DiverDave

Right on, Michele! The sky only gets bluer from here on out... Cheers... Dave

My name is David (or Dave) Brussin... I live in Playa del Rey (a part of Los Angeles) and jump at Perris. I work as Director of Security Technology for a computer security company... Cheers... Dave

THANKS! Cheers... Dave

Well, I found out that since I have Friday and Monday meetings in NJ, work has to cover my hotel/expenses over the weekend. Any good hotels/motels close to the DZ? Thanks, Dave

Jim Slaton runs the Perris Evolution canopy school, which includes a significant aerodynamics lesson as part of ground school from what he's told me. My guess would be that this is a ram air kite to be used as a teaching aid... but that's just a guess. Cheers... Dave

XKeys folks: Where is the best place to stay close to the DZ? I'll be coming in for the weekend (7/14-15) from northeast NJ and will probably stay over the nights of 7/13-14. BTW, I'll probably be out the following weekend as well... Gotta love it when business trips turn into skydiving vacations! Hope to jump with you guys... Thanks, Dave

JC has been hanging around Perris quite a bit lately... especially since the planning for the Para-Performance Pro Blade "Pro Cup" started a couple months back. He does some freefly load organizing, but I think he mostly does canopy-school related stuff with Jim Slaton. He's still teaching canopy flight over at Elsinore, as far as I know. I don't know that he's formally coaching for the Flyboyz... I sortof got the impression he was just helping out for the skillz camp. I can say this: he is an incredible freeflyer and canopy pilot, and an excellent teacher/coach as well. As for Psycho Circus, no idea... haven't heard anything. Cheers... Dave

Greetings, all... Well, the Flyboyz freefly skills camp at Perris was a blast... I did 2 coached jumps with Fritz on Saturday and one with J.C. on Sunday, and a whole bunch of jumps in between. Jump 1 with Fritz: sit exit, did 360 turns, weedwackers and backflips... went pretty well. On the debrief I could really see that my knees were up too high (a bit above my waist) and too close together. Also, my feet were a bit too far back, stealing air... A related problem, I was leaned forward a bit with arms too far back, fighting not to backslide. Jump 2 with Fritz: Headdown exit, sit maneuvers... The debrief showed that my headdown position needs a lot of work, and that my sit hadn't made much progress yet. Jump 3 with J.C.: Headdown exit, sit maneuvers... The headdown exit went a lot better, with only a couple of corrections... kept the headdown for a moment after we broke, then transitioned to sit... WOW, what a difference a day makes! The video shows a completely different sit technique from Saturday, with knees below waist and shoulder width apart, and feet only a touch under. Back straight, could perhaps be leaned back a bit more. Totally different feeling! The turns were smooth and stopped on heading, with no distortion of position. Weedwacker was smooth with good eye contact, and flips stopped exactly on heading. What a blast! Now a million more things to work on... In between the coached jumps, I did a bunch of jumps with some of the camp participants, including Pat Works (great freeflyer!) On Sunday Fritz led a great bigway tracking dive at sunset. On Saturday at sunset I earned my beer for the weekend: A formation sitfly jump... formation as in 2 Otters! Very, very cool. I was in the lead plane, floating. The exit went really smoothly, then the visuals were incredible as the jumpers from the trail plane came in as the sun set behind a great cloud formation. All in all, a great weekend... Cheers... Dave

Michele, I for one think your jump went great. Like I told you on the ground yesterday, if you walked away and could stand there telling me about it, it was a good jump. You are in AFF to learn, right? Sounds like you learned a lot on that dive. Your awareness, decision making and actions all sound great. Your arch is good, a little turn under those circumstances is no big deal. When I started AFF, I flew like a friggin' two-by-four... flat as a board. I kept instructing my body to move like it needed to, but to no avail. Over time things just 'snapped' into place. This hasn't changed a bit, just this weekend I made real progress in the Flyboyz skill camp, and on my first jump Sunday morning, something just 'snapped' into place and I refined some aspects of my sitflying. There is (and will always be) infinite room for improvement, but I feel good knowing I made some progress toward the unreachable goal. Your jump yesterday is a _necessary_ step toward some pieces 'snapping' into place in your flying. Stick with it, keep jumping and it will all work itself out. By the time you start doing solos, you'll be amazed at how much time you have to play up there because your body and mind will have learned how to fly so you won't have to think about it. (Right, Sinister?) Based on some advise from Eli and Fritz this weekend, I can relate this: think and practice on the ground... in the air, don't think! there isn't time! just breath and fly. Good luck on your next jump... Cheers... Dave

