Liemberg

Since I'm all that too, but prefer to call it 'well seasoned' what I do is basically the same as what Rob does. The only difference is that in a C182 I'm already om my knees during hook-up, since I'm so old that I find it almost impossible to tip over the balance/get upright if I start out on my bum. I find it easier to start on my knees - but my knees are still good. Superior landing skills that my knees can still do this after all these years? Nah - I always use the passenger to take most of the impact. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Sky Performance... (OMG - I am in a philosophical mood tonight, aint I?) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Why do you think so? Then again, "what would live be without an occasional crater party?" Hey everybody - there's a skydivers fund for tsunami victims in Thailand (You Check It Out - got internet havn't you?) Give graciously...whatever you can spare... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

What if you lose control over the situation? (Yeah, I know - don't lose control...) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

On your first ever tandem as a passenger? Just let him count to thirty, lose count underway and then start all over again - enjoy the ride! "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

[anarchistic mood] Nah - learn as much as you can on the internet! Be prepared! Keep watching them bad movies! Let that instructor work for his money! [/anarchistic mood] Sorry - happens sometimes. You think I got a naughty streak somewhere?

Well - let's see. In 1995 the Ameland municipality offered the Russian State Circus that was touring Europe / the Netherlands part of their huge airport as a place for their July / August 'summer camp' So there we were, with a circus at the DZ. (Every other morning we walked up there to hug an elephant - but that's a different story) One day a new Static line course went up for their first jump and as they do, they came back all happy and smiling and excited and full of 'shit there I was'-stories. This one guy however proved to be a complete lunatic and we seriously started to doubt his mental capabilities: "Shit there I was, under canopy , looking out over the island and the dunes. What an amazing sight! And then there were all these ostriches chasing each other through the dunes - truly amazing!" (Ostriches? In the dunes? In the Netherlands? This guy lost it somehow - better keep an eye on him...) Later that evening in the local pub: "You noticed the excitement with the circus people running through the dunes this afternoon? The ostriches had escaped - they had a chase that lasted three hours before they re-captured them..."

I was just about to suggest that, but you beat me to it.

Anybody pregnant then?

Fine. Once actual data prove experts to be wrong, they stand corrected. But - in all walks of life - with lack of actual data what the majority of experts say is what is usually done. Why is that, you think? Poorly thought out cures could be the only cures available right now. (But I doubt that is the case here...) If the poorly thought out cure only cures part of the disease, at least it is a start. Doing nothing - waiting for better crunchable data - doesn't appeal to me. During the first thirteen years of my skydiving career, people going in under fully functional canopies were simply unheard of. That sure has changed. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

But (AFAIK) jump numbers are incorporated in license levels. Anyone out there who has an A license without making 25(?) jumps. B-licence without 100(?) jumps (sorry - not that familiar with the USPA system - but in Holland for a license, among other things you have to have a certain number of jumps and a certain level of accuracy when landing...) With these things (IMO) its a bit "you have got to start somewhere" with refinment comming into place once good data becomes available - if ever. However a license could be part of the proposal also... If I were to make a wild guess - the number of times you landed successfully under different circumstances should count for something. The (scarse) data in Holland (& for myself what I have seen happen at my own place) seems to point out in the direction of a relationship between jumpnumbers and screwing yourself when landing. (Some people are pretty sharp in freefall, others show superior control under canopy...) Now there's not enough data to let good old Poisson do his magic, so the next best thing would be "What do the guys who have watched all these landings think?" "What is the paradigma - what is the concensus?" I'm afraid you'll find most of them thinking in the direction I pointed out. We maybe wrong. But WE are gambling with our livelyhood - others are gambling with their hobby and the freedom they find in it... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

I dunno about this 'First man down' rule - in fact I don't like it. At my place the first man down often is the 'Velocity 104' guy who loads his toy above 2 and often makes down-wind landings training for the swoop tour. I'm not happy with all the other lemmings following him since most of the time he is well on his way to the packing area, by the time the others are on final... Tunnel vision, miscalculated flares... What I am trying to build (but I stink at building) is a tetrahedron that needs more than 3 meters of wind before it starts to change direction. Should be resting on a pole and 'follow the wind' but only if the windchange is significant enough to turn it. That way you get a 'fixed' landing direction against the last known wind direction and probably no eratic changes during a group landing. Now if the first man down decides to ignore it, others don't have to (and it may be that he gets a public flogging ) Seems like the only viable solution to me. (Then again, I'm situated on a large piece of real-estate and islands are - well - windy...) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Yet before you can move there, it may be better to first draw the 'final conclusion' about a generic proposal which could be formulated as: 1. Mandatory wing load restrictions relating to jump numbers should be incorporated in the USPA BSR's, just as they are in the BSR's of several other countries. 2. They should constitute a bare minimum - later in the discussion to be formulated. 3. Formulating this bare minimum should be done by a 'group of peers' who have in common that they both have extensive experience in training / educating skydivers in handling their canopies AND bearing the end responsibility for the safe conduct of a skydiving operation. 4. Once this bare minimum has been established it can only be waived through an educational program specifically directed towards canopy control. 5. Such a canopy control program ("Landing-survival after the skydive university"? tm) should also incorporate specific TASKS a candidate must perform in order to have the waiver signed. 6. For practical reasons skydivers with canopies exceeding the 'to be formulated minimum' can have them 'grandfathered' IF they owned AND jumped the canopy before the date this motion is passed. 7. The board will appoint a committee to work out the specifics of this proposal. The committee will report back to the board within three months with a specific proposal that sees upon: A. Canopy classes / wing loadings and required minimum experience level B. The aforementioned specific TASKS a candidate must perform to get this rule waived. Now if you guys could get your board to pass such a motion and appoint a committee you are moving beyond making remarks in cyberspace and discussing the ins and outs of statistics with Dorkie and Kelpdiver ... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Since one of you asked in PM "What is a Kevin? Why did Saskia call this a Kevin?" while probably others only wondered but didn't want to look stupid:

Did one with my wife, eight with my kid...

