robinheid

Indeed. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair But really, you make broad sweeping statements. Suppose you support them with some facts or at least details, to wit: What is the "plethora of reasons why this is true?" Why is "no one about to go back to the old system even if it did things much better (in the very part of the sport that is -- by FAR -- causing the most fatalities)?" What are the "flaws" in static line training -- and how do they compare to the fundamental flaws of a system that teaches fun skills before it teaches the basic survival skills? SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It's an absurd analogy and we both know it. Thanks for telling me what I know, buddy, but jes' fer the sake of understanding what it is I apparently already know, in what way is the analogy absurd? Nice. You ask me to act on my concerns, and when I tell you I did, you sneer at my efforts. I've provided a path for 16 years, and periodically remind others of it.... but they either scoff the way you do, or ignore it completely. The path is very simple. Cut away AFF and go back to the future by using already-in-place systems that are parachute-focused (survival skill-focused) instead of freefall-focused (fun skill-focused). SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

No, you are not understanding it well. You persist in thinking a freefall-focused basic training program (the severed artery) can somehow be "fixed" with the bandaids you propose. And did you notice how no one else (except UFK22) even addresses this issue? You at least don't ignore me as if I'm the crazy uncle at the wedding, but notice how no one - no one - even entertains the notion that the system itself is a bad canopy that needs to be cut away. And even you completely ignore ufk22's advisory that the necessary replacement system is already in place -- and was, in fact, the primary training system before the advent of "AFF," the very name of which disqualifies it as a legitimate means through which to teach PARACHUTING skills. Time for sport parachuting wake up and chop that puppy before it kills us all. P.S. And when are you other peeps who have so much to say about bandaids gonna devote at least a paragraph or two to explaining why you persist in sticking with a system that violates every basic training system in the book: survival skills first, fun skills second? Or maybe Upton Sinclair was talking about all of you when he said ""It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Maybe you've failed to notice that one is very simple mechanics while the other is a fairly complex process. If you have so much to say about it, Robin...why not come up with a course/program/syllabus and work to get it adopted? Sorry, Spot, cutting away a bad canopy and cutting away a bad training system are both equally simple, especially when in the latter case the system in question violates every basic training precept: teach survival skills first, fun skills second. And I know you're still kinda new around here, but I did in fact "come up with a course/program/syllabus" more than 15 years ago, and have since then "work(ed) to get it adopted," including the post I made yesterday to this thread, posts I've made on multiple other threads on this site, a series of SKYDIVING articles that addressed this situation is both technical and systemic detail over a 16-year period, and both formal and informal presentations over the years to BOD members. But to go back to the cutaway analogy, some people die because they wait too long to cut away, either because they don't recognize the danger soon enough -- or are too prideful to admit to themselves that the pack job in which they had so much confidence just was not up to the job. Both of these factors are at work with cutting away this fatally flawed training system, despite the efforts of those such as myself who keep shouting: "Cut it away! Cut it away!" SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

There is only one right question to ask and that is: WTF are we doing teaching people how to freefall before we teach them to fly a canopy without a RADIO?" The root of the problem is our freefall-based training system. PERIOD. Until we discard it and return to a system that teaches fundamental PARACHUTING SURVIVAL SKILLS before tangenting off on freefall fun skills, we will never get a handle on this problem. "Adapting" our current freefall-focused training system to increase the canopy training is just plastering more bandaids on a severed artery. Get a clue, people. This is NOT rocket science: In any dangerous undertaking, you teach the basic survival skills first, then the fun skills. Until sport parachuting addresses this fundamental flaw in its outlook, attitude and product delivery, we're just gonna keep killing way more people than necessary clinging to that fatal flaw. Unfortunately, we seem to understand cutting away a canopy that we expected to work but didn't, but can't seem to even be able to notice that the training system we expected to work... doesn't. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Dilatory! SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I did it numerous times during the early 1990s on a Sabre 135. I was a very good blader but just learning to swoop so it was interesting, to say the least. mike mcgowan filmed me on many of the jumps, then quit because "now that you've learned how to do it, it's not worth filming any more." Naturally, next jump i smoked it into the loading ramp at eloy and careened into the fuel tank barrier -POW! no injury but great video on my handheld held by someone else -- mike was pissed he missed The Big One! bottom line: as others have said, start with very good skating skills, wear a lot of armor (and your leg straps inside the protective pants if you don't want to buy a new harness), land downwind on a long run way, and... most important, stop flying and start skating a few feet off the ground. and DO start on grass just to get a bit of a feel for it, but beware that grass'll keep you from rolling, so you'll face-plant if you're flying too fast. conceptualize it in terms of skating fast straight off a 2-4-foot-high ledge onto pavement. let up on the toggles so you pitch forward (to what would be a bloody face plant without skates) so that your CG is right, stick the landing then go to your front risers to keep the canopy penetrating the wind. nothing to it. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It's going to take more than one world record attempt for P3 to match the money BJ grossed over the years running the World Team show. As you explained in great detail, BJ farmed out more and more of the critical World Team prep work to "Kate and her crew" over the years, but still swooped in on the actual world record and lined his pockets with the silver _they_ generated. "BJ World" during that time was predicated on his access to Thai military aircraft, so when he lost his planes due to the political turbulence there, P3 axed him from the load because he no longer had anything to contribute that justified his cut of the action. It was a business decision, pure, simple and unsentimental -- and BJ has no reason to expect anything different because, as anyone who did business with him over the years knows, sentimentality never guided his business decisions. Thus the aspersions you cast and the conclusion you draw about P3's "maneuver" are misguided at best and malicious at worst. It is in fact the same Koolaid poured by the same people - minus one -- and even though BJ's World Team personal silver spigot has now been turned off, he will forever remain The Man who put it all together in the first place, and not just in the jungles of Thailand but in the Arizona desert where formation skydiving began. As I wrote in SKYDIVING Magazine #327, and in this thread, it's hard to overstate B.J. Worth’s contributions to sport parachuting – not only in the United States but all over the world. It is hard even to list them all – and I suspect that he will go down in sport parachuting history as its most influential single individual. But as I also said in those previous writings, BJ's legendary achievements and accomplishments notwithstanding, it's time for him to track off into the sunset and leave the playing field to his heirs. I do hope, however, that when the dust settles. P3 honors BJ Worth with a one-feather Indian slot on the world record load because he's earned it -- in at least 500 different ways. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Indeed... http://home.earthlink.net/~sscutchen/baseball/Quotes/baseball_vs_football.htm SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 both are great places to jump. most likely, you'll get in more jumps at perris and there's a nicer bar/restaurant at perris, but you can't beat the ambiance and the lake view from freefall at elsinore. one caution: wherever you decide to start, get out there thursday night or you'll burn way too much daylight dealing with Friday rush hour traffic! There are motels a mile or two away from both DZs, plus both have camping and nice bunkhouses. p.s. perris has load organizers every day, and elsinore on weekends for sure and probably on friday, which is a busier-than-normal weekday at both DZs so you should have no trouble finding people to jump with... but i would also strongly suggest you do a 1-way on your first jumps at both DZs to get the lay of the land AND be able to concentrate more on your first landings because density altitude can easily reach 4,000 feet on hot days at either place. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 Really, guy, everyone's had good advice but this is the best... just stick with tandems wherever you go on your backpacking trip and you'll end up with a great beginning to your parachuting career. Get a "real" logbook, and start logging the jumps, and be sure to take Dan Poynter's book (much lighter and less bulky than a rig) and otherwise start learning as much as possible about jumping. And then learn more on each tandem too... you may not know this but tandem was in the beginning designed to be "dual instruction" the same way as airplane training is, but then it turned into an amusement ride. The more jumps you make, the better you'll be in the air, both in freefall and under canopy. So make sure when you do those tandems, you make it clear that you're not just there for a tourist ride, you want to learn too... Seriously, that will be the perfect way to backpack AND make some great jumps and then when you get back to wherever you live, you'll have more cool jumps in more countries than a lot of your future instructors. Plus you'll also have more "air sense," gear knowledge, canopy control and navigation knowledge, and all-around understanding of the sport than pretty much any other student, which will make your training more fun and efficient and you'll (probably) be rocking on your own faster than average -- plus you'll have a better start to a jump career than almost every other kid on the block. And then you can buy mdrejhon a beer when you run into him at a DZ somewhere for making such a brilliant suggestion. p.s. with all the extra charges on airline luggage, the $$ you save by not flying your heavy gear around will at least cover part of the extra cost of the tandems, and the sweat you save by not lugging it around, and the stress you avoid wondering if some fool-of-customs-inspector will pop your reserve, will probably cover the rest. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Indeed. Thanks for acknowledging it. I spoke of the documentation clusterfink in general, not "life limits" specifically. As other posters above have documented, there are multiple areas where ambiguous and/or contradictory documentation represents a serious liability. Is the risk management committee going forward with cleaning up that -- a truly fundamental liability issue (you know, "have your paperwork in order")? No, it is, as you confirm, pursuing a goofball strategy that increases liability risk to the whole sport rather than reducing it, and at the same time limits the potential customer pool. So I say again; It is truly bizarre that PIA is more worried about limiting its liability by limiting the customer pool to adults instead of limiting its liability by cleaning up this documentation clusterfink. Fixing said clusterfink should be PIA's #1 liability mitigation priority, not hassling 16-year-olds who want to skydive, no matter how many jumps your lawyer has. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 It is truly bizarre that PIA is more worried about limiting its liability by limiting the customer pool to adults instead of limiting its liability by cleaning up this documentation clusterfink. Fixing said clusterfink should be PIA's #1 liability mitigation priority, not hassling 16-year-olds who want to skydive. If anyone knows which yoyos at PIA are responsible for this idiotic state of affairs, would you be so kind as to post their names on this thread? SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

