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I posted this on dropzone.com, but I'd like to know what base jumpers think as well:

Would a used Fury 220 be a poor canopy choice for a newbie? I am a broke college student planning on earning my A License this year. This canopy is selling for $200 in the classifieds and I believe it is the 7 cell version of the 9 cell Manta 288 that is in my student rig. Do you think this canopy would a safe choice for a jumper on a budget looking to purchase his first parachute?

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/classifieds/detail_page.cgi?ID=81055;d=1

is your life worth $200.00

It depends on how many jumps it has done. If its in reasonable condition and a rigger passes it then there is no reason you cant jump it buddy. Sure its not going to have the most powerful flare and you wont be doing any surfing with it. If its all you can afford and will get you in the air i say that its better than renting gear which is like flushing your money down the toilet.

I suggest you take up knitting....

Its far less expensive, it has the risk factor with the needles, and by the end of it you may have made your self a rather fetching wool jumper.

WRT the canopy if your DZ allows you to jump with it then its a bargin, but get yourself a new reserve.

Fury 220 is never a great choice. But it is acceptable if you weigh about 170lbs or less WITH GEAR.

Still "broke ass college students" usually make 10 jumps a year because.... THEY ARE BROKE !

I suggest you learn to be the DZ packing bitch. You will make good money, and once you get to know most of the regulars well it's quite likely someone will hook you with a nicer and more acceptable canopy. It's has happened before.

learn to be the DZ packing bitch

I agree with Paul, you will get to
learn more about gear & packing.

I was given a BASE rig to look over that a newbie skydiver bought for around £300 with a fury in it ($500), I took the fury out and kept it as a roof cover as it was shot to hell...... Just be careful buying cheap gear...

Otherwise, I loved jumping furys out of a plane and with CReW - good canopies.

What rig would you put it in? It's not worth it if you can't fly like you want to. A good secure container and good reserve is important. It does not need to be new.

If you're about 150 pounds with no gear, the fury would be fine. It needs to be in very good condition and honestly, that's not likely. The ad is so vague I wouldn't bother contacting him.

Skip this canopy unless it's got less than 200 jumps on it and has been in a closet for 18 years. It must fit into a suitably sized and secure rig as well.

Feel free to ask more questions about gear here. There are some very experienced riggers, freeflyers, and knowledgeable and fair used gear dealers that post on this site.

Meh. I think of it like buying a used car. You obviously cant afford one new right off the lot, but at the same time you don't want to buy yourself something that is going to cause you a lot of problems and require investing money into repairs (when its just going to break again anyways).

Its your life.

 
Nothing wrong with a fury. We jumped them for years. They work great but they are what they are. Don't ask them to do some thing they weren't designed for. Don't over load it. You can get about 600 jumps out of it. If your light you can get 800. Jump it and fly it like it's ment to be flown and you'll never have any problems from it. $200 is a little high. You can generaly pick them up for half that. Ask around. you can probably pick up an old vector 2 or jav out of some ones closset. Some one else will have a super raven 2 setting around. You can get it cheep. Every one wants small optimmas now. Invest in sewing a boc on the old rig and upgrade or repare the main closing flap and you've got a rig you can jump the shit out of for about a fifth the cost of a new cool rig.

Lee

Thx for all the replies!

The more appropriate question is "Will spending more money make a big enough increase in my chances of keeping my bones and soft tissues intact that I care ?" (experience says complications like nerve pain suck, ok? You're not as unbreakable as you think you are.).

In some cases the answer is not really. 150 pounds of you should be fine unless it's really gone. 190-195 pounds and it should be fresh. More is more likely to break you (that hurts). Where the parachute has a not so fresh feeling, it's a wakeup call not a Massengill moment so trash that tarp. Fresh is a few hundred jumps. Some people jumped them until it hurt and passed them on to people who sprained ankles or worse.

Specifics are really important there, people don't even know the condition of what they're selling (I bought a consignment from one of the big gear sellers; allegedly a 6 year old Monarch with 300 jumps but it was out of trim and packed like 600+. In hind sight that sucked, and not because of the pink cells which made it cheaper), and others are creative. You need it calibrated by a rigger nearby you trust.

Next is "Can I have more money for toys." Spending less on other things is one option. Room mates and Ramen are the big ones but you can go farther. I skipped rent for a month living in a machine room (better heating and shower facilities than my tent) to pay for my season ski pass. Normally I just got a room in a house. Some room mates cut costs even farther, with a prize fighter and tire/wheel sales dude sharing a single room furnished with sleeping bags to cut costs. Those guys were OK but I liked more privacy - I chose technical homelessness first. Accepting random house mates made getting cheap rooms easier. The Hooters waitress with the cow skull bleaching in a trash can (while cow boys think those things are junk and sell them cheap, artsy guys pay hundreds of dollars once they're clean and you can paint them southwestern style) by the hot tub was OK. The alcoholic who drunk our Ever Clear and mixed it with chocolate milk (It's not alcohol, it's chocohol) and rifled through things was not. The preacher's daughter Hooters waitress with boyfriend in prison (don't worry - mom and dad got custody of the sprog after she gave birth at 16) who lacked the work ethic to change the bleach and let her skull rot (she thought that would be better than the waitress gig) was iffy. Come to think of it some of the guys screwing her ripped us off so she was outright bad. Eventually making more money is better apart from the memories which grow more entertaining with age. There's packing parachutes at $5+ per. At 10 an hour with some practice (you might need to hang out at a busier drop zone over summer break, oh well). You could also take up prostitution or sewer diving although those don't seem as pleasant.

After that the question is "Would spending the money I got be worth the fun increase?" I don't know. I had plenty of fun under the Turbo Z 205 I started with, and every one else seemed to be doing OK under big F111 canopies.

When I was a poor student, my first rig had a Pegasus 220, which is an older version of the Fury. You should teach you to PLF well, which is a great lesson to learn, and when you get used to it, you should be able to dial in the landings well enough. Just remember, not that many years ago, the Fury was a good canopy. We would take the student out to watch the guys on Fury doing "hot" double front riser landings coz they were wicked fast!!!
Ah yes, good times!!

Like Drew said...

If you want to do something, make the sacrifice. My first base rig was paid in cash I made selling plasma. I donated 178 liters total. That was 2 years of getting stuck with a 14gauge needle twice weekly for an hour.

I'm knocking on wood, but I've never lost a drop of blood under that canopy and harness - did it all up front I guess.

If I intend on using my first skydiving rig to practice my canopy skills for B.A.S.E. jumping, does it matter whether I buy a ZP or F-111 canopy?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that F111 flies different, packs different,
opens different, and takes up a lot less space.

No, in that learning how to do drills and accuracy
landings on a big ass parachute will translate.

However, big F111 is cheaper to buy, easier to
pack, and works better for this purpose so....

Design and size make huge differences. You really need a big F111 seven cell.

Many (if not most) F111 seven cell designs with fat airfoils have a significant (from over 2:1 to below 1:1), progressive decrease in glide ratio as brakes are applied which provides the basis for classic accuracy. Such approaches get you into tight unfamiliar landing areas most consistently and therefore need to be in your BASE toolkit when you don't want to limit yourself to objects with relatively large and uninteresting landing areas. It's not hard - EIFF claims 100 jumps are enough to achieve USPA pro-rating accuracy levels.

Every modern skydiving canopy I've jumped had a glide ratio which increases with some brake application and then remains fairly constant until just short of its stall point. Without wind you have no ability to change your glide ratio and accuracy becomes a function of accurate guesses on where you are (which works best when you've made a lot of jumps in an area and know what it looks like to be in the right place), the length of approach legs, and shape of the corners connecting them. Some people argue that this is enough for BASE jumping, although having become a tree-hugger over shooting and watched professional skydivers with over 10,000 jumps do the same I strongly disagree.

BASE and classic accuracy canopies also have a stable sink regime where forward speed can decrease to zero. This can be used to stop you short of obstacles, although since the canopy is no longer producing lift you only have its drag slowing you down. That means you need a big parachute.

At pleasant BASE or classic accuracy wing loadings around .7 pounds per square foot (40% bigger than the accepted size for skydivers' first canopies) you can fly in 3/4 brakes until you flare and still have a comfortable stand-up landing. Short sinks over hard ground still produce comfortable landings. That's not going to be the case at contemporary skydiving wing loadings.

Flying modern ZP skydiving canopies will teach you to react to winds (which change with altitude, especially once you get into interesting geography like canyons joined together) and to make flat turns, but otherwise isn't too applicable to progressing as a BASE jumper.

I agree with the specifics of what you say, however, when i was a student skydiver, we spent a ton of time going over braked approaches, flat turns, landing on risers, etc - We were forced to learn all the different things a canopy can do, many of which are applicable in base. Those basic motor skills, along with the awareness of canopy control gained, willl not hurt to have when you start base.

edited to add: go have fun skydiving for a while, don't make skydiving like homework for base class. some people take that goddamned sport too seriously as it is