NickDG

Buy an airplane ticket and come to me? It's what we ask of our unknowing students. What I'm saying is we need to centralize student training so we can spot problems and trends. The way it is now we've thrown that possibility out the window. And no, I haven't had a drink today, yet . . . NickD

Get hip to yourself . . . The USPA hides out on the east coast because for 6 months out of the year there's no jumping going on and there's no jumpers banging on their door. I belong to a lot of professional associations and they all spew that same line about, "We're in Washington and working for you, and we got you a break on a rental car!" Please, it's a phony industry onto itself. USPA should be in Florida, California, or Texas. Maybe they'd then stop running that lame "spring cleaning your gear" article every April. HELLO, we are out here jumping year round and so should the office that represents us. On Christmas morning and New Year's Day I'm doing level ones with the kid that wasn't quite ready the day before. While you're sipping eggnog in front of a fire in your fuzzy slippers I'm watching student videos and telling them how good they did. USPA should be next door to Perris, or Eloy, or anywhere where I could take my students and introduce them to the people that have their backs. But you chose to hide where no self respecting full time jumper would live in the first place. It's like a guy with a Harley who parks it for 6 months out of a year and still calls himself a biker. And, you know what, we know our fifty a year goes toward your snow-bound cocktail parties . . . NickD

Jump without a helmet at all. Skydiving is about freedom, not being a meat missile. People with helmets scare me . . . NickD

Now you are thinking along the right lines. I can't help but laugh at the well intentioned, but inexperienced help you've been offered here. Go big girl, and go long . . . NickD

There was a time when you had to provide proof of 200 jumps to get "D" license and those were photocopies unless you wanted take a chance and mail in your actual logbooks. NickD

In general, if you can't cutaway in a really bad situation you're in the wrong sport. If you can't cutaway because your disabled or knocked out then your life is in the hands of some guy named Helmut who lives in Germany. And even then if you jump a fashionable reserve size you're doomed anyway . . . NickD

Get a water bottle and spray it! Warning - I am a Rigger . . . NickD

Didn't you see the horrible whitewash in this month's PARACHUTIST, according to it everything is fine and dandy . . . NickD

I don't see that. All I see is what holds up in court and not what holds a student up in the air . . . The USPA follows the same pattern as the FAA, they are reactionary and not pro-active. It's why the BSR's are only suggestions. They don't want to take a chance of being sued back into an old whore house in San Francisco where they started. The way it should work is if you want to be an Instructor, you have to get passed me, or in terms of Instructors who post here, I'll include Tom Buchanan. And if we are really really really backed up, Bill Von. But then there would be an asterisk after your name in the Instructor list. And if they sue me then they can have my paid off trailer in the Perris Ghetto . . . NickD

Best reply in this entire thread (above) . . . NickD

It's Thursday, so you guys must be shitting in your pants! Only kidding, don't worry, the beginning is best, and the rest is just practice . . . Post the vid . . . NickD

I did my first "gig" on bass guitar not long ago and it was scarer than my first jump, my first student, or my first reserve pack job all put together. Sometimes I think we over-do the dangers of skydiving. Dieing on stage is much worse. All I can offer is follow the loudest member in your band, know where the breaks are, and be able to transpose up and down on the fly . . . Our band name was my idea, The Fabulous Lacklusters . . . Woohoo! NickD

>>Bozo

The USPA will never break it down into terms you are after. The USPA is run by DZOs, or at least highly influenced by them, and they don't want to be sued. See the problem? NickD

If comfortable with a 170 why not up size the container? If it's money, then yes, you are making the wrong decision . . . NickD

Told you so . . . LMAO . . . NickD

The only rule that counts is the "unwritten rule." Call it Rule #9 . . . Don't let any 100 jump wonder, novice, or student who might believe what you say, die. If you aren't capable of that then don't ever talk to a 100 jump wonder, novice, or student . . . NickD

There's an inherent and natural reefing all canopies, round and square, exhibit in high speed environments. It's called squidding. And it means the canopy just can't overcome the power of the passing air molecules to spread until it slows the load down enough. It's the reason we could do terminal deployments on early squares before rings & ropes and the slider was invented. Squares of the day were way over built so I wouldn't do that today with a small light weight 9-cell, but there is a downside to modern reefing. If the system starts to slow you down, and then the reefing system fails, for whatever reason then you get a real slammer. My girlfriend, who's an engineer at JPL, was in on deigning the Rovers currently on Mars. When Vertigo (a bunch of eggheads who don't jump) where tasked with designing the parachutes for the Rovers their first few attempts in the wind tunnel got them a huge round with the apex pressurized and a closed skirt. These bozos labored over their sideways math and slide rules without a clue about what squidding was. B.A.S.E. jumpers are also counting on squidding without realizing it. We use mesh covered sliders on terminal delays not to control the opening so much but to control the lines. So find yourself a well preserved 1970s vintage Strato Cloud and you could bang out terminal no slider deployments all day long. But you couldn't because the current definition of a hard opening is something you felt . . . Oh, and that's how they actually did early tandem terminal jumps without a drogue. It wasn't so much the slider as it was squidding . . . NickD

