ZigZagMarquis

... and if they don't show back up for Cat C, the DZO and JMs get to rake in a bunch of $$$ with much less effort then if they had taught the student AFF from the get-go. No argument with anything you said, but don't deny that's a fact as well. AMEN!

Yeah, the Tandem only progression is the best thing ever invented for the DZO and JMs frustrated teaching FJC after FJC for students that +98% will never do a second skydive. Think about it... The DZ "requires" all students to start out doing 1, 2, 3, 4... ??... more??... Tandems, thus, doing away with having to invest all that time in training students on how to deal with malfunctions, landing pattern, flying their canopy, what to do if the radio doesn't work, off DZ landings, etc. etc. etc. because at the end of an AFF or SL jump the student is going to wind up under their own canopy, by themselves. Enter the Tandem-only progression and all "that" goes away for the DZOs and JMs when you require students to do Tandems for their first X - number of jumps. Okay, like someone up post said... if for what ever reason it is that sparks someone to be a skydiver happens... then it won't matter if they go AFF, SL or AFP... but wake up and smell the coffee, the motivation for the AFP program for many DZs is they don't have to invest all that time in training students for the fist jump, but they still get the $$$... but if they get a student that progresses past those first several tandems, then they'll invest the time to teach them what we all used to learn in FJC for a SL or AFF 1st jump. And consider also those that may be lost becasue the spark to make them a skydiver isn't as strong as it is in say the next person or slow in coming and we loose them out of the sport because all they've done on their first few "student" jumps is go for a "ride". *sigh* ... sorry for the vent.

Its okay. Its good to ask questions and be currious... no matter whether you have 8 jumps or 3000 because when you (if you) start falling into the mindset that you have this skydiving thing "licked", something will come up and bite you in the ass to show you that you're not "all that"... and it may involve six to eight of your buddies carrying you in a pine box.

Well, not to split hairs, certainly knowing how to survive is the top priority to be imparted by instructor to student, but the TLOs are important too, otherwise, what's this sillyness of jumping out of marginally maintained aircraft all about anyways... besides a prelude to drinking beer. ... but we digress from topic.

Fortunately... err... actually, unfortunately, I don't need a weight vest anymore... ... and I'll be sure to quit licking the lead seal on my rig and everyone else's rig when performing a reserve pin-check... Come-on people! Okay, lead poisioning is "bad", but just because you handle a weight bag with lead shot in it or touch the odd lead seal on a reserve pin from time-to-time doesn't mean you're going to be coming down with lead poisioning any time soon, I'd guess.

Does anyone out there in the rigging verse have any experience with these types of sewing machines sold by Harbor Freight? http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=3914 http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=92966 It looks like its Chicago Electirc Power Tools that markets them... although I'd bet they're made in China. Anyway, they appear to be economical and I've been tempted to buy one, but I wonder if they're junk or not?

Hmmmm... I want to say it was covered when I went through FJC and/or FJCs I've seen since then, not in infinite detal, but it was mentioned... then again, that was a lot of years, jumps and beers ago... IMO, by the time a student gets to their 8th student jump, it should be something that is gone over with them by their instructor... i.e. showing them how to do a gear check and reinforcing such things as how all the bits work. Certainly not to surpass the TLOs and priorities on any given student jump (PULL, PULL AT YOUR ASSIGNED ALTITUDE, PULL STABLE), but the sooner students are exposed to such things and the more its gone over, the better. Same thing different words, IMO, while I wouldn't expect a student to be able to give a disertation on gear like say a master rigger should, I'd expect a student to be able to at least explain the general jist of what an RSL does if their instructor points to one on their student rig and says "What's this / what does it do?" by the time they've got 8 student jumps under their belt. AND... that all being said, if a student doesn't do well or has a lack of knowledge, its their insturctors that have failed them. ... oh... I'd better go lookin' for my flame suit.

ummm... can I pull that thread some... Was it, you had some sort of understanding of what an RSL is / does and didn't recognize the name OR was it your instructors at Sky Nights - East Troy, WI, didn't cover what an RSL was in FJC or since during your 8 student jumps during, say, gear checks?!?

I own a V2 & wish it was still in my possession.

Actually, Phoenix, as folks up-thread have said very well, a V1 or V2 isn't necessisarily a bad rig nor "should you have to be really broke" to consider one. Certainly freeflying brings a lot of unique considerations when chooing a rig... but its not all about freeflying... a V2 would be perfecly acceptable for wingsuit flying & ecinomical, say for example... is that you in a wingsuit in your avaitar? Anyway, just wanted to point out to anyone coming into this thread late to go back up-post and read what's been said. Lots of good rig / gear / rigging info there from folks qualified to speak on the subject... and some other stuff to weed through.

Nah, I always go to Vegas via Death Valley to Beatty to Vegas. --------------------------------------------------------- Come to Skydive Mesquite. Its just like the old days at Apple Valley....no kidding. ... you mean they get started late, the airplane breaks down a lot and they have no one on staff that can fix it? nooooooooooo I meant the great vibe, :o) ah... that was just the beer...

Nah, I always go to Vegas via Death Valley to Beatty to Vegas. --------------------------------------------------------- Come to Skydive Mesquite. Its just like the old days at Apple Valley....no kidding. ... you mean they get started late, the airplane breaks down a lot and they have no one on staff that can fix it?

Nah, I always go to Vegas via Death Valley to Beatty to Vegas. Winds? Cal City?? Ah... never! Yeah, I laugh at the Perris-ites that bitch about the wind when it kicks up to a good 8 to 10 there...

Yeah... well... and... So, Bozo, when are you going to venture over to the Califonia side of the Mojave Desert to jump agian? Haven't seen you since the Apple Valley daze...

I study nuclear science I love my classes I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses Things are going great, and they're only getting better I'm doing all right, getting good grades The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades I've got a job waiting for my graduation Fifty thou a year -- buys a lot of beer Things are going great, and they're only getting better I'm doing all right, getting good grades The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades Well I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise I'm a peeping-tom techie with x-ray eyes Things are going great, and they're only getting better I'm doing all right, getting good grades The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades I study nuclear science I love my classes I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses Things are going great, and they're only getting better I'm doing all right, getting good grades The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades I gotta wear shades, I gotta wear shades Did you learn this from Not Fuckin' Mike?

3 feet shorter then what!??! ... as in, how long do they say it should be??

Okay... this is weird... this thread about Jim Hanbury... then Dana & Kirt surface at Cal City last weekend... and today I'm at the Avis Rent-a-Car counter in Ridgecrest, I've got a Cal City Skydive t-shirt on and the gal behind the counter tells me her brother-in-law used to jump there a lot... her brother in-law is Mike Deluna (sp?) !!

Skydiving "too politically correct"... not sure about that... people whining... yeah, that I can see. But anyway, that's part of the problem. How many times have you seen threads in the incident forum with people getting all worked up over "you can't say that" because they're trying to defend their friends from being "picked on". Certainly we shouldn't be disrespectful of slanderous of anyone or anything involved in an incident, but we need to get over the emotion of it when it comes to the investigation, analysis of the cause & affet and conclusions... in short, sometimes the truth hurts. Does anyone have pics of the wall of pain at The Ranch?

To help with part of your question... Back when I bought my Javelin, about 3 - 4 years ago, I aksed Sunpath what the "K" meant too. Basically, it means its their newer design for their containers... i.e. a J3K is newer (slightly different / upgraded) then a J3. Things like the riser / shoulder tuck flaps have changed (gotten bigger) and the tuck flaps on the reserve flap that coverst the pin have changed (no longer possible for a "death tuck" where you get it tucked under the reserve cap AND top reserve flap as well as it tucks into the slot at the top of the second / bottom reserve flap... if that all makes any sense... easier to show then explain). Anyway, yes, they're pricey... ... but what rig isn't from the Big-3 these days... Sunpath, R.I. and what ever Mr. Booth is calling the RWS these days. I still see some Javs where the top reserve flap pin cover doesn't want to stay tucked into the bottom reserve flap and to a lesser degree ones where the main tuck flap doesn't want to stay closed... usually on the same rig and I'd say canopy choice in those rigs is a factor in this. What I haven't seen lately is the shoulder tucks coming undone on the newer Javs like used to be a bigger problem on the older ones where the shoulder tucks were smaller... i.e. had less ass to them. ... anyway, just my 2 cents. Keep asking questions and happy rig hunting!!

That's funny, I have had a kiss pass from ... Mark... at Cal-City... so If I read this right, kiss passes were invented by old guys at Cal-City???? Yeah... you old guys kissing other old guys at Cal City... Try kissing girls, its much more fun!

I have seen "The Bounce Book" have a positive impression on low-pullers and / or jumpmasters who chased a student well below the hard-deck. For hook n' swoops gone wrong, I'm not just talking stills, I'm talking video, if available, both from ground-to-air and if the hook-ie had a camera on, that video too. There's got to be more video of these incidents floating around out there then what surfaces. Go to Jay's AFF course or to get a Tandem JM cert and he's got a collection of AFFs gone bad and Tandem landings gone bad where the JM gets injured. He shows it to y'all and then asks you to consider if you really want to do this. Folks up thread have said a lot of things that I'd expect like there's always the element that won't listen or think it won't happen to them or they're too good to mess up. True enough. I've said and thought the same and probably will again, but consider some of the others out there... those under the influence of this type... they just might be swayed by something like this rahter then just writting them off too.

Et all, To start out, I'll be honest and say I spun this off from this... http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2503554;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread ... thread. NickyD and Bill have said some good things there, IMO, that we shouldn't divest ourselves by saying that folks killing themselves under modern high-performance canopies by hooking themselves in and dieing isn't a skydiving problem; my words for what I think they were trying to say, in part. Depending on who y'all consider my peers, I haven't been in the sport for a very long time or you could say I have. But anyway, when I got into it back in 93/94, the "hot" canopies were Sabre's, Stilettos and BatWings (and I'm sure there were others to who's names escape me), but the guidance I got from instructors, up-jumpers and the local gear store was that when getting off of student status that the best thing for newbies to do was to downsize from the Manta 288s we were jumping as students to an F111 canopy loaded at about 1:1, no more, put several hundred jumps on it, then maybe we'll let you try a Sabre. Furthermore, I recall hearing talk that gear stores wouldn't even sell you or let you demo a Stiletto unless you had a thousand jumps or very close to it. Back then, the majority of deaths each year were "No Pull", "A Cut-away & No Reserve Pull" or "A Cut-away & a Reserve Pull Too Low To Do Any Good" and the term "Fatal Forties" still applied. AADs and the proliferation of high-performance canopies have changed that to most deaths are "People Flying Perfectly Good Canopies into the Ground and Killing Themselves". Heck, I still do a double take when I see someone at the local DZ that I know has only a few hundred jumps jumping a Stiletto or Kitana or hearing someone talk of their "first new rig" and they're getting a Sabre2 to put it it, no matter what the wing-loading. Things sure have changed even during my time in the sport. Lots of folks will harp on education education education; that canopy piloting classes and maybe even ratings required to pilot high-performance canopies are the answer. Certainly none of that can hurt, but I'm sure someone will be quick to point out you cannot force education on everyone and others will poo-poo more regulation from the USPA along the lines of "Canopy Licenses" for lots of reasons. However, keeping high-performance canopies out of the sport's modern day "novices" certainly would change the face of the yearly fatality stats. Also, as callous and morbid as it may sound, possibly putting together something like a "bounce book" for hook-turns may effect a change to. With as many video cameras as there are floating around at DZs these days, you have to know there are many many clips of folks hooking themselves in; either shot ground to air or from a camera the victim wore themselves. Possibly we'd serve ourselves as a community a service if we sucked it up and put emotion aside "not to diss our friends who were "great guys", but hooked it and got hurt or killed" and posting or showing such things around the DZ to show folks what happens when someone hooks it and screws it up. Kind of like those old movies they used to show in drivers-ed in High School what happens when you drink and drive... i.e. those old bloody movies of car wrecks where they're scrapin' drunk driver’s guts and brains up after a wreck. I don't know what the answer is, but dismissing it all as "just another hook turn fatality" or "nothing to learn here" isn't the answer.

http://www.gpssource.com/index.php

Yikes! That's reminisent of Patrick de Gayardon incident, in a way. Hope you can locate the rigger that F'ed that up. I'm guessing it was as a result of trying to do the hand-tack with the reserve packed / container closed. What would possess someone to do something so stupid? ... unless... err... I hate to speculate... but... did you ask the folks that brought you the rig if it were possible the hand-tack was done by someone other then the rigger that packed it last? Anyway, glad the owner didn't have to use their reserve during the last repack cycle!

Dana and Kirk were out again today (10/29) at Cal City. She and I did a 2-way. She was talking about buying a new rig and getting back into jumping.