skybytch

I dunno. I faxed a renewal to them last year and had my new card in hand a week later, just in time for a boogie I was going to attend - and that was without paying the "expedite" fee. Perhaps they told you two to three weeks for the "shit happens" factor? Why'd you wait so long to renew? Why is it their problem that you didn't deal with it before your membership expired?

The exit is only the beginning of the skydive. As long as you aren't taking anyone else out as you "burble", it's not that big of a deal. You will want to be better at it but it's not something that you're likely to be cut for as long as you're performing well on the rest of the skydive. Being unsteady on docking is an issue. One of the keys to building a large RW formation is that everyone must dock with no momentum. Docking with any momentum at all can send a wave through the formation which as you can imagine can be a very very bad thing. Happily, both of these issues can be dealt with on any skydive, even a two way. For the exits, concentrate on presenting your hips to the relative wind as you leave the door. For the docking, don't be in a hurry. Fly to your slot, fly your slot and then pick up the grips. Make a clean stable exit and a soft and smooth dock your personal goals on every jump you make - even if the rest of the skydive goes to shit you can be happy that you achieved your goals. Visualize yourself doing both perfectly before each skydive. I'm assuming you'll be jumping with one or more of the organizers prior to the record attempts. They'll slot you based on where they think you'll perform the best. Trust them. If you can swing it financially, I'd highly recommend one of those camps. Contact Kate, Tony and/or Dan BC. Let them know your situation, your goal and if possible give them a reference or two (experienced people who have jumped with you in the past). It's quite possible that they'll relax that minimum jump number for you. The big advantages to doing one of their camps are 1) you'll get a chance to fly a number of different slots (base, short diver, short floater, long diver, long floater), 2) you'll learn the mechanics of doing bigways from people with shitloads of experience at them and 3) you'll get some exposure to being in the air with 40, 50, 60 or more canopies at once before doing it with 80+ people under the pressure of a record attempt. And don't give up if you don't make the team this time. There will always be another record attempt to be on. The journey alone is, imho, well worth the effort. Good luck!

How you doin'?

A friend of mine used "Rickety Rigging" as his business name.

See, I learn something new almost every day. I was told that the original Ravens all came with bikini sliders and if I ever found one without it I shouldn't pack it. On another purely trivial note, does anyone know exactly when Precision changed from arabic numerals to roman numerals (ie from Raven to Super Raven)? This thread got me curious so I looked through my logbook today; found that I'd packed a Raven II with a d.o.m. of 8/87 and a Raven 2 with a d.o.m. of 5/87 so I'm assuming that it was sometime between May and August of 87 that the change happened...

I'm gonna disagree with this. I'd suggest doing at least a few solo jumps and just enjoy being in freefall without having to worry about "performing." Other things you can work on/play with when doing a solo include tracking (which is a survival skill), front and back flips, barrel rolls, refining your turn technique... Then pull high and play with your canopy. Practice flaring with toggles, rear riser turns and flares, front riser turns, braked turns, toggle spirals, play with the brakes and rears to see which one and how deep will get you the most glide, etc. If you haven't already, I'd suggest picking up a copy of Brian Germain's "Parachute and it's Pilot" book; there's lots of good info in there and it will give you other ideas on things to work on. The more you learn about your canopy and how it flies, the safer you're going to be in the air. Depending on where you jump you may only be able to jump with a rated "coach" until you have your A license. If that's the case, definitely start with belly 2 ways with more experienced jumpers once you get your A license; if not then you can start doing 2 ways earlier. Make a point of mixing in some "fun" jumps with jumps where you are working on technique - try a tube exit, do a "hog flop" (dock, break, both people do back loops, redock, repeat), build a 2 way open accordion and spin it... Don't be shy about asking people to jump with you, and don't take it wrong if they say they're busy doing something else. At many dz's you can let manifest know you'd like to jump with someone and they can hook you up. Probably the biggest piece of advice I can give is hang out at the end of the day - don't do a couple of solos and then split. After sunset is the best time to start getting to know people, and once people know you they're more likely to come up and ask you to join them on a skydive or three. Post-sunset is also when you can get a lot of free ground coaching, learn more about gear, etc. Like on these forums you will need to be able to filter the information/advice/opinions that you will hear; the advantage of your local dz is that you can ask the instructors that you already know and trust if Joe Bob actually knows what he's talking about or not. And the most important thing of all.... have fun!

Will you be my mommy?

Take your own advice - relax. Nobody is making fun of you. With the information you gave in your first post it would be a logical assumption that you planned to start jumping the camera right away. Coming back at people with attitude when they are only hoping to give you advice that might keep you from dying is bad form.

Cool, thanks for the input guys! Additional cameras are not an option at the moment but I think I know where I can borrow a tripod and I've been offered the use of a wide angle lens. I'll definitely be playing with those options in the future. What about non-swoop landings? We've been putting the raw footage up on the TV at the end of the day for everyone to watch and having a more experienced person debrief the landings, and eventually I'd like to put together a piece that shows both "good" and "bad" landings for use in training classes and/or at Safety Day. I'd like to improve what I'm getting of the "traditional" landings as well so it's easier for people to see what they are doing/not doing. Regarding zoom - I know not to use it often and I try not to use it at all when filming swoopers, but due to where I'm usually shooting from sometimes I have to to zoom in to get "close enough". Is there a trick to zooming smoothly? Does it just take practice?

