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What a GREAT training video. thanks!

Do you think it's because he read an article from April which said the virus had peaked and was about to fade away?

I had the opposite problem. I'm a 'feather-butt'. I had a very hard time keeping down with other jumpers at the beginning. I jumped with 10# of dive weights in my pockets for a while. Although a definite 'crutch', it allowed me to be able to jump with others and stay with them without needing to be maxed out on my fall rate. As I got better, I learned how to fall better (faster) and am now able to fall fast enough to keep up with almost anyone. A friend and jump partner had your problem. He's a fairly heavy guy, and muscular, not fat. So he's pretty dense (from a physics point, not an intelligence one). He has gotten somewhat better at falling slower, but he needs to 'dress for success'. He needs a bigger, slower suit to not end up going low. Until he found the right suit (actually a couple different ones), he was low a lot. For now, I'd suggest finding jumpers who have the body type or the skills to be able to fly with you. As you progress, the range of fall rates you'll be able to jump with will grow along with your skills.

Three components will help with this 1. Yes, the other jumper has to help. And it helps if you include fall rate in your jumping buddy selection criteria, especially if they're also a newbie. 2. Dress for success -- they need to wear a slicker jumpsuit and maybe weights if they're experienced enough, you need to wear a bigger jumpsuit than they have. 3. Practice. You will improve a whole lot with practice; the tunnel is a help here just for exposure time. But if your reaction is always to get big so that you can evaluate the situation, that's better than evaluating and then getting big. Wendy P.

Terriers are cute. I'll take it!

Ha! No surprise there. Did your AFF coach not ever use the hand signal for "fly better"? Just remember to do that! The major jumpsuit manufacturers know how to achieve a draggy RW suit with as little bagginess as possible. Don't just fill out an order form, make sure they know what you're trying to achieve to get their ideas. Type of fabric of course is important, and double layers, large diameter grippers on the outside of your legs (not the back of leg), along with inner leg grippers, knee padding, cordura for the booties and entire lower leg starting above the knee. The first suit i bought from Tony Suit had all of the above and their swoop cords, which I only used twice, so it is an expensive option not likely to actually be used. Dual arm grips might be useful for extra drag without flappiness.

+1 for VOG. I wish they'd add some better logging features, but it's an easy choice as-is.

Thank you all for your replies. These were all pretty much exactly how my thought process was going. I will definitely look into a baggier suit and try to talk through who will be the base and all the other great tips that were posted above.

Shouldn't be a problem if you wear your kilt.

If it helps at all my liberal friends generally see me as a gun loving right wing hard ass.

Exactly. I said it's the responsibility of the writer.... I'd give you a "like," but I just did that the other day and with your being a liberal and all...

Watch Kinesthesia, The Art of Body Flight by Norman Kent and Guy Manos. It gives a progression of skills necessary to acquire before jumping with another new jumper. As mentioned by @wmw999, you can acquire these skills in a wind tunnel faster than you can making individual skydives. Unlinked exits are particularly tricky and I recommend you exit as shown in the video, but, only AFTER going through the program with an experienced skydiver mentor/coach/instructor.

I agree with the poster who stated that there's a limit to how slow you can fall, and that it's easier for someone to fall faster than to fall slower, especially if the faster faller still wants to be able to move with some sort of precision. That's why the typical convention is that if the exit funnels, you go to the low person. But I wouldn't think of this as whose "job" it is to match fall rate; rather, I'd frame the question as to what all parties can do to make the jump more successful. The faster faller can get a baggier suit, the slower faller can get a tighter suit and/or wear weight. Unless the disparity in fall rate is really that great (in which case you may just need to jump with other people), little tweaks like this should allow the jumpers to match fall rates and turn some points.

What helped me at the beginning of jumps with other people is to say who's the base. If you are the base - you just fall in the most relaxed & neutral way and the other jumper(s) try to get to you. If you don't specify who's the base you will be going up and down as everybody tries to slow down & speed up simultaneously. Now you already know that you fall fast, so get baggier suit and make sure other jumpers on the dive know that you are fast faller so they can get skinnier suits and arch more.

IMO, and I caveat this with the fact that I'm a fast faller, there's only so much range someone has to fall slower. You can get a baggier suit made in poly drill or another slow material but there are going to be limits to how slow you can fall and still be able to move around the sky. It's much easier for someone to fall faster through arching , carrying weight, etc. so, if you're unable to fall together after doing what you can with suits and technique then the onus should be on the slower faller to do something to stay with you. I've done some jumps recently with guys at my DZ and had no issues staying with them in their civilian clothes but, as soon as they put on their RW suits which had relatively slow material and big competition grips, there was no hope. Given the disparity in fall rate once they put those suits on, I think it's on them to either wear weight with those suits or change the suit to a faster falling option.

Given that this is a discussion about the bible how do you propose the receiver presents those questions to the author? Further, you realise that you gave no indication of this in your original post and the two subsequent clarifications of it, and that Skyfall's apparently mistaken interpretation of your posts is still your responsibility?

