thelem

It varies a lot country by country too. For example Javelins are popular world wide, but I'm sure they are more popular in the states than elsewhere. The Teardrop is popular in the UK, but I'm told its almost unheard of in the states. In the next couple of years, I can see the Aerodyne Icon becoming popular (partly because of the success of their canopies), and also Relative Workshop's Vector 3, because of the Skyhook system.

Cool. Well one thing certainly hasn't changed - we are still making the students wear badly fitting orange boiler suits :)

Have you got them in a better format for the internet? Such as jpeg?

It varies from dropzone to dropzone and from person to person anyway. At my DZ you will either go to the off licence and buy a crate of beer, or put some money behind the bar and ring the bell to signify that there are free drinks available from the bar - you choose what you want to order. I think that is what happens at a lot of UK dropzones

Just buy them all a beer, I'm sure they'll be happy with that.

A related question - Define "Sequential" Does one person changing grip make it sequential? Does every jumper need to take a different grip?

But I have spoken to other instructors at my dropzone who have conflicting advice, so who am I to believe? I chose to seek more opinions. Judging by the responses it is not totally clear cut (although reserve only seems to be a bit more popular).

I'm still unconvinced. Until I've had a few more mals, I would rather keep one reserve procedure. Yes, it may only take a fraction of a second to think exactly what I need to do, but then cutting away should take less than a second too. If you practice a reserve-only drill, that also increases the chance that you will pull the reserve without cutting away when you needed too. Also, if I had a total, I don't think I would be confident enough in that split second to decide if it was absolutely total, or if I had my pilot chute partly out of the pocket or something. I've started a poll on this subject, it will be interesting to see what other people think.

In the thread "Should you wait between cut-away and reserve?" (http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1275289;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread) there has been some discussion about reserve procedures after a total mal (ie absolutly nothing deployed, for example if you couldn't find your main handle). So far the arguments for cutting away seem to be: * Simplier to have only one reserve procedure * If the main does come out, it is better for it to already be cut away. And the arguments for going straight for your reserve: * Saves time by not cutting away So, what would you do and why?

That is definatly not a golden rule, and conflicts with most of the advice I have been given. If I had a total mal, then I would first cut away and then go for my reserve, because: 1. It means my reserve drills are consistant, I don't waste time thinking "now which reserve drill should I do in this situation" 2. Deploying the reserve could cause the main to depoly - at which point it is better if it is already cut away. The most obvious situation where the main could deploy is a pilot chute in tow (if you count this as a total, if not - point 1). In that situation, emptying the reserve tray could reduce pressure on the main and allow it to clear.

I don't believe that I would have the time to look at my alti, decide if I was too low and make a decision to pull my reserve, so I'd probably go for my main.

I tried loads of different things to slow down my Triathlon. Then someone advised me to change to micro-bungies. Since I did that my openings have been much better. (does that read like one of those bad adverts to you?)

I agree, get as far as you can now - it will leave you less to do next year. Also, is there any posibility of traveling to another dropzone to do a significant number of jumps (one or two probably isn't worth it if you need to get used to different procedures etc)?

Its great for doing 4-way out of, and I think 8-way is fine too. The problems only come with camera wings / birdman (too little descent when leaving the plane) and larger formations with running divers (potential stall, tail popping up).

But static line students are often not very aware of what is happening in freefall - because they have so little experience of it. They will probably be looking for the horizon, but not know what it should look like at pull altitude. Remember a 10 second delay is probably the first time they have pulled belly to earth. If it was her first 15 second delay, then she would be expecting it to take longer, easily up to 20 seconds just by inaccurate timing. A bit of instability could easily distract her for 10 seconds. If it was her first pull-on-alti jump, then maybe she got obsessed looking at her alti and for some reason couldn't read it.

I don't think they are trying to prevent americans from using their products, they are just saying that if you do happen to get your hand on one and something happens, then its nothing to do with them.

I've not really got the jump numbers for me to give advice like this based on practical experience, but I am the sort of person who follows the recommended jump numbers. Sure there are jumpers who do things before they are ready and get away with it. Many people will then look at these jumpers and say "they were ok, so you'll be fine" when in fact the original jumper was just lucky. Also remember jump numbers are only a guide to ability and don't take into account things like tunnel time and what you did on each of those jumps.

We had a BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) weekend. I'm sure any DZ that can match that will get very busy.

The problem has always been that you can't do FS inside a stadium, I don't know why CRW isn't an olympic sport though, its quite cool to watch. Maybe lack of competitors? I also think if they were able to get good air-to-ground radio links for video cameras it could be really exciting, although landing areas could be a problem. You could have several small planes (4 or 8 way + camera), all at altitude at the same time. Someone would signal to all the groups to exit at the same time and you could relay their videos to big screens in the stadium. Some of the skydivers could then land in the stadium (probably couldn't get everyone landing there though). There are probably several holes in that plan, but I think its a nice idea anyway. Swooping does show potential to become an olympic sport though, which should be interesting. Question there is do we want to encourage wuffos to focus on swooping? Would that lead lots of people to take up skydiving just so they could learn to swoop? If it did, would these people be patient enough to wait until they are skilled enough to start swooping? We don't want to increase the already high death toll due to people swooping when they don't know how to properly.

With the skydivers or the computer geeks? I'm not saying there aren't women, black people or working/upper class people who skydive or who are computer geeks, but in my experience both tend to be in at least two of the classes I mentioned.

Typical skydiver: White, middle class male. Typical geek: White, middle class male. (and of course on here you'll get even more).

Actually, I wasn't trying to counter your post - I just picked 30 because it was a round number. The UK also makes it harder for older skydivers. Anyone over 40 needs to get their doctor to say they are fit for it, and there is an upper age limit for starting AFF or RAPS training (60?).

I was 18 when I started, and the majority of the RAPS and AFF students at my dz are under 30 (many of them are current military too, which probably reduces the average age). The tandems are all ages though.

I'm assuming you mean throwaway (throwout/pinpull is where you have a normal pilot chute packed inside the container) I'm still trying to work out what happened on your jump though. You pulled the toggle and held on to it, nothing happened. Then you went for your handles, but surely you were still holding your pilot chute at this point, why didn't that stop you from pulling your cutaway?

The whole door is designed so that, on exit, each of its sides are vertical. The step under the door frame is also designed to be horizontal on exit, and means that the floaters' feet don't get in the way of the divers on exit. I've attached a (rather out of focus - sorry) photo of the 750XL at Cark in the UK