-1 Dude, I guess you've been skydiving hard instead of reading the news -- "the people in US" rejected capitalism in 2008 when they elected as president a man who thinks "capitalist" and "profit" are dirty words. +1. In the US now, you must be fashionably and financially correct as well as have the cash. and unfortunately for Lok, Western Union is apparently waaay incorrect; just ask all those genius posters who are so capitalist-challenged that they can't tell the difference between a buyer and a seller. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Thanks for the kind words, but you missed the OP's point entirely. He proposed WU, it was declined, he said "Okay, fine with me. how would you like to get paid?" because he obviously concurs completely with your view that "the seller can choose what methods of payment they wish to accept and what methods they do not accept." Then, according to him, she declined to offer an alternative and instead said everything was sold, even though that appears not to be the case. According to the OP, Bonnie didn't play straight with him, and so he reported that to the community. It's obvious from the posts that for those not lucky enough to personally know Bonnie, she is a long-time straight-up, all-around good person, and for whatever reasons, she got sideways with someone who is also respected in his own country and used to doing business straight up, especially over large distances. As for the guy who says he got what he deserved, best of luck to you on your next trip to Greece or wherever you don't speak the language like a native and see how everything goes. Methinks you'll end up getting exactly what you deserve. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I'm wondering why he's still allowed to post. You know, this is in fact getting pretty silly. People say snarky things about Lok and then_he's_ the one who shouldn't be allowed to post? Let's go back to beginnings here if you wouldn't mind. I have known Lok via email for a number of years. He started out and has remained a respectful, humble, curious guy who is really into sport parachuting -- and in a country where you really have to make an effort to be a parachutist, unlike most of the US posters to this thread who have their choice of multiple turbine DZs within a few hours drive. I have also known Bonnie for many years and concur with every nice thing said about her on this thread. I am utterly confident that if these two met, they would no doubt like each other, jump together, drink beer together, et al. Most likely, they would also compete with each other for the fastest apology/acceptance of responsibility for making a mess of this aborted transaction. Finally, I think Bonnie might also apologize to Lok on behalf of her countrymen who seem to think it's okay to basically taunt a guy in their native language, then beat up on him further for his sometimes-less-than-elegant replies in a language which is at least his second, and maybe his third or fourth. There have been only a few comments in this thread that are fair to Lok, and, if I correctly recall, only one that was wise ("you've made your public point, now take it private with Bonnie to sort it out"). It's also true that one messy transaction does not a crappy business make, and it's understandable that those of you who are usually calm and thoughtful in your posts would jump to Bonnie's defense because you didn't think Lok was being fair to her. So what say everyone turn down the volume a little bit here? We have two quality people who contribute a lot to sport parachuting, and neither one of them deserves to be barked at any more (at least for THIS). SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Some interesting stats from der deutschelander und der motorshykler... but what I think would be more interesting is for the sponsors of some of the mega-sponsored teams to pay for some hearing tests for their teams. various combos of before-after joining the team, and just current absolute numbers, as in: Team guy X has 10,000 jumps, he's 26 years old, how does his hearing compare with the average for that age, average compared to people in "loud" professions versus "quiet" professions, that sort of thing. just anecdotally, i don't hear too many high-jump, high-frequency jumpers saying "Huh?" any more than the average jumper, and them no more than the average person. Of course, maybe I just can't hear them going "Huh?" SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Mike Mullins. kids Charlie (8,000 jumps), Joel (3,000+), Jeff (4,500), and Zachary (3,000+) all started at 11 or 12. I had the pleasure of jumping with Charlie when he was 14 and 15, and with Jeff when he was 11. Totally dialed in, more methodical, conscientious and procedurally safety-conscious than almost all adults. Plus I learned that we all look like 11-year-old kids in freefall... then we put our adult faces back on after we land, whereas Jeff... well, he was 11 in the air and on the ground too. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

When I was in the 82d airborne, we did arctic warfare training in alaska and we had the exact same problem except completely different. In our case, it was weapons and cameras... you couldn't be in -20 F. temperatures, then take your weapons and cameras inside the toasty warm +34 F. tents or you would have an M-16 popsicle and a camera that just stared at you. So we left our weapons outside, and I kept my camera inside my jacket while outside and kept it close to the tent wall inside, so that the temperature differential was minimal, and it never froze from condensation. So instead of ziplock bags, etc, you need to do two things: 1) change your storage strategy from ease of access to protection from the cooling airflow; and 2) INSULATE it. Instead of a ziplock, how about a sock or a sock/space blanket snippet/sock? However you do it, the solution is to minimize the temperature differential between high, fast and cold and low, slow and warm. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

reminds me of the whuffo in the bar telling tall tales about his skydiving exploits and when I asked him what kind of parachute he jumped (not wanting to confuse him with terms such as "rig" or "canopy," he said: "A regular one." SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

You did agree to it while responding to previous post. Below is the question I posed, and underneath is your repsone, both cut and pasted from one of your above posts. D'OH!!! Hoisted upon my own petard... Or did I just change my mind? I can't remember... My Old Timer's Disease notwithstanding, a wingloading BSR is still a bandaid on a severed artery, but maybe this reasonably well-reasoned discussion (on both sides) will in fact get us to address the 900-pound gorilla in the room and at least head in the right direction on this. Kudos to you and everyone else on this thread who's at least thinking about this, including ol' Bill picking nits to absurdity and beyond. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

+1 Kinda funny how some of the posters can't seem to get their heads around the notion that, instead of having "health insurance," you just pay for health care if you get hurt or sick. It's kinda like the car insurance example you mentioned. Yes, most states require liability insurance so if you hit someone else, they are covered, but you can choose whether or not to have collision and comprehensive insurance -- i.e., if you hit something or someone, you have to pay to get your own car fixed instead of having your insurance do it. Rush Limbaugh paid for his treatment when he had his heart problem in Hawaii last year. The lefties tried to make a big deal out of the fact the he could pay for it because he was rich, but the bill was in the $15,000 range, which means only about ONE YEAR of premiums for a lot of people. And get this -- even "mandatory" car insurance has a "self-insurance" opt-out option in a lot of states; if you agree to pay for -- and can prove that you can pay for -- any damages, then you don't have to buy the insurance. So back to the topic at hand: The OP needs to either buy his own policy that covers catastrophic injuries ONLY (unlike "health insurance") or he needs to build up that bank account enough that he can pay for his ER and ortho surgery visits... except, oh wait, insurance companies won't be allowed to offer that kind of coverage any more... EVERY health or hospital insurance plan will by federal law include pregnancy testing services, mental health services, preventive screenings for a host of problems the OP won't have to deal with for another 30 years... Young feller, it looks as if you're going to have to build up that bank accoutn... except wait... your taxes will be going up soon too... oh well, there's always bowling... SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

the only problem with your supposition is that with obamacare risky sports will probably be outlawed because it won't be fair to the rest of the population to pay for the injuries we incur taking such an extreme risk. We're already starting to go down this road with smoking and obesity because obamacare forbids companies from denying coverage to anyone for any reason, so the only way to "contain costs" is not just to ration health care itself, but to discourage and ultimately prohibit certain activities and behaviors that lead to increased levels of care. All overseen of course, by federal bureaucrats who do not produce anything except systemic friction and whom are paid with the redistributed wealth of people who do work -- in the private sector. look for it in the coming months and years -- rhetoric that americans do not have a "right" to skydive, rock climb, ride motorcycles, et al, because it will cost too much to fix us when we break. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

And the low-timer to high-timer non-fatal crater ratio is..? Nobody so far (that I recall) has put any numbers to this ratio, but I can say anecdotally over my years in the sport that measurably more of the non-fatal craters are also being made by high-timers, so in my experience the fatal-non-fatal distinction is moot. I did not and do not agree to this; I specifically and categorically reject it. Using a wingloading BSR in place of refocusing our fatally flawed training system is tha bandaid on the severed artery. We need surgery, not bandaids. +1... sort of...