Liemberg

I wouldn't dream to let any of my FRIENDS do something as trivial as to PAY for something as spiritually rewarding and mind-expanding as SKYDIVING. Just imagine what it would do for my karma. However. I do expect my friends to help me with the cost of keeping the airplane flying... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

No, that's a frumola, which is an abreviation from the German "Früh Morgen Latte"... What the risers are will become clear during your first jump course. Pulling a front riser when you are told to flare will make the world spin for a very short time, just before it smacks you in the face.... The ground is indifferent towards female beauty. This in sharp contrast to fellahs with frumola's... Should you meet instructors that think with their dicks, don't let them do the thinking for you...

Someone once said to me: "Hell, I could teach a monkey how to skydive. Provided that it's a virginal monkey..." I wonder in what category a 'demzel in distress' is placed, that learned how to hook it on the internet, prior to her first jump course. (instructor via radio: "FLARE!" --> Student grabs right front riser and pulls it down as hard as she can...) The best source of video? here; and it's free... Have fun in Mexico. When you catch them starting to refer to you as "gringa loca"... take a step back... (edit - can't spell...) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

He wasn't "using the Cypres as an altimeter", his altimeter got slowed down and then stuck at (I believe / reading on the ground) 4000ft. He was using that altimeter, and his sense of duration, visual clues from the ground etcetera... Had he had an audible warning, the cypres deployment might have been avoided. But of course, that would have made him 'device dependent'. What the outcome of the jump would have been if the cypres wasn't in place remains open to speculation. Let's not forget that this "student" had his sense of duration and knowledge what the ground looked like built in over 1800 jumps and that there was another one present of unknown abilities in the AFF-realm but good enough to produce an excellent film of the whole event, complete with the exit, several turns of the tandempair, two trips up to the drogue and finally the cypres fire @ 2000ft... I want to place an important thing as altitude awareness completely on the student by training. In that training is incorporated an immediate LOUD warning that he failed the most important aspect and therefore has to redo. (as in "hear the beeps in freefall = failed on altitude awareness; hear the beeps while grabbing toggles = well at least that went well, now next time see if we can stop the planet from turning so fast...") Feel free to point out where I said in previous posts that the student now can concentrate 100% on body position and his tasks in freefall, since the audible will warn him that it is time to pull. The audible warns him that this is the last chance to pull and in a few more seconds the AAD may kick in... Of course, that message also comes across when an instructor takes your ripcord away from you or an AAD stops you. However, if the instructor takes your ripcord WHILE THE AUDIBLE SOUNDS, it is instantly clear what happened. The continuous suggestion that bringing the audible into play automatically means doing away with the training is not based on reality. The student isn't "using" satellite navigation systems or diving computers. He is passively undergoing a reminder that he forgot something. The next reminder (if he forgets it a couple of seconds longer) is the AAD. Students are stopped sometimes by AAD's and on these boards we have seen discussions at regular intervals about how long an instructor should chase a student below the hard deck. The consensus seems to be that below 2000ft they are on their own and if they fail to notice they are at the mercy of yet another electronic device. When the student is a graduate with already 30 jumps or so (say around the A-license) and buys and uses the new gadget 'outside your sphere of influence' (since you moved on to the next student while he is graduated and therefore no longer your immediate concern), he may find that they are usually reliable, see everybody jump with one (especially when they are doing "the unstable stuff") and put his complete trust in the audible, pulling when it warns him... That is how you get the incident reports you provided... I'd rather have him in that position with either the knowledge that he has "always nailed it by pulling at least a full second before the audible sounded" or "having had to redo a few jumps and knowing instantly he screwed up"... Further down the road, it is pretty easy NOT to see the instructor being around - floated up maybe a meter as the student is struggling to make a 360 (but doing a 270 or a 540...) followed by looking at the ground, looking at the altimeter and doing a handle touch... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

On the first couple of jumps that's hardly in the students bag-of-tricks other than being able to read the altimeter. If that device slows down or gets stuck, they are not going to experience 'ground rush' the way you or I would below 2000ft... The audible can, from jump one, be presented as a backup for those occasions. Hell, I have seen a video from a cypres save on a tandem with the tandemmaster having more than 1800 jumps at his credit. Reserve went, just as he was getting his first glimpse that there might be 'something rotten in the state of Denmark...' So much for 'altitude awareness'.... (and I am quite sure that he wouldn't have made the cypres-save-video if he had been jumping with an audible set 500ft below his normal wave off...) Well, when they don't save themselves from losing altitude awareness and the BEEP BEEP sounds in freefall, they have to redo the jump. Been looking at any price-lists lately?

