DrewEckhardt

If you have no pre-existing conditions and can't afford insurance then you can't afford skydiving. High deductible plans for young people are generally under $100 a month. Broken legs often run $40,000 without too many complications and $100K+ with some. You can't afford that if you can't cover insurance premiums. While emergency rooms are required to treat you, the laws allow them to collect on your bills and don't require them to provide the follow up care that will get you functional and doing sports. So just skipping the insurance and doing dine and dash isn't a very viable solution.

With a good beer belly and decent track you may only be going 90 miles an hour vertically, although you're also going 90 miles an hour forwards for a 127mph air speed which is what the canopy sees when it deploys.

With inflation adjusted college tuition and fees increasing four fold since 1978, medical insurance two-fold, and the market for semi-skilled labor smaller it's not surprising that college students can't support themselves and those that are working at least half-time (required to receive food stamps) have looked to the government for help that doesn't mortgage their future. Without the special considerations they couldn't get used to sucking the credit teat which powers the American economy. When people could no longer borrow against their equity, the economy tanked. We need to save ourselves by getting the next generation out into the world and in debt. Wow, college students are like adults (with their strategic defaults) and corporations (with their prudent business moves like "efficient breach").

Eventually you're going to find a big cliff or antenna and take it to terminal. If it's going to ring your bell at terminal you want to find out when you're opening at 2000 feet over a nice landing area, not some where under 1000 feet over some place small surrounded by obstacles with scattered boulders. You might find that you want a small hole mesh slider instead of big hole. Just be sure to: 1. Use a slider when taking it out of the plane. 2. Route the steering lines through the keepers and slider. 3. Use your shallow brake setting. 4. Use an appropriate pilot chute (even if you pull immediately, you're starting at 60 MPH out of a Cessna and 100 MPH out of a King air and wouldn't want anything bigger than a 42/36" respectively). Unless you come from a classic accuracy background and have been jumping something like a Parafoil or EIFF Classic loaded around .7 pounds per square foot you'll benefit from more than just a few jumps getting used to the basics. Although we tell skydiving students that they should be in full-flight to get a good flare, that sort of skydiving approach to BASE jumping will have you over shooting landing areas and running into obstacles even if you have 10,000 jumps. That'll be more relaxing when you're open at 2000 feet over a nice grassy field with pea gravel if you stall versus 200 feet over hard ground.

Yes. You can even free pack. While you're at it learn classic accuracy so you're more likely to be ready when you want to jump into smaller landing areas.

The coach rating is a USPA/skydiving industry commercialization of what was already happening for free. As long as you can successfully complete basic flat RW jumps (this is no longer a given) it's plenty to teach basic skills, be a stationary base, etc. for students who have been cleared for self-supervision. 100 jumps used to be enough to jump master static line students.

Get over your shyness or find another sport. Skydiving by yourself gets old fast and doesn't provide any frame of reference so you know you'll be stationary when jumping with other people. Classic accuracy and sky surfing are neat but not too many people want to do them exclusively.

There are over twenty on-line auction sites, although I couldn't name any apart from e-bay and u-bid.

The barrel roll (or more precisely half one) is OK when you're leading a tracking jump on your back and need to get back to a normal pull attitude.

The only video I've seen had the jumper go head down (in a sortof back track) when he he left the jump (got hit by a deploying AFF student or his bag - it's been a while). The reserve split into 2 and 5 cell pieces connected by the single reinforcing tape at the tail and spun in so he probably stayed in a similar high-speed orientation. He lived.

Or if the parties she is suing/their insurance carriers decide that its cheaper to settle than fight the lawsuit.

Good. I'd rather students spend their time studying the US Constitution which defines our country instead of chanting about their loyalty to the government which violates it.

Absolutely! OTOH, I couldn't recommend it after being one of two people who made it back to the DZ on a night jump from a full King Air (winds get wacky) before the moon came up with a 1.7 wing loading with density altitude past 5000 feet (like over a size smaller at sea level) which would have sucked to land in an unlit farmers field.

Not guaranteed. Line length and speed with the brakes stowed vary radically between different sorts of canopies. I've seen Stiletto 120s fly fine with Tempo 150s. 2) Less control in high winds. Not really. Although kinetic energy has an inverse linear relationship to canopy size, speed varies inversely with the square root of size. A 175 would go about 25 MPH in full-flight at .9 pounds/square foot and a 193 would be doing about 24 MPH at .8 pounds/square foot assuming both were measured the same way. With a 23 MPH head wind the 175 would have twice the penetration (2 MPH) as the 193 (1 MPH) although in both cases you're so close to going backwards that you should be flying with the wind and picking a different landing area if it's at all questionable. There are varying schools of thought as to how big is big enough. IIRC Windsor Naugler(sp?) used to mix things along the lines of a Raven II (218) with ~100 square foot cross-braced canopies. When I was smaller I liked a 150 reserve (1.2 - 1.3 pounds/square foot) as much when I started jumping a 105 (1.7-1.9) as when I jumped 150 mains.

Instead of selecting main and reserve sizes now, too many people buy rigs that they can "grow into." Others just prefer a smaller, sexier to safety margin. I subscribe to the philosophy that both canopies need to be appropriate for your experience and the inherent physics of the situation. You'll be more likely to be landing your reserve off the drop zone (because you only have 1000-2000 feet left after a cut-away, or you just want to follow your main down), you'll be less familiar with it, and it won't land as well as more modern shapes at higher wing loadings. So I have hundreds of jumps on a 105 main I'd be willing to land pretty much anywhere, and a few on a 143 reserve that I'd land pretty much anywhere.

It is. No one on my first sit 4-way which built had fewer than 500 skydives which would be 10 hours of tunnel time by yourself or 40 hours split four ways.

Send some one else to buy beer for the dropzone with your money. That would be bad karma. I once knew a woman who didn't buy beer. She broke both her wrists, started buying beer, and didn't have another injury.

You're paying for time on the plane (engine(s), propeller(s), airframe), fuel, and pilot. Jumping (or not) has almost no effect on the DZO's operating costs and you should expect to be charged.

Have you tried to blow air through it? ZP remains ZP long after it's lost all the slickness on the surface. Air comes out easier during packing because the stitching holes have opened up but it doesn't make a difference in the air (obviously you also need the line set to be in trim for the canopy to fly like new).

I flew about 30 hours until my instructor (who owned the plane he rented to me for $58/hour and charged just $20/hour for his time circa 2002) moved. Landing seemed about the same except with cross-winds.

A local farmer will have a more profitable crop this year. Nope. $120 worth of weed that fits in a pilot chute should be seedless.

Someplace with good weather would be a good start What, you don't like 95-105 degree days with 65-80% humidity (when not raining)?

I liked the hop-and-pops from Mike Mullins' King Air on one of the days we were clouded over. I think the one minute call may have been before take off.

Yup. As 'the' boogie you'd run into most of your skydiving friends from other places, load organizing for any sort of jump was great, there were enough co-ed naked skydivers to fill entire planes, aerobatic helicopter rides are oodles of fun, there was no waiting when you were not particular about aircraft type, there was any sort of gear you'd want to demo (skysurf, wingsuit, canopies), and the food (you're not going to get alligator gumbo at most DZs) was good. The partying was good too.

Or military contractors to build something. Although Canada has approximately the same landmass to protect we're spending 30X what they do for defense. We speed over 7X what China does in second place. We even spend more than the rest of the world put together. Paying companies to equipping a military so much larger than it needs to be is the biggest example of corporate welfare in this country.