Grogs

Great weekend. We had a Casa at our DZ this weekend. I got off work Friday and ran out to the DZ and managed to make a jump. We did a 3-way, with me and another guy backing off the tailgate into an iron cross position, so our bodies slowly tilted back and we were looking down past our feet at the Casa flying away. Then I looked down and realized the other 2 were way below me. I went to swoop down, and I guess I punched my chest out too hard and the next thing I knew I was heading at those guys head down (that's completely new to me). That was a fun dive. I showed up on Saturday and made 5 jumps. We had an organizer, so all the dives were between 9 and 14-ways (at least coming out the door). It was fun, and I got a lot of big-way (errr, medium-way) experience even though all the jumps didn't go exactly as planned. I think the best jump of the day we pulled out was a 2 point 12-way. Saturday night we had Fish Stew and Fried Fish, which was really good, then we hung around the bonfire getting really messed up on Saturday night. I personally got nice and messed up, did a little fire walking myself, and even learned not to catch falling beer bottles on my head. I spent the night at the DZ on Saturday night. I wasn't planning to jump at all on Sunday for $$ reasons, but 2 of my friends (Tom and Chip) hit 100 so we went and did a 14-way for their 100th. It was a fun dive, even though it never got together properly. I had a lot of fun busting Tom's chops for falling out of his own 100th jump, even though it wasn't really his fault (someone went under him and stole his air). I spent the rest of the day Sunday packing to pay off some of my jumps and watching the other jumps. It was quite a bit of fun just watching, with CReW and other big ways. The CReW guys managed to put a 9-way diamond together by the end. The funniest part was watching the 10th guy trying to get in. We didn't realize until he got on the ground later, but when the canopy had opened, it had split a rib from front to back. On the video you could actually see blue sky through the top of the canopy. He was actually able to control the canopy, and even tried to dock on the other 9, but they told him to stay away since the canopy was having problems. He chopped it and pulled the reserve at 4k, and one of the other guys actually swooped the main and caught it (which I have to think was incredibly stupid, but he got away with it, so it looked cool). All in all, it was a great weekend, and I'm looking forward to the next time we have the Casa back in June.

Hi Skymama. I know the questions you asked were just examples, but I'm sitting around bored at work and figured I'd try and answer some. I'm certainly no expert, but hopefully I can help a bit. Well, I'm still not great at this myself, but here's what I try and do: There should be a point upwind of your target where you enter the 'pattern', somewhere at 500-1000'. Face the canopy upwind at this point, and look down at the ground to see how fast you're moving over it. This should give you an idea of how fast the canopy will be moving when you turn upwind on final. If the winds are strong (and thus your forward speed is slow), enter the pattern lower since you'll go downwind in a hurry, and when you turn to do your crosswind, don't pass your intended target very much since you won't be able to penetrate very much on final. You'll probably also want to shorten up your crosswind leg on high wind days, since when you're turned crosswind you'll probably still be getting blown downwind a bit. On low wind days, do just the opposite - start the pattern a bit higher, overshoot the target a bit more, and take a longer crosswind leg. In the end, it's still takes some practice to judge it right, but this will at least give you some guidelines to start with. 2 reasons come to mind. When you first open up the canopy, you can immediately grab a rear riser and steer away from a nearby canopy if you have to without fumbling around for your toggles. Front riser turns are more for swooping than anything else I think. When you make a hard turn with the toggles, you deform one half of the canopy, and your body gets thrown way out from underneath the canopy. When you release the toggle, the canopy has to recocer it's shape, and your body will oscillate back and forth a bit under the canopy before it returns to truly level flight. I've been told this can take as much as 3 seconds, and during this time the canopy won't flare properly. A front riser turn doesn't deform the canopy nearly as much and doesn't throw your body out like a toggle turn, so when you let up on a front riser turn you can flare almost immediately. This means front riser turns down low are much more forgiving since you can recover quickly and flare if you make a mistake. Front riser turns also make the canopy dive and lose altitude quickly, which causes the canopy to speed up. That's why people swooping their canopies usually do a hard front riser turn (or 2 hard turns in opposite directions) just before landing to generate speed for a long surf. Open high on a few jumps and play with all the control surfaces, front risers, rear risers, and toggles and see what the difference between them is. Well, the 'standard' response seems to be practice, but something that might help is having someone video tape your landings. You'll be surprised at the difference between what you think is going on vs. what is really happening when you land. Again, practice is key. Talk to the folks on the ground about where the spot should be and the direction of the jump run. If possible, try and get them to draw it out on an overhead photo showing the direction of the jump run and the release point. Then go up on the plane, look out the door with an experienced spotter doing the actual spotting, and see if what you see from the door looks like what you saw on the aerial photo you were looking at from the ground. Hope this helps a bit. Blue ones, Grogs

Damn! I need to work for that company. The people at my office just look at me like I'm crazy when I talk about skydiving.

I'd say it depends on what you're planning to pack. For larger canopies (210+), I think flat packing is probably a bit easier to do, especially for small people who can't reach down far enough down to flake all the line groups. But if you're going to be jumping smaller canopies, especially if they're zero-p and/or elliptical pro-packing is the only way to go.