"When a coup attempt goes unpunished, it has officially become a training exercise." - Author Unknown

When I was 16 I wanted a motorcycle really bad. Mom said no. Her dad broke his leg on one so they were dangerous, no motorcycles for me. I tried to get one when I was 18 and she said no again. WTF? I was 18!?! I earned the money for it!?! I was going to get it whether she liked it or not! I didn't get that bike, for you see, I still lived with them. They still paid most of my bills. I was pissed, but that's just how it was. I respected my parents so I didn't go against her wishes and buy it. I did get one four months after I moved into my own place though. At that point, it didn't matter whether she liked it or not. I was supporting myself and I could make my own decisions. If you'll be out supporting yourself by next summer, that's awesome. Get back in the air, get your license, buy gear, become a world champion swooper. At that point, she has no say regarding what you do or don't do. If your parents are still paying any of your bills then, you might consider waiting until you have assumed full responsibility for your life prior to jumping again. It's just the respectful thing to do.

Nevertheless, he is right. It is the argument you made, and repeated several times so there was no room for misunderstanding, that interpretation of a passage is solely the writers responsibility. If he reads something you wrote and decides it means what he said, then it's your fault that he decided that.

I missed part of the conversation but I'll try to clarify my remarks. First some of the examples given have been comparing different canopies one being steeper then the other. Often what they mean by that is that one has a longer dive then the other which is not exactly the same thing. In doing this they are also comparing two different air foils, plane forms, break line configurations etc. So for example the location of the maximum thickness may be at a different location cord wise on an air foil. Or it may be thicker. The pitching moment may be different affecting the pitch stiffness. The point is that you tend to be stuck comparing Apple's and oranges which tends to be anecdotal. I'm looking at this from my experience tinkering with crw canopies. Crw canopies are one of the very few examples where you can get the same canopy in different trim configurations. Steep of flat. Short or long. You name it. And that's just the starting point. No crw dog deserving of his hook knife has ever been able to resist tinkering with and retrimming their canopy. I mostly did bigger way stuff but this was kind of the thought process at the time at least among the people I knew. Keep in mind that the ideas of how best to set up your canopy are constantly evolving and vary from one team to another. So of the three disciplines rotation sequential and eight way. Their thought was that in rotation you wanted to be able to drop as fast as possible relative to the formation. Ether by stalling back over the top and dropping through the wakes behind the stack or by turning off to the side and cutting back in behind it in a quick sashay. The thought was you wanted the canopies as flat as you could get away with. You wanted the stack to be floaty. But more important you wanted the rotating canopy to be maxed out on Cl. When he popped the toggles or rears to drag him back over the top of the stack you wanted to already be on the edge of stall so there was no more lift to pop you high up off the top of the stack. Pretty much the same thing if you were going to turn off to the side. You didn't want extra lift. So basically you trimmed it real flat adding an extra link and then trimming the lines. Some of the canopies were so flat that you flared them with the front risers. The the thought process was reversed with sequential. They had the thought that in flying peaches or changing slots that you wanted to be able to float relative to the formation. They trimmed steep to be able to get on the rears and float relative to the other canopies with out dropping behind. Or at least that was the idea behind the old expresses. So you got to play with the same canopies at both ends of the spectrum. This is where my observations come from. That when you trim the canopy flat the fronts become soft and are easy to pull down. When you trim it steep. The load on the front risers increases. One secret of pulling down the fronts on a heavy canopy is to tap the breaks to rock it back before grabbing the fronts as it rocks back forward. It will soften it up enough to let you get locked in. Part of that is the angle of attack and part the dynamic easing of the load. The increase in load towards the front of the canopy is why I tell people that it's in some ways safer to trim a canopy more nose down when tinkering. More lift at the front of the canopy improves the stability and you have plenty of room to increase the Cl so you can have flare authority to kill your sink rate on landing. Contrast that with a very flat trim on the same canopy which tends towards soft front risers. When you try to flare there is nothing left. It just stalls. That is why you wind up doing front riser approaches may be with a bit of turn and killing your sink rate by letting up on the front risers and just finish out the landing with your toggles hoping you can slide or run it out. Going flatter is defenintly trickier and should be approached with more caution. That got longer then I intended. This information is some what out of date. I hear the newer crw canopies are much nicer and not even scarry to land. I would really like to put some jumps on them some day. But right now I'm stuck here in isolation playing nurse maid. Lee

Discuss openly about risks and the steps you take to manage them. I find it helps sometimes with people who do not know about skydiving and have the "you're insane / have a deahwish" knee-jerk reaction. When you counter with well-thought arguments, people eventually tend to get interested despite themselves and ask more questions. Downside is, you have to do this again with every new person, which takes a lot of time. I'm blessed with very supportive parents. Talking about risk management, precautions etc. helps them stay supportive. Well, except that my mom does not want to hear about CReW. When I told them I was going to take the FJC they just smiled, looked at each other and told me that that was exactly something they'd expect me to do. I'd get the idea, and I'd go do it. Funny thing is, approximately half the people I knew at the time agreed with my parents point of view, the other half reacted exactly opposite.

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when I realized that I forgot to take my multivitamin this morning."

Is there anyone that tried wearing a dress in a wind tunnel? I flew in a wind tunnel where some friends work and we all goofed around In the tunnel after regular flying hours were over. I changed back into my dress and went in there when the wind was on for a bit. My dress nearly blew over my head and I got a small rip in it. Haha not my best Marilyn Monroe impersonation. Am I the only one who thought of this? Has anyone else done this or heard or anyone doing this? I thought I’ve heard of photo shoots like this. NGL, I think it would pretty cool to do a shoot like that myself.