Fast

I think this is a good point and totally agree. ~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 am with Dave on this. I have posted in other threads on here like this where the person is "shopping" around the country looking for a cheap place to run out to and get an A license. In 99% of cases, it's not worth it. The bottom line is that, you want to have an idea who the people are at your home dz. You want a relationship with the staff at your dz who are going to be the ones helping you decide what gear isn't a ripoff. You want to be around and figure out what rigger to use. You want to get to know people so that when it comes time to get on a load they have some faith in who you are and what you can do. You want to have some friends to hang out with after jumping, be it someone you took class and learned with or the instructors and other jumpers at the dz. I mean, I understand not wanting to throw money away, but in most cases the little bit extra you would spend (once you factor in all your costs) to just stay at home and learn from someone close by, is worth it 10 times over. Skydiving isn't cheap, but again, if you get to know the locals, you might find more ways to pay for jumping, working for the dz, etc etc etc... In the long run, unless you have a ton of money to be traveling all the time (which if you are looking to do something as cheap as possible, you don't) the people you are going to skydive with are the ones at the dropzones closer to where you live. Part of me even thinks that spending the money on your dz close to home benefits you even more because, you're supporting the locals who wouldn't exist without student business. See, this stuff has huge trickle down effects. Fwiw, my dropzone will finance a student to get his A license, but that fact isn't plastered all over our website because we don't really want people showing up from all over the country looking for that deal. It's a way of helping out people who are going to be jumping with us hopefully for years to come. 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

Yeah I agree with this sentiment quite a bit. ~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

The number of people killed or seriously injured in BASE is most likely substantially higher based on the number of participants and jumps made a year compared to swooping. On my DZ alone there are 10+ people who do some form of swooping and only 3ish base jumpers. We make hundreds more swoops a year than they do base jumps. This comes back to the same old argument of driving vs. skydiving. Just cause only 20 some people are killed every year skydiving and thousands a year die in car crashes it doesn't make skydiving safer. (Many many many more people drive cars) ~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

+1 Yeah man... UGH. That type of flying isn't acceptable at my dz for video to be sold to a customer. Overall lots of things I don't like about how the videographer worked that situation. Pretty rough landing, wont comment on that cause shit happens, but ugh. ~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 have one of these lenses. I mostly use it for AFF. It's basically amazing cause I can see the entire student in frame while still holding on to them. The only place I could see this being used in tandem video is for handcam. It also has niche uses for when you are looking for very specific shots, but most of the time that isn't what people are looking for. I think you can get some cool shots of people swooping with it 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 dunno, I have a different opinion. I think that the lighter loaded canopys aren't a totally bad choice for learning to swoop. If you make a mistake you are more likely to be injured vs. killed. I learned to swoop on a saber 170 @ 1.3 and started double fronts around 200 jumps. You just have to know what your personal limits are and be reasonable about them. I have had my share of close calls, like anyone else. Just have to work hard to stay out of that area. FWIW, on my saber150 people thought I was going to die. The people doing all the bitching didn't know a whole lot about swooping though and were mostly used to seeing people swoop velos. So yeah, my 450ft turns looked pretty damn low. The swoopers on the other hand did a good job making sure i was being reasonable. Anyways thats my $.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

If i was making millions of dollars scamming consumers all across the country, pulling a few $100 out of the drawer every weekend to build up a local base of people who will think I am the best person in the world and spew it all over the place would be worth it. My DZ buys beer and food sometimes too and we are scraping by most of the time. ~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

The pretty graphical chart that USAirnet provides is just a graphical front to a text based forecast from the National Weather Service. I mean, i guess they can get it wrong like anyone else, but at least in my area the NWS/NOAA guys seem to get things pretty close. ~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 are doing it at our dz. I found a couple of free utilities for making it easy to convert the video to a web acceptable format. Our output files are around 35mb for a tandem video. All of our editors use NL editing and output a file from that software to use to burn to a dvd. At the end of an editing session for however many videos they have they batch it through one of the utilities then they just upload it to a web application that i created and assign it to a student. From there the rest of the process of getting the content to a flash/h.264 media hosting company, ensuring that the content is ready and available for the customer to view on our website and emailing the customer is totally automated. We don't charge customers for this, it's an added benefit of choosing our dropzone and buying a video. Our typical workflow has a DVD in the mail arriving at the customer in about a week. In many cases though, the online video is up right away. After they watch it online the buttons are there to email it to anyone they want or share it on facebook, or basically anywhere. Lets all their friends see what a good time they had. So their friends click the link to watch the video and... there they are on our website able to book a jump, buy a certificate or just get more information about us and skydiving. It's really cool. ~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

if carryon is going to get banned, then airlines are going to have to start offering an insurance options for baggage. I refuse to check my rig and cameras. They are worth too much money to me to become lost baggage. ~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

