karenmeal

Well.. so short-term, obviously, giving him specific pointers about how to begin to freefly is what will make him a better freeflyer---- in the short-term. However, when I give people advice on how to proceed in the sport, I give them advice for the long-term. Just like I would tell someone with 50 jumps who wanted to learn to swoop to work on some other canopy skills first, I think that having a solid foundation of belly skills is invaluable to being a well-rounded (and much better) freeflyer later on. Belly flying and freeflying are not that different. In both disciplines, you must learn to be aware of your body and how to move your body through the air by manipulating your body position. This is unarguably much easier to learn at slower speeds. If you are going 180 miles per hour (not at all uncommon when learning head-down), a slight problem with your body position will be magnified and will translate into tons of unwanted movement through the air. However, a slight problem with body position while belly flying and going 120 mph, will not produce as much movement in the horizontal plane. It takes a certain amount of practice to begin to develop good self-awareness in freefall. You need to learn to relax and critically evaluate what is going on with your body position before you can fix it. Much easier to learn this self-awareness when belly flying. Corking. You can't really cork out of a skydive while on your belly. You can do this in freeflying and it can hurt or kill you or your jump buddies. If you learn to freefly before having a basic command of belly skills, then there are some very basic freefall (not discipline specific) skills that you will need to learn while in a more high-stress environment where you must deal with higher speeds and the potential of corking out. General awareness. It takes a lot more than 20 jumps to develop good awareness of your freefall environment. When learning to freefly, you are falling faster (as I mentioned before) and problems with body position often translate into movement in the horizontal plane. Are you aware throughout the skydive of your movement in relation to jump run? This is a challenging thing to maintain awareness of, yet it is important for people in all disciplines to be aware of this. Why not learn to develop this sort of awareness when belly-flying when you are less likely to have lots of movement on the horizontal plane that has the potential to have your skydive invade the air space of another group on your same load? Break-off and swooping a formation. The basic concepts here are the same for either discipline, yet sooo much easier (and safer) to learn when belly-flying. You will need to belly-fly at some point in your skydiving career, and at pull-time on every jump. This is the foundation of skydiving. Not knowing how to do this could prevent you from becoming a good instructor later, not being able to do good tandem videos, not being able to get on important belly jumps (like ash dives). Learning to belly fly before you freefly is to me, the best plan in the long-run. You will be a much better skydiver over all, you'll have greater flexibility in the types of jumps that you get on (which believe me, you will appreciate) and you'll just have more confidence and awareness in freefall when (or if) you decide to eventually transition to freeflying. I am honestly not giving this advice because I don't want the original poster to not have fun or something. I just strongly believe that having a good foundation of belly skills is invaluable to becoming a good freeflyer. Without that knowledge, I feel as though people are missing a fundamental chunk of skydiving know-how. Do I know good freeflyers who don't really know how to belly fly? Yes I do. But, I will never think of a freeflyer who can barely belly fly as a great skydiver. To me, they have skipped over the fundamentals and it definitely shows. When I tell someone that they are not ready to learn to freefly, it is not because they won't be able to acquire some basic freefly skills.. it is because I believe that it is in their best interest (in the long-run) to develop some other skills first. So to sum this very long post up.. I feel that I have addressed the original posters sentiment: My hint is: be well-rounded by developing more belly-flying skills now, and enjoy the multitude of benefits that will stem from making that choice for the duration of your (hopefully long) skydiving career. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

My advice (and I'm a freeflyer) is stay mostly on your belly for at least another 100 jumps! I find it hard to believe that FS is really boring for you. It's not boring for me by any means, especially jumping with people who challenge me. Personally, I just prefer the general fluidity of freeflying. Learning some basic skills on your belly will only serve to make you a better over all flyer and I doubt it is a choice that you will ever regret. Learning basic skydiving skills while going slower, in a safer environment (no danger of corking) is vital to applying those basic skills to something like freeflying later on. Not to mention if you ever want to be an instructor of any sort or a videographer, you need belly skills. That is my advice. Stay on your belly for now and work hard. Set goals for each jump and work to accomplish those goals. Once you can do 15 points or so on a four-way.. then you are probably ready to learn some freeflying. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

5 Jumps.. Competed in the local sport accuracy meet. Was doing great until I landed a couple yards out of the circle. I did get two zeros (you want as few points as possible) and I'm proud of that. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Good job!! 20 year old gear can still be in great shape and perfect for just getting off of student status! My first rig was 20 years old as well, two years older than I was when I bought it. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Hooooray! That must be a fabulous feeling! Under a month until I graduate. (But just with a puny bachelor's) "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

The Seattle Zoo!!! You must take your kids there.. don't go on a weekend though. I love this zoo. They have some really cool exhbits - especially the Pacific northwest one with grizzlies, mountain goats and river otters. I will think about some hikes for your family and e-mail you my suggestions with directions. When would this trip be? It has a great effect on hike availability due to snow levels. -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I don't name inanimate objects. That's just plain silly. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Do something like rent a cabin in the woods next to a major mountain out here (Rainier or Baker) and take the family fishing, hiking, and have campfires. You could spend a day or two in Seattle doing tourist things, but I wouldn't budget much more time than that. Also, taking a trip out to one of the islands out here would be fun. You could also go up to Canada and check out B.C. If you need help finding hiking spots let me know. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I would scrub it with TSP, let it dry and then lightly sand before painting. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

That's a pretty good definition to me. I concur! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

For extra practice of course! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I used the data sort feature... but I had 960 trials that I had to go through.. so using the data sort just scratched the surface of what I wanted to get excel to do. Once I got it into chunks it was easier to make a tally.. but it still took about 4 hours. I don't think I'm cut out for this end of research! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope random chicks on the freeway are flashing you! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I have to try that! I have three that frequent the feeder outside my office window. They come around about every five minutes or so. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Three beers under canopy definitely CAN affect you! Always remember to finish your flare. ***This public service announcement brought to you by a now-sane person recalling their wild skydiving teen years. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Well.. i dunno anything about quicken.. But what I was trying to do was make a sheet that tallied errors codes and organized according to training status and study phase.. 7 months ago I didn't even know excel was more than just a plain ol' grid. Seriously. I feel sooo stuuupiid using that program. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Thanks.. maybe a pivot table wasn't what I needed. Anyways.. I did all the calculations by hand and sorted it out. Man that took a while! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

How in the hell do I make a pivot table? "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Does it count if you're drinking the beer under canopy? "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Ahh.. yes. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I called bullshit when I read that too. What is wrong with that 10%??? Do they prefer to sleep through sex? It's got to be closer to 95-99%. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

How did I know this was going to be about a penis? That thing looks painful! It seems like the equivalent of a woman tying a string to her nipple with the other end tied to a brick, and dangling the bricks from her nipples to get bigger boobs. Yeah.. I guess that might work. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Oh my gosh! We agree on something!! The DZ has always worked fine for me for getting to hanging out with my friends. No need to send a million texts/do a phone tree just to hang out. No need to meet at a particular time-- just go skydiving. It's where the friends are! Oh, and to not hijack this thread: I've got the LG phone.. I think that's the model. It's a little flip phone, it has worked good for me, and I think it was the cheap phone. It's taken a bunch of abuse too and hasn't broken yet! Just yesterday I accidentally flung it into the street and no chips or anything! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

A research poster is a summary of your research-- basically an abbreviated version of the paper that I will later have to write. It's just a way to present it to people. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I know I don't know what I'm doing. I've recently posted two threads about things that I don't know how to do. (Make a research poster and interview tandems.) "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham