Grogs

Congrats Brandon. I know you've been wanting to knock out that AFF for quite some while. I'm glad you finally got to do it. I hear you about the hard openings on those Mantas. I really think they're designed to do that on purpose. Don't worry though, once you go to a smaller chute you will rarely ever get bruised like that. I agree with you about the ParaSIM too. Definitely a lot different. They were demoing that thing at Louisburg during the Easter Boogie and some guys with over 1,000 jumps were running into trees and all sorts of other stupid things, mainly because there's really no depth perception with it. Anyway, congrats again!

I just noticed the post count for the Skydiving Talk Back forum is over 20,000 now. Does that mean Sangiro is eligible for some virtual Emerald Wings now?

Sweet! Congrats on the A

Woohoo! Way to go Kelly. Glad to hear you finished with your AFF. Now tell John he needs to get that Steerman down to Suffolk and jump in the front seat and ride down here with him. We definitely need to do a jump together.

Wow, I must have been tired as hell when I wrote that last night. I actually owe 2 cases of beer for this weekend because in addition to riding my first tandem I also broke 200 this weekend on one of the solo head-downs.

We had a little discussion about it at the DZ and the general consensus was I could log it, but it didn't count towards licenses, ratings, or awards, so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble of giving it a number and having to remember to subtract it out for certain things later.

At our dropzone, we have a 20 jump sequence now. It includes all the AFF dives, 10 or so coach jumps, and a check dive on number 20 to get cleared for the A license. The total cost of the whole thing runs around $2000. That's a really good question. The new BSR's state: "Students engaging in group freefall jumps must be trained and accompanied by a USPA coach or jumpmaster until the student has obtained a USPA A license" which pretty much says to me they need to either be doing a coached jump or a solo. However, it's waiverable at the S&TA level, so each dropzone is allowed to make their own rules for jumpers who are off student status but don't have a license yet if they so choose and have a waiver on file.

Damn girl, you rock. 100 jumps since Easter? And people say I jump like a mad man. Sounds like you'll be doing the Hakuna Matata dive, huh? Ooh yeah, my score was 0:6.5:1 Two solo head downs, 2 big ways (9 & 12), and 2 coach jumps. The half jump is for the tandem I rode as a passenger (since it's not really a logable jump). That's also the reason for the case of beer, since I had never done a tandem before.

I'll buy it. That aligns pretty well with my definition too. Skygod and whuffo are more about attitude than anything else. We've got a 14 year old on our DZ whose Dad is an AFF/Tandem JM and his Mom is a coach. He's out at the DZ every weekend, packs 50 or so chutes every weekend, can tell you about the characteristics of every type of container and main chute we have on the drop zone, and is saving all his money up so he can do AFF when he turns 16. Even though he's never made a single skydive, Iwouldn't dream of calling him a whuffo.

I think Jaime, aka Jumpergirl could answer that question best since she lives near there (Texarkana). I think the DZ in Shreveport closed down at the beginning of the year after the novice went in down there. I think Gladewater is the closest DZ to there now.

I got the numbers from the same place you did (I think?) - the NHTSA web site. I think you just missed a few zeroes on the number. The rate they quote is 120 fatalities per 100 MILLION miles. I just saw that figure that 2% of drivers would have a fatal accident each year, and it got me thinking. We should be seeing people dropping like flies with that kind of rate. In any case, no big deal. Never quote odds to a skydiver.

LOL. You probably wouldn't get 3500' if you did that. She'd get mad and make everyone get the hell out.

I think you messed a few numbers up here... Total miles driven in 1999=2,691,335,000,000 37063 fatal accidents/2,691,335,000,000*100,000=0.0014=0.14% chance of dying per 100,000 miles driven Given that the average number of miles driven/year is around 14,000 (# of miles driven/# of licensed drivers), the odds a typical person will be killed in a car crash in a given year are about 0.02% The odds of dying on one skydive are about 30/3,400,000 or 0.00088%. 23 skydives gives you about the same odds as driving 14,000 miles The odds of dying on a tandem are probably even lower since there were about 180,000 in 1999, and the number of tandem fatalities is less than 1/year, resulting in a roughly 0.00056% chance of dying on 1 tandem skydive. In any case, I think no matter how you run the numbers, skydiving isn't greatly more dangerous than driving around in your car, but remember, they're just that: statistics. If you run around doing stupid stuff all the time, your odds of being in the small percentage of fatalities greatly increases.

This seems pretty easy to me. Try and smother it, and if successful close the door and everybody rides the plane down. If the reserve goes out the door, the guys going out the door. Period. He might as well try and follow it before it inflates and rips him through the wall of the aircraft. If you're between that person and the door of the aircraft, you need to get the hell out of the way unless you want to go with him. Along those lines, this brings up something a jumpmaster pointed out to me not too long ago. In most planes I've been in, we close the door for take-off, then reopen it at 1,000 feet or so. It's in your best interest to make sure that your seat belt is off before you open the door just in case someone has a chute open and you need to either get out of the way or get out the door (if it's your chute).

Right you are. No written test for the A under the new ISP system. Even cooler is that the little yellow proficiency card actually counts as an A license once it's been signed off and stamped, so you should be able to take it to another DZ and jump even if you haven't gotten your actual license back from USPA yet. Not all DZ's (most even?) have converted to the ISP system yet, so the old A license test and application are still valid until the end of the year (as far as I know).

Personally, I can't see any real advantage to pulling the cutaway in a lost deployment handle situation. I've never had one, and hope I never do, but I'd like to think my thought processes would be something along the lines of 'I need to get something over my head right now!' and that means pull the reserve immediately. But, if I happen to spaz out and grab the cutaway instinctively, no biggie. Cut and then pull the reserve. I think the odds of an entanglement are much less likely than the odds I'll take too long trying to figure out why I'm holding the cutaway and not the reserve and trying to sort it out.

I wouldn't completely trust that bottom end number on the Pro-Track. Those things seem to get a bit flaky on the opening altitude. For example, I know a friend of mine who usually opens by 2500, and his Pro-Track shows him 1200' or so for an opening altitude on some jumps, which is way below even his saddle-out altitude.

I read a thread on rec.skydiving not too long ago about the statistics of skydiving versus driving in a car. According to one person's math, skydiving was actually *safer* than driving your car 10,000 miles per year when computed in deaths per 100,000. Another person, in typical wreck.skydiving fashion told the guy he was an idiot, and according to the 'real' math, skydiving is actually 3 times more dangerous than driving. In any case, most people don't think twice about jumping into their car to drive across the country, but wouldn't jump out of an airplane for any amount of money. Just a matter of perception I think. Personally, I *do* believe that skydiving is safer than some of the other high risk sports like scuba diving or hang gliding. In any case, my personal philosopy is that I'm going to die anyway, so if I go out doing something that I love, it's not such a big deal.

Assuming it's still the old test, I'd focus on the following: - A-license limitations, i.e., minimum opening altitude, landing size requirements, recurrency times and requirements, types of jumps you can make - Aircraft procedures, such as seat belts, emergencies, and who's responsible for what (usually the jumper and the Pilot in Command) - Cloud clearance requirements (located in FAR 105 in the back) - What constitutes an obstacle - Freefall times (on your belly). There's usually a question like how long do you have until impact from 3,000 feet. Figure 10 seconds for the 1st 1,000 feet and 5.5 per 1,000 after terminal is reached That's all that comes to mind at the moment, but I think it'll give you a pretty good start. Just one word of caution, if it's one of the old tests, some of the info (i.e. the 2001 updates on the SIM) won't be covered, so you might get a question like 'What's the minimum opening altitude for an A license holder?' The correct answer according to the latest SIM is 3000, but for an old test, the answer would be 2500.

My friend was jumping a very new (~2000) Javelin J-1. The Javelin has, IMO, pretty good riser protection, but certainly not as good as some of the made for freefly rigs like a Mirage. Most of the riggers on our DZ feel that the problem was probably caused by the brakes being improperly stowed during packing.

The biggest cause of line dump (IMHO) is not the stows breaking, but rather them being too loose and the lines slipping out too easily. The easiest way to prevent this is to keep an eye on your rubber bands/tube stoes and when they start getting too worn out and loose, replace them. In the case of rubber bands, if I think they're too loose, I'll double it up. The nice thing about the rubber bands over the tube stoes is they're designed to break if you get them too tight. If all your rubber bands are handing by about 1 angstrom of rubber, you might have line dump problems as well. I guess the bottom line is, keep an eye on your stows, and when the retaining bands are getting too worn out, replace them.

Ahh, right you are. Thanks for pointing that out. I looked in the forms and publications section and didn't see it there, so I assumed it wasn't posted.

We usually buy our rigger whatever the heck he wants. In my case, my rigger is French, so I bought him a nice bottle of Merlot, but if he wanted a case of beer instead I'd have no problem with that. We actually had a similar incident happen to us this weekend. One of our jumpers was going head down when he noticed *both* steering toggles flapping around outside of his container. He grabbed them, went belly-to-earth, then let them go and deployed. When he deployed the toggles made a nice friction knot and both sets of his risers ended up in a half-hitch. His canopy started spinning madly, and he cutaway and landed uneventfully. It could have been much worse.

Sweet deal Dutch. What was the number? 116? My first anniversary will be on the 1st of July, so I'm hoping to hit 200 by then. 2 jumps this weekend gets me there.

Do you guys use the ISP (Integrated Student Program) at your Dropzone? It contains canopy control exercises for every jump and/or level which are designed to increase the student's knowledge of canopy control. For some reason, USPA doesn't have it on their website, perhaps because it's not an 'official' document yet. As mentioned earlier, practice brake/flare turns. Those can really save your butt. Practice your flare up high several times and with different speeds and amounts of flare to really try and dial it in and get the best flare possible. Try playing with all your control surfaces, front & rear risers and toggles and find out what happens when you pull down 1 or more of them. Practice doing a fast turn and stopping on exactly the heading you want without under or over shooting. See what gives you the best glide angle going down-wind (such as going to half-brakes, leaving the brakes stowed and pulling on rear risers, or unstowing the brakes and pulling on the rear risers). This will help you if you ever have to try and make it back from a long spot. Try the same thing into the wind. Do a hard 180-degree toggle turn and see how much altitude you lose. Try the same thing with front&rear risers, and braked turns. This will give you a good idea of the lowest altitude you could ever do these maneuvers on that canopy. That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are many others we could come up with. Just remember to quit doing any radical maneuvers by a nice high altitude (probably 2k or higher) in case you have a problem.