On dutch news television this morning. Was that smart? Probably not. Now lets see how many more people visit my dz's website today compared to a normal tuesday BTW: two years ago almost exactly the same happened at my place with a 26 year old... (i.e. hurt his arm on exit and was not able to steer with both arms or make a good flare...) So... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

What I teach from jump one on and how to discern between types of malfunction can best be described as a decision-tree. With any type of student training there is a point that the opening of the parachute is supposed to happen, be it through a hand-deployed thrown, a ripcord pulled or a Static-line pulling the direct bag from ones back. (Most of you know the feeling…) Here comes decision nr. 1: once I have counted – one thousand, two thousand, three thousand there are two possible outcomes: I’m either stopped or I continue falling. When I continue falling – given the historical lack of successful freefall rigging – my options are both limited and beautifully simple: start pulling handles (in the right order) until you are under a parachute or out of handles… Most of the time, at the first fork in the road, we are stopped. Now we look up and see if that what is stopping us is landable. Looks like the second decision to me… “Is it a parachute or is it a Kevin?” The parachute – for the time being – seems to function (hey, it stopped my freefall didn’t it?) but does it so, wholeheartedly? Now you may call that semantics, but close to the ground there may be turbulence, obstacles in the way and one thing is for sure: if I cut this thing away I would better do so at an altitude that leaves enough time for my reserve to open – otherwise …† That’s what I teach about the partiality of the phenomenon. Once the second parachute turns out to be a Kevin - as we have seen happen recently - all bets are of but let us not make the mistake of landing a Kevin when we have enough time to get rid of it. And since an ounce of precaution is better than a ton of cure, lets not turn perfectly good parachutes into Kevin’s. (A word of warning against Canopy Relative Work? Nah…) Of course, before cutting anything away that is stopping our freefall we could try to convince the parachute to do its job. The twist might come out (easier when we jump docile canopies) once the twist comes out the slider might come down, stimulated to do so by our nice control-line massage and those end cells may open when we fly the canopy a couple of seconds in deep brakes. Then again, all this might not happen – but hey, time flies when you are having fun, so I would better keep track of it by glancing my altimeter when my parachute still isn’t square, stable and steerable. And remember: the lack of success of under canopy rigging is only surpassed by …

Remains to be seen. If you think that your job is to get everybody into the air, no matter what - then indeed you failed. If you believe your job can also be to help somebody find out something about themselves he / she isn't able to find out alone, before the course, may be you did an excellent job... My definition of failure would be: This student had written FEAR all over. Gave every possible signal he wasn't up for the job. I talked him into it against his own better judgment. Student ran into minor problem, freaked out, panicked and got hurt. If you are not doing tandem, once their main starts to open, they are on their own. They might open a reserve into a streamering main. They might cut-away at 300ft to counter a headwind problem. They may try if buildings go out of their way when they land, screaming "LOOK OUT , LOOK OUT!!!" In the final analysis it is the student, not the instructor that counters and overcomes the students fears. If in the door you ask the ritual question ("Are you ready to skydive?") you want the answer to be "yes!" but if the other answer ("uhm...eh...NO!") was not possible, what is the point of the question? Hey, they may become happy and successful pro-golfers once YOU point them in the right direction.

"Poisson - my first love!"

Questionable (the 2 minutes to impact when the airplane is out of control @ 2000ft ). I used to think the same until I encountered a film a couple of years ago of a C206 crash. Things went wrong at 3500ft (premature opening) airplane experienced C of G problem (apparently to many people towards the tail). Incident happened to be filmed from the ground. (Someone filming the first student exiting...) From deploying canopy until impacting airplane took less than 25 seconds... If airplanes don't fly, they can come down extremly fast! "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

The fact that you - with that many jumps and fully aware by now about the thousand things that could go wrong - are willing to give it a try with another living person strapped to you... That IS the stupidity test!

(Mr. Booth - if you are still reading this, please don't ) One of the funiest I ever saw was a passenger wearing a rig of his own, who planned to make a 'jump from the tandem' (release the hooks after deployment of the tandemcanopy. Climb on TI's shoulders. Shout 'Mr Bill!' and jump of...) He did not manage to release the shoulderhooks and had to stay where he was. I'll never forget the look on his face as he looked over his shoulder when the they were landing...

You build it, We'll jump it. "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Yes, an English girl in Australia - but I don't think reversed risers was the only issue there... Supposedly, low drag mals (bag lock etc.) might get stuck when you are (slightly) headdown during the cutaway. With the harness rings in the right place as is the case with rigs designed for reversed risers, like the Atom it seems a non issue. Just remember (when swapping canopies) the risers belong to the rig, not to the parachute! Normal 'non-reversed' risers don't have this issue and the reason for reversed risers has gone since there are better building techniques for normal risers than there were when reversed risers were invented. Don't know if the French found out about that, already... "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...

Make that dzoATskydiveaggieland.com (Unless you want to buy viagra, cheap...) "Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci A thousand words...