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gus

If your home DZ banned swooping...

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No way,

I would keep on doing what I do untill they kicked me off. It would suck for the DZ to lose a Tandem, AFF, Video, and Rigger all at once. I think it would be assinign for a DZ to do that. I'm a firm believer in the "Time and place for everything" theory, but banning something alltogether just sucks. That's all I have to say about that.

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I agree to a degree. That said, I am not someone out there "experimenting" with HP landings; I do so professsionally. If the DZO (I am an S&TA) arbitrarilly banned such landings, it would have to have been because I havd been failing to do my job of keeping wreckless people in line. That is not the case. That said, if that were to happen at my next dropzone (where I won't be in any position of authority), then I would simply go to the next dropzone down the road. Like Spizzzarko, I have all my ratings and am not the kind of person that most DZO's would like to see leave.

There are actually quite a few dropzones that have signs, clearly posted, saying they prohibit "hook turns." Very few of those locations actually enforce that rule, choosing only to use it selectively when needed.

Chuck

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I think instead of saying "Never going to Happen" , because it can and it will if people continue to break them selves, We as a community of High performance landers should take some of the responsibility upon ourselves and police our own before DZO's start making knee jerk reactions. I see this happen in the Military all the time. One person makes a mistake and injures themself, now nobody is allowed to make turns or touch fron risers below three hundred feet in our squadron. As I said in my earlier post "there's a time and place for everything". Maybee doing "high performance turns with a dynamic flare" in a busy traffic pattern is not the wise thing to do. Swooping Cars like a "jack-ass" at the NSL probably isn't the wisest thing to do (thanks Chuck). Maybee we should take it on ourselves and make a high performance landing area away from the normal landing area. Face it, we swoop for ourselves, some jack off tandem student or someone fresh off AFF doesn't know what the hell their looking at.

Maybee we should all pull a little higher, and wait around in brakes untill most of the traffic is clear before we come screaming in for landing.

Maybee we should take it upon our selves to educate the younger time jumpers on how not to kill themselves. What is painfully obvious for you and I may not be evidently clear for a low time jumper.

Maybee we should all take a little more of a proactive approach to our younger jumpers when they are asking us about what type of gear to buy. Just because you where able to handle a VX-46 at 400 jumps doesn't mean that jumper Snuffy will beable to.

If we all take some of these ideas into account then DZO's will have a harder time banning things due to a knee jerk reaction from somebody doing something stupid. Trust me, I've done stupid things and probably will continue to do so, but it's a lot cooler to hear it from you guys than from an Irate DZO who's pissed because I swooped at a goup of tandem students, who don't know wheter to stand still or haul ass because a 200lbs meat missle is heading straight for them at 60mph and laughing the whole way (these are theoritical examples I would NEVER do any of these things...)

If we don't want to be regulated any more than we already are, then we all need to help each other out, before DZO's "help us all out". That's all I have to say about that.

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If we don't want to be regulated any more than we already are, then we all need to help each other out, before DZO's "help us all out".



The problem is, not all jumpers will listen and not all the advice being given is good advice. Jumpers helping other jumpers out is the system we have now, which doesn't work. I spent an entire reserve re-pack trying to convince a jumper w/ 200-ish jumps that hook turns with a Stiletto 135 isn't a good idea at this point. He simply didn't believe me. He has since hit vry hard, missing some paved ground only by hitting on one side and landing on the other.

Derek

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2 of the 3 DZ's that I frequent have signs stating no hook turns or hook turns will not be tollerated and I hook at both. If I couldn't, I simply wouldn't jump there anymore. Like someone else said, I think at these 2, it's more a warning to the inexperienced that hooking youself in isn't an option. At my regular DZ, I have seen experienced jumpers warned that if they fuck up and have to dig to save their life again that they would not be allowed to swoop! Here there are no rules except, Be safe!












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I would find another DZ to jump at if mine all of a sudden said I couldn't use my front risers.

But recently while attending the Eloy Holiday Boogie, I decided to scale back my approaches as I found myself taking one too many chances. I will still do 270s, but the majority of my approaches during normal jumps with traffic will be to setup for a nice long carving 180 which won't confuse and conflict with my fellow canopy pilots in the air.


Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

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I spent an entire reserve re-pack trying to convince a jumper w/ 200-ish jumps that hook turns with a Stiletto 135 isn't a good idea at this point. He simply didn't believe me. He has since hit vry hard, missing some paved ground only by hitting on one side and landing on the other.

Derek



If you would have been succsessful in the convincing of this stilletto hooker and every S&TA in the world was also succsessful simultaneously of doing the same to the new fresh underskilled canopy pilot. You would collectively have an effect on mearly a fraction of the jumpers in danger.

Even very skilled swoopers drop a toggle now and then. Even experienced AND conservative canopy pilots compound their problems with a PANIC response to a situation that could have been a piece of cake otherwise.
Have you examined the latest fatality demographics. What worries me is an attitude out there that because a jumper has chosen not to delve into the high performance or greater wing loaded side of canopy flight they are some how in less danger Than the guys that do. I had a few conversation about this very thing in Eloy. Anytime your canopy size isn't matched to your canopy skills, regardless of the size of either, you are indeed in a great deal of danger, equal to the person with a little more skill and a few square feet less.

Actually we are in a great deal of peril anytime we strap on a rig and climb on a jump plane. It shouldn't take a broken body before our eyes to snap us out of euphoria and make us "think" about what we have chosen to do with our afternoon.

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I agree. Generally its not the people who've chosen to agresively downsize that concern me, as long as its in reason. It's the people that have chose NOT to downsize, and think that makes them safe.

I am guilty of cartwheeling accross landing areas as I was learning how to do high speed landings. Flubbed landings are part of the learning process, and are not in themselves indications that somebody is out of their league.

_Am
__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

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Hook turns are banned at my home dz.
High performance landings are not.

Basically, if you're in control and not scaring the up jumpers you can do what you want.

However, if you're stabbing your toggles, getting into the corner, inconsiderate of other traffic, etcetera, you'll hear about it.
-Josh
If you have time to panic, you have time to do something more productive. -Me*
*Ron has accused me of plagiarizing this quote. He attributes it to Douglas Adams.

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Hook turns are banned at my home dz.
High performance landings are not.

Basically, if you're in control and not scaring the up jumpers you can do what you want.

However, if you're stabbing your toggles, getting into the corner, inconsiderate of other traffic, etcetera, you'll hear about it.



I'm thinking the DZ in question didn't ban people from "stabbing your toggles, getting into the corner, inconsiderate of other traffic, etcetera", and had previously allowed such things. I'm sure they banned high perfomance landings.

Derek

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Truely Derek, I'm at a big DZ. It is part of "the tour" home of "the team". Home base to a LOT of talent, read it as real world serious swoopasouras talent. no delusions just guys that can! Even the instructors at the two schools due to student volume, jumpable days, And the level of skill required just to get a job there, are cabable of burning it up on "the tour". Most can swoop big time, not all do on the tour or "have to".
This would be a bigger question for all of them that really can swoop it before it ever becomes an issue for me.
But lets say that it does come to that and I have to do it. I can always land out....... way out. Does this help?

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