speedy

I could post the video, however, the video man was a long way from me and it is not easy to see what position I am in. I have heard the rumour that 80% of reserves a pulled while people are back to earth. Not the best position, but better than pulling too late. As I said, I had a lot of horizontal speed after cutting away. You can see how the free bag tends to be pulled out sideways on the video. I#ll try and post it later today. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

Three letters: PDF or to be more specific, Techno reserves. Are they any good? I dunno really, I am no rigger, but I have had two rides on a Techno 128 and one ride on a Techno 115 (yesterday) and I found that they flew nice and flared well on landing. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

Yeah, I know what you mean, I only jump my full face in team 4-way jumps. Ripping goggles off is far cheaper than dumping your helmet I was glad I decided to ditch quickly. With the time spent trying to get the cutaway pad peeled, if I had decided to ditch later, it may have been too late A spiralling Velocity loaded at 1.9 looses height very quickly Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

It was the 1st jump of the day. It was also the 1st jump with our replacement for our now pregnant team captain. A simple jump to check out level with a fair bit of no contact flying. We also had two video guys, one doing just stills and the other doing just video. The jump went O.K.with break off at 4500 ft. I tracked and dumped at 3000 ft, looked up and ,uh oh, that's a line twist. I thought no problem, I've had them before and they tend to untwist themselves. I started to kick them out and noticed that I was now turning relative to the canopy. I checked the lines again and noticed, uh oh, that's now 4 twists and is getting worse. I'll admit, no check on my alti, but I knew I was at about 2300 ft. I decided to chop and went for the handles, at the same time the canopy went into a spiral dive and I was falling back to earth. I use the two handed method for EP's, that is left hand on the D-ring, right hand on the cutaway pad. I tried to peel the cutaway pad from the Velcro and it stayed stuck, a second attempt the peel the pad away and still it would not budge. I looked down at the pad through a fogged and scratched visor (full face helmet) and could see the blurred red handle with my white gloved hand around it. I released my grip slightly, adjusted my hand grip and then put an extra effort to peel it away. This time it came loose. Altitude? I had not heard my hard deck warning on my pro-track yet. I was going to die if I landed in this configuration, pulling the reserve without cutaway would probably be fatal as well. I yanked the cutaway pad and arched. The main had gone and I was still on my back and my pro-track started the hard deck scream. I thought, fuck this, arching is not going to get me belly to earth anytime soon and pulled silver. In an instant all the spinning and speed stopped and I was under a nice reserve. But, man, did my back hurt. Altitude after deployment was 1500 feet. A couple of things I thought about afterwards. 1. I ordered a new visor for my helmet. Not being able to see your handles properly under a spinning mal is unnerving. 2. Why did I have problems with the cutaway pad? I believe this was a combination of things. I was wearing gloves that have a sort of sticky surface on the palms. Due to the spin my harness was probably a bit out of shape, so I grabbed not only the cutaway pad but also part of the MLW, the gloves keeping my hand stuck to the MLW. The rig is almost new, so the Velcro does not peel away easily anyway. One more thing to add. Some witnesses on the ground said that I had fired my free bag into the main. That is to say cutaway and reserve pull at the same time. Someone even asked me if I had a RSL. They said that my free bag stayed entangled in the main for some time. I was convinced I had left time between cutaway and silver. So what really happened? Would you believe it, the video guy filmed the whole event! On the video you could clearly see the cutaway and then the free bag deployed away from the main. Also on the video you could see the deployment was more horizontal than vertical. The people on the ground just had a bad angle to judge. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

YES - but they don't have any parachutes Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

Orientation : East Relationship Status : Ongoing Humps : 2 (both on my camel) Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

wow, been in the sport for 7 million years and still only 1 jump. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

I happen to have 2 rigs and 5 jump suits I can pick and match my colors as needed I am lying really, both rigs are all black and the jumpsuits are all Blue with black apart from the red freefly suit that is totally un-cool. Priorities for equipment are: 1. Safety 2. Safety 3. Saftey ..... ..... 200. Safety Coolness just does not enter the equation. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

We try and try and try, but the TV people are just not interested. At my club we did a jump for charity, Red Nose Day. This was something being actively promoted by a TV station here. We gave them freefall video footage and guess what they showed about 3 secs of the freefall. 3 girls washing a car got more coverage. The real problem is that skydiving is not mainstream. Most people just don't get it. People who don't skydive are not really interested in watching a bunch of idiots leap from a plane. As for Moto X , well there are a lot more bikers out there than there are skydivers. Also, almost everyone has ridden a bicycle. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

Most of the Tandem Videos I do are put on a CD as a SVCD. The quality from Tmpgenc is excellent. The reason I don't burn DVD's is because I can get around 40 mins of video on a CD which is plenty for a Tandem Video and the blank CD's are much cheaper than blank DVD's. Nearly all modern DVD players can play SVCD and the players themselves sell as cheaply as $40. I thought about archiving my Tandems vids to CD or DVD this year but changed my mind. Tape is just as cheap as CD or DVD and your can store the video with out compression on tape. I would not recommend producing anything in VCD format as the quality sucks. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

Don't worry about it though Thomas, there are plenty of enlargement offers on the net. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

I don't need two. It's just that I registered under speedy. Then I sort of left for a while and when I wanted to come back I'd forgotten my password so I registered again. It seems like I remembered my password at some point and started posting under my old name again. That's when my new ID started disagreeing with me. Get it? Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

I have heard that a number of people have multiple identities on DZ.com, I was wondering if anyone else has ended up having an argument with themselves. This happened to me in what in talk back. I ended up disagreeing with another poster and did not realize I was disagreeing with my other ID. I would post a link to the thread but the greenies deleted it because I start personally attacking myself. Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

I've read Lord of the Flies, but not Lord of the rings. I have not seen any of the films either. Am I missing something? Dave Fallschirmsport Marl

Who the hell is Gandalf anyway? Dave Fallschirmsport Marl