yoink

This thread has long since lost any worth except to other beginners. JWest will always think he's exceptional... I started off by saying that I think 200 jumps isn't necessarily a great metric, and that a dedicated coaching course would be better. I'm now revising that - it's not necessarily skill that 200 jumps gets you. It's also experiential maturity, and that only comes from time spent skydiving. No amount of book learning makes up for it. So to them - the future beginners in the sport: On one side you have someone with basically no experience skydiving claiming one thing with few supporters to back him up. On the other side you have (conservatively) 100 years and 50,000 jumps of collective skydiving experience in all disciplines and ratings. YOU choose who to pay attention to... And perhaps a less obvious point that JWest may have missed - this is a small sport. People tend to have only 2 or 3 connections between anyone. If you start getting a reputation as 'that guy' on a DZ or even on a forum, don't be surprised if it follows you around for many years and limits some of your options.

love it.

It used to be called toggle-whipping. And we worked out that there are much safer ways to increase your speed for landing...

Again, I think you're giving poor advice. If you have an issue at 500ft, you're in the shit, no denying it. But there's a spectrum of things you can do there and some are worse than others. Assuming you do not have a MARD in your rig The BEST thing you can do is fire your reserve. That's when you start praying. If you choose to continue that into a canopy transfer, that's up to you. One of the WORST things you can do is cutaway and then pull silver as you suggested. Putting yourself back into freefall at 500ft has a near 0 survivability.

If this is true, it's one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while. The solution to that problem is educational. Not to constrain reserve deployment conditions.

You didn't suggest a canopy transfer though. You said "So I think that I personally would take the risk to cutaway and pull the reserve at 500 ft." Cutaway and reserve pull is NOT a canopy transfer and would most likely end badly at 500ft. We need to communicate clearly if we teach that as a potential solution. Low canopy transfer - maybe. Low cutaway - NO.

She's a pathological attention whore and you lot are just feeding her psychoses. Quit feeding the Troll!

Are there instances where it's necessary? Sure, if your only other options are unavoidable obstacles. In most cases like thatI think a braked turn would serve you better though. I'd say that s-turns (and by that I mean big 180 degree swings one way and then another) are the tool of a student. Once you've got even a little experience there are better ways to predict and control your landing. To see an experienced jumper using them smacks not only of piss poor planning, but also a lack of awareness of others. The risk associated with them increases dramatically when you use them in a landing pattern with other experienced jumpers due to the unexpectedness of them - we know students are capable of anything so stay away from them in the air but if I'm landing in an experienced landing area then I expect others to behave predictably. That lets me fly safely... You have no problem driving fast next to another car on the freeway, but would you do it if you knew they might make sudden shifts in direction? To my mind the only legitimate use of them is in accuracy comps with accuracy style canopies, which very few people do or have any more.

If we did everything perfectly the first time life would be pretty boring, no? Congrats on your first AFF jump! Take pride in that!

The problem wouldn't be the BASE jumpers. The problem would be the same as it is now - 100 jump wonders who think they know a lot more than they actually do, seeing highly experienced people with a tonne of gear knowledge pulling at 800ft and all of a sudden that's the cool thing to do and they're on a race to be able to do it too... In a few years it's the new camera situation. People pulling low on BASE rigs without the appropriate skill set to do it safely because they're sure they have the skills to do it, and all you guys who have put hundreds of hours into learning about how it works are just old fuddy-duddies who just want to hold them back. Soon after, BASE canopies start to be replaced with 220 Navigators, then 190PDs then 150s etc etc.. The problem with experts making exceptional rules is that they forget how not to be an expert. Personally, I wouldn't want the hassle of having to pack my skydiving rig like a BASE canopy for every jump. I also think reserve saves are a hell of a lot more common than AAD saves. I wouldn't want to see a 1 canopy option in effect just to keep the amount of down time from bounces to a minimum.

AWESOME! I'm opening a beer. Miss Gibbs should be proud that she finally has proof about something we've all known for ages... She's anything BUT normal! MHS should offer her a free tandem as a consolation prize...

