daffes

@hillson Those are good pointers. My memory might fail, but that's what I record from AFF. And the 1000 feet was about telling me how fast I should be acting between the cutaway and pulling the reserve rip cord. It seemed clear, that the decision could only be made above 2500. Instructor: What's your decision altitude Me: 2,500 feet Instructor: What do you have to decide? Me: If I'm keeping or cutting away my main Instructor: Good, from 2500 below you have committed to land your main. EDIT: Point 9 mentioned does seem to address my concerns.

I did revisit that, with around 30 jumps at the time, and learned better. Although, I wish I had never had to revisit that, and learned first time. I'd like to hear more from this student mal and why he took so long to chop, I wonder if it's related with how he learned about hard decks.

Sure, this thread solved the purpose to confirm that I was not crazy by proposing two different decks. I have been disturbed to allow me that for a while. Wondering, if something bad happens, will this be seen as a stupidity? I'm still new to the game and will do my best to explain my perspective in interpreting the safety guidelines... Given it's a source of confusion to me, might be to others as well and even if the proposal don't pass, the discussion is still valid.

Nice, I didn't know about those procedures for submitting a proposal. I plan to review the SIM and reach to Jason.

Thanks those are good points @Dthames, I can adapt and I do it, although, it's common sense that students and people with low experience are better following guidelines than adapting. I think there's space to change the wording on the SIM to clarify this situation. I know that overwhelming students with complex decisions is also not advised but a decision altitude vs a hard deck altitude seems simple enough to be discerned on the SIM.

I meant if the side by side turned out into a downplane below your decision altitude, not to cut away the stable side by side. I believe I would very likely have committed to land the downplane if it had happened to me before that discussion, given my training at the moment.

Thanks tred, seems like a very similar discussion. Reading it now.

I like this distinction between decision altitude and hard deck. I think it maps to the "soft deck" proposal. It would be nice if skydivers picked up the terms or if USPA pushed on them.

@NWFlyer Thanks for your reply and I agree with what you said, but that's not how we are thought on AFF and it's not on textbook definition of hard deck or in articles like this http://www.skydivemag.com/article/when-should-you-cut-away which I saw a link given the safety days discussions. The guideline is: Below your hard deck, your only option is to deploy the reserve into the main. Combine this with many people suggesting higher hard decks and you get into this deadlock situation. Another situation is in a two out scenario, where a stable landable side by side can turn into a downplane. It might also be the safer approach to cut it away below the hard deck. I was surprised when a instructor told me this recently after I had my A, I wouldn't have done it after reading the SIM. Should the guidelines on those sections be rewritten to clarify this?

Currently, my hard deck to assess any malfunction with my canopy is 2000 ft, if anything still looks wrong at this point I'll chop it. I also plan to have a full controllability check done by then and I won't touch my slider below this altitude. Now, suppose something happens between 1000-2000, there are few unlikely, but possible scenarios, like a canopy collision, a cell might tear apart, a line might break... (it's out of this scope to discuss that those two last could be prevented by proper maintenance) If I follow my hard deck guideline, this means that I shouldn't cut away my main anymore, although, it's very likely that my reserve can be safely deployed on the remaining 1000 ft right? So, by having a higher hard deck, which I believed would make me safer and give me extra altitude to deal with anything, it actually removed from my hands the opportunity to save my life on the most safe way on those situations. Should I have then a "soft" deck and a true hard deck for those events between 2000 and 1000?

That's interesting, with a low number of jumps I had a two out on a rental gear when the reserve came out with the impact of the main deployment, likely to a loose reserve pin that I didn't check properly before gearing up or maybe for a misrouted RSL. Although I assume full guilty for the the lack of gear check (and I learned my lesson), I asked at the time how long had been since the reserve had been packed, and the instructor's answer was that it didn't matter for my case. Did you get to any conclusions on this?

It should be easy to color the toggles on a image editor software though.

Thanks for everyone's valuable replies, and this pic is really gold! I've been waiting to reply to the thread until I had to test a few of the hints here. Placing my arms back is giving me that angle I wanted :). I didn't get to be in the extreme last diver speed star position that I mentioned before yet to practice my new skills for real but I did dove a bit faster than I could stop for a couple smaller jumps and had to float back, good thing I was not aiming at the formation :). Now, refining the technique...

Do a firmware update, 1080 wide 60 fps, I suggest you avoid super view. For Freefly keep it mostly vertical, for belly, angle it backwards a little bit.

