Fast

Dave, I agree. The issue here is that for all the pages and pages of debate about this on the internet, the average semi-experienced skydiver doesn't care and doesn't think it can happen to them. Speaking from the standpoint of running a dropzone, if I even mention the topic of rules people start going on about how I'm an asshole and they are gonna go jump somewhere else, which is ok,... till I don't have anyone left at my dz. Skydivers inherently are "risk accepting" people and that's why there is such backlash. There has to be trade offs. Lodi is a perfect example, no hook turns, but $15 jumps. Hell, the list of reasons why a lot of people wont jump there is fairly extensive, but people go cause of the cheap jumps. If he was charging the same as everyone else, I am certain it would be a whole different picture. If rules must exist, they have to be everywhere, there is consistency then and it allows DZOs to say "my hands are tied and so are the guys down the road, what do you want me to do about it... just go jump." I do feel that there are issues with compatibility from one dropzone to another regarding landing area size and implementation though, and it also seems that at least in regards to a lot of the more recent incidents there were either existing rules not being followed, or extenuating circumstances (such as undersized landing areas). If in the end, if we need to have more rules, well that's what has to happen, but rules for the sake of rules doesn't help if there is not going to be enforcement. I also agree and have been saying this since the debate first started a few months ago that the issue comes down to education. If we don't educate our new jumpers to make the right decisions we are forcing rules on them that they don't understand and wont have any desire to follow. That just makes it into a "the man" vs "we just want to have fun" situation and no one wins. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I think a lot of it depends on where you are at in the sport too. For me, it shows up in my self google searches. I also am so involved with the dropzone that it would be impractical for me to work somewhere that they didn't know. My office walls are covered in skydiving pictures. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

There are a lot of ways to do this. There are companies that sell the service specifically for skydiving, a ton of ways to roll your own (I wrote a whole website that does this for my dz), youtube + file share service, etc etc. Just depends how robust you need it to be, how much money you want to spend, what your skills are. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Last year (December) Exiting error, and i bashed my head on the step of the plane. Made my vision blurry and near knocked me out. upon landing, I inspected my Cookie Composites helmet, it was split at the back . The helmet took the brunt of the impact and spread the force out. doing it's job admirably. I immediately rang Cookie and asked for another. It worked as i hoped it would.

Right here we have a shinning example of why skydivers continue to kill each other under canopy. This isn't about 1.1 1.05 or .95 or whatever wingloading, it's about the attitude towards canopy flight and learning in this sport. That mentality is what needs to change if we are going to see an improvement. It's our job to ensure that the young punks, and I speak toward no one in particular, that get into this sport get sorted out and pointed in the right direction. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I don't see a camera step, that has to be kinda sucky? ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Next time you go to the tunnel you need to be clear with them that you're doing AFF. The wuffo tunnel experience is not for you. Just an FYI. Have fun! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I think it's an issue because short of banning small parachutes, there needs to be a way to figure out who can actually keep up with what's going on when flying one. I absolutely agree that risk factors increase the smaller the parachute I also agree that the greater the disparity between parachutes in the air at one time the more risk. I don't think small parachutes are going away. If people are more able to determine where they are at skill wise and we educate properly it will cause people to want to fly a parachute that they are qualified for. I also am not suggesting that we directly regulate who jumps what, I think people need to want to be reasonable. If we can change that mentality it will takes us quite a few steps in the right direction towards lowering the risk of canopy collisions. Also, I don't make these statements in reference to any one particular incident. It's something akin to my understanding of a process that was once used to train air force pilots. You start out with the slower stuff and they were moving people up till they couldn't keep up with what the plane was doing. Some people just don't have the skill to think about the turn they have to make for something that is still 6 miles in front of them, those people don't belong in an F16. The same can be said about canopy piloting. There are a lot of people who can get by on luck, but truly lack the skill to know what's going on and stay ahead of the parachute. They need to be flying something that they can learn on, still have fun and actually want to be flying, not resenting someone telling them screw you, you can't jump xyz parachute. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

