Fast

Well, not quite the same situation, but I have been on tandem videos where after exit I realized I didn't do the final tightening of my chin cup. I have a 2-5 second period of time in which I don't need to use my arms much and will fix the problem then. On a big way with video I think it would be harder to do that. I think i would let them exit w/o me and leave after the last diver of the formation, fix the problem and get into position. My GF had her chin cup break on an AFF jump. She had to hold her helmet on with one hand and control the student with the other, that was a lot of work. Other than that the skydive went pretty well for her, the student and other AFFI ~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

We have taught a few deaf students at our DZ. The primary thing you have to do is spend a lot more time on the canopy stuff. Most of what you need to teach in skydiving is physical stuff and you can get through most of that easy. The things that are conceptual you're just going to have to write down. We managed the canopy stuff by spending the significantly longer amount of time on it and used paddles(pool noodles actually, as mentioned earlier) in the landing area. As it is we teach all our students how to mimic our hands in the landing area if the radio fails. ~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

We have the program set up this way because we would like students to get the experience of a diveout exit while working with the instructors (before moving on to coaches). We go back to the poised exits because we want you to have a fair amount of experience with them before the first hop and pop jump which happens before you switch to coaches. Hope you're ok and I sent you an email.

One of the jumpers at our DZ is a massage therapist and also works manifest and other stuff. She makes a lot of money from the jumpers. A lot of the staff will pay her right with money from doing tandems/videos/etc so she uses it for jumping. ~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

Bump cause this is on sunday! ~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

Two is more trouble than it's worth. Learn what site pictures look like and learn to deal with the problem of it dying. What do you do if both of them die? Give up and burn in? Prolly not, so just get a sight reference in your head. you'll be a better skydiver at the end of the day because of it. ~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

Link: http://www.bbb.org/atlanta/business-reviews/ticket-sales-events/1-800-skyride-in-kennesaw-ga-13003271 Ha! You're all wrong, ASC and AST are not on that BBB report. I told you we are not a scam! They're completely different companies. Yeah, So what if Cary owns them both, ASC and AST don't do all that stuff you guys are talking about. You guys are skydiving cops or something. You associate with the worst scum in skydiving. Don't be surprised when you end up smelling like shit at the end of the day. ~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

Certainly, I would love to learn why lube is needed on the cutaway cable. Do you have this information? I've done simulated cutaways hanging from risers (only body load) with and without lube, and could not feel any difference in pull force needed to extract the cable, although admitedly I didn't use any kind of real measurement device. Just make sure you always ask "Why?" If everyone accepted the conventional wisdom without question, there would be no innovation or simplification of procedures. The silicon spray is used over all the other oil types most prominently now because it attracts the least amount of dirt. The reason to put some kind of lubricant on the cables is because, when you're up in the air and something has happened that has caused the friction coefficient of your cutaway cable to be greater than that which you can pull (maybe your hand is broken or your arm or housings have been twisted, or who knows what reason) it would be crazy to not have put some lubricant on there. "Oh fuck I died cause I was too lazy to clean and lube my cutaway cables on a regular basis, oh well" isn't what I want going through my head when I am standing there as a ghost. ~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 whole bunch of Bill Nye (of all people) videos that CNN has that explain a lot of this stuff. One of which includes that they already use massive amounts of Hay to clean up oil spills. It's not new info. ~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's a myth! You dont have to breathe, because of the airspeed the oxygen will just penetrate your skin, no need to breathe in freefall. really not the place to try and confuse someone. This is not true he is just fucking with you. The reality of it is that there are a combination of things that cause a first jump student to have this sensation. Non-perfect harness fit and type of harness can contribute to circulitory problems. That combined with the unexpected rush of air in your face making it harder but not impossible to breath and the significant amount of adrenaline can lead to this. The muffled hearing was likely because your ears had not yet cleared. In the end, it's likely you can deal with all these issues with some more jumps and by remembering to keep your mouth shut and breathing through your nose. Anyways stick your head out a car window on the freeway, it's harder to breath then too. ~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 see something wrong with this interpretation of things.... Here are two articles regarding this issue: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/06/02/abuse-of-power/ http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns Thoughts? ~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

Where I am at right now for my hosting for other non-related projects, a 100MB video watched 1000 times a day every day for a whole month costs about $242 + storage costs at $0.55 a GB monthly. This is on a content provider that can do full speed to essentially as many people could possibly hit the site and could care less if a video got 100,000 hits. But all that doesn't mean anything because we have no concept of what kind of ad revenue the site was generating. I think the problem we have had so far is that it's hard to get something up and started now because when skydivingmovies.com started it was the _only_ site that was worth going to. Now things are pretty fractured and it's hard to get everybody behind anything. And who wants to pay for this services when youtube is out there for free? No one wants to deal with trying to rebuild that content base. All that stuff is out there in limbo, kinda makes it hard to start over for a lot of people I think. ~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