Gary, I know you specifically mentioned MLW adjustment, but I'll take the opportunity to say lateral adjustments should be banned from student gear. In practice they don't always get moved and they take a lateral force when they are deigned for a horizontal one. So the hardware over time saws through the webbing. We already had more than one harness fail in that area with the Student Javelin being the most memorable. Lateral adjustment is just another way DZOs cheap out on their student gear . . . NickD

>>Doesn't matter

Are we making the mistake of judging USPA by how long it takes to get a card? We make the same mistake with airlines. It's not who loses the least luggage, or their on time rating. It's really how many people get shredded by sharp aluminum shards in fiery explosions that count. NickD

Good post, Derk . . . The teaching aspects of AFF shouldn't be over shadowed by air skills, which sadly is the case most of time. Even in the AFF cert course we put the emphasis not on a person's cerebral skills but on their monkey skills. The aforementioned skill of linked exits, imparting stability, monitoring altitude and ensuring an open canopy is the basic parlor trick of every AFF rating holder. And even from scratch it's something you can be taught to do well in a short period of time. But teaching, imparting the right information, to a varied in ability cross section of people is a talent you either have or you don't. It calls for empathy (putting yourself in the student's place), patience, and having more than one trick up your sleeve. Before I continue, I always get notes, after a post like this from folks who say that's not how it is at my DZ, and I fully realize we all over the map on how we teach skydiving. And that right there shows the depth of the problem we have. And so the following is general in nature. In my entire AFF career since 1984 I've met very few rating holders who didn't possess acceptable air skills. But I've met way too many who didn’t have the teaching skills. I believe we need to go back to a three rating level system. AFF Instructors who would be allowed to teach first jump courses and do jumps with students, AFF Jumpmasters would do jumps with students, but not teach first jump courses, and AFF Apprentices would be folks in training to become AFF jumpmasters. As an aside people who conduct tandem jumps should be called Tandem Masters and not Tandem Instructors. (Even if they hold an AFF instructor rating). Tandem Instructor should be reserved for people who teach new Tandem Masters. Is the guy who takes your ticket and makes sure you are buckled in on the Ferris wheel down at the carnival a Ferris wheel Instructor? And in a really perfect world Coach would be the highest rating of all and these folks would be our most experienced AFF Instructors who, because they can't hack the daily grind of handling students anymore, are put out to pasture. Right now we really squander that experience. A Coach rating should be the "gold watch" of our sport and certainly in no way an entry level position. There's a good reason that in big league baseball the first and third base coaches are not twenty year olds . . . Right now we figure as long as the air skills are there the teaching skills will develop. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Some people are just cut out to teach and some aren't. I've seen too many heavily medaled record holders who couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag. So we wind up with jumpers like the subject of the current Hawaii incident. And also the involved Instructors, like the one with 18000 jumps, who's put up as infallible. Guess what, guess again . . . Right now we use theater, not skill, to initially judge our Instructors. Right now we make our fledging Instructors recite the syllabus by rout, figuring the thousandth performance of the Rocky Horror Show will be better than the first. But sometimes it only gets worse because your performer has zero talent. There are really three kinds of students. The average one, the below average one, and the above average one. Not knowing how to connect with each means you are losing part of your class. And the old saw about teaching to the dumbest in the room doesn't work either, as you never know who in the class gets handed the biggest challenge on their very first jump. As far as where the blame for our current mess is, it's easy to point to the USPA, but while a mix of the too new, and the too old, I think they try to do the right thing and just can't. No, the real problem is the DZOs. Every time we try to rise up we get stymied and fired. And I don’t know what we can do about that. But the USPA says often we Instructors are the backbone of the sport. Does anyone think it's about time we showed some? NickD

The shame of it all is rec was at one time a very valuable unmoderated/unfiltered historical resource for anything that happened in skydiving. And it would have went on being that if you guys hadn't burned it the ground . . . NickD

Opps, misread your OP I'm going this month, April 16th. Catch you the next time . . . NickD

>>for the record..sonic packs my reserve..at the ranch..i trust him way further then i can throw him..