That is a logical fallacy. While it's true that ~68% of collisions were involving turns over 90, it's not true that it was the only cause. In fact, it's hard to know if those people would have not also collided if they weren't making the turns. The people in question may have lacked (clearly) the skill to perceive other traffic. Maybe the big turn made it harder, but the skill level that they had was also presumably greater because they had spent time working on canopy flight. That's kinda that point that I was making with my last post. We need better ways of educating people and determining skill level. We need people to want to stay within their own skill set. I don't discount that there may be procedural / operational changes that can be made in some instances to help this situation, but it's not the problem. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Yep. My problem with all the forum jockeying (and this isn't directed at bill) is that these issues aren't as cut and dry / simple as people want to make them out to be. Every DZ has a different layout, every canopy / jumper pair is a bit different, everyone's skill set is a bit different. There isn't one right answer to solve this problem. I think what's going on here is pretty reactionary and not super tuned into what an educated response is. I mean, we have people blaming swoopers, people saying "fuck you it's not swoopers" and it's all just blather. The reality of things is that sometimes people make mistakes, that's problem number one. In our sport a mistake can kill you pretty quick. We can't stop people from making mistakes, only educate them to help prevent mistakes. The second problem is that we have a whole generation of people who want what they want right now no matter what the consequences and regardless of anything. That's not a skydiving problem, that's a problem in general with society and it's only gonna get worse. Couple those things with the fact that people are incapable of determining the level of their own skill and we start to see the issue. The only time I know for sure that things are gonna work out for me and be 99% safe is on 4 person cessna loads where we exit one at a time, from highest to lowest wingloading and have explicit landing order set. Does that mean I think we should ban all other types of jumping cause there is risk associated with it, no it doesn't. Exiting a turbine in wingload order for "everyday" skydiving isn't even remotely feasible, for such a long list of reasons that it's not even worth talking about anymore, and I don't know why anyone is. The reality of these problems is that the answers you all want, aren't gonna happen, at least not easily. I say this from the standpoint of having run a dropzone. Banning swooping isn't gonna work, unless USPA came out and said "no more hook turns" which isn't gonna happen, a DZO isn't gonna do it. I mean sure Lodi did it and I know there are other DZ's out there that are isolated enough that they don't have to worry about it, but for a lot of us, there is another turbine right down the road. That's the problem with rules in general, skydivers don't like them from a practical standpoint. "Rules are ok, till they affect me, then fuck you I'm going somewhere else." That's the attitude a lot of people have in this sport. Unless rules are going to be top down, sport wide and actually enforced by the USPA, people aren't going to follow them. We need to not be reactionary and move forward with the solution of educating people. It's like the concept of teaching someone to fish, rather than just giving him some fish. We need the skydivers in the sport to want to not do that hook turn through traffic, now how to set up a landing stack, get better at predictable pattern flying, know how to look around under canopy, know why things shouldn't be done. Just making a rule that you can't do it isn't going to accomplish anything. It will only serve to limit the "fun" and be another way that "the man is keepin me down" and then you have to enforce the rule, well that's just a terrible way to look at a problem. We already break people out of their mold when they come into this sport, it changes their life, now we just need to work on changing the part of it that causes them to throw all caution to the wind in the search of instant gratification. I feel that's gonna be our hardest challenge ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I agree. I much prefer the creepers that are only 4 wheel with nothing at the center point. Find they are much less tippy and you can creep faster / easier. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Buying non-shit caster is by far the most important part of making creepers. Buy the good ones, cause they are gonna be abused. Not 100% sure who made the ones at our dropzone, a local jumper I'm sure, but they are really nice. 4 amazing casters, padded and covered with vinyl with plastic edging to prevent any damage to the vinyl. Comfortable and roll really nicely. Again, it's all about good casters and a durable surface material. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

All that stuff and yeah, the TI shouldn't have let this person anywhere near a tandem. This guy shouldn't even be wearing a camera. Not to mention whoever was flying the other greenish / yellow canopy clearly landing perpendicular to the indicated landing direction. So many things wrong all in one video. Whoever these people are clearly are not making good decisions. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I'm not at your DZ, but for what it's worth, I don't let my students jump without a jumpsuit. Too many risks of handles getting covered, poor landings, etc etc etc. Suck it up, it's not _that_ hot. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

All of these are very good ideas and great advice! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

My numbers were on the diagonal across the back, a gopro in it's case is only 2.75" x 3" x 1.75" so i guess it's fair to say that it's not "way" bigger, meh, dunno. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

One of the primary issues that gets ignored is how we got into this situation in the first place and all of this still comes back the the basic principle that no one will ever be happy with what they have. Back in the day, people did a job, got paid and a company made something to sell. That process was reflected in cost of living. Over the course of time through some inflation and also through increased "taxes" on the system (taxes in quote cause i don't mean just like actual taxes, i mean it in the larger sense) the cost of making a product went up, but so did the amount of money that a person made. At some point, it became possible to build something and ship it cheaper then it was to do it here. Cost of living should have gone down, cause the cost of the product went down. Wages here could have gone down too. That's where things broke, when that didn't happen, mostly cause companies saw no need to voluntarily lower their profit margin, we got into a fucked situation. Right now we exist in a upside down economy. The concept of trickle down that keeps getting brought up around here is supposed to solve that problem, but it doesn't. It's a non-starter because no one is willing to part with what they have, they just want more and more. Even charity is only driven by the fact that it gets you out of obligated taxes, it's just a way to get something more (good image) and it's just another form of being greedy. We're kinda all fucked at this point. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