After a few times you just remember to put something softer down on the floor or not move around so damn much. Same goes for the floor of planes, they aren't always comfortable but tend to be conveniently 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

Sky Knights is hosting an R44 for helicopter for jumps on Sunday June 27th, 2010. Cost of the jump is $45 per slot. We will be starting jumping at 10:00 and because the helicopter is coming from such a short distance we will be doing the jumps so long as we have at least 3 people signed up. If you want to come get in some cool jumps we'll see you then! (Photo services available by me if you want to buy me a helicopter jump haha ) Blue Ones! ~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

Cool - but not a p51? Or are there other versions of it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-51_Mustang There is a guy on our airport that fixes P51s. They are some of the coolest sounding planes and so fun to watch. They also have some of the navy fighters with fold up wings that look similar to what is in your picture, but I don't know what they are. Either way - lots of fun to go for a ride/fly in one! ~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

Hi Everyone! Razz can answer a lot of the questions regarding this boogie but if you have anything you would like to know specific to Sky Knights as a dropzone or DZ wise relating to this boogie I can help out in answering those questions too. If you have been to this boogie before I am one of the dudes who was cooking and running around all day helping to make things flow. I am also one of the DZ Managers for Sky Knights. So let me know if you have any questions and/or feel free to provide feedback regarding last years boogie as we are in the planning stages of how things are going to operate this year. I'm excited to see all our CRW friends and have some great skydives! Thanks, Derrick ~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 a good rant, so... I'll say it again. As a student (or someone who has never took a First Jump Course) trying to learn anything about how to skydive on the internet is a terrible terrible idea. Take the first jump course make a few skydives get a knowledge base and then come back here. Even then, there is a substantial amount of advice given on this form that is terrible and not going to help you. Need to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff. ~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

As an AFF instructor, I completely disagree with you. There is no reason to put such emphasis on standing a landing up. This is what in most cases leads to broken backs, sprained ankles and a myriad of other injuries. There is nothing wrong with doing a PLF landing. The only reason to stand up your landing is to try and look cool - and you don't look cool when you are being carried off in an ambulance. Standing up landings comes in time with a greater understanding of how parachutes fly. Most people start to figure it out by jump 10-15 some take longer than that and some figure it out sooner but there should be no great emphasis placed on standing it 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

Colin, what part of jumprun isn't working. I don't have any Windows 7 machines to test on so I haven't really seen that problem for myself yet. That said, does the client not install or are you having problems with the backend database stuff? If the client will install, I could prolly walk you through manually setting up the SQL database for the backend. I know quite a bit about how jumprun works because I have done lots of custom programing to go along side it for my dropzone. It's really a simple program and if the client can load, getting everything else working shouldn't be that hard. The only other place I could see some problems coming up is with the database connection. None the less - short of jumprun going away it's a problem that we will have to solve at some point here. ~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

Student parachutes have a lot less horizontal velocity. So even the reduced vertical speed is much more noticeable, and draws your attention more because you're not turf and surfing much. Yeah pretty much. The decent rate is much more matched to the forward speed. It just draws your attention down more. I found myself having to "remember" to keep my eyes out in front of me. Some other people who have lots of jumps took a bit of adjusting to the student canopies from what they normally jump. I guess it's just one of those things that I like to point out to other instructors because we often are so far detached from what it's actually like to fly student gear. ~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 for sure. At my dz we teach all students to always be in PLF position for landing. A PLF landing can be just as soft as a stand up landing, but if it isn't at least you are less likely to be injured. Interesting that it's encouraged that you seek advice from other students and non-insructional staff... we teach the opposite, students on AFF should only get advice from AFF instructors. I don't think that contributed to your problems at all though. If you're having hard landings, you're doing something wrong, but I can't tell you what because I haven't seen you jump. I encourage you to do what the poster above said and speak with a qualified instructor about the issues you're having. Other helpful tips are, do what the radio guy says, but know what to do if you think you're not getting radio commands. Your instructors can help you with knowing what to do. Also, ensure that you are NOT looking down at the ground between your feet when you are coming in to land. You should be looking out ahead of you watching where you are going. Straight on depth perception kicks in much too late to look down at the ground and see how high you are, you need to use different visual cues that you gain from looking out forward in the direction that you are flying. My dz just got brand new student gear and after putting some jumps on it it reminded me why it's so easy to end up looking down too much at the ground. Just fight that urge and keep your eyes out more infront of you rather than straight down. Again, go over this subject with an instructor at your dropzone because your gear is different than mine and so are the things that you have already learned. ~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