I haven't done any Tandems as well. I think if you have done many activities involving adrenaline and heights, like skiing, pool diving, bungee jumping, even roller coasters etc... and you really feel like skydiving there is a small chance that you'll bail at the door. I think doing a tandem and tunnel time before your first jump do increase your chances of succeeding on CATA, will keep you safer, and might even save you money if it avoids that you fail a level. Although, it might sound silly, but I really wanted the challenge to go, first time, and succeed. I spent 3-4 years, while in college and poor viewing skydiving videos on youtube from time to time, including AFF and Tandems, watching students like me go out of planes over and over made things easier as well. I don't know why but the falling on the tandem never appealed to me, I've always dreamed about flying and being strapped to someone's didn't match my interest. Even if I decided not to pursue the skydiving career after the first jump I still wanted to do it alone.

When I'm the last to dive out on jumps like a speedstar (big delay from the first out) I often find myself having trouble to close the vertical distance as effectively as horizontal distance. I try to get into a steep dive but I'm usually horizontally close to the formation while way too high. I then arch really strong and can get down but a lot of time is lost during this phase. I did a lot of research on this forum and also on articles like http://parachutistonline.com/safety_training/foundations-flight/diving-exits but the only effective way I have found to make my dive steeper is to guide it with my head. The issue with that is that I can't keep my eyes at the formation as I'm looking to the horizon as in a head down position. I then keep alternating between keeping the steep angle and looking at the formation every couple seconds until it's time to put the breaks on. I don't like this technique because if I really want to get the maximum out of my dive I can't look at the formation for longer periods of time, which would make me an unsafe skydiver and possibly overshoot the formation. So, what are the other ways to adjust the pitch angle (dive steeper) while keeping looking at the formation? I'm basically trying to understand how to achieve the same effect using legs, hips, arms... not the head. According to this article http://parachutistonline.com/feature/tracking%E2%80%94theory-and-application a delta track, would create a steeper track dive, but that goes against the powerful position explained on the first article (legs bent instead of pointing straight) On angle flying, we see skydivers completely dearched and bringing their knees down, but they also are looking to the opposite way that they are going, so it doesn't help to keep looking at the formation. Any advices? Thanks in advance.

What a coincidence, was randomly browsing DZ.com and found this, I was the n00b in question, didn't know jacketsdb23 had posted it here, he was my main instructor on CAT A, thanks for teaching me well :). About 70 jumps later, there hasn't been a single one I haven't checked my reserve pin before jumping, on that day, I had only checked it on the first jump, bad idea :/. The situation was pretty fucked up with the main reserve entanglement. I was very glad that I had reviewed the emergency procedures of a two out on the night before on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4x1ptlBF1Q, besides checking your pin, always be prepared to deal with any sh*t. I found this on reddit a few weeks later, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fienNK0DtUA, where the guy had a very similar situation as me, decided to cut away instead and spiraled to the ground, they named him miracle mike for surviving. In his case, they concluded it was due to a misrouted RSL, wondering if that could be the case on my situation as well. By the way, here is a slow motion video of my pilot chute popping out with the main deployment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsaMtbbuZVA Blue skies

Hey guys, I've just realized a long standing dream of skydiving. I completed my AFF past week and had a couple solo jumps. I'm super stoked about the sport and want to get better at it in a safe way and I hope you guys can help me out here :). Let me first quote Vladimir and Tamara at (http://www.vladiball.org/index7.htm) "Skydivers, who learn about the theory, will be able to take advantage of it immediately and thus experience a faster learning curve. Theoretical knowledge is always a huge short-cut, enabling you to learn more in less freefall time, less jumps, and thus less money. By having the theoretical knowledge, you can deliberately and consciously make adjustments to your body position in freefall to achieve the aerodynamic results that you desire." My instructors are very skilled, but I can't agree more with the above quote. I spend many hours looking for articles, books and videos similar to the one that I've linked above and it seems very hard to find this sort of content for skydiving, mainly about freefall and freefly (canopy control I found a couple good books). A few years ago I learned to Ski and the amount of material available was huge and helped me progress much faster. I can't understand why isn't that the same with Skydiving. Another area that I can't find much content is video classes about the main disciplines and skills I need to learn between AFF and A license. Like well performed tracking and fall rate control. I ended up finding tunnel classes about fall rate control later in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWyefbG48Ls and a good tracking guide here http://parachutistonline.com/feature/tracking%E2%80%94theory-and-application. Anyway, everything I'm curious about takes a long time to find a good and complete answer and I wish there was a central source for all of this. I would be willing to spend some $ in "off-air" learning material. So, if you have any suggestions of this sort of material it would be highly appreciated. Blue skies!