Please put your experience in your profile so that beginners like the OP can make an informed decision whether to listen to you or not. For the OP - JWest has a history of posting controversially aggressive opinions on various types of progression, from cameras to canopies. Experts in the skydiving are experts for a reason, and 'Instructor' isn't the same as 'Expert'. As a default I'd follow Germain's advice for a coupe of hundred jumps until you have the experience and knowledge to decide for yourself.

Out of interest, what's your marketing background? Because, you know, you kinda make it sound like it's a piece of piss, takes barely any time, and is sure to be successful rather than it being an entire career in its own right. Groupon exists because you're paying for the exposure that their multi-billion dollar brand brings. They can reach many times more customers than most DIY marketing attempts. Is it worthwhile? That depends on the DZ, but the blanket statement that all middlemen can 'go fuck themselves' sounds pig ignorant to me, along with lumping it in with genuine shitheads like Skyride. There's a WORLD of difference.

Not everyone's as familiar with facebook stalking as you are!

In the old days they did it down low, and broke a lot of femurs. Not THAT long ago... You see it a lot in speedflying now. High bank turns with little bursts of altitude loss to duck down to the ground.

My immediate thought is that I'd class that as a malfunction and stop the skydive. 3 or 4 big wave-offs then deploy my main... I'd rather not be in freefall (particularly at deployment altitude) and not be able to see what's around me. To continue it until 1500 (and to rely on a dytter to tell you when that is) is absolute insanity. No other word for it. It's not just gadget dependency - it's worse than that. It shows a serious lack of thought and understanding. I don't want to be in the sky with a robot.

Something like this would be my guess as well. From the sound of your posts I'm assuming you're a regular jumper so we're not talking about unusual muscle strain / activity. I do know that I tend to eat very differently on a DZ than I do at home. It may be that a change in diet is throwing your body off... Is what you eat / drink at the DZ different to what you'd have during the week? Describing your symptoms might help too. Is it mental - is it different to being tired? Are you feeling nauseous or have a lack of appetite?

Thanks for taking these notes. They make for fascinating reading! Could you expand a little on this: What was the innuendo? Was it the suggestion that CQS were making that MHS were flying non-standard patterns that day? The big thing for me is that unless the link between CQS inc. and CQS / Gibbs can be shown, then the funds continue to be available and it's more than likely that they'll immediately file an appeal if they're allowed to. I really wonder how much this is actually costing Gibbs...

Honestly, it depends. It depends on what type of jumping you're doing, whether you're packing for yourself or if someone else is doing it for you. It depends on your general fitness and on your skydiving fitness and experience... we tend to use unusual muscle groups which tire easily unless you're used to it. It depends on your psychological strength and the aims of your jumps as well... Are you just banging jumps out to get to a number, or are you trying to learn from them? If it's the latter will you be able to make good progress if you're tired? Do you need to debrief in between jumps? Personally, I always saw my performance drop off after about 5 in a day. Not only that, but my enthusiasm for jumping started to wane too. The limit was always a personal one - I never wished (given no adverse weather) that the DZ was putting up more loads. I always enjoyed making a couple in the morning, one in the afternoon and then the sunset load. That'd set me up just right for a decent night in the bar and doing it all again the next day. Too much jumping and I'd just be knackered... it took the fun out of being at the DZ. That said, I was always a fair-weather skydiver. Some of the teams who TRAIN make more jumps in a day than I'd do over a long weekend. What's the rush? Start with your aims and go from there.

That article misses the biggest difference IMO. Certainly in the UK, and I think in Australia and Canada, people don't define themselves by which political party they vote for. It's never really a conversation which comes up apart from at election time. At no point in living in the UK did I ever meet anyone who would proudly proclaim that they're a Conservative or Labour-ite (Labourian?) in a personal setting. My time in the US is the opposite experience. Many personal conversations split down obviously political lines. I honestly couldn't tell you who most of my UK friends would vote for. I could do it for 90% of my US friends.

Monster Raving Loony Party did about as well as expected. They did better than the BNP... Which is great news.

Nothing to do with the incident, but it kinda looks like the main side AFFI spends most of the jump geeking the reserve side camera...

You see it in angle/atmo/flocking jumps. Only very vertical ones, I'd imagine.