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This is what you said "Not the same. Skydiving MAY result in serious injury or death. Swooping is a guarantee.. " Which most people would interpret as: If I skydive I might die. If I swoop, I am guaranteed to die. We have far more swoopers than deadly accidents, that by itself should prove that you are wrong. Besides, statistically, swooping related accidents are not really dominant in the incident reports, still some people are trying to paint the devil on the wall, referring to numbers that dont support their cause. I know many DZ's that have not had any swooping related deaths, but deaths caused by other reasons. Your argument sais that the data is not true. Don't know how you can argue against reality. It is true that incidents under canopy are dominant, but what the heck, isn't that expected giving our focus on AAD's, freefall education, limitations on who can jump with who etc. After all, we have been able to lower the incident rate quite a lot the last 20 years, but there is a limit to how safe you can make something that is inherently unsafe and attracts people that are willing(or attracted to) to take a certain risk. When people died from no-pulls, did we ban skydiving or did we address the problem? Today, the incident rate is way lower than it was years ago and isn't it time that we accept the fact that skydiving is subject to some risk. Instead of banning every risky activity, we could focus on educating people to make sure that no one dies unknowing of the risk that they take.

+1

Is it because children don't know better that they are able to make a swing rock back and forth? Or could it perhaps be the difference between statics and dynamics in the physics world?

IIRC. the Cypres display will go blank 60 seconds after the activation, so chances are high that after an activation, you will not see the '0' on the display any longer.

Don't you think this defeats the entire purpose of having your AAD prolong its on time by 14 hours every time it senses a pressure change? All I tried to say was that having the AAD try to be smart is not useful as _everyone_ has to apply the method you just described just to be on the safe side. Then it is better to keep the AAD dumb to avoid potential misunderstandings. Keep in mind that the AAD is handled by humans and programmed by humans and neither are flawless. Better keep things as simple as possible to keep Murphy away.

A problem with this scheme is the following: You jump late in the evening, so the unit detects a pressure change. (And extends it shutoff time 14 hours) In the morning, you take your rigg and look at the display which sais that the unit is on. While walking to the plane, you pass the 14 hour limit and the device now shuts off without you knowing it. regards, Stefan

This isn't true. Once your forward speed matches the tail wind speed, you will either have to touch down, or you will start flying backwards. You are assuming that your canopy will maintain the same speed as the headwind during the last seconds of the swoop which isn't correct. You misunderstood him, he was talking about a headwindscenario. You are saying that once your forwardspeed (=groundspeed) matches the tailwindspeed, you will have ... to touch down ... this is correct as once your forwardgroundspeed matches the speed of the tailwind, your airspeed would be zero and your wing would have already stopped flying... but he was talking about a headwindscenario. With the groundspeed being zero, the airspeed would still be the speed of the wind (the air, therefore called airspeed :-) ) and as long as the windspeed is faster then your wings stallspeed, you´ll keep flying. The groundspeed being zero it will look like hovering, but from an "air-point-of-view" it´s not what is is.... Please read again. What I said was that once your canopy's forward speed (ground speed is irrelevant as the canopy is just a wing flying through a block of air (which happens to be moving either in the direction of the course (tailwind) or towards the gates (headwind). It is true that you can keep your canopy (wing) flying for the same duration of time regardless of the direction of the wind, however, with a headwind, the last portion of the flight will actually be going backwards. (As the block of air is moving faster towards the gates than your wing is penetrating through it) What you are saying regarding hovering will only be true for the short duration where the airspeed of your wing will be equal to the ground speed of the air. Unless your stall speed of your canopy is higher than 6.7 m/s, you must agree that you lost some of the wings airtime from the portion where the wing was still flying, but not able to penetrate the wind? /Stefan ps. No, I dont expect to get laid from this, but I do hope for Ian to get some rectification(?)

This isn't true. Once your forward speed matches the tail wind speed, you will either have to touch down, or you will start flying backwards. You are assuming that your canopy will maintain the same speed as the headwind during the last seconds of the swoop which isn't correct.

As the time you spend in the air is only equal to the time from entering the gates until you start flying backwards(!), the time in the air will be shorter for a headwind run compared to a tailwind run. The extra airtime will both let the tailwind push you further and your canopy fly further. That's why you will see a bigger difference than the just calculated one. /Stefan

Maybe the problem here is that English is not my first language. However, you stated initially "Dont let peope who dont swoop criticize you". I was not interpreting that as criticizing _for_ swooping, I was thinking of criticizing your landings. Bottom line: regardless if someone is a swooper or not, they may be able to give you an outside view that will help you become a better swooper or simply just survive. Dont dismiss people just because they chose not to swoop.

I am not sure what to say about this one. If people who dont, swoop get scared of your landings and tell you about it, you are probably in the danger zone! Even non swoopers pick up the behavior of good and bad swoopers, and when they feel like you look like the crazy dude that went in last week, they are probably right! Bottom line, if someone tells you that what you are doing looks dangerous. take a breath, put your ego away and try to figure out what you are doing that looks dangerous. 9 times out of 10, they have a point and you could walk away with more experience without having to learn it the hard way. regards, Stefan

I agree 100% with you. It seems that the biggest learning piece has been missed out by a bunch of people here: A swoop pond is not a safe place to start to swoop, a swoop pond is a playground for experienced canopy pilots! (And even we hurt ourselves there!) Hitting the water surface is undoubtedly more forgiving than hitting the grass, but becoming target fixated on a pond makes you much more prone to general screw-ups. And then it does not help that there was a pond just 5m away from where you went in. I have seen people hurt them selves pretty badly by bouncing in the water and then bounce out of the pond only to hit the rock hard edges of the pond. Lesson #1 when learning to swoop is "Find a large practice area where you can dial in your altitude and that gives you with plenty of bail outs." Throwing a pond in there is what you do at lesson #4 or #5.

I cannot help to disagree with you here. An incident by definition is a happening where something did not go according to plan. Sometimes incidents have material damage, sometimes personal and sometimes both. And in some cases, there is no damage at all. If we stop taking every incident seriously, we will take away our chance of learning _before_ there is personal injury. In this case, I would agree with you that this happens over and over again, but I don't mind people posting stories like this every once in a while. It is true that there have been plenty of posts like this in the past, but in reality, how many newcomers do you think scan our forum multiple years backwards to read stories like these and learn from them? I am not saying that I want the forum to be filled with them, but when they do appear, I see nothing wrong making them a useful learning thread.

Ask your rigger to take a similar friction lock found on legstraps and 4 feet of webbing. Then just sew a standard chest strap (with folded stop at the end etc.) but instead of connecting the other end to a rig, you connect it to the friction lock. Takes a about 30 minutes to do and $5 for the parts. I have mine in my car, otherwise I would have posted a few pics on it. Make sure that when you sew the webbing onto the friction lock to use the correct side of the friction lock as they are usually meant to be installed in a specific direction. regards, Stefan

Thanks a lot for your comments. Yes, we basically need a lift, but having some other skydiver around is always nice. We might need someone who wants to shoot some video though. Blue skies! /Stefan

Hi! I am looking for a DZ near SF that is open 7 days a week and that flies a turbine aircraft of some sort. I am going the be in the area the next 2 weeks doing AFF instructors training with my girlfriend and we need to find a suitable dropzone. Any help is appreciated! Blue skies! /Stefan

Also, let yourself sink a little more than you usually do and bend your knees. And just when the lift of the canopy is almost gone, give it an extra flare at the end to lift your body up so that you can stand on straight legs. This will pitch the canopy as much upwards as possible and will direct that last forward motion slighly upwards instead of just forwards. Correctly executed it will look like you are pushing yourself from the ground with your legs while it is actually your canopy that is lifting you. rgds, Stefan

Just keep in mind that your canopy isn't (hopefully) flying at 5 feet altitude... How does your formula look like? It looks like it is very non-linear near ground where you normally don't fly your canopy. rgds, Stefan

If you move in the harness you will momentarily change the cog of your body. Normally cog will be more or less straight below the 3-rings. (slighlty behind due to the drag your body introduces) If you then move backwards or forwards in the harness you will force the wing to pitch up or down without distoring the airfoil. I have absolutely no idea how much this effect is, I am just explaining it from a physics point of view

How much do you adjust your point of initiation in high winds? If you initiate at the top of the gates (where I usually initiate) and the winds are strong, this will push you away from the gates much more than during a no wind day. And since my visual of the gates is changing, this will make me wanting to turn back into the gates much quicker than I normally do. This quickens the turn and changes the altitude loss. Have someone video you during a no wind day and a windy day and compare the video. If there is the slightest difference in time between initiation and when you are finished with the turn this means that the loss of altitude will be different. This may explain it abit clearer to you since then you will really have something to reference between. rgds, Stefan

Interesting dicussion you are having, I think I can recall most of the points made here from quite a few times before

So would you explain how a 3-axis accelerometer would be able to sense rotation? During acceleration and rotation all you will read is 3 m/s^2 parameters varying. If the body is completely in vacum, the sum of the 3 vectors is be equal to g. But that is not even close to the conditions near terminal. rgds, Stefan

A tumbling (or rotating) body will show very funky readings from the accelerometer. So in order for this to work, the device needs to be able to tell its orientation accurately. However this wont be doable using 2 3-axis devices since the spacing will be too small to notice any difference between the readings. A gravity sensor wont work either since it will be useless during the event of a sudden free fall (cutaway for example). The only thing left I can think of is a gyroscope. I guess this problem isn't as simple as it may seem from the start... rgds, Stefan

Until we see a real graph of the preassure measured I guess it is not a good idea to speculate. However, when I think about it, it would be really interesting if the C-130 is able to preassurize the chamber so that it equals a freefall speed of 35 m/s. Besides, if I were in the aircraft at that time, it'd pie my pants if I read my altimeter and saw that I was in freefall in the plane that close to ground :) Did anyone actually notice anything on the Neptunes? Once when we decended and people started freaking out regarding their cypresses I just glansed at my Neptune to see that we were decending with 35 feet/s. Safely above the activation speed. If it showed 35m/s, I'd be rather worried, not for my cypress but rather for my life in C-130 diving towards the ground :-) rgds, Stefan

I can easily get my Crossfire2 - 109 to achieve higher than 35 m/s decent speed using harness turns and 3-4 rotations. It scared the hell out of me when doing that up high. However, I would never be able to repeat those turns accurately close to ground so I think I am safefor now.