pchapman

Is there a 'change log' anywhere that specifies what has changed since the previous version?

Thought I saw that come up in some other SC thread. But anyway, the whole thing isn't entirely one-sidedly a case of dumb cops. Not entirely. It sort of comes down to the issue of whether a cop is allowed to fire at a fleeing vehicle. Maybe that's allowed, maybe it isn't, maybe it is a massive over reaction these days. That particular cop wasn't part of the initial traffic stop incident so may not have fully realized who all was in the minivan. He was on scene when the vehicle was stopped the second time, and the mom inside decided to flee police again and took off. So she did up the ante. It was a level beyond cases of people who get shot at or tasered by cops just for not complying with every order a cop gives.

So that's Parachute Labs for the handle, John Sherman's company which is known for supplying ripcord components and assemblies. I'm guessing not cracks in the normal sense, but just metal that has squeezed up out from between the dies during the swaging process. But still, with good technique and dies one would normally just have one mark on either side of the pin, 180 deg. apart, and the squeezed metal wouldn't be that messy, creating narrow flanges. Grinding the part with the cable ends seems normal enough, although messily done here with multiple ground facets. Sounds a bit like a home made replica of a RI ripcord that wasn't done that well, at a minimum at the cosmetic level? Not sure about the scratched on lettering. I don't care so much if it is a home made ripcord, but if so, why try to pretend to be from RI? [edit:] But that's all guesswork by someone who has built a few ripcords but not at a TSO facility. Whether to trust it or not, I dunno. Not everyone has a setup to do a 300 lb test. TSO requirements are another thing but I'll leave that to the US riggers.

One of the ugliest rigs out there, in my opinion. (Although that doesn't in itself affect functionality.)

Still, I go for the idea of emphasizing that one can easily get oneself too low, so one screws around with a canopy only if one is absolutely sure one has altitude. Screwing around with a canopy is normal -- trying to pop out a tension knot, checking controllability with a small tear, trying to fix a jammed steering toggle, whatever. Otherwise one might as well say something like, "Never drive your car in winter! People have died on icy roads!" or, "Never skateboard! People have done dumb things on them and gotten killed!" (Come to think of it, I did go to a memorial service for a skydiver who died in a skateboard related accident....) Just because some people have screwed up at a task doesn't mean nobody should ever try it again. We have to look at what the risks are, whether they are acceptable, and whether some mitigation is possible. Even though it is so easy to get sucked low, it is way too strict to suggest one never try to fix certain malfunction-like situations. Let's get back to stuff that really is stupid...

Part of the Prof's web page: To some degree, the idea is trivial: If you do what you were trying to avoid doing, that's just called "failure". But their point is that if someone emphasizes avoiding one particular type of error out of different errors that could occur, that one type of error should actually become more likely. It does sound like a valid area of research though, especially if they have a hypothesis about specific mechanisms for an error to occur. It also appears that "Ironic Error" is a term developed at that university, so it hasn't necessarily received broad usage or acceptance. I haven't looked into the effect and can't offer any insight into the amount of evidence for the effect, or about the construct of having an operating and monitoring process. The youtube video is from 2012 and it appears that research is ongoing. It sounds like they are looking into some sort of 'priming' effects -- there's plenty of that effect noted in psychology, where having one idea introduced might subtly influence behaviour during another subsequent task. So their theory seems to include the following: Say you want to kick a ball into the corner of the net, but are reminded "Don't kick the ball too wide!". Then if you are unable to focus entirely on the task at hand, that idea of kicking the ball too wide might impair performance and lead to a greater chance of kicking the ball wide. In the video they mention eye tracking experiments to see if the priming might cause someone about to kick a ball to glance further to the side. I suppose they are looking at both the effect of priming, and the influence of stress on that effect. The topic also seems to relate to the older idea that some talk about, about the benefits of visualizing an upcoming task in a positive way, focusing on the right things to do and not the wrong things to do. Again, I can't comment on what the current understanding is about that claim. I certainly don't like to see too much use of that concept, as it takes away from the ability to examine dangers and think through ways of dealing with situations outside of the perfect plan. Perhaps the negatives are needed, but in the final mental rehearsal, only the positive version is needed to prime the mind for the task. There is one problem though: Is the Ironic Error supposed to happen only when the priming is negative (e.g., "I tend to hit the golf ball short. Don't hit it too short!!"), or also if the priming is positive (e.g., "I will make sure to hit the ball harder than usual!")? That's not made clear in the little bit I have seen so far on line by the university group. E.g, if the monitoring process takes more hold of one's actions when under stress, that would suggest the notion of 'Hit the ball harder' would come to the fore, and one would actually get better under more stress. That is counter to what they are saying. There are large gaps in some of of short descriptions online, about what they are expecting to observe. I did see the abstract to one paper from that Prof, where during a golf putt competition where negative priming was used, it was only those people who had a certain 'repressor' coping style had a statistically significant increase in their Ironic Error -- "This suggests that the act of repressing anxiety has a detrimental performance effect." Further study would be needed to have better informed opinions.

