Anachronist

Might be moving to NC soon. Any input on fun jumper dropzones on the eastern side of the state? Preferably between Wilmington and Nags Head and close to the coast.

Hahaha, it was a joke. I don't buy new gear. But I lean to black for resale. It is an impressive coloring program.

Impressive, now I can see exactly what all black is going to look like

I would be interested in seeing a video, just to see how ya do it and maybe I can pick up some things to make my pack jobs faster.

Neat, yeah I don't think I could have accurately counted to 10 my first time out the door. Ever have FXCs fire?

So far 1 cutaway in 4200 wingsuit jumps, watch me pack in 3 minutes So why don't you pack your BASE rig that way?

Except you, right? Less retarded than most After reviewing a ton of openings, a lot of the line twists happen before the canopy comes out of the bag. So extraction from the container is also important, and what determines how the bag comes out of the container, how it fits in the container (as well as body position of course). It is silly (monumentally fucking retarded) to think that as soon as the bag opens that all pack jobs are exactly the same. Otherwise why do we bother flaking or cocooning it? Just stretch the lines, quarter the slider, and shove it in like a stuff sack. Can't wait to hear how that goes.

I'm not affiliated with Fluid in any way so don't take this as coming from them. I do chat with some of them from time to time though. I get the impression that some folks didn't like the short-ish recovery arc of the Helix, though it is intended to be that way, so the AirWolf is designed to appeal to that audience. It has been really interesting watching them grow. They really like to play with designs and try new things. Trying to appeal to jumpers across the whole gamut of flying styles and coming from other high performance wings seems to be quite a challenge.

Ohh FXC main and AAD reserve, I'm intrigued. Could you elaborate? Altitude settings etc?

You are over simplifying it, how you pack also affects how the bag fits in the container, and subsequently how it comes out. Everyone seems to think the snivel is the only thing that matters, but that is because everyone is monumentally fucking retarded.

I'm the same as some other posters, I'm really afraid of heights, ladders, hotel balconies, etc etc. But never and any issues with airplanes or helicopters (even before I started jumping). The only common denominator I've found that seems to work on what scares me is whether or not I'm touching something that is touching the ground. Paragliding gives me a little tummy tingle but in a good way. Skydiving nothing at all acrophobia related, although I do get a little scared on every jump (and am at 500+ and counting) but more because "this shit is dangerous" rather than "fear of heights." Planes and helis are both non-fear inducing, but if I'm standing on something or attached to something, whew, scary. My gf loves to give me shit about how scared I get on roller coasters. The "urge to jump" at cliff edges and bridges is well documented but I have no idea if anyone knows why.

Agreed, a good strong throw is a solid 80% of the whole deal. Would really like to see some stuff with d-bags though, might help clarify the whole stow/stowless, single/double stow, and is more "snatch" really better? questions for skydiving.

Email sent thanks.

If someone can give me some hard info and the name of a company, I'm interested. I talked to 5 different insurance brokers that told me that exclusions no longer exist because they always got litigated. I'd be happy to exclude skydiving but apparently it isn't an option.

As long as we're sharing videos of assholes making assholes of themselves, I submit my personal favorite. The icing on the cake was the pilot explaining that "I went to my back on purpose to get more stable." Video starts right after exit, pull was at 10 or 11k. Suit was an R Pro Link

DISCLAIMERS: because drama. 1 - This is just neat to look at and I'm glad someone is spending some money to actually quantify this stuff. 2 - No the experimental technique is not perfect, but is well beyond anything anyone else is doing. 3 - Yes SQ did this (so it is very BASE/Snatch focused), but they seemed fair in saying that no strong conclusions could be made about some things and packing being most important about others and more testing needed for some topics. 4 - No I don't have a Snatch (or SkySnatch), and no I don't want one. Ok so here ya go... Because someone from or close to SQ will probably see this at some point... 1- It would be nice to see some figures and p values (I don't really care what you think alpha should be, just give us the raw output). 2- Maybe go a step farther for us skydivers and put a dummy d-bag in a rig to see what happens out to line stretch. 3- Turbulence is good, no one is pitching into laminar flow. 4- Thanks for giving me some interesting and entertaining reading and spending some money to actually quantify some of this stuff empirically.

Yeah the basics of packing are all the same, but you can tweak your openings some. It varies on the wing how those tweaks respond as well. Now talking about finesse rather than necessary or important; I've found rolling the outer cells inward and leaving the center cell open on my Prime help dial in inflation the way I like and making two reduction folds also improves consistency. I will admit that if you had me jump back to back pack jobs and tell you which one is which (assuming nothing was amiss) I probably couldn't, so it may just be mental masturbation, but I do believe it increases the quality of my deployments somewhat. On the same note, it is really easy to screw a perfect pack job with bad body position.

At the risk of being redundant here is the link to their description of flight characteristics. From what I understand it is suppose to be more or less a competitor with the Katana. In chatting with them a bit it seems they tend to put a lot of emphasis on harness sensitivity.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. And is the whole "means to an end" thing. The whole balance of "do what we know works, because this is a national security issue after all" vs. "try and innovate but risk failure (however that may be defined)" is a tricky bugger, I do not envy the people who come up with the SOPs. A much more complicated and expensive example would be the V22, but "innovation" came at a very steep price in lives and material/$.

Can you pm me the details of your life insurance? I've tried but it is insanely expensive.

No, more like guys who have been in 30+ years and had little to no continuing education still calling the shots like it is 1970.

Yeah, apparently the reason for using civi drop zones is that jumping out of military aircraft is a bureaucratic nightmare, and multiple jumps in a day? lol, good luck. That's just what I've been told.

Spend 15 min in a tunnel and tell them you are going to do AFF, that will pretty much solve your repeating jumps problem, and help you learn more quickly. Also, make sure you have some extra cash budgeted.

I've seen the military fall well behind the training curve in scuba too. (Personal experience) The attitude is completely different, our "sport(s)" is just a means to an end for them. They are just looking for "good enough to get to where they need to go so they can do their real job." They also pile on as much as conceivably possible to check off a proficiency slot as quickly as possible without any emphasis on "mastery." And to some degree it makes sense, most will only serve a handful of years, and years is what it takes to achieve mastery. I would imagine they have a piss poor safety record for hours flown on aircraft too if you were to compare it to civilian/commercial operations. But again, it makes sense to some degree. Not only are they pressured to do more in less time, they are doing more dangerous and complicated activities.

I'm interested to know what the activation altitude was as recorded by the AAD. It has been acknowledged that a back flying reserve deployment at or below 800ft may be insufficient to get a fully inflated reserve before impact. The 3sec/300ft rule is only tested in stable belly to earth positions and every reserve deployment I've seen barely makes it or doesn't make it. (Including one of my own from a fully inflated main with a skyhook (basically a "perfect" reserve deployment situation), video has it right at 3 seconds, maybe a tad more).