That goes for most of us, I gues. But in the not so distant past, having a device that could automatically open the reserve scared the crap out of a lot (if not most) experienced skydivers. Now AAD's are widespread and even mandatory in some places for some categories of jumpers. The fact that it isn't there now and that it has a whole bunch of design parameters that are extremly difficult to meet, doesn't mean it is out of the question. I don't think that a device that can register an opening shock on the main followed by a spinning mal and cutting the loops on both risers above (say) 750 feet and automatically switching of below that altitude, combined with say, a skyhook type setup is inconceivable. Economically viable, marketable, "do we really need this?" etcetera are different questions... Of course, it would violate the K.I.S.S. principle bigtime but compared with say rockets or GPS devices it might be "simple" technology... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

I'm afraid you are misreading me. They always jump a couple of times without one. And if you are realy THAT concerned, give them one but remove the batteries beforehand....after the jump, tell them they made a skydive with a non-functional dytter and survived. Because altimeters nor instructors are infalible. Since, per your words altitude awareness is paramount, what is wrong with an extra device that does that and only that - making a skydiver aware of his altitude, in case he has forgotten? That skydiver made his appointment through a cell phone, found the DZ on the internet and with his car-navigation sytem, had his first tandem filmed on video, pay's for his jumps electronically, jumps from GPS equipped airplanes and has an electronic AAD built into the rig. "OMG - you'll become DEVICE DEPENDENT! Don't you know how dangerous that can be?" If all devices fail, then the plane doesn't come from the ground. Problem solved.

This, of course depends on the emphasis during the ground school. They may not pull if they hear it in freefall during their first ever skydive, but they are certainly going to react when they hear the same sound they heard a few times right after opening while this time they are struggling to stop the planet spinning so fast... Therefore, they are taught to pull BEFORE they hear it. Upon / after graduation, the gadgets is taken away from them and it is up to them if they are willing to buy one for themselves. The benefit is in the feeling of 'security' that, if they get 'carried away' with new freefall stuff there's a good chance they are reminded of the ground coming up. No different from the use that I, myself, make of the gadget. (I have one. Do you have one too?) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Nah, that's completely outdated. Nobody does that anymore. I touch tailwing*) before boarding and stare down at the DZ before exit looking for "the perfect 45 degree angle"... . There used to be a ritual that involved virgins blood, twirling rings and burning chickenfeathers but... O well... (I wonder if I can keep getting away any longer with only replacing broken rubber bands when they actually break during the packjob. Anybody willing to send me some fresh virgins, just to be on the safe side?) *) Briefly touching the tail(wing) before boarding BTW is the best safety ritual anybody ever taught me....

If I had to send my loved ones somewhere and I knew that they were doing 'flocks of tandems' which was noticable through the lack of 'instruction' and the casual attitude they had, I would be a lot LESS worried about their safety than if I saw 45 minutes in the classroom to begin with, followed by tandemmasters and students fully geared up doing extensive briefings on al procedures... I would be thinking: "Dzjeez - if they take time for one and a half hour briefings for something as simple as a tandemjump, they are not doing a lot of them and they are not jumping with passengers on a regular basis... They'd better be careful not to freak that innocent tandempassenger too much - the more stressed he or she is, the more funkier the ride usually becomes..." There IS something to be said for "the minimalistic approach" for that first tandem. If you talk to people for more than an hour and far most of the content isn't essential to do safely what you are about to do, then what's the point? You'll be the only one saving their ass anyway, whatever they decide to do once you leave the door. Might as well try to relax them as good as you can. Getting them overwhelmed with information they don't need and only partly understand isn't going to help there... If they only have to think about one thing that you told them five minutes ago they might do much better than if prior to the jump you took time to discuss in dept the USPA SIM's and Brian Germains "The Parachute and its Pilot" ... I want them to hold their harness and put their feet on my bum on exit. Then on landing, I want them to pick up their feet (grab their kneegrips) and not reach for the ground. See - now you are all briefed - let's skydive!