Nice, but the super quick editing, with two second scenes, makes it hard to explain to non-skydivers what's going on. There's tons of BASE. There's also a lot of focus on the highest level of achievement. So on the one hand it does show off what can be achieved (eg, XRW, Gary Connery's wingsuit box landing, Red Bull Stratos, various BASE terrain flying), but one would want more 'regular skydiving' too, to show what is more common. Still, it is a video (through iloveskydiving) that has a million clips of fun stuff all combined into one.

Hey Nigel, a little clarification of the wording please? You make it sound rather serious, like the RSL lanyard to the Skyhook broke, or the metal Skyhook hook broke. Or did you just mean that due to the way the system tensioned during the cutaway, the lanyard to the RSL slipped off the hook (where it is restrained by only seal thread if pulled in the 'wrong' direction).

We don't so much consider him our "mayor" as our "mascot". Our big, dumb, fun at parties, x-rated mascot.

Although the TI did a spectacularly poor job, from a broader perspective, one can't just bash the TI but should also question the training or supervision they received. If one wants to get all fancy, one can say that from a human factors or an integrated system safety point of view, one can't just look at the individual who screwed up, but consider, "How did he get to that point?" Is he a yahoo who just won't listen? Is it his first season as TI? Maybe the training was fine,but I don't know. Is the DZ supervising him at all? I think it isn't an uncommon issue for newer TI's to need be told that the emphasis has to be on flying your body. Trying to adjust the student's position is fine if one can, but not to the detriment of flying the tandem pair. If it is such a crime to screw up in that way, why do TI's get told that by buddies or on the internet, while they are working as TI's? The guy in the video actually did bide his time after exit and had a reasonable, stable drogue throw. The rest of the jump would have been fine, if perhaps some annoying chipping from a student in a lousy knees down body position. But he really managed to make an almost trivial issue much worse... He seems to have gotten a little obsessed with the idea of being allowed to force the student into the proper body position, even if that plan of action wasn't working. As for his exit, it kind of looks like he was going for one or more tumbles out the door. Or was he really so unaware of how to stay stable that he dearched and cupped with the student on exit? I didn't check out the rest of the video closely, but some other exits on the video show it is common at the DZ to do stable exits, so it isn't about showing every student a few loops on exit. So while I think he did a crappy job, I'm not sure it required pulling a rating. Maybe, maybe not. One could probably pull a new TI's rating a couple times their first season, if one were really strict on them not ever screwing up. And if a TI messes up, who is there to supervise them? Is there a senior instructor reviewing tandem videos to make sure the DZ's TI staff are performing up to standard? How is a new TI supposed to know? Sometimes you know quite well as a TI when you didn't perform very well, but especially for new TI's, they can be unaware of how a particular performance may be considered below the desired standard.

Thanks for that closer look. It isn't as apparent when a Wings is flat on the floor, and shows that the issue isn't just about, say, 6 flap reserve containers with extra large and stiff riser tuck tabs. Certainly in this whole issue, the devil is in the details. In the old days, while rigs had plenty of issues of their own, the reserve container was more independent of the harness and main risers over the shoulders....

I don't see any easy answer here. In the classic Wings 'pulling the bridle over the shoulder' video from Quebec, the jumper was at least slightly over on his back. In this video, it seemed like the jumper was pretty much upright. With the main already gone, the Wings doesn't seem to generally be a very restrictive rig for pulling the freebag out towards the jumpers head. Yet that's the direction that seems to have caused problems. "Try not to be too upright after a cutaway" is a silly conclusion but one those circumstances suggest. Mind you, if one does chop from a more upright position, and have an RSL pulling, one won't have time to change body position, and a towed reserve pilot chute will have one upright anyway.

Wow. There have been other instances where planes land at the wrong airport, including ones far too small. (One list of wrong airport landings by airliners seems to be at http://www.thirdamendment.com/wrongway.html) But the Dreamlifter is a pretty special, very large plane, so it isn't like the pilots are going to be run of the mill pilots with little experience in bigger aircraft.

I have made a Safety & Training thread in case anyone wants to discuss skydiving pranks in general. Nothing wrong with this thread though, for discussing the issue between the OP and his not-so-friendly-anymore buddy. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view&post=4565290 @lucky: Nice typo: Hey girls, want a pink check?

An interesting issue came up in a bonfire post, where a guy dumped his buddy out as a prank at 10,000'. The buddy is mad and won't talk to the dump-er any more. Certain safety issues were taken care of: the prank was arranged with the pilot and other jumpers so that jumpers wouldn't think there was an emergency, and that there would be no ATC issues or other planes dropping soon after. That's important these days. (The thread is http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_view&post=4565248) The guy got a lot of negative reaction for his prank. But when I consider skydiving history, I would have thought it would be regarded as a real hoot, a good prank on a buddy, even if not something I'm really inclined to do (Given that pilots & jumpers were informed.) One negative reaction was that it wasn't as much about safety, but a matter of trust, that the prankster could never be trusted again. One does want to trust buddies to do any prank safely, and pranking too often can wear thin and waste lot of jump money. Better than just to do silly stuff that everyone on the jump is in on. What is acceptable nowadays for pranking people? Are people less tolerant of screwing around, or is it just that some specific dangers are increased in modern jumping and need to be taken into consideration? Is the cost of each jump considered so high that screwing up a jump deliberately is an offense? Certainly one doesn't go screw up a 20 way just on a whim, but if some friends get together to prank a common friend, that should be more acceptable. Is it the case that nowadays "any deviation from standard procedures is an increase in risk to jumpers and a liability to the dropzone and therefore not to be tolerated in the modern skydiving world?" Or do people just need to suck it up and not be such wusses? I'm not big on freefall pranks but have done a couple minor ones. I guess I'd call it a 'stunt' to do something where everyone involved knows the plan (e.g., Mr Bill, hanging upside down under canopy, etc), and a 'prank' if a person isn't informed of what will happen. Let's look at a few pranks: -- Taking the keys to the Cessna as you leave, or shutting of the fuel Ok, leave that one for History and Trivia. I doubt people will risk the plane like that nowadays. -- Giving someone a really bad spot and see if they notice and jump anyway Those stories have been around often enough. Acceptable today? Probably, but as with many things, there are caveats so that one wouldn't do it indiscriminately. Clearly it works better for DZ's with good 'outs', and one wouldn't spot someone a mile into subdivisions, swamp, or freezing cold lake. And one wouldn't do it if neighbour relations are really touchy. Easier to do with a C-182, but it has been done for the first group out of an Otter. -- Letting someone jump on "go!" with others not leaving That's an old one. Do the count, buddy leaves on "go!", but everyone else stays on the plane. Maybe a little cruel if someone is planning a cool jump and then gets left with a solo freefall. Heard of it done very occasionally. At least compared to dumping at 10 grand, the spot should be good and thus is a safer prank, with less need for pilot coordination. Pranks that don't waste the whole jump for someone are nicer. -- Dumping someone out in freefall That seems to have been a common enough trick. Seen it done in the last few years. I'm used to the idea of it being done shortly before breakoff, so the sucker should get back to the DZ, rather than being done at 10,000+ ft. Is the latter OK too? At one time in the old days, everyone had similar, reliable F-111 parachutes. These days one might consider not dumping out jumpers with really small parachutes, even if one made sure they were nicely belly to earth when dumped. You don't want a jumper angry because he spun up, chopped, and lost his stuff, blaming it not on his own packing but on being shoulder low when he got dumped by someone else. [Edit to add:] Another topic brought up is that poor body position can lead to hard openings and injury. So then is it still acceptable to dump someone out, but only if reasonable precautions are taken to ensure that they are belly to earth? But sometimes things go wrong despite precautions -- and now perhaps the liability for injury goes to the dumper, rather than the jumper who normally accepts the risk. Dumping out also brings up the issue: Is off-landing considered to be "dangerous" these days, or "something every jumper should be able to hack"? One hears of the fatalities, people talk about how to off-land in canopy courses, etc. On the other hand, isn't the average jumper expected to be be able to manage landing in slightly worse terrain? Otherwise they made a mistake in choosing the parachute they did, and have accepted extra risks. Off-landings are an occasional feature of skydiving and not an emergency? -- Tackling someone in freefall That's an old one. Been on jumps like that, where the guy doing his 500th or whatever gets tackled by whomever can catch him, late in the belly dive. Used to be done long ago even when pin protection was worse, I think. Best not to do it too low. Sucking a good buddy a little low may be a hoot if both are into that sort of thing, but you don't want too much a mess of people at different levels going below normal breakoff. So one does have to consider how many people there are, and the altitude involved. Some breakoff altitudes are conservative, some less so. Instead of just plain tackling someone, there are variations in how to flip someone: Such as doing a 2 way star with the victim, swinging ones legs down and back up around the torso of the victim, letting go with hands, arching hard, hopefully flipping everyone 180 degrees, and end up riding rodeo on the victim who is back to earth. I've done it myself and seen it done, with novice jumpers. Not with someone who doesn't have freefall stability and breakoff procedures down pat, but still done with a relative novice and not just an experienced jumper. Comments are welcome on what sort of pranks are considered acceptable or not these days, especially because opinions and practices at different DZ's may vary. In any case, there are some interesting issues involved, regarding safety and norms in the skydiving community.

Wow, I didn't expect this much negative reaction. Interesting! Dumping a buddy out is a really old school trick, and I'm sure happened a bunch 20+ years ago. Boohoo, someone who is open high might get cold and land off and get a little mud on them. (The issue of not having another plane dump on them was already taken care of in the OP's case.) But admittedly these days if someone is dumped out, what I've seen (very occasionally in the last 5 years) it would tend to be at the end of an RW jump. Close to breakoff, as long as nobody is overhead, the jumper gets a surprise by being dumped out. But these days that's maybe better for intermediate level jumpers but not those with small crossbraced canopies. Don't want someone complaining that they lost their gear because the canopy spun up when then deployed shoulders not level. It has also been acceptable to "waste a jumper's whole jump", as long as everyone is buddies or among a group where goofing around is appreciated. You don't normally screw up a jump for someone, but a trick I recall (but haven't seen done personally) is to have an exit where the jumper being tricked leaves on "go!" but everyone else stays with the plane and launches an appropriate time later. Another trick was to give someone a really bad spot and see if the sucker goes for it. Easier in a C-182 of course than with a full Otter load. Maybe it hearkens back to days where DZs tended to be surrounded by fields. Landing off wasn't seen as some terrible danger that could kill. One could argue that while one wouldn't spot a buddy a mile into subdivisions or swamp or freezing water, at many DZ's a bad spot isn't the end of the world and won't destroy neighbour relations. Plus jumpers should be responsible for being able to land their own damn parachute safely enough, away from manicured DZ grass and windsocks. The particular issue with one buddy may fit in Bonfire, but the topic of "what kind of screwing around on a jump is acceptable these days" could well go into one of the regular forums. It's an interesting issue, trying to find a balance between: a) "Any deviation from standard parachuting practices is an unacceptable increase in risk and cannot be tolerated in today's skydiving world" vs. b) "Suck it up cupcake, you've got to be ready for a little bit of shit going wrong, have a sense of humor, and be able to land your parachute in any open space." I might just try a Safety & Training thread later some time...

*** This is about the existing Cypres bulletin from 31 January 2013, where certain newer C2's might very occasionally freeze, not some new bulletin *** Looks like Airtec/SSK have been getting through the backlog for service, and now are allowing some more C2's to be sent in even before their regular maintenance time. They haven't opened it up for the full date range of affected units, but just ones manufactured July 11 to Dec 12. They do not cover shipping costs etc as it isn't a full recall. The document is labelled as an addendum to the original bulletin, in a separate file. It is dated "November 2013": http://www.cypres-usa.com/SB-Follow-up_11_2013_eng.pdf

Unfortunately there is nothing yet shown on the North American dealers' site, SSK. Wonder who is left to take care of things there. Can't find anything on the Airtec site either. Maybe they didn't all have a co-ordinated rollout of the new feature, and Basik just have the fastest responding webmaster. I'm sure we'll hear more later. The LCD indication for the mode is pretty small, one little bar of a digit, but Airtec are limited in not having a dot matrix display.

Yeah, do the math yourself or look at freefall tables. Prove to yourself just how long you have from 5000'. Try to do the exit and pull in a nice slow deliberate manner, one step at a time, confirming that you are in a nice stable body position, belly to the wind, before doing the pull sequence. Trying to rush things will just make your performance worse.

Roger that. Too bad the OP deleted his post, long as it was. Some of the basics: He's an AFF student, level 1, after a couple tandems elsewhere. (I won't mention the state; maybe the OP was advised by someone that it might seem that he's ratting out the DZ. Still, the DZ was never named.) The OP and one instructor don't see eye to eye when it comes to discussing what the appropriate main canopy size is. The instructor rushes his gear up at a 20 minute call. The student hasn't been given a circuit and landing briefing yet either, but asks and is given one by the other instructor. In the plane at 11k he wants to ask a question but the first instructor basically tells him there's no time for that now. The student is repeatedly told to never flare before being told to do so. The flare command comes apparently late, a few feet off the ground, the student tries to flare, but still hits hard and may have knee injuries. This isn't helped by him being 266 lb + gear on a Nav 280, so he has more speed and wing load than most students. The questions: To what degree does a student speak up when uncertain about what he's being told? What about when to flare?

All fine and good, but plenty of people would never skydive if that were entirely true. Who does feel 100% confident? How to know when to trust your instructors that you have sufficient training and instruction for the task? What do you do when an instructor doesn't answer a question 3 minutes before exit? Get up and shout, "Stop this airplane!"? Time may have been tight at that stage of the climb but the instructors could have listened. It isn't uncommon for students to get rushed during instruction, and the flare command is not always given very consistently. Unfortunate truths abut skydiving instruction. Sometimes learning to skydive is a bit of an unintentional hazing process. The students who ask a million questions can be a bit of a pain in the ass but students do need to speak up and ask a few when they are really uncertain of something. The OP is being pretty respectful when asking questions. @ OP: At least next time you'd have some good ammunition (your injury) to convince instructors to slow down, assuming that you are actually good to jump again soon. The Nav 280 is rated for higher loads, 336 lb max, but for students 270 lbs is the recommended max. Still, there are plenty of DZ's that don't have extra large or extra small equipment, so some compromise is needed. It is a very tough call whether to disregard an instructor when it comes to the flare. By far most of the time it will be the student who perceives things wrongly, but not always. What could you have done in your case? Maybe start the partial flare, whatever Level 1 you learned about, and risk being chewed out for flaring early. Or it might have prompted the instructor to issue the full flare command or buy a little more time for that to happen. Hard to tell. Plenty of DZ's use a single stage flare command; others use a 2 or even 3 stage system. A multi stage flare (arranged with the DZ) might help for you as you are loading the canopy more than the typical student and will be coming in a lot faster and with more energy available for a multi stage flare.

Just some thoughts: Maybe if you are the one introducing new equipment, you need to do more to educate people dealing with the equipment. That's the cost of introducing something new, as I'm sure you know from marketing the Skyhook. Riggers have a reasonable handle on when to replace metal ripcords, but don't have much to go on for synthetic fibre ripcords (unless they read this thread). Fuzzy = bad? But to what degree? If a 7 by 7 strand metal ripcord cable has a couple broken strands at the pin, I bet almost any rigger will replace it. Maybe it isn't actually much weaker than originally, but that wear is considered in the industry to indicate a ripcord worn beyond acceptable values. So a rigger seeing a fuzzy Spectra ripcord may understandably not be too trusting of it. (We accept some fuzziness and broken fibres on harnesses, a fair bit on main canopy brake lines, and just a tiny bit of fuzz on reserve Cypres loops. Each situation is a little different.) Unless I missed it, perhaps UPT manuals need to show what is acceptable fuzziness or not for Spectra ripcords.

Is there a 'messing with tandem students' thread? Must be somewhere... (I've bought and emptied one of those little plastic hip flasks of vodka. Could be handy for a drink of water while in the airplane...)

Well done! Some jumpers may forget to distinguish between a brake that is broken or locked at full flight, versus a brake line that is in the set position -- which can slow the canopy down a whole lot. It is much more serious to try to land with risers from what is a partially braked approach.

I can't disagree since I haven't seen enough examples either way. Still, just as a data point, I'd like to add that the one time I tried it, it was no problem. Still, "YMMV", and I'm used to using risers and toggles on landings, so I won't recommend this "asymmetric" way of landing to others. I was on an FX 88 at 2.0- 2.1 loading and essentially had one toggle locked up at full flight. I had never practiced landing with one toggle and one riser, but it seemed natural enough to use one of each -- adjusting either input as needed to keep the canopy level, even if wobbling slightly. Slid in the landing nicely, given that the landing area was smooth. I would guess that I was leading with the riser, focusing on the small amount of pull that takes, while using the opposite toggle as necessary to prevent any turn. (As another data point for at least partial asymmetrical use of landing inputs, another time the toggle wasn't fully locked up, but moved somewhat as it was wrapped around the guide ring and the brake line. Had a slide in landing that time, although tipping over onto the side of the good brake that I used. On the other bad side, I pulled the brake which partially came down, and partially pulled the riser down. Probably not the best strategy as I wouldn't know to what degree either input would occur.)