Felt the need to comment on this. With the velocity, it isn't that you weren't going fast enough. I can only speak for the non-pro level swooping that I do (I'm not doing 450s, etc) but in my experience as fast as I can make that canopy go with 270s it doesn't ever plane out on it's own. Input is always required to get level flight. If I crank a 270 and then do nothing it just dives for awhile untill it has slowed down to normal flight. it's the concept of a "negative" recovery arc that people always talk about on here. I think the term negative isn't great, but it doesn't have a positive recovery arc like your crossfire does. (I fly a V103 and a XF2-129 in my rigs.) Hope that helps, stay safe.

You don't really seem like you're looking advice cause you aren't listening to the guy who has them and says they suck. What kind of goggles are you wearing now that they fog up? I wear flex-z goggles cause they are comfortable. Put some anti-fog shit on there if you have to, but mostly just hold them open/off your face before it's time to get out. If you are wearing goggles with no vents in them it's no wonder they are fogging up. I haven't heard of anyone having goggles fog that badly under canopy. There is so much air moving around and coming through the goggle holes I don't know how that would happen. BUT if that really is the case, I think a drill bit to add a few extra vent holes is a much better idea than wasting $150 on some goggles that are too bulky, look dumb and you just don't need. That's my slightly crabby $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

Thanks man, I just noticed that and will look into it. Appreciate the reply. How does that joke go? If you want to have a million dollars running a dropzone, start with 5 million? Haha... Anyways... i will offer just this one peice of advice, expect this to be about 100 times more involved and require 100 times more work than you are thinking now... Then it will probably be more. That's all I have to add. ~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

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Deluxe-Backpack-200EG-Cameras/dp/B00009R6TA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1258652539&sr=8-1 That's smaller and wont hold a laptop, but if you don't need a laptop bag, this is a great alternative too. I really like mine. ~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

+ 1 j Here is the answer from basically the DZO. We know about it, we know we don't have super great relations with the fire department, we're trying to fix it. Mike - Please don't go over there asking questions. We don't need the help right now with this matter. Also, if any of the moderators read this, it would be nice if someone could edit the city name out of the main post of this thread. I don't want this showing up in google searches. The reason that we have such a poor relationship with the fire department stems primarily from the fact that skydivers don't behave very well at accident scenes. I think that this goes pretty much for the general public as a whole though. From the huge crowd of people who have to come gawk at the person stuck in a tree, to the people who's "friend" just got hurt and wont leave the accident scene to those who know what they are doing, to the dude who said to the firemen "you guys don't know what you're doing, why don't you let me drive that truck." We have a reasonable idea of what we are dealing with and want to have a good relationship with these people, but it's challenging at this point. It's a volunteer fire department and in general changing people's views of us is hard. They don't want to understand what we do or why we jump from planes, so we need to start by not being giant assholes to them every time they have to come out and help us. Going over there and questioning them about parachutes painted on a firetruck isn't going to help. (And yeah, they do have them painted on there. I honestly have no confirmation of what they mean, but what indyz said is most likely true because there are more of them than people who have ever died at our DZ) ~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

Symettry works like he said, and also it's considered "countering" because you are counter acting the effect of moving your right hand back and out of the airflow. Some combination of those two things are how I teach it to students. ~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 biggee right there. Expand your awareness, learn to "read" another jumper's body position, build in more altimeter checks than you normally do and link those checks to specific things happening on the skydive. These skills can be practiced on any jump. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest spending an equal amount of time focusing on the ground stuff as you do on the air stuff. Any monkey can be a bulldog in freefall; it's a bit harder to learn how to teach effectively so you don't have to be a bulldog in freefall. Assist in more FJC's than the cert card requires. Shadow the best AFFI's on your dz when they are doing ground preps and debriefs. Read the ISP - better yet, KNOW the ISP forward and backward. Definitely do some practice jumps (preferably with an AFF I/E or evaluator), but also do some practice ground evals (Cat C and Cat D) before you go to a course. Good luck. I like this post. I probably did 20ish practice jumps with an evaluator just working on spin stops, rollovers and "what did the student do on this skydive" stuff. Prior to that I had done a lot of 4-way RW and camera flying so my RW skills were pretty solid. I spend a TOn of time doing ground preps with practice students. In the end I found that it made for me being a much better instructor than if I just did the least amount that I could have to prepare. ~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