Ask the seller if the canopy has a bikini slider on it or not. If it does, it's likely a Raven 3. If it doesn't it's likely a Raven III. IIRC "Super Ravens" use the roman numeral designation. As long as a rigger inspects it and determines that there is no damage (neither visible - ie large holes - or invisible - ie fabric strength issues, which can be determined by doing a pull test) I see no reason why it would not be okay to jump as your main. Contrary to what many people think and say, there is nothing instrinsically unsafe about older gear. It comes down to how well that canopy was maintained by it's previous owner. I'd assume that a reserve canopy with 3 jumps on it spent most of it's life in a container. There may be fabric strength issues created by wear from handling during repacks but a pull test can clear that issue up. Since your goal is to get into BASE, I'd suggest asking an experienced BASE jumper which size would be better for you. While some of us love to offer them, the opinions of people who have never done a BASE jump on that particular subject are worthless. There's an easy solution to that problem. Don't jump it on windy days or on days when the winds are marginal (ie they aren't that high yet but could get to high at any moment) - basically if the dz puts students on wind hold, put yourself on wind hold since you'll be loading that canopy as light or lighter than most student canopies are loaded. This would apply regardless of whether you choose a Raven III, a Raven II or a Fury.

Yeah, but Steve has an excuse. He's insane.

The best weekend day to go to Disneyland is Super Bowl Sunday. Really. Did that a few years ago and it was great - waited about 10 minutes for Space Mountain and about the same for Splash Mountain and those were the longest lines we encountered. But I agree, any other weekend day, forget it! It ain't worth the hassle.

Better golf clubs than a bowling ball and shoes. I've known that for a long time.

Practically giddy? As I remember it, we were all more like ecstatic!

The whole site wasn't down, only TalkBack went away. And yes, it was great watching everyone freak out in all the other forums and in the Pub. Since I was green back then I think I got 43 PM's and a couple of phone calls that day, all people asking WTF?

Anybody out there have any tips/tricks/hints for getting really good landing and swooping footage? I've been playing with this over the past few months and would really like to get good at it. You can see my most recent attempt at filming swoopers here - this was someone else's event so where I was filming from was less than ideal (I didn't want to be in his way). At my home dz I've been trying different locations and a few of the swoopers (ones I trust!) have been swooping directly at/by me, but I think I may need a wider angle lens to get the best footage on those. I'm currently using a PC100 with the stock lens.

IIRC, 9 am but I could be wrong. Call Morrigan, she'll know, she knows everything! No it's not. It's sitting about 15 feet from me at the moment. btw, the Wings looks really nice, I'm almost jealous.

I'll be getting my free pancake breakfast and free tshirt at Skydance (Davis, CA) and listening to some people talk about canopy control, gear, aircraft and other stuff. But before then I have to put together a short video of people flying patterns (or not) and landings (good and bad) for the canopy control part of the presentations. Guess I better get on that, huh?

Tell us about your senior year in high school... if you can remember that far back! Year : 1981-82 1. Who was your best friend? Dawnette, Mark and Spot 2. What sports did you play? Made the varsity softball team but that bitch Mrs Castillo gave me an F in my newspaper class for no good reason so i didn't have the gpa to be on the team. That was my last chance to get a letter. It's been over 20 years and i'm still pissed off about that. 3. What kind of car did you drive? 1976 Chevy Monte Carlo 4. It's Friday night, where were you? "At the movies" 5. Were you a party animal? Yup 6. Were you in the "In Crowd"? Nope 7. Ever skip school? No way. Town was too small, my parent's would have known before the school day had even ended... 8. Ever smoke? Yup 9. Were you a nerd? Nope. I was a loser. 10. Did you get suspended/expelled? Nope 11. Can you sing the Alma Mater? school song? Don't know if we even had one... 12. Who was your favorite teacher? Ms. Wojcik - math teacher. She put up with a lot of crap from me. 13. Favorite class? Lunch 14. What was your schools full name? Coast Joint Union High School 15. School mascot? A Bronco (bucking horse) 16. Did you go to Prom? Yup 17. If you could go back and do it over, would you? Not a chance in hell 18. What do you remember most about graduation? The joy I felt tossing my hat up and knowing that I never ever had to go back there again 19. Favorite memories of your Senior Year? Graduation 20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall? What's a senior wall? 21. Did you have a job your senior year? Yup, pumped gas at my dad's gas station 22. Who did you date? Robie Rowe 23. Where did you go most often for lunch? Bob & Jan's liquor store and deli. They made a cool sandwich called the Bronco. 24. Have you gained weight since then? I weigh about 35 pounds less now than I did at graduation. 25. What did you do after graduation? Went to disneyland

So called "neutral" colors will look great with a very red rig - black, white, charcoal (dark gray) or silver (light gray). If you'd like to really stand out, bright yellow.

I know someone who does that. She hates that part of her job...

Menage a trois. Pythagorean Theorem (or) a squared + b squared = c squared. Three dollar bill. Three dog night. Three strikes. The Three R's. Oh and the obvious one - 3 ring circus.

Paranoimia (by the Art of Noise). The version featuring Max Headroom brings back soooo many memories...

Depends. Was it regular Diet Coke sweetened with Nutrasweet or Diet Coke sweetened with that other stuff? If it was regular Diet Coke you'll be fine; Nutrasweet contains a blood coagulent that should take care of your problem without the need for stitches. If it was Diet Coke sweetened with that other stuff, go to the ER right now; if that stuff gets into your bloodstream you'll immediately go into convulsions and die.

I'd hate to have to sell skydiving equipment for a living. That would really suck.