ZigZagMarquis

... Austria has an "Air Force"... or do you really mean "flying club?"

Collapsed end cells too.....so it's not just my sabre 2.(170) Does most everyones sabre 2 also hunt around on opening? Tried my packing and different packers, filmed openings-not dropping a shoulder etc....So if it's just another trait of the sabre 2 I'll live with it. Yeah, I was of that opinion too about Sabre2's when I first started jumping them... they like to hunt on opening... but now I figure it has to do... mostly... with bad body position either at toss or as the canopy opens. I know you say you're not dropping a shoulder, but I found that Sabre2's will high-lite any bad habbits you have at toss or right after more so then say a Stilletto will. I found that the best thing to do is toss, DON'T watch the bag leave your back, look at the horizon and arch as the bag leaves your back, line strech, sits you up, etc. and then get ahold of the risers and spread them to keep the opneing in heading... that solved most of the Sabre2 "hunting" I experienced early on... and it puts me in the position where I've got ahold of the risers and then I just haul down in the rear ones to get the slider the rest of the way down and the end cells open as mentioned before... collapse the slider then... unstow the breaks... land... pack... repeat...

Zig, can you please elaborate on the ***Line of death*** Thanks. When getting into tail-gate type aircraft... i.e. SkyVans & CASAs... it is not untypical to see a big red line painted on the floor, wall, ceiling, with some sort of placard saying something like "No more then X-Amount of people aft of this line!" From Aft -> Fwd... Some will have multiple lines... one that indicates the max number of folks aft of such and such line on jump run... a little further forward, another line/placard saying no more then Y-amount of folks between these lines and then everyone else forward of this line on jump run... etc. Same thing, different words, in such aircraft, if you get too many people on the ramp... i.e. aft of the line of death... on jump run... the aircraft will go into what's known as an "Uncontrolled Climb". The phenomena is easily identified as it will coincide with the aircrew yelling at your asses to "Get Out!" If such indications are ignored, said "uncontrolled cllimb" will be followed shortly there after with what is known in aviation as a "Stall"... then, potentially, "Departure From Controlled Flight"... and then a "Spin". Maybe Zing or some other pilot will tune in that has flown SkyVan's and/or CASAs... but I'm not sure if a SkyVan is recoverable from a Spin... i.e. you can't get the tail flying again. There's a video (probably more then one) floating around somewhere of a SkyVan with too many folks in the ass end on jumprun... it stalls... pretty ugly.

... what folks up-post have said, and my 2 cents, a couple of things... 1) Being a tailgate aircraft... ask to be briefed on the Line of Death. 2) Your first CASA jump = BEER!!!!

hmmm... I can see where that could be a problem ... I've seen it lead to SIDS... ... Skydiving Induced Divorce Syndrome.

That's what I did... saved up for a year, and paid for all of AFF in one shot. Saved me a couple hundred bucks to do it that way as a package, plus I wasn't worried about where the money for the next jump was coming from. I had saved enough for gear too. Glad I did it that way. Wow!!! You are more brave then I'll ever be!!! I NEVER buy blocks of jump-tickets ahead of time or do something like pre-register for a boogie and would NEVER have paid the entire AFF course ahead of time... way too supersticious (sp?) to do something like that. For example... every year, my home DZ has a "January White Sale" on jump tickets where you can buy blocks of tickets at an even more reduced pirce then during the rest of the year, but January White Sale tickets are only good for that year and their not transferable without permission from the DZO... even with those two cavieats, its a really good deal and lots of folks will buy blocks of 50, 100, 150 or even 200 tickets and use them up that year. I myself NEVER do this as I'm conviced that if I do, I'll do soemthing silly like slip and fall getting out of the shower the next day and break my neck...

This is more "Stupid Stupid" then "Stupid Scarey"... Gal borrows boyfriend's rig. Goes up, does a skydive, opens, looks up at the main... boyfriend had had a rigger put aftermarket dive-loops on the front two main risers, rigger had happened to use red webbing & the risers were the typical black type-8... gal mistakes the "red loops" on the front risers for the steering toggles and "thinks" the main is hooked up backwards... so... she cuts away and deploys the reserve... lands under reserve... comes into hangar and bitches out pakers, rigger and boyfriend for hooking the main up backwards on the rig she just jumped... after a brief investigation... packers, rigger & boyfriend explain to her the difference between toggles and dive-loops, yellow vs. red and the nose vs. the tail of the canopy... rigger repackes reserve, boyfriend and paker hook-up main (correctly)... packer repacks main... gal borrows rig again and goes up again... skydives... opens... looks up... dang if those red dive-loop steering toggles aren't still on the front risers... still thinks canopy is hooked up backwards... cuts away again and shoots the reserve again... ... she was a Static Line Jumpmaster that had gotten out after putting out her students... did this twice in the same day. This is NO SHIT... rapter can verify.

... let me guess, your name's Peter?

Fun Sponge!

Dunno... I know one of those that's all that AND a skydiver.

ZippO... if you were female, hot, blond (or brunette... or red-head) & stacked the JMs would sure remember you...

... and then you'll give him those NASA and AIAA documents including both wind-tunnel and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies on the deployment and inflation sequences of both round and ram-air canopies? Don't laugh, I've seen such things.

True enough... but its kinda like opening all the windows in your car to increase the "drag" on the vehicle to slow it down when coming up on a stop sign rather then use that pesky break peddal, sure in theory & practice it works, most effective means though, that's a different story...