BAD IDEA Don't do this. Figure out how to advance your career and skydive or put the skydiving on hold. ~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

FYI if you are running firefox, you need to open this with IE. And I am also getting this error: ERROR SUMMARY Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log. * An exception occurred while downloading the manifest. Following failure messages were detected: + Downloading file:///C:/Users/skymarshal/Desktop/Application Files/FreeFallXBAP_1_0_0_13/FreeFallXBAP.exe.manifest did not succeed. + Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\skymarshal\Desktop\Application Files\FreeFallXBAP_1_0_0_13\FreeFallXBAP.exe.manifest'. + Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\skymarshal\Desktop\Application Files\FreeFallXBAP_1_0_0_13\FreeFallXBAP.exe.manifest'. + Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\skymarshal\Desktop\Application Files\FreeFallXBAP_1_0_0_13\FreeFallXBAP.exe.manifest'. PLATFORM VERSION INFO Windows : 6.0.6002.131072 (Win32NT) Common Language Runtime : 2.0.50727.4200 System.Deployment.dll : 2.0.50727.4016 (NetFxQFE.050727-4000) mscorwks.dll : 2.0.50727.4200 (NetFxQFE.050727-4200) dfshim.dll : 2.0.50727.4016 (NetFxQFE.050727-4000) ~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

He does yeah - you wouldn't catch me doing 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

Haha yeah I like that! As for me, i dock on tandems sometimes and have never had a problem with ending the dock on even the most deathgrip driven student I have jumped with. You really have a lot of leverage to get them to let go of you. The TI not so much which is why I think it's more sketchy when a student somehow grabs a TI. Still it comes down to grabbing them in the right way and honestly I stick mostly to like a high-five or something similar. ~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

How about every DZ that has hosted Nationals before this year? If this was a boogie at a DZ, like Summerfest at SDC, I wouldn't expect them to allow a windblade from a competing DZ. They would allow it, but if they didn't I would understand that. Summerfest is a for-profit venture put on by SDC, and anyone who doesn't like is free to go to Lost Prarie, or some other boogie. You've made my point quite well. The DZ will profit off of those improvemnts for years to come, the same improvements paid for in part by sponsors, the same sponsors who are placing limitations on the competitors. And shit, I wish I had thought of the Knights. What are you going to do with them? Their whole game plan is to advertise and recruit for the Army, and they have windblades, and tents up the wazoo. Who's going to tell them no? Somebody better tell them no. I agree. It would be one thing if it was a boogie. This isn't a boogie, it's the nationals. I could understand offering a premium spot or advertising space on the dropzone for major event sponsors and limiting where anyone else can have their logo'd tents or whatever they want to do (so long as it's part of a sponsored team). But telling the teams to go fuck themselves is a really shitty move in my opinion. ~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 and also really wish that we had something in place for dealing with these situations. In a recent fatality that I was involved with investigating, we were the 3rd or 4th group of people who were allowed to see the gear after it had been handled and messed with by the previous parties who have no experience with parachute equipment. We were also denied the right to see the on scene photos of the accident by the primary police department heading up the investigation in order to "protect us" from the "gruesome" scene. In the end, we were told that we won't ever be allowed to have any part of any investigation. We won't ever get allowed on the scene of a "murder"(and that's the exact word used) and we are "crazy." So the really sad part about it is that, if someone goes in by us, we're fucked when it comes to finding out what happened. Just a real shame to lose a person and then not be able to learn anything from it to help someone down the road. Honestly it would be great if there was some kind of FAA guidlines that were pushed down to local authorities that detailed what needs to be done in the case of a parachuting accident. Something so far as a list of things to check for, who to contact and some guidance on "if you don't understand this ask xyz for help" The preliminary evidence gathering from these types of accidents isn't overly complicated. I could name off a reasonable list of things that need to be looked for right away to prevent loss of evidence. In the end, the sad part of this is that the police are mostly worried about making sure someone wasn't murdered and they are also not in any position to know that. Most of the evidence that could prove something like that is in fact destroyed because they don't know what they are doing with us and our gear. Just really sucks. ~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 know honestly. What I do know is that we have had people call up to book with us because "they couldn't handle our group" or "they were already booked." We book up too, but can handle many more people a day so as the days get shorter we don't book up as fast. That's all. I am sure you will have a great time wherever you go. ~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