skr

>you could be off level (all things being equal) at the end of the move Right. That explanation is the one I give to people who have been given a technique (move your arms and legs like this) and now need to think why that really works. You use your whole body, fronts of thighs, insides of thighs, elbows up and down, the curvature of your shoulder-chest- stomach-pelvis and so on. I think the flying between the points is way more fun and interesting than the points, which, after all, were only put there in the first place so judges would have something concrete to count and measure. That's kind of why I gave up on points as such and started designing dives out of flying moves. Go for the good stuff :-) :-) Skr

> I'm just wondering if anyone has any good ideas on avoiding brain lock. I avoid it by designing dives that have simple, repetitive dance patterns. I'd rather focus on feeling the flying than remembering random sequences of meaningless formations. I further avoid it by not going on dives that other people are organizing when I know they are going to organize that kind of dive. I don't enjoy the meaningless string of formations form of activity so I just don't do it. If I do organize a formation type jump it's more like a drill dive, alternating donuts or whatever. >Sometimes I miss the old days where all you had >to do was look for something round and get in. :-) :-) I was thinking about that at Eloy this Christmas, standing around watching the endless, elaborate creeper diving, and the thought passed through my head: "I'm a one point skydiver. This stuff is too much like work!". Maybe that's one reason I'm drawn to wing suits. You don't have to do anything, you can just fly around. Skr

>My question is- How do you side slide The main surface you are presenting to the wind is the rectangle from your shoulders to your pelvis, plus maybe part of you thighs if you want to think of it that way. Tilting that rectangle causes horizontal sliding. Stick your legs out, pick up the back end of the rectangle, slide forwards. Stick your arms over your head, pick up the front end of the rectangle, slide backwards. Stick an arm and a leg out on one side, pick up that side of the rectangle, slide sideways. Tilting that rectangle is one idea applied in several directions. You can stick arms and legs out or drop elbows and knees down and so on in all sorts of combinations, but tilting that rectangle is the main cause of horizontal motion. Skr

>I'm taking the coach certification course at the moment I wrote a shorter, plain English supplement to the coach part of the ISP which I give our post AFF students. It's several short articles at http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html#learning Some people seem to think it's about teaching them 2 way freefall stuff, but it's really more like 80% canopy control and spotting and packing and how to be a parachutist. Focusing on freefall when they don't know how to see the winds and land without hurting themselves is cart before the horse. I see from your profile that you are jumping in Hawaii. Please say Hi to Constance for me. Skr

> Too cool. Skratch Garrison and Bill Newell both posting ... I was kind of startled myself. I went to the forums page, saw something new in the history section, clicked the thread, saw login bbmsc, thought hmmm ... Hey! that's Bill Newell! Then I flashed back to when we first met, pulled out my logbook to check the date and there it was: Jump #284 August 8, 1965 Oceanside, California 5 star - Me, Clarice, Bob Buquor, Jim Dann, Bill Newell It also says I had a stuck cone and pulled my reserve, which I had completely forgotten about. Cool, all the old farts are showing up. Maybe we're not too old to teach young dogs new tricks ... I mean ... No, wait ... How does that go ... ?? Then I clicked his profile and saw that he is still a man of good taste ... his Racer is older than mine :-) :-) Skratch SCR-16 (You'd think since he created the Star Crest that he would (be SCR-1 but the first 8 were in order of entry in the star.

> Ethically, who is responsible I've been mulling this and there doesn't seem to be a clear cut answer. At 50 jumps a person should probably know better, but they may not due to poor training. Or they may be a testoserone poisened young male who sort of knows better but wants even more to be cool. So that seems like ignorance or possibly irresponsiblity. The person who gave them the 120 and then recommended a 109 could also be young and ignorant, but if they are experienced they are certainly being irresponsible. I'm not sure where ethics fits in that. The person who sold it to them could also be ignorant, but if they are experienced they are being irresponsible and unethical. So I guess if we are focusing on the ethical aspect of the chain of causes and effects, it would be the person who sold it. Skr

>or did it only lose 2k from its last zero at eloy? and so is -2 ?? I think it's that. The needle went counterclockwise from 12,000 to 11,000 to 10,000, so you should fix it by moving the needle clockwise from 10 to 11 to 12. It matters which way you turn it. I took one apart once. The needle was attached, through several gears, to a little metal bellows which expanded and contracted as outside pressure changed. If you turn the needle the wrong way to zero, then the inner workings are really at + or - 12,000 ft, and it wasn't meant to be used that way. Skr

> Ethically, who is responsible Maybe another question is more useful. Saying that we are responsible for our own decisions may be true (may be), but it doesn't follow that we are responsible for the outcomes. We put in our 1%, the universe tosses in its 99%, and the results happen. We all take advice that we don't fully understand the consequences of, from doctors, from tax accountants, from astrologers, friends, television commercials ... And we all know DZOs and other people who give bad advice for their own purposes. Maybe another question is more useful. Like what can we do when we see it happening? I will often say something to the person, or the DZO, but not always. Un asked for help is often experienced as an intrusion, and a lot of people don't listen, and there are just too many people doing unwise (unwise to me) things to be able to fix it all anyway. So I often try, but not always. Skr

> How did AFF students meet their A-license spotting > requirements at big DZ's I've wondered the same thing. At Calhan in Colorado I gathered all the clear and pull and spotting and tracking requirements into a 3 jump sequence we do out of the Cessna. The Caravan was just too expensive to be flying around. About 2/3 of the way down in http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/cc_coach_handout.html is a short description of the "Cessna Playground". I wrote that coach handout to help the new coaches. Skr

> > you're more likely to have fun even if you screw up the formation > I'm gonna have to puzzle this one out I guess. > I'm an RW guy who always has fun. > Am I doing something wrong? No, it's just the current fashion to confuse body position with attitude and type of activity. Here's an excerpt from http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/soc_ev_skydiving.html Skydiving has become main stream and the commercialization of it is remaking the landscape. We now have a fifth kind of person coming out to jump. Many people divide the world according to body position or type of activity, but I see five main categories: #1 The artist, explorer, pioneer, innovator, questor. #2 The recreational but totally hooked every weekender. #3 The professional - movies, demos, jumpmaster, livlihood. #4 The competitor - numbers/comparison in a restricted format. #5 The mainstreamer - comes out 5, 10, 20 times a year, maybe takes a week long skydiving vacation. Skr

> You know that in theory , it is possible to build a > belly flying formation so large that it will move so slow > that no one has to pull. The first time I heard this theory was at the Gulch in 1975. We were building these kind of dynamic motion things and Seattle was leaning more towards big, very floaty blots. (Big was like 20.) We heard that someone up there had calculated that they could land a 172 way wedge. We immediately started scheming about skateboards on our chests and some kind of nose wheel. A few beers later in the night someone pointed out that if we could land a 172 way we should be able to dirt dive a 300 way and float up to altitude. It did seem to make sense at the time, but the desert has that effect on people. Skr

Who's coming up with all these artificial categories and boundaries, and what's with this word "discipline"? It's like I'm sitting here on the couch looking at the mountains, and then someone else sits down and we're hanging out together appreciating the scene. Then someone else stops by and lays down to kick back and take it all in. And pretty soon we're arguing about whether it's better to sit or lay down and we're not even looking at the mountains anymore. "Discipline" reminds me of the 60's when we wanted to call it skydiving, but PCA was pushing "sport parachuting" because it sounded more respectable. Bah! What's wrong with recreational skydiving ?? Sorry .. I'm just practicing my soapboxes. We're getting up in the middle of the night to catch a plane and go down to Florida to the board meeting. Don't you guys get it all figured out before I get back! :-) :-) Skr

> Isn't killing always killing, > no matter what the circumstances are? I don't know, but I always feel uneasy when pulling something out of context and then forming a judgement about it. Someone cuts someone with a knife. Is it a surgeon helping someone? Is it someone defending themselves against attack? Is it a torturer inflicting pain? Killing someone seems like a major act in any circumstance, but without knowing the context it seems hard to form the next layer of opinion. ---- Abortion is even harder to get a grip on, and I don't think there will ever be any agreement on the question of when a life begins, or even on what the question means. I do think it's the women's question to answer though, not some judge, not some senator, not even the father. If all these anti abortion people really wanted to do something about abortion we would have really good sex education and some more realistic views on human sexuality, and people wouldn't be getting pregnant unless they wanted to. They are going after symptoms instead of root causes. Skr

Good jump stories .. Thanks. I could feel myself accelerating into the wind just reading it. Skr

Those are good questions and you are smart to be asking. The way I explain it to our students is here http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/cc_separation_summary.html To get some first hand experience do some solos. When the group in front of you goes, move to the door, keep your eye on the group in front of you, use one of the techniques people have mentioned in this thread for getting separation and then jump out. In freefall keep your eye on the group in front of you and notice stuff, freefall drift, landmarks, how hangars and runways and cars and trees and stuff look at various altitudes. How does your position change relative to the group in front of you? If you're too close on top of them, you can break a couple thousand feet early, and track perpendicular to the jump run to make some room. If your distance is OK, then watch them break and open. That's pretty interesting in itself, and you also get quite a rush of speed, it's almost as good as a cloud. Now the important part is to start relating what you did in the door before exit to how much actual separation you got on the bottom end. This takes a number of jumps in various combinations of upper and lower winds. It's not a particularly easy skill to develop, but it's worth the effort. ---- Opening higher than the generic altitude matters if the people behind you on exit don't give proper separation, or if the spot is off and there are hazards, or if another plane full of jumpers is coming overhead in a couple minutes. I pull higher now than I used to. The people who taught me pulled at 1,000 ft plus or minus. I was taught to pull at 2,000 ft. I pull closer to 3,000 now because I'm older and slower and today's chutes take forever to open. Sometimes I'll pull a little lower down at sea level drop zones like Eloy where the air is so thick you almost don't need a rig :-) :-) Skr