and you continue to ignore the fact that Doug runs CSC (a skyride dz) and ProSkydiving. Something to consider is market politics. I run a dz that DOES NOT take shitty skyride certificates. But for what it's worth, it's costing us massive amounts of business and it has cost us lots of experienced jumpers. Honestly, most people who work in the sport don't care where the money they make comes from (im talking at the staff level) because they make so little money anyways that they need what they can get. What Andyman has said is true too, in the greater chicago market, skyride is making a lot of money, they started a whole dz up here basically from it. (Which was subsequently sold to someone else, and they are still making a ton of money) What are we supposed to do about it? There really isn't anything we can do except roll over and lose lots of money for not taking the certificates which is what my dz does, but we don't have mouths to feed since we are a club, we can get away with taking massive losses. The only thing we can really hope for is that the big DZ's like SDAZ can put enough financial pressure on skyride to make them go away. (Edited to add: Just to be 100% clear, I in no way support or condone the actions of Skyride and pretty much hate all that they are and have done to this industry. Wanted to add that because I know how anal and crazy people on here are about picking apart posts. I pretty much hate everything that is skyride, just wanted to point out that it's a situation kinda like you have within driving distance of ASC, there is at least 1 dz here who wouldn't stop taking it, regardless of what everyone else did) (or at least that is my understanding of the situation historically because no one has suggested that the status quot has changed) ~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 managed to make 3 jumps this weekend before winds screwed us, at least one of them i landed on rears only because it had gotten windy to the point where toggles were an unnecessary tool. ~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 time in sport can count for something, but in many cases it doesn't. It's one of those things like jump numbers, that doesn't mean anything as a stand alone number. If I have 2000 jumps as a big way belly flyer, I don't really have a lot of ground to teach someone freeflying. If all I ever do is tandems I probably don't stand to give my opinion on how to be doing 16-way. The same can be said for time in sport. My personal story is that since I started jumping I have been active on these forums and at my dropzone on a daily/weekly basis. I can probably count the number of weekends I have missed at the dz since 2003 on two hands. I get to the dz on friday most weeks and am one of the last ones to leave on sunday. Then I jump a day or two during the week as well. MY time in sport is a lot more valuable than someone who shows up for 3-4 hours one day a week. At least if you are just looking at it on the basis of "years in sport." I have seen my share of dead skydivers, helped to investigate a fatality, run a dropzone, instruct, seen close calls, been part of close calls, went through the "you can't scare me" phase, am in the "be reasonable about shit so I don't get killed" phase, etc etc etc. Many people with the same time in sport might not have done all that. So, it's meaningful, but it might not be. Makes for an interesting topic. That's what makes me like the system that is often employed by jumpers at my home dz. It's more like mentoring. I learned what I needed to know about doing AFF from a local examiner who knew me and could make sure I knew what I needed to pass the course and be a good instructor. When people with fresh ratings or people we don't know show up, it's like a first date, you have to figure out if you like this person or not, get to know them. Except, it's a lot more dangerous in skydiving, so we have to be cautious. Not that everyone is trustworthy, cause I know there are a lot of people out there who just want to make a buck, but some sort of mentoring/recommendation system would be substantially more productive. Sounds pretty backwater and exclusive, but if people were more honorable in the world it would work pretty well. Vouch for those who you trust to have the skill and they proceed. Too bad greed will prevent a system like that from ever being successful. ~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 jump a decently loaded velocity and am in the "have broken neck in freefall club." So I think you could land a parachute with a broken neck, I have done it. For what it's worth I have a vector+skyhook and I don't disconnect them jumping camera. My experience with disorientating things in freefall is that it often takes a while to figure them out and any type of helmet snag is going to end up with me dealing with problems very low. It's also one of the least statistically likely problems that I have to deal with. I am much more likely to have to deal with a spinning malfunction (skyhook works there, seen it many times) or many other things that end up with me having to get a canopy out quick after breakaway. You can't perfectly protect against every situation in skydiving, just like you can't teach a student every single thing and possible combination of problem they might have while skydiving. Your best bet is to try to stack the odds in your favor. Do the things that mitigate the most risk and hope you can deal with the outliers if you have to. So many more problems can be solved with using an RSL/skyhook than with not using it. I don't feel the need to prove myself to anyone and that's why for the most part I jump with safe gear, RSLs, AADs, etc. I'm not afraid to go without them, but I don't cast those things aside to prove anything. Just 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