JohnMitchell

Loved those cartoons. Pride goeth before the fall.

My understanding has been - the AAD doesn't arm itself until 1500' I do believe you are correct, so that wouldn't have been a factor on an emergency exit. I've also exited below 2000' after going up and getting squeezed back down by bad weather. Another time to use caution, or maybe just land with the plane.

Good advice there. When I purchased private term insurance, I told them I was a licensed skydiving instructor. No increase in the rates. I didn't go into detail.

Thanks for yielding to the slow guy and keeping it safe.

Obamacare? Sorry. I have no idea. Like many Americans, I receive my health care insurance thru my employer. I've never shopped for it in the outside market. But some of these people have. I hope someone will chime in.

I don't care for it much. But I love buying new toys.

Could be pretty sporty. How did it go? None of my jumps compare at all to base jumping being done today. My wildest times look pretty tame now.

Definitely. I met a guy once who handed me a card like that. Had his (real?) name and a list of all kinds of things like that. I got a chuckle out of it.

Aww, thanks, Pat. I love the sport, I love the people in it.

Are they going to cut him out of there?

Wait until you have a hard opening while your head is tilted back ( watching your canopy open ). Hard openings will happen ...... watching your canopy open is a bad habit in my humble opinion. yep, keep that neck straight.

The download I got looked like an early square and an old Barrish Sailwing. But wow.

What's the lowest you've ever pulled your main? One thing to remember, when exiting a plane in flight (even gliding with the engine out), it takes 10 seconds to fall the first 1000', then 5-6 seconds each 1000' thereafter. Leaving a plane in flight at 2000' you have almost as much time until impact as you do being in freefall at 3000'. I've done emergency exits from as low as 1200' and was able to use my main on all of them. Caution, this was pre AAD days.

and I can't agree on this one. Common belief is: More jumpos - more knowledge Which is, I believe proper to say: utter BS (with an exception of me and sush) It's not a jump numbers thing. It's an attitude thing. There are plenty of safe jumpers with low numbers. There are plenty of dangerous jumpers with high numbers.

..but not, of course, about yourself (See Dunning-Kruger effect) Very good point. To see ourselves as others see us. I've never worked harder at anything than becoming an air traffic controller. Several years of training, washout rates as high as 2/3rds in just the first 3 months, cramming more info in my brain than I thought it could ever hold. The glorious day finally arrived when I made Certified Professional Controller, or CPC. I was all checked out and on my own, no more instructor breathing down my neck. I spent the next five years questioning every clearance I gave, every move I made. Could I have done better? Was there a better way of doing it? Where was I wasting time? Wasting moves? After years of this I started to feel a little better about my control ability. I still spent a lot of time in the books, reviewing procedures, researching new ones, and keeping abreast of the changes in our system. I sought out critiques from controllers I considered better than me. I was the first in our control room to research and adopt advanced procedures at a busy airport we worked, in order to expedite traffic during bad weather. About half of my area followed my lead. The other half were too scared to try something new. Ten years down the road I found myself being used as a resource for management and procedures offices on air traffic matters. Fifteen years into my career found me receiving a several national awards for air traffic control. My proudest memento is still a small stack of thank you notes I received from pilots over the years. Yet I still found every day a challenge to improve, to do a better job. I was never completely satisfied with any control session, even up to the day I retired. You can find a few former coworkers that would call me a hard nosed prick, but I do take pride in the work I did. I gave it 100% of my ability.

Yeah, and they only get to do freefall once.

The immutable law of aerodynamics: Performance costs you stability, stability costs you performance. Years ago we tried to slope launch my old long line stratostar at Point of the Mountain, a popular paragliding area south of SLC. The slapstick comedy of it all was priceless. Seems to be a common thread in the fatality reports. Maybe I just take my Stiletto speed flying. What could go wrong?

I was reading one of the paragliding magazines the other day. The back is full of incident reports, just like Parachutist.

Hell yeah. We just downsized and are still trying to get rid of stuff. How did I end up with 3 claw hammers. How many can I use at once. Depressed? Come out here for Christmas. We'll go fly in the tunnel a while and pig out on prime rib.

I didn't think so. I think you had a great point about "hard deck" not being a defined skydiving term. In my other career, we had strict phraseology rules; what to say, what not to say. I constantly monitor my skydiving instruction for ambiguities, confusing statements, etc.

Hmmm, interesting position. I think I agree with you. The term we use with students is "decision altitude". After reading your post, I'll keep an ear out for slang encroaching into my lesson plan. I think a point I should have made earlier is that when you go below your decision altitude with a bad canopy and you still haven't deployed your reserve, you've left "safety land" and are now in "survival land", a much harsher environment. Safe is behind you. You're now just trying to survive.

Yep. It's an awesome story of good karma.

***slips...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DTjWlafkw

I must have missed one of the Am. Pie series. Never saw that scene before.

Vskydiver and I live to the north in Olympia, WA. Portland is one of our favorite "getaway" towns. Music, arts, great mass transit, brew pubs, cool vibe. It would be a great place to live. There are several DZs to the south, and our own Kapowsin, with a Super Otter and Super Caravan, is just a few hours north.