This morning I was passing through Slashdot http://slashdot.org/ on my way to later and ran across a blurb by Joe Jennings which led to http://www.gaspig.com/ I went back a few minutes later to check something and it had already disappeared off the bottom of the page. Skr

Three statisticians go deer hunting. They spot a deer. The first statistician aims - and fires wide to the right. The second statistician aims - but fires wide to the left. The third statistician throws down his gun and shouts "We got him! We got him!" ---- "We are sorry, but the number you have dialed is imaginary." "Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again." Skr

> Stick something through my rooster?? > Not a chance in hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now that made me laugh out loud :-) :-) I saw the same thread over in the women's forum. I was thinking people sure do some weird and interesting stuff and then I stop by here and ... I know I'm from San Francisco, and I know I'm eccentric and non main stream to boot, but pounding nails through my ... ah ... rooster?? Well, not today anyway :-) :-) Skr

> Search the 2003 SIM Yep, she's one of the good guys, all right .. Skr

> I know Hod plans to attend both. Please say hi to him for me - and maybe ask him who was on that first Mirror Image and tell us. I was there at Pope Valley while they were forming, but I was disgruntled that they were going to waste all that energy doing assembly line points when we could be exploring further. It was a painful fork in the road for me, these USFET guys were my best friends at the time, and I really wanted to jump with them some more, but the competition energy trap was too high a price. Skr

I'm seeing a lot of names getting tossed out and maybe before history gets any further rewritten you should ask BJ or Jim Captain. Mirror Image lasted several years and the membership evolved. In 1974 BJ got the idea while jumping in Europe to make a movie and turn the world on to relative work (relative work used to mean freedom and expression and exploration, not the pale imitation of a competitive format that it has become today). In 1975 we made a bunch of jumps at the Gulch and took movies, mostly Rande Deluca and Ray Cottingham. It was a very exciting time, so exciting in fact that every weekend for several months I drove from Los Angeles to the Gulch and back, a 1,000 mile round trip. We showed the movies at the 75 nationals, the world meet in Warendorf, Germany and even drove down to Yugoslavia, jumped with the Russians and showed the movies to the whole Eastern bloc at the meet in Portoroz. In 1976 BJ went off and convinced the world meet guys to do the 4 and 8 way formats that are still used today. He then came to Pope Valley to recruit some USFET people to go compete. It's the main thing I have ever disagreed with BJ about. (If you want some insight into BJ notice (that all his happenings are actually vast (international gatherings. He called a meeting at Rande Deluca's house. He, Jim Captain, Matt Farmer and I were to be the center four of an 8 way team. For many, many, many reasons Matt and I thought that competition was a very bad idea. Matt went off into life in search of truth. I stayed at Pope Valley and developed Skydance. Skydance meant base the flying on dance patterns and synchronized swimming patterns, all flying, no hanging on, and put some explicit effort into the mood components of organized dives, that is, organize for the emotions, hot dives, playful dives, sunset dives, and so on. BJ and Captain went on to form Mirror Image. I remember names like Dave Sheldon, Roger Hull, Curt Curtis, Hod, Crater, BT, Mike Gennis, but you should really ask someone who was on the team. Skr

> anyone jumped in Taft during the 60's and 70's I was there from about 1964 to 1970. I remember Walt and his Beech. Please tell him Skratch says Hi. I met both Walt and Jerry Bird at Arvin. Bird took Russian at the Army language school in Monterey and one day he started counting who was on the load in Russian. I took Russian in 1957 after the Soviets sent the first Sputnik up so I started talking back. For a few years Bird and I were brother in laws, married to sisters Diane and Clarice, two of the early women jumpers. Clarice is now married to John Rinard. John and I were the base / pin on the first 10 man team. Bird and Clarice were somewhere in the back of the load. It's a very small world. Skr

I don't know who was first but the first one I ever heard about was an Otter at Spaceland in Texas. (Australian) Ken Hills and I had it up for a weekend at (the first dropzone named) Skydance in Tahlequah in 1980. Skr

I've never seen one but it would be great to make a copy and put it up on a web site somewhere like maybe right here. I got the idea somewhere that Spud Manning knew how to fall in a gentle delta / swan dive sort of position, but world war two came and people forgot about it. Jack Pryor, the guy who taught me, started in 1953 and told me that he learned of the idea of stable fall when he ran into someone somewhere in 1957. Skr

Thanks to both of you for that great Christmas dinner at Eloy. And thanks for starting the dropzone out at Brush. It was a major step in the Colorado skydiving scene. Skr