Sinister, WOOHOO! Good job, sounds like that dive went even better it sounded yesterday. How did your accuracy attempt go? I just watched your level 1 aff off of your homepage... looks like you are a quick learner all around. Anyway, hurry up and get that A license so we can do some dives together! Cheers... Dave

I do believe the 'SPLAT' mentioned is the sound of a virtual pie hitting a virtual Dave square in the kisser... :) We know you can pull your handles... hopefully you won't have to pull quite so many of them for a while! Cheers... Dave

Albatross, I'll be out all weekend for the Flyboyz camp... look for the black/white/red infinity with 'Dave' on the 3ring cover and say hello! Cheers... Dave

Justin, You were really burning because back flying is quite a bit faster than belly... less surface area out... you can fly slow on your back, but it takes a lot more work than on your belly. You were almost certainly sticking a leg or arm out a bit more on one side, that'll cause a spin. Next time try bringing your arms and legs all the way in (out of the wind) and then pushing them symmetrically back out. When you are comfortable backflying an entire skydive, you are a long way toward safe freeflying with others. To get to a sit from your back, stick your arms straight out to your sides at about shoulder level... Then pull your feet in to your butt (cannonball style), and you'll rotate upright... Then you can push your feet _down_ below your knees, and you'll be sitting. If you can see your feet, you're probably reclined on your back with your legs in front of you backsliding like hell. Remember this position for later, tho, its the beginning of a back-track, and a great way to drive back if you end up on the outskirts of a freefly jump! :) The most important thing is that when things fall apart, resist the urge to pop to your belly... When it feels like its about to go unstable, try the cannonball-with-arms-out (Pat Works calls this the 'vRW Stable' position). Also, use your backfly to recover and try again. Cheers... Dave

Michele, From what Ed told me, you can arch _hard_ and really get the fallrate up... so when you get that A license, you'll be popular with us freeflyers for the ever-elusive hybrid dives... That's a combo of bellyflying and freeflying... So, crossing threads, I guess that means we can combine the DZ.com RW and vRW record attempts into one group! Now if I could only think of a way to work in the CRW dogs... :) Cheers... Dave

CONGRATS! Have I mentioned how jealous I am that you practically live within walking distance of the DZ and jump your ass off every week? :) Cheers... Dave

Herv, Sounds like you're doing great for 36 jumps! Just wait till you get the rush of burning 287364234 points on a four way... Ask Stacy about that feeling, I suspect she knows it well! Congrats! Cheers... Dave

One the great 'falling while falling' sensations is flipping off your belly into a full-on stand... WOOHOO! Cheers... Dave

Well, 200 has come and gone! It was a really cool jump... Pat Works (did the book/video 'The Art of vRW: The Way of Freefly) was out at Perris, so Devlin (friend of mine) and I got together with him and a guy visiting from Germany named Stephan and put together a 4 way. For jump 199 we did a headdown 'flower' exit, it went surprisingly well. We broke the flower and transitioned to sit... Pat and I got 3 good docks in, then at the very end of the skydive Devlin came in from behind and above me and put his feet on my shoulders and totally took me out! I spun around about 10 feet below everybody, then back-tracked out just at breakoff alt... Sweet! Jump 200, we were on the lead plane of a 2 plane formation load... Our 4way got our own jump run before the formation, definitely a good start! We took another flower out right over the center of the DZ... it started nice, then threw us out as we broke it... I transitioned to sit and drove into the center. Stephan stayed head down, Devlin stood and Pat was in a sit as well... Major zoo, we all just carved around each other for the rest of the dive, it was a blast. After opening, it was cool to look around and see only the other 3 canopies in that big blue sky... We sorted out a pattern, and I did my (conservative) carving 90 front riser into double front risers... just a bit of a breeze, so toes in the empty grass for a nice swoop. Then as we head across the runway, we look up to see the entire formation load open directly above! SWEET! As for swimming, I somehow managed to dodge that for now... :) I think we were all too excited about getting on the next load! Cheers... Dave

