Slider-Up Heading Performance - Redux
I while back I posted some questions regarding slider-up heading performance with my Ace. Just wanted to fill people in on what I've learned since then. After talking to people, trying a whole bunch of different ideas and watching Adam's & Vertigo's packing tapes a few times, I think I have the issues worked out... I've had 3 dead on slider-up openings in a row after narrowing things down.
In a nutshell, the problem appears to be mainly due to how I was closing my container (a Warlock from Vertigo) and partially how I was handling the nose.
With all the weirdness and head-scratching between me and my mentor, I decided to go back to the sources. So I studied Vertigo's and CR's packing tapes... Vertigo's to try and mimic how they were folding the canopy & closing the container, and CR's for how they were handling the nose, primarily.
On the container front, I was routing the pullup cord through the grommets and then just pulling everything together. No big deal on a skydiving rig, BAD juju on a BASE rig. After I became more disiplined about controlling the pack job and container flaps, my heading performance improved dramatically.
I also figured that since the Ace is Adam's canopy, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to do the nose the way he did it. So I started wrapping the nose around the packjob (something which had given me the heebie-jeebies before).
So I'm pretty happy with everything now. Thanks to Adam for emailing me out of the blue and offering suggestions, as well as those of you I talked with offline.
Now if I can just find a pilot chute fold job that I like....
