NickDG

I wrote, and probably others did too, CBS news in LA about the doorway thing and they must've looked into it and now they are saying not to do that . . . NickD

Read this then decide for yourself . . . http://omega.twoday.net/stories/308957/ NickD

>>That is not what the American Red Cross Says.

TV news is passing out that bad info about getting into a doorway. That course of action has been disproved after studies down in Mexico and Japan. In a really bad earthquake standing in a doorway can cut you in half if the structure collapses. Likewise getting under a heavy table can crush you. Most earthquake survivors are found in voids. Voids are formed next to beds or large pieces of furniture inside collapsed structures . . . NickD

>>I was there for the Northridge quake years back. We thought that was the big one.

Was just getting out of my car in Pasadena, damn near knocked me over. There's a 1 in 20 chance it's the forshock to the Big One!!! NickD

Here are a few photos from Frank Mott's memorial ash dive held yesterday at the Ramona Airport in east San Diego County. Some folks came from as far away as Arizona and Texas and approximately 75 to 100 jumpers and friends were in attendance. The ash dive was a formation load using two Cessna 206 aircraft that went perfectly. Beer was drunk and stories were told and we sent Frank Mott off in style . . . NickD

I heard from the editor of the local paper early this morning, a nice fellow that seems to be a closet airport supporter, but he said the same thing you all said, he loved it but thought it was too deathy. He said he didn't want to butcher it for publication, so that's the end of that. Funny though, I've worked at plenty of airports that have similar stories, in fact they all do. Are we going down the wrong road in rationing out the truth? NickD

I took that into consideration, and you could be right, but I believe that in the truth of things is a certain beauty. And believe me I did leave out some stuff that makes what I did write seem tame. I didn't want it to be a puff piece, but yeah maybe I under did the puff . . . NickD

Oceanside airport, a small field north of San Diego, is under a concerted attack from the local wags who hate aviation. And they almost have the city talked into paying back the FAA improvement monies that would finally clear the way to closing the airport. I worked at that airport for many years and so wrote the below to the local newspaper. It probably won't get printed, but since I had fun writing it, I thought someone should see it so here it is . . . NickD

>>so in this safety driven sport why don't more DZ's have packing hooks?

"Six two and even, they're selling you out, sonny." Sam Spade ~ The Maltese Falcon NickD

Don't worry Ghost, if you ever get on a load with me I'll treat you like an equal. My post was illustrative of looking for answers to questions you may not have yet considered and to do that sometimes you must look ahead and also back . . . NickD

Get ready, you guys. That attitude that skydiving isn't dangerous is going to become more prevalent over time. I know that because I'm already seeing the very same thing happening in B.A.S.E. jumping. At first I thought it was idiots talking out their asses, or newbies just trying to make us old-timers look foolish but I've heard it enough now that I began trying to come up with a reason for it. It's a complicated subject so bear with me as I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. First off, and for the record I don't believe skydiving or B.A.S.E. is any safer now than ever. (And I was around in those days of hand deploying your reserve, and those days before we had dedicated B.A.S.E. gear). No matter our technological leaps in progress, no matter our improvement in technique, and no matter how knowledgeable we become, there is always going to be a bow wave of death. In that wave will be both the extremely capable pushing the envelope, and the extremely inept for who it was only a matter of time. In skydiving this is called "Booth's Law" and in B.A.S.E. it's just called, "Duh!" There's no way to figure this out without going into the numbers. But I'll only say this about that. The fatality rate from when I started jumping in 1975 to now, if you throw out the highs and lows, is still fairly constant. But what has changed is there are a lot fewer up-jumpers nowadays. I don't have hard science to support that, but I do know this. If you, as a jumper of today, could time travel back to a typical weekend at Lake Elsinore in the late 70s or early 80s you'd think their was a big boogie going on. I've stopped by Lake Elsinore on a beautiful weekend just lately and have seen more people at some birthday parties. Perris which always looks busy, isn't what it used to be either, but maybe they're all hiding in the tunnel where it's safer. But one constant at both places is there are always gobs of students, both AFF and tandems and way more than there was in the old days. But I think we are blowing it by chopping them up and spitting them out for profit. This sport used to live and die on its up jumpers (as they were the ones who originally brought in the students) but now we discovered mass marketing and because of that we now live and die on One Jump Charlies. Sometimes I think today's DZO tolerates up-jumpers only to assure that day's students that regular people actually do skydive . . . We also, and even after living through it myself and hating it, I can see we are screwing up in the way we treat our students socially. We celebrate their first jumps, we drink and party with them, we make them feel way too important because unknown to them they are the reason we have turbines. But back in the day, as a student, or even before you had a hundred jumps, you were automatically a fucking nobody and barley tolerated. But for those that wanted it bad enough it gave them something to shoot for. Who doesn't realize you can't just hand something to somebody and expect them to appreciate and cherish it? I doubt if I started jumping today I would have stuck with it. Even if I had unlimited funds at the time I couldn't have bought my way into the club. I saw a rich guy once with 75 jumps buy up all the slots on a DC-3 load that was too short to launch by half and when he came around later for beers everyone just ignored him. Imagine that happening today. We'd be carrying the guy around on our shoulders and six months later he'd be gone from the sport. Some of our younger participants bag on us old-timers by saying we don't understand change and progress. But ironically we understand change and progress much better then they because we've lived through more change and progress than they have. But they do have us on one point. They look forward to a limitless future and we tend to look back with too much fondness. And as the Bard said, "therein lies the rub." So back to the danger question. I now think how you present either skydiving or B.A.S.E. simply depends on how you came to it. If it was easy and effortless for you than how could you possibly understand anyone else having problems with it? In just a few days I'm going to a memorial for the guy who took a chance and gave me my first job as a skydiving instructor back in 1981. On a cold and rainy Sunday he sat me down and said, "Nick, I don't think you've really got the makings to be a skydiving instructor, but I'm going to give you a chance against my better judgment. Just keep in mind you've got one hand on the students and the other on a banana peel that's gonna slide your ass outta here." Of course, as he told me years later, he didn't really mean that but thank God he put it to me that way. I've carried that fear all through my Instructing career. Even when I worked for DZOs who didn't care what I did as long as I pumped out students. Maybe we should all start acting like we are on banana peels . . . because when it comes to death, we are . . . NickD