On my first jump, I was in the very back of the Otter opposite the door (while my two friends, also on AFF1, were all the way in the front against the cockpit bulkhead). Since it was quite hot, I sat there staring out the open door from about 1k to 8k... the left-hand banking turns were particularly exciting! For me, the real nerves started at like 10 or 11k, when things really went from 'airplane ride' to 'i'm actually leaving this airplane.' Once I was in the door ready to exit, though, the nerves vanished... it was all about the air at that point. Throughout AFF and the solos that followed, the 'nervous' altitude got higher and higher, until it was gone altogether... from then on, all good! Soon you'll amuse yourself by trying to guess your altitude AGL while sitting in the open doorway... or even dangling a foot or two in the breeze. Cheers... Dave

Unless I'm out of town, count me in for the Perris attempt! By the way, the SkyVan is still out having new (superfast!) engines installed... maybe ready in time, maybe not. I suppose I should be devil's advocate and suggest that we honor the 'dark side' as well... DZ.com vRW record anyone? :) Anyone going to the Flyboyz freefly camp next weekend? I'll be out all weekend, be sure to find me so we can throw each other out of an airplane at some point! Cheers... Dave

Well, the last entry in my logbook says 'Jump #198'.... I guess Sunday will be the big 200... I'll be at Perris, say hello if you're out there... Cheers... Dave

Hey Sinister69! Glad you worked out that situation, didn't sound like fun. One thing I did on my solos after AFF was to add a specific 'arch' step into my break-off routine. Since its good to build good habits, at break-off altitude I would always turn to a heading perpendicular to jumprun, track for 5 seconds (even though these were solos), then focus on a very stable arch before and during my wave off and pull. This focus on arching hard, with arms and legs spread wide, helped to shake off any instability from trying new things during the skydive, and also established a very symmetrical (read: no line twists) body position for deployment. Anyway, I'm glad to hear that you were able to shake that pilot chute loose... as to your opening, under the circumstances I'd say it went great :) Just goes to show, today's canopies want to open, despite our efforts to the contrary :) So, hurry up and get your A license so we can jump together! Cheers... Dave

Jump #4 (freefalls #4 and #5 :) Freefall went great... from the video you can see that I am nice and stable at pulltime, but you can see the lines starting to twist up right after the bag comes off my back. The opening was pretty hard, and the canopy started to spin right away. I could see that the lines (and risers) were twisted all the way up to the slider, and that only half of the canopy seemed to be inflated properly. I ditched my ripcord, grabbed the risers, pulled them apart as hard as I could and kicked... tried that twice, by then I was spinning horizontal to earth up next to my canopy. Going through the video frame-by-frame later, it looks like it may have been a line-over. A choice word escaped my lips as i reached for handles... pull red, pull silver... ... reserve open! A couple of deep breaths, then I released the brakes and did a canopy check on my reserve. As most of you know, it is an interesting feeling looking up at your last canopy! The reserve landed fine, although not terribly gracefully... On my next jump, I was somewhat 'attentive' at opening time as I watched my main deploy beautifully. I have to say, having a malfunction, and dealing with it, that early was a great experience. Gave me a lot more confidence than the harness room ever could... Cheers... Dave

Michele, WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I knew you could do it! I'm glad you decided to get back in the air right away. Your description is incredible... made me think back to my own AFF jumps. See ya at Perris sometime. Cheers... Dave

That's nothing, guys... you really need to ask Froggie about how she got extra altitude on that tandem! Cheers... Dave