Yeah, that pretty much sounds like a Sabre2 to me.... I've got over 500 jumps on mine and it behaves that way... usually with collapsed end cells too. After opening, I get a hold of the rear risers and haul down on them to pop the slider the rest of the way down and to open th end cells, then collapse the slider, then unstow the breaks is the typical sequence of events for me. I'd like to hear what PD says about this as I've heard similar reports from many other Sabre2 jumpers... PD is supposed to be at Cal City later this month, I'll try to remember to ask then too. I've never heard the "loosening your chest strap will bring your slider down" theory.

I've been wondering if Jay may try for 700 at some point in the future... I'll have to remember to ask him if / when I see him again. Course... Mrs Jay may have something to say about whether he gets to try for this or not. Maybe in the future, he or someone else could organize a "relay" marathon jumping type thing to raise money for the Special Olympics... you line up bunches of jumpers and several airplanes, packers, volunteers, etc... Jumper #1 loads up in an airplane, goes to 2.1K, does a hop-n-pop, lands, Jumper #2 cannot get in the plane and t/o to go do his or her hop-n-pop until Jumper #1 lands, Jumper #3 has to wait for #2 to land until he or she can get in a plane and t/o... etc., so on down the line... meanwhile, jumper #1 can pack, or get their rig packed, and get back in line and so on. Individual jumpers could collect donations / sponsorships before the event. With 2 or 3 or more aircraft and lots of jumpers, you could crank out a lot of jumps. Or maybe even put a stick of 3 or 4 jumpers on the load doing hop-n-pops... next stick cannot take off until the stick in front of them lands, etc.... there's lots of possibilities I suppose.

Sell the boat. If you want to experience freefall, AFF would be the way to go... but like someone said up-post, if money to continue with the IAD progression is an issue... then it will be & more with AFF. Currency is important IMO when on student status... from both the "continuous progression" while learning and from the "keeping people's interest" perspectives. On one hand, don't stress that you have to be out there every weekend doing student jumps, but on the onther hand, it shouldn't be a once ever 30 days thing either. Generally speaking, I tell students to shoot for 2 or 3 student jumps a weekend, every weekend if they can, if not every other weekend... others will have different forumulas / advice that works equally as well. I realize its expensive, but realize to that it is a commitment and factor that into your decission making. Another thing I heard once from an ol' grey-hair when I got into the sport was that if / when you do get off of student status, if you're going to "get into" and "progress" in skydiving, you should do 200-300 jumps a year your first couple of years in the sport... again, realize that this is expensive these days and you don't "have too" and others will say things differently... but my experience was that wasn't a bad bit of advice. Anyway, good luck to you. Try to make a decission. You can go away from skydiving for awhile and come back if you wish... or it can be something that you tried a few times and it wasn't for you and/or the bug didn't bite you... you wouldn't be the first nor the last person to happen by a DZ for a jump or a handful of them never to be seen again... no blood no foul.

We usally still do "Pumpkin Drops"... or pumpkin jumps, if you're the pumpkin... at the annual Cal City Halloween Boogie... C206, 1000' AGL, one pass over the DZ for each person, you spot your own run, toss out a pumpkin at the time of your choosing, he or she who's tossed pumpkin craters the LZ closest to a target placed out there wins.

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2363748;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

Years ago at Cal City, a bunch of bored skydivers (the most dangerous thing in the world) rigged up one of those 100lb+ pumpkins in an old rig... rapter proceeded to teach first jump course to Mr. Pumpkin... someone video taped it and there used to be a copy floating around the DZ... then Mr. Pumpkin went on his first AFF... Mr. Pumpkin failed his TLO's though, namely, he didn't pull and his instructors had to pull for him... unfortunately, Mr. Pumpkin had a mal and failed to deal with it correctly... in fact... Mr. Pumpkin fell from his harness and wistled in... near-by citizens seening a "large object" reach the air-earth interface without a parachute called 911... authorities arrived to find a bunch of skydivers yuckin' it up around the crater w/ pumpkin guts and seeds scattered everywhere. ... or that's about how I remember the story told.

I wonder how this putz would feel if someone politely and reasonably explained to him that this could cause someone to be injured on a bad landing trying to avoid his yard when then could make a safe landing there? --- Anyway, such things seem to crop up from time to time in this sport... some DZs seem to have it worse then others... like lawdude said up post, its up to the skydivers to not give "them" extra reasons to complain. ... except for the folks that buy houses next to airports and then bitch later... I blame the courts for even listening to those folks.

Raven's of that era are fine IMO, as long as you DO NOT load them more then 1:1... but, yes, if you DO overload them, they have been known to do what you describe.

I didn't say their was anything wrong with GPS. I just said its a tool that you have to know how to use and not just trust blindly... like a lot of y'all do. I'm done with this.

LouD, Your first two statements (above) contradict each other and prove my point exactly.

Good point. That story shows my biggest gripe about GPS... it tells you EXACTLY where you are... but it doesn't do DICK about where you want to be. Its a tool. Tools make work easier, but you still have to know how to use it. Too bad it was a couple of low timers that got burned; glad they're okay. Correct... presumably they were cleared to self-supervise, but we should still look out for each other and help each other out.

IMO... if you're going to open a DZ, you should be able to fly the airplane and wrench on it too. You ought to be a jumpmaster too, but you can't fly the plane and be a jumpmaster on the same load (and use the plane again), so if you had to pick between the two, I say go for the pilot's license and AMP license.... sooo factor in the costs of that too. I've seen two DZ's struggle with operating where neither of the owners could fly or fix the airplane.