>>I'm hoping your making this remark in jest. Don't ever cut away a good canopy, unless you have a chest mount reserve. (3 canopies)

There's a fellow in the Capital Building threatening to jump right now. And the morons at FOX News just reported it's 7500-feet to the Capital floor. If it was I'd take more interest in gov't . . . NickD

Either way has its issues solely depending on how the user interprets the data. In skydiving because of the way it's presented we understate it. In BASE, because of the way it's presented we overstate it . . . From a purely un-scientific standpoint sometimes it seems to me you have excellent chance of getting injured in BASE. but not killed outright. In skydiving it seems you have an excellent chance of being killed outright but not injured. I think it's that way because we are getting better at doing BASE and worse at doing skydiving . . . NickD

Might be - Broken femur . . . NickD

I think we make a mistake by using a year by year count of skydiving fatalities. We sort of fool ourselves, our students, and certainly the casual wuffos that ask, "How many people die skydiving?" It allows us to say, "Well, not that many really. This year it's only 15 or so out of three to five million jumps made." And even that is fuzzy math as who knows how many jumps are really made. And then we get to start fresh from scratch every year. Suppose we kept track from the very beginning of the sport, say from 1955 until now. After all, isn't that the question people are really asking even if they don't realize it. If you very conservatively figure we averaged 25 fatalities per year for 53 years the number is in the thousands of fatalities. In reality, and worldwide, that average is low, and the final tally is likely higher still. I know when someone asks about B.A.S.E. fatalities I can say with some confidence that since the sport began in 1978 the number of deaths is currently at one hundred and twenty three although I can't know how many B.A.S.E. jumps are really being made. If we did it the skydiving way I could say there have been just three deaths in 2008. But which way gives a clearer picture? Which way you spin the numbers depends on if you are buying or selling. If you are USPA, and you're selling, it makes sense to use year by year. If you are a line Instructor and dealing with students who are buying, maybe the other way would be more truthful. After over thirty years I know for a fact people die all the time, almost like clockwork, so who are we trying to kid? NickD