It's also way bigger than a gopro. A gopro is 2 3/4 inches, 3.5 if you include the case. Just the screen on this thing is 2". Why not just get a CX camera? I mean, sure - if sony doesn't keep making an EIS camera, eventually we are gonna be stuck with stuff like this, but it isn't the case. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Why on earth would you work with TWO MIDDLE MEN, let alone one. I mean, sure, do a groupon if you think it's gonna help, but... a second party groupon, are they insane. This is not a wise way to conduct business. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

But who's gonna land the plane? Haha, what a space cadet I am! That gives me an idea... I'm going to start a thread asking, "What do you do if the pilot jumps out of the plane?" I always tell observers if the pilot jumps out of the plane, follow him and pull the little silver handle and hope you don't die. hahah

First, thank you what you are doing on my behalf. If we ever meet dinner and drinks on me. Having done a fair amount of demos in CA you will be hard pressed to find an area where you don’t have to file a COA with the local FSDO. It seems to get tighter every year. When you get ready to give it a go, get in touch with me and I will try and help out. Sparky ^^^ there ya go, the perfect type of help. GL and Blue Skies

Death and Taxes. Anyways... The key points to remember here are as follows: 1. Avoid skydives where you think this is likely. That's step one, no matter how you cut this issue, if you're looking at the plan (or have forgone one all together) and thinking to yourself "this is insane" or "these people don't have the skills to do this" then accept one of the following: A) This isn't a skydive I want to be on. - and then don't go or change the plan. B) That this skydive might be the one that kills me. C) That the only reason I'm willing to go on this skydive is that I have placed a false sense of security in my AAD. 2. Incapacitation is possible. I have had my bumps and bruises in this sport. I broke my neck, in freefall, deployed and landed my velocity (wasn't incapacitated thank god, cause the break would have both made me a quadriplegic and stopped my ability to breath, so i was told.) I have also been pushed into a low wing on a head down exit, on a jump where everyone had a 1000+ jumps and I regard them all as qualified freeflyers. That skydive ended pretty much before it began, I was seeing plenty of stars and a few more prolly would have knocked me out. I was lucky enough that one of the jumpers docked on my was also an AFFI, rolled me over and kept me stable till I collected my thoughts. Even after the canopy opened up, I was pretty fuckin foggy. AAD could have saved me on that jump, but I would have gone on it w/o one. 3. AADs should mitigate risk, that's what they are designed for. If it doesn't, don't use it. If you do use one, you need to ignore the fact that you have one when deciding to go on a jump. I don't like doing AFF w/o an AAD. I'll do it, but I don't like to. Mostly because I don't want to hesitate if I have to catch a spinning student, I want to offer them the best chance at survival that I can, does that make me a horrible bad person because I'm more willing to accept that risk with an AAD? No, but only cause I would still do it w/o one, I just don't like to. There are plenty of jumps that I have been asked to go on, decided the participants were nuts and either backed out cause they were unwilling to change their plan, or the more likely outcome is that I have helped them change their dive to something that was quite a bit more likely to not injure people. Getting around to the original question, if you're unconscious in freefall and don't have an AAD or someone to pull for you (please dear god, pull my reserve if this happens to me in specific, fuck landing a velocity unconscious) then you're going to go in. That's going to kill you pretty much in 99.999% of cases. I don't even know why you would ask a question like that, it's pretty cut and dry. my $0.02 ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I recall talking to a rigger friend who said that the line length tolerances on a velocity from the factory were less than a few millimeters. I suspect that a 1CM difference could fuck things up. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Time out. You don't qualify for a demo jump, but that makes a "non-demo" off airport jump ok? Please take the time to consider the consequences of your actions. If you don't have the skills to pull off a demo jump, you likely need help ensuring that what you want to do is even safe. Just the fact that you came here on the internet means that you haven't consulted with anyone that has the qualifications to determine if you are going to be able to do the jump you want in a safe manner. If you have the skills to do it, the area, the plane and the pilot, a local mentor will help you. If you lack those things a local mentor can help you get them. If you're arrogant about it and do the jump anyways, you might get away with it, or you might kill yourself or someone else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't do this jump, all I am saying is that you really need to seek local help to make it happen. I mean, are you wanting to jump in near your home? Hell, get a couple friends to jump too and have a BBQ, whatever. Just seek qualified help to make this jump a safe reality. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Yeah. This is something that we have been working to get people thinking about at my dz. The thing that I find is that most people treat canopy flight in very different ways and it leads to problems. The problem comes in with the people who aren't thinking about things that happen before the pattern. They just want to screw around and have fun under canopy, which I understand, but you can only do that up to the point where it causes problems later. The actions you take after opening will directly affect your options when it comes time to fly a pattern. I don't know why that is a hard concept for people to grasp but I see it at a lot of dropzones that I have been at, including my own. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka