd falls off and deploys reserve. OR
- 2nd can jump off, deploy reserve and 3 & 4 can downplane past no.2.

Dangers:
- cutaway canopy tangling with no.3 and 1 to a lessor extent
- pilot losing control of ghost plane
- the bomb falling too early and hitting someone below
-dislodging handles etc whilst clmbing around
- having too much fun

Stay Safe - Have Fun - Good Luck

The above could be crap, thought provoking, useful, or . . But not personal. You decide.