I saw one person do that and severly burn her hands; so when you are going to slide down along a bunch of nylon strings, be sure to wear gloves. I know of another person doing that and ending up INSIDE his round reserve....

Bill, The examples you give on why it is a bad thing, all have to do with experienced people making a 'conscious effort' to retrain themselves and then in the jump routine takes over. (new EP's, different location of PC, different drill when in the basement...); where is the practice (and therefore the build up of the wrong routine) in showing the gadget, letting hear the sound twice (LOUD: "this is what you DO want to hear, under canopy & MUFFLED: "this is what you DON'T want to hear, in freefall...") and telling it's the back up's back up... If all goes according to plan it is either: 1. Student hears loud beeps as he reaches for his toggles. 2. Student hears loud beeps as you pull him. If he hears them in freefall, well, he just might interpret them the way most of us do when we hear an alarming sound... There IS no routine for the beginners and I'm not suggesting to build one, especially if it is the wrong routine. Drilling students to 'pull when they hear the audible' is a bad idea, yet paradoxically when they are turning on their back and wrestling to become stable at 2500ft and for some reason it is the AFF instructors ultimate bad hair day, loud beeps might just divert their attention from stability towards handles... And the same student you let go in the world, freshly graduated, who sees everybody routinely jump with audibles, will want one for himself and in your absence he may develop precisely the wrong attitude with it. Once he has learned from you that 'pulling on the audible sound' (i.e. pulling on time) means that he has to redo a level the routine will become "must pull BEFORE the beep otherwise one more expensive redo jump" Given that you stated how hard it is to break routines, I find it hard to see the harm in that. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

