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I use both eyes doing crw, although sometimes i am temped to close them both!

Learn to do foot takes! Then you don't have to let go of the toggles, everyone's a winner! plastic

The russian rotations team all jump tri 99's now, loaded at around 2.0 and seem to get good landings out of them, well at least i have never seem any of them on crutches. plastic

A good few years ago two friends of mine (friends now, i had not even started jumping then) landed a downplane on a concrete runway and both lived, anybody beat that? plastic

Use a mesh slider, tail pocket, expose the centre cell and just put a single fold in the outside 3 cells (as one, not individually) and fold the tail over the top each side leaving the center cell well exposed. Make sure the run in speed is 80/85 knots (if the aircraft can do this) and dont do more than a 3 sec delay cos if you start to go face to earth the opening shock of pulling you upright will hurt more. If you roll stuff then you get an initial snivel as the canopy is starting to unfold followed by an explosion as all of a sudden it is full of air, while this was happening you have started to build up freefall speed, this seems to magnify the effect of the opening shock. Also if you wear lead wear it around the body and not over the shoulders as this can cause you to start going flat much quicker, also a decent weight belt around the waist will give you lower back some support. Make sure you have a decent, well fitting rig and everything is done up nice and tight. Do some stretching before you start jumping to loosen up the neck, back and shoulders. Go to russia and jump helicopters cos the openings are fantastic, plus if you do get hard openings the cheap vodka numbs the pain big time. Cant think of much else at the moment. plastic

Nah, only joking. plastic

Maybe i did not word that very well. I wont be there, it does not mean that i do not have any talent, i dont have the time, money or inclination. My spare time and money is devoted to team training and has been for most of my crw career. However should anybody wish to assume that i won't be there because i am not good enough then so be it, i can live with that. However i do wish the team all the best and i do genuinely hope it works, as i do know quite a few people who will be on this. Plus the pictures do look good...

That is a strange but maybe misguided assumption that everybody who has an "ounce of talent" will be trying out for this. Some people may not have the time or money to do this, some may just not want to, it does not mean that they dont have any talent. Sure a lot of people will want to have a go at the record including maybe some that dont have the skills or experience yet.

I doubt that list is accurate because one of the names on there is somebody who is no longer alive!

Yes, now you mention it i do remeber some of my early lightning landings, but that was a long time ago now so i am sure nobody else remembers them. plastic

Hi, I have already been in touch with rusty regarding these canopies. I have a person on my team who had a badly broken leg last year so canopies that dont land well are not what we need right now, until we have the technique to get the most out of the canopy. I jump a lightning 143 at 1.5 wing loading and get great landings, i dont understand why people complain about how the lightning lands. plastic

Hi, having jumped lightnings for competition crw for 9 years (sequential, 8-way and rotations) and having also jumped diamant and triathlon crw build I would say that the weakness of the lightning is that it is not aggressive enough which is why it is good for coaching on but no top teams use for competition. If pd are spending money on developing a less aggressive canopy then they are wasting their time when they should be developing a more aggressive canopy, but not as agressive as the xc which is so hardcore only a handful of teams in the world are good enough to use it apart from the russians who all use triathlons anyway. This makes the potential market for the xc so small that it would not be worth spending much money on developing and putting it into general production. This is of course just my opinion. plastic

That is why i always pack my own reserve!

Nice, outstanding photo's. plastic

Hi, This is one of my 8-way team Cenobites training at langar last year after returning from a successful training camp in Russia. Plastic

*** Do lots of crw and get good coaching that is the only way to get good. Plastic

One of the camera guys at our dz has a triathlon 120 hybrid which he uses mostly for freefall but also for video on crw. He has a dacron lineset, in theory the openeings at terminal should be softer as dacron has more give than microline. plastic

I have never heard of anybody in europe using them, but most european jumpers usually do competition/smaller crw jumps. Smaller meaning 9-way or less. If you need 2:1's to be able to dock then either your canopy or the formation needs re-engineering or sometimes it is as simple as working on your technique. As for flying wings while waiting for a lock, a lot of europeans use b-line, having a person hanging on a wing with a handful of 2:1 is not going to help the dynamics of the formation. plastic

A few years ago i did a few jumps where we had some guys on lightning 160's and some on hybrid tri 135's and we did loads of stacks/planes etc without issue before the other guys got lightnings. The guys on the tri's had loads of performance on the lightnings and so docking was easy, they just used a different technique where they used a brake sashay technique to loose height then just turned in behind the formation knowing they could just use the extra performance to fly up and dock on the formation. Trouble was when they moved to lightnings it all changed and they had to learn a whole new technique. You don't always have to use just risers to loose height, this is where you get the opportunity to learn all the different methods and techniques until eventually you can dock almost anywhere on anything (within reason of course). plastic

Hi, The hybrid tri's are a lot harder to front riser than the competition tri's. One of my ex-team mates coached an internediate team a few years ago, he went up on a jump with them and they gave him a hybrid and he made the comment about it being difficult to front riser. This could be caused by the difference on the nose of the canopy which is different between hybrid and comp tri's which is also apparently why you can take a hybrid to terminal but not a a comp. This also could cause a difference in the glide angle which could cause the comp tri to descend faster than the hybrid. Just some thoughts. Of course adjusting the glide angle with extra links can help. plastic

In England the recommendation for one on one crw jumps with novices is not to exit above 7000' this gives loads of working time for 2-way. A 190 crw canopy is massive, i dont know anybody who has one that big, i know somebody who has a 176 but that is only used for 16st guys. Normally if we have a novice with a heavy wing loading the coach will either wear lead or downsize. Even so, glad you had fun. How were the landings by the way? should have been ok on a 190. plastic

OK, the front riser is not mandatory by any means, especially if you do not normally do that. However the part about a good progressive flare still holds true, if there is even a breath of wind you will be fine, in nil winds it may seem like you are coming in fast but just keep the flare going don't panic and jab the brakes down and risk stalling the canopy, just bleed off as much speed as you can and be prepared for a short run when you first hit the ground. Most bad landings i have seen on crw canopies have been fast panic flares that have resulted in a canopy stall. plastic

One other tip for landing crw canopies, you normally need some front risers on approach, either stright in or better a progressive 45-90 degree turn, when it is time to come off the risers ease them up, pause to let the canopy start to level out and then a good steady progressive flare. You will find that you need to ease out of the risers slightly higher than you would if you were landing something like a stilletto etc dont leave it too late and put yourself in a situation where you are trying to dig out on brakes cos it wont work. If you do hard risers and then quickly realese the risers and immediately do a fast agressive flare you will kill the speed and lift from the canopy (this is good when you are doing a swoop down to a formation, eg:8-way speed jumps, but not good for landing) it will stall and drop you on your backside. Also i have 120+ jumps on the french diamant, i have gone back to lightnings for the last 5 years, i thinks that would sum up my opinion on diamants. other than that, have fun. plastic

In my experience people who say crw canopies land like sh*t are usually people who cannot land them or have never jumped one and have only watched pther people who cannot land them. I have jumped lightnings for years (9) and always get good landings even in nil wind days, yet i hear many people complain about the way lightnings land. I did jump a competition triathlon quite a bit about 10 years ago and the landings were ok even then when i did not have that much experience landing crw canopies. Compared to the french rubis and the old ar7 landings on lightnings and triathlons are a dream. plastic

I do not use one because i do not have one. plastic