I want to become a race car driver...(an article about canopy flight)

[AggieDave 6]

I want to become a race car driver or I want to become an acrobatic pilot.

What would you do to make that happen for yourself? Would you read everything you can get your hands on then go do it? Could you just watch the F1 racing or watch the national acrobatic competition and learn from watching? Or would you, after reading what you could get your hands on, go and get the best hands on coaching you could afford from the best people available?

Personally I would read everything I could get my hands on, get coaching, continue reading and continue getting coaching until I reached the level of ability I wanted to reach. I would still continue to get coaching as I could afford it and reading, though, since it is fun.

Canopy flight draws the same parrells. You can read all you want, but without hands on coaching, it will be at a loss. Sure you learned something, but how does it really apply? How about coaching? You could get only coaching, but even spending a number of days with a coach there's a lot of information to remember as well as the practical applications. So would you think that reading all you could from good sources and getting coaching from good canopy pilots would give you the best results?

How does this apply to the non-swooper? Think about the aspects of driving (since that's something that a large majority of people have done). The techniques taught to you on how to drive were from people who have learned and studied driving. Accidents and deaths causes laws to be established and practices to be taught. It also created an industry of design improvement. Those techniqes and improvements have helped the average person in daily driving, even if they don't realize it. How many of you slow down a bit and turn your lights on when its raining? Who came up with that technique and why? How about those always on driving lights? Same thing.

Right now we have the most advanced skydiving canopies availabe to us that skydiving has ever had in its history. We can make our canopies go fast, go slow, turn, flare and do many different things using multipul control inputs with our hands, legs and body. We have 6 individual control inputs available to be used plus the harness and plus combinations of the control surface. (6: 2 toggles, 2 rear risers and 2 front risers). We can use those and in combination to get our canopy where we want to go and do what we want it to do. What functions of our canopy flight make us safer in various conditions? What do we need to learn to do when the conditions change? Perhaps learning basic canopy control to include stalls, flat turns, flare turns and landing patterns. Flying a landing pattern is like driving the right way on the highway. It doesn't make life perfect, but atleast you're not going against traffic in a limited space.

So even if you have no intrest in becoming a swooper and are Joe-Skydiver enjoying RW, FF, whatever; you're still flying your canopy every single skydive. Sometimes with tens or hundreds of people in the air around you. So do yourself a favor, read, learn and get coaching.

If you're wanting to become a swooper understand that no one gets their license at 16 and starts racing NASCAR the next day without extensive experience and training. That learning to swoop takes time, practice, a desire to learn and the ability to be taught.

If you are a swooper, come visit my DZ or I'd like to visit yours, I want to learn from you.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Peej 0]

Quote

If you're wanting to become a swooper understand that no one gets their license at 16 and starts racing NASCAR the next day without extensive experience and training.

Amen brother, they spend a lot of time driving go-carts and working their way up through other similarly "less powerful" vehicles before they get to the high performing NASCAR. And even then, the potential to injure themselves is still very real. Kind of like me hooking it in on a 170 Hornet.

Nice post Dave

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[mnealtx 0]

Good post, Dave!

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706