And it would be up to the instructor to avoid that and get the following etched in the students brain: "My audible could or could not be my last warning; it may or may not sound before I get to low. Now that doesn't look fundamentally different from what instructors tell students about the wonderful workings of AAD's and the benefits of pulling yourself in time... (In fact, if I look inside an old dytter I see something remarkably similar to what I see inside an altimeter or a barometer...) Since no AFF student prior to the first jump already has developed a mental clock / knowledge what the world looks like at their pull altitude, AFF instructors tell AFF students that - for the time being - they should believe what the gadget says when "the time/space continuum gets distorted". In fact, conciously reading the altimeter and shouting /mimicing the altitude to one of the instructors is built into the program. If your brain temporarily looses the connection with your eye and you only produce a blank stare, apparently having no idea what the dial says, most instructors will let you redo that level... Is there anybody that does 'circles of awareness' and lets the student look at the ground and shout / mimic his best 'guesstimate' to the instructor? I don't think so. They are supposed to look at their altimeter as the primary source of altitude information. And although most instructors during briefings also try to build some 'time awareness' into their student so that they at least start with some notion about how long it takes before they will be at their opening altitude, you don't see the students counting or gaze at a chronometer and without doing that no one really has any idea how long 'half a minute' takes... An extra gadget, whatever the limitations may be, could help the student to start a bit more relaxed with the task at hand. Most of us who do use a beeper and use it in the way it should be used, know the triumphant feeling of looking up at your slider coming down, just as the beeps start. We are not supposed to hear it in freefall, prior to separation, prior to getting back 'belly to earth', etcetera... If the instructor is smart enough to understand why this is so, and his students are smart enough to make a skydive anyway, it shouldn't be that hard to get this across, during the ground preparation. IMO when there's nothing wrong with loud beeps for experienced skydivers 500ft below the planned altitude where they should have started to do something (separate, stop working, get belly to earth, pull, whatever..), you might as well incorporate it in the basic training where you have adequate time and attention to explain the benefits and the limitations... If audibles were such an evil thing during AFF, you would never see an AFF instructor ('teaching by example') wear one. The reality is, however, that a lot (if not most) of them use audibles themselves, often set at the 'must get student under canopy' altitude... A student that hears vague beeps in freefall while he is supposed to only hear them loudly on opening / already under canopy will have no problem with the fact that he has to redo this level and just like the rest of us, will apriciate the wake-up call, for this wake-up call beats the one he might get from the AAD that - though a bit more sophisticated - fundamentally works the same and is also part of his student equipment... Of course, once licenced, some students will ignore all the warnings about dead batteries, height induced deafness or simply forgetting the gadget and develop 'device dependency'. But that is not different from students that were taught to inspect their gear prior to putting it on, prior to boarding and prior to exit and yet end up in freefall with uncocked pilotchutes, cutaway pads folded under their webbing or cheststraps not routed properly. Just my $ 0,02... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Can't help but wonder how many others had "watch thread" activated here, following you guys in your chase for the elusive pdf file. (and the faa.gov webmaster wondering where suddenly all this traffic is comming from with people from all over the world downloading some obscure 45mb file about "parachutes?" that in previous times was sought by nobody...) Hats of for councilman24! "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Don't know Wim, but if the cameraflyer is so close during my opening that his burble is influencing my canopy, there are some other urgent matters to discuss with that cameraflyer... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Search forum for user wimdevos Austrian / Dutch rigger has built one and if I remember correctly has something on his website - but I didn't get around to saving the link. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Now lets picture him doing that again with a passenger up front and a drogue trailing behind.... I would imagine that a lot of us, when confronted with an opening container 'to close for comfort' would roll, flip, turn - whatever it takes to not get hit in the head and certainly not grabbing anything. With some skill and some luck, we might save the day - though it isn't clear what the fractions would be between skill and luck. With the restrictions you have when doing tandem you are into the 100% luck realm, when you get away with the same scenario. When I want my kicks purely from 'rolling the dice' I go to the casino. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Make that: No one with a passenger strapped in front and a drogue trailing behind could react fast enough to avoid a premature happening underneath them. There is simply no possibility for him to get out of the way in a split second, even if he reacts fast enough. And there are four arms, four legs and a drogue... The problem isn't RW with a tandem. Also the problem isn't sitflying next to the tandem while holding hands with the passenger. The problem isn't "all hybrids being inherently unsafe"... The problem is the guy hanging on to the passenger. That is not the place to be when you put some extra stress on your reserve ripcord housing and maybe find out that the cable lenght and/or free movement isn't right... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Since you don't get a bottle anymore nowadays and I'm a lousy bookkeeper anyway I'm not sure - never kept track... I DO remember my most memorable one: couple of years ago at the beginning of the season I packed my own rig's reserve and then packed the main afterwards. As I was standing with the 'finished' main over my shoulder the phone rang, so I 'carefully' laid the canopy down, handled the phone call, had another chat with somebody and resumed the packjob where I left it... (Don't try this @ home - this is a trained professionals mistake!!!) Two days later, after the first jump of the season, I look up and see my left steering lines half way in front of my canopy, distorting the three cells on the left. Definetly Unlandable! Just as definetly caused by my own packing error... I'll always remember that the moment I cut away I was thinking: "Shit - I hope I was paying more attention, when I put that reserve in..." Apparently I did.

It beats young, death, dum' and full of unused cum in every aspect, me thinks... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Only crazy people start to screw around with their main canopy, once it is open...

I Dunno, somehow I DO like the enigma which is created ... , especially for future forum searchers.... Of topic:

There's always Paratec Next, Performance Variable Omega or Parachutes de France Atom (and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few...) Once I purchased through the classifieds one of Mr. Booth's, Mr. Strong's or Mr. Sherman's fine tandemrigs and use them for whatever purpose I see fit outside of the USA, well, there's not much either of them can do about it. Other than that, most TI's anywhere in the world agree on the 'no go area' above and below the tandem. Not because of lawsuits but because of real world (added) dangers... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

That's a snap value judgement! Nurse Ratched said specifically they were forbidden in group therapy! "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

No straightforward answer possible to that one. But clicking once on the link in your signature line gives most of us a clue, I would think... BTW 'snap value judgements' happen all the time, everywhere - just because in real life often there isn't time to get to the bottom of things. If I were in need of an imidiate 'skydiving safety snap value judgement' (because I had to make a "go/no go" type decision) I would take Stratostars over yours in a heartbeat. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...