Damn, I'm surprised anything worked at that kind of Temp. I'm too lazy to rewrite my first jump story, but it can be found at: http://personal.picusnet.com/grogs/firstjump.htm

We had one of those at our DZ. I think they were called "3 Holes And A Pole"

132 lbs. Couldn't tell you about the height though, I don't remember that conversion off the top of my head

Hmm, let's see here: 20 freefall jumps, at least 3 of over 40 seconds 5 minutes of freefall time Landed withing 20 meters on 5 jumps Ability to hold heading and make right, left 360's in freefall Ability to jumpmaster yourself, including safety checks, opening altitude, etc. Ability to pack your own chute Unintentional water landing training (should have been in your first jump course) At least 3 2-way RW jumps Pass the written test These are paraphrased, since ******* Acrobat won't let me cut and paste. Blue Skies, Grogs

Hehe. So when are you getting the trailer and moving it to the DZ? Oh yeah, I forgot. You practically live on the DZ already.

Wow, I'm sorry to hear about that. I hope the jumper heals up quickly. From what I've seen, the Voodoo with a BOC is a very tight rig with minimum bridle exposure and a tight main flap, so it makes a good freefly rig. I'm certainly saddened to hear about this.

Hehe, I think mine needs a little washing after last weekend. I was priding myself on the fact I hadn't biffed a landing in nearly 50 jumps, and I rolled not 1, but 2 in this past weekend. The first one I swooped through the peas, drug a toe, and promptly face planted, and the second one I just sort of rolled in a demo canopy I flared a bit too high. I need to get at least some of the grass and mud off so I can 'hide the evidence' as mentioned earlier.

Hehe. I summed my trip up a little more succinctly. It went something like this: Drive down, Drink, Skydive, Drink, Skydive, Drink, Skydive, Drive Home I may have left a detail or 2 out there, but that covered all the main points

BWAHAHAHA Sorry, I couldn't help but laugh about that. That was my friend Chip that chopped the Cobalt, and I got the pleasure of following it down (or at least trying to, I hit the field next to it anyway). From what he tells me, it was a, ummm... packing error. The risers on one side were twisted up pretty tight, and after several seconds the canopy began to dive off so he chopped it. As near as we can figure it, he somehow managed to flip the bag through some lines when he packed it. In any case, I just thought it was pretty funny you mentioned it. We stopped by our home DZ on the way home Sunday and everybody was walking around calling him 'Chop, Chop'

Wow! Just 3 words come to mind: Four Line Check! Not you necessarily, because it was packed when you got it, but whoever rigged the risers onto that rig should have done one. Along those same lines... this past weekend my friend Chip was demoing a Cobalt canopy and I helped him rig it into his container. When we did the 4 line check, we found the canopy been put onto the risers all screwy. In the end, it took one of the riggers at the DZ over an hour to get it all sorted out and put back together right. I don't know what would have happened if he had jumped the canopy the way it was, maybe just a couple of lines twisted, or maybe half the canopy collapsed into some sort of spinning malfunction. In any case, always do the check when putting a new canopy into your container. If you don't know how, get your local rigger to show you. Oh, and congratulations on getting that new Oddysey. Which bank did you rob to be able to afford one of those?

Congrats Jason. Glad to hear you've got the AFF thing taken care of. I know my log book says in big bold letter "You are a skydiver now!!!" That made me feel really good to see. Now go do a solo and enjoy the view, sit back, and really enjoy the fact you're jumping by yourself and not under pressure from your JM's.

Hehe. Hey, I told Jim we were gonna make a mess and he just laughed and said it was a rental car. I'm shooting for the vague time frame of 'Sometime This Summer' for my next trip to Cross Keys since I'm broke and with the tenant moving out of my other house soon, I'll probably be even more broke soon. I found out John stopped by my DZ with the Steerman on his way back to Cross Keys, and there was talk of trying to have him down for jumping at a future date, so maybe you could even tag along as a passenger. We've got a couple of cobalt demos sitting around the DZ, including a 135, so at the very least you could jump another cobalt demo (assuming you haven't already bought one by then ). Oh, and if FFF and Stacy start scheming about ways to get back at each other, I'm moving. Virginia's half-way between the 2 of you and I'd hate to be caught in the crossfire!

I don't think the plane was at SDD. Skydive Texas, wasn't it? Edit: Yep, checked the article. The plane crash was at Skydive Texas in Decatur. Different DZ. Edited by Grogs on 4/16/01 12:02 PM.

Hehe. We used flour and whipped cream. I got the idea because that's what they used on me for my 100th. Unfortunately, they didn't exactly show me how to mix it up, since that sort of takes the surprise out of it so I think we used a bit too much flour. The funniest part of the whole thing had to be when we were walking out of the RV on Friday night and Stacy said something along the lines of "Great day... I hit 200 and I didn't get pied" Jim and I just looked at each other and had to fight not to bust out laughing.

Hi Kingie. What an amazing weekend. I tried to look for a guy out there rolling around in the field, but with all the demo gear, there were lots of people there rolling around. After seeing 2 or 3 guys land in the trees and another fall right through them though, your landings couldn't have been THAT bad. I did find out it's a bad idea to try and surf out a landing downhill when there are no winds myself. And I agree with Froggie, that Ultralight is coool. It's even more fun to jump out of. That dead air is nice.

My lowest is actually 3500'

Getting old? LOL...

Welcome aboard Erica!

Does he get Diamond Wings for this? A pieing and beer are definitely in order.

Not me. And I think all the men on the Dropzone will thank me for that. Most of the women too I think.

Are you talking about Louisville, KY or was that just a slip of the fingers? I'm going to Louisburg, NC for the Easter Boogie, not Louisville, KY. Although I do think Louisville is a nice place, but I think I was 17 last time I went there so I didn't hit too many of the bars.