I have a friend who's a HAM radio guy and I was listening in with him one night and couldn't believe what I heard. In the course of his normal conversations with other HAMS from all over the world (which is pretty damn cool) there were always a few people who'd break in to say dirty words, call my friend an asshole, jam the signals and just generally disrupt things. He told me that these were unlicensed people using HAM equipment illegally and that it was ruining the hobby. My though was, geez, it's just like the internet. I remember when people bounced before there was an internet. Living in an area with a lot of DZs the word would spread quickly and would go something like this. You'd be packing or something and someone would walk by and say, "Hey, they just had a bounce over at Drop Zone X-ray." And you'd simply ask who and how? "It was Johnny," and the reason was generally no pull, low pull, or an emergency procedure gone awry. Two seconds later you knew that somehow Johnny made a mistake and went back to packing. And it was basically case closed except for raising a beer later in Johnny's honor. A few days later you may learn Johnny had a gear problem, maybe to the point he was doomed before he left the aircraft. But the end result was still the same, Johnny messed up. In that regard nothing much has changed. However, even back then, like now, there were always a few people on the DZ who didn't take news like this well. Even when they didn't know the person. They'd go to pieces, sometimes cry, or carry on about quitting the sport and so on. Sometimes I'd tell them, "Hey people fly, people die." And wonder what part of that they didn't get? But most people like that simply weren't suited for skydiving and eventually they worked it out or they just quietly disappeared from the scene. Does anyone, besides me, feel there are more and more of those types then there used to be? When we began to discuss these incidents online the medium changed but the people basically remained the same. Except you do hear a few different things nowadays. Like when the guy walked passed to tell me Johnny was dead if I'd said, "That a tough break, are you on this next load?" I would never hear, "Naw, I scratched, I have to go say a prayer for Johnny." Johnny is beyond prayer now. If you are going to do that then pray that we have Instructors who take their responsibilities seriously, pray that your DZO isn't a fast buck artist who's cutting corners behind the scenes on aircraft maintenance. And pray that some meat missile doesn't take you out in the pattern. Also, and I have this problem in spades, I give people too much credit for being literate enough to write in words what they are really trying to say. But the fact is less and less folks can do that. So when someone writes something that sounds ridiculous we shouldn't automatically surmise it's what they meant. I need to remind myself of that all the time. The other side of that coin is you can write what you mean but someone else lacks the reading comprehension to get it. I guess what I mean is don't over react to what you read in those threads. Also, if the next weekend you happen to be over at Drop Zone X-ray and you see Johnny's best friend you wouldn't walk over and say, "Gee, Johnny really screwed up on that one." No, you'd throw them a hug and that was it. But here in the online world it's different and it's the bereaved that need to understand that. Yes, the world is more complicated now. The gear is more complicated and being used by people who understand it less and less. We went from a time in the 1970s when you could never make a five minute call because it took twenty minutes to put your gut gear on. To the 1980s when gear was probably the simplest and easiest to use and you could make a now call by getting geared up on the run. To nowadays with so many hooks, lanyards, and gizmos many jumpers only know what the handles do (and sometimes not even that) and that's about it. It's the same across the whole spectrum of life. It used to be if you wanted to play music you had to actually learn to play an instrument. Now there's Guitar Hero where you can look and sound good right out of the box. Are our DZs filling up with Skydiving Heroes? NickD

I took it about a year ago. The test stopped at 70 questions and I passed it too. For those not familiar with it rather than a paper and pencil test it's a test you take on a computer. But you go to a outfit called Person-Vue to do it. Their security is something else, you need two forms of photo ID, then you get fingerprinted, and all your belongings get locked up before your led to a work station terminal to sit the test. While doing the test you are video taped. The test itself is called adaptive. What that means is there is no set number of questions. The computer gives you questions until it decides if you passed or failed. You'll get a question on a certain medical topic and if you get it correct, you get a harder question on the same topic. If you miss a question you get an easier one and so on. The idea is in this way the computer can figure out where your overall knowledge level is. And that level must be above the standard set for this particular exam. Also once you answer a question and move on to the next one you can't go back and change any previous answers. A lot of questions are scenario based like: You respond to a call of a 72 year old male who fell down a flight of stairs and is complaining of shortness of breath (SOB in EMS speak) and chest pain. Once on scene you see one of his legs appears shorter than the other and the patient wife tells you the man is diabetic. His blood pressure is 160 over 40, pulse is 90, respiration is 20. His lung sounds are noisy bilaterally and the patient is confused (called ALOC in EMS) and you see blood coming from the man's lower thigh area. What do you do first? The multiple choice answers are then written so if you really don't know your stuff you're totally screwed. Everyone leaves this test thinking they failed. It's a tough exam that lots of people do indeed fail so you can be proud of yourself for passing . . . Maybe it's time our own USPA A,B,C, and D license tests are given this way . . . NickD

Some years ago I was caught B.A.S.E. jumping from a building by a passing police officer here in San Diego. The officer was cool and said as long as nobody is complaining about we'll let it go. But he took down my name, address, and phone number. The next day I got a phone call from a police captain from the San Diego Police Department and he said, "Hey Nick," and I said "Yeah," and he said, "Could you teach a couple of my guys to do that?" So I said, "Why?" And he said, "I thought maybe I could station them on some downtown buildings and when they saw a crime they could swoop down on it." I said, "Are you serious?" And he said, "I'm serious as a heart attack." So I said, "You mean sorta like Batman?" And he said, "Yeah, just like Batman!" I actually thought about for a few seconds before I got a hold of myself and told him to forget about it . . . NickD

The long view cancels out hanging your hat on statistics and causes. I knew it was bad when I started to forget their names and that was a long long time ago . . . NickD

Wuffos, and how they perceive us never amazes me anymore. Once, at Lake Elsinore I was in the middle of teaching a first jump class of about 8 or 9 students. We were outside the classroom on our way to practice PLFs when a visiting jumper smoked a bag lock in right in front of us. I even pointed him out and said, "Look there, now watch this cutaway!" But he never did cutaway. I sent the class away to meet back later and went off to deal with the fatality. A couple of hours later we re-assembled and I said, "I'll understand if none on you feel like jumping today." But they wanted to know exactly what happened and after I explained it to them in detail they all wanted to continue on. Looking back on it I was more shaken up then any of them, even though I'd dealt with fatalities before. One of the students even said, "We're all right, Nick, are you all right?" And then with a perfectly straight face one of the students asked, "What's up, doesn't this sort of thing happen all time?" They all jumped later that day but it still leaves me shaking my head . . . NickD