skyhighkiy

I remember driving 2 hrs. to my home DZ on friday, staying there friday, sat, and all day sunday until I had to go home, without being able to jump. BE THE BUDDHA!

Kind of a continuation to Rdutch's post. Look at a video of the people test-jumping the skyhooks... it's amazing, skyhooook!!! BE THE BUDDHA!

I have a buddy that's in an identical situation. I asked him why he plans on downsizing. My buddy had an ego problem. He wanted to downsize so he could brag about his canopy, so he could get"morespeed" out of his landings. when he was barely pulling out 180's on risers. if the problem is ego with your buddy, and he just absolutely will not listen to anyone, use his ego against him. Example: "Why are you downsizing anyway? I've seen a guy on your canopy and your wingloading out-swoop a guy with X wingloading and X canopy...are you downsizing to compensate for your lack of skill on your canopy?" "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" I don't know about you, but I think a guy that can swoop a conservative canopy in total control and awesome form, is far more impressive than a hot-shot barely burning it in under something he obviously can't handle. BE THE BUDDHA!

www.bigairsportz.com "the canopy and it's pilot" by Brian Germaine get it, you won't regret it. BE THE BUDDHA!

You'd be amazed by the amount of young jumpers that don't read up on things like canopy control. you'd also be amazed by how many young jumpers read a ton about skydiving, but don't know enough to know what to read. BE THE BUDDHA!

get busch light, the universal beer. if he had them, It'll bring him back to his college days who doesn't like busch light? BE THE BUDDHA!

not what he meant at all. Because this is the same mentality I have. you know it can happen, so you do things to do your best to avoid it. BE THE BUDDHA!

whether or not the post does a lot of good relates to what scale you're thinking on. say 5000 people look at this post and 300 are the 100 jump wonders with the mentality. that's a really, really small number of people compared to the 5000 that saw it. Lets say that only five of those actually hear what he's saying. Lets say, those five people never thought of it as taking more than their own life in to their hands and are truly affected by it. That's five people whose lives you might have saved. and if they are supporting people...well, you get the picture. Sure, this post doesn't have an affect on you or me or some other newbie jumpers, but we need people like him to put stuff like this out there, to help them re-think what they're doing, even if it only means one skydiving brother's life. It's like a cypress, how many people actually have a cypress fire? but for that one person that does... why is it That that one life seems so much more insignificant pre-accident, but everyone knows about the person, respects their death, has dives dedicated to them, and uses their mistake as an example of what not to do, once they have a profile in the fatality database? Edit to add: Nobody should be so ignorant as to believe that everyone learns the way they do, or that everyone learns like the majority does. There are acceptions to every rule, How do you know the ways you (not saying YOU, specifically) are suggesting to teach these topics, the topics you describe as the "Right" way, are going to work for the acceptions? BE THE BUDDHA!

personal fav so far. bat hanging off a 182 w/ 1st time tandems watching from inside the plane. Looks on their faces were priceless. or 3000/2500 ft hop'n'pops BE THE BUDDHA!

with the acception of landing on rears, why not? I did. BE THE BUDDHA!

My true weight (without gear) is 170, when I bought my canopy it was 175 and I"ve been jumping my gear (sabre 170) since jump # 14 BE THE BUDDHA!

triathlon=7 cell rather than the sabre's 9 You're going to get less performance out of a 7 cell, although I know a couple people that have them that enjoy them. you can't go wrong w/ a 170...actually...what might solve all this...what's the smallest canopy you've jumped thus far? I made the decision to go w/ 170 after comming in downwind on a turbo0Z 165 if you haven't jumped a 170 and 150 yet...there's really no way to tell. edit to add: IT seems you're really eager to get under something smaller than a 170 really soon. and although there's chances you'd be fine going smaller, there's also chances you won't be. choose wisely. YOu're always fine under a smaller canopy until you're not. you will definately get more surf out of a 150 than a 170. if you don't have the skill todo high performance landings, and you'll definately have more speed when you nail the ground on one of your lesson-learning dives that are inevitable in the learning stages. BE THE BUDDHA!

what dropzone "elsewhere" would let him jump a 1.2 w/l at 79-89 jumps????? BE THE BUDDHA!

no dropzone that is USPA certified...and many that aren't. please, someone correct me if I'm wrong BE THE BUDDHA!

anything dealing w/ sinus problems and altitude will be at least a wee painful. I jumped w/ a severe head cold a couple times, (nothing really like a broken nose) all I ended up with was a pretty bad headache when I was done..... but make no mistake about it, sinus problems and altitude do equal pain. another reason to wait (I dunno what, inside your nose has been injure), but your sinuses are connected to your inner ear, which controls your equilibrium. BE THE BUDDHA!

by "tailered elliptical" you mean tapered, right? fully elliptical and semi-elliptical (unless I'm mistaken, please correct me if I'm wrong) are quite different from tapered, which is what the sabre2 is. anywho, Jeff It's not whether or not you're more likely to be caught "doing something dumb like a low turn" close to the ground. IF you're going to whip your toggles close to the ground and freak out when something happens, you're going to do it regardless of the canopy (unless you're super nervous about smaller canopies over your head and it adds more stress to you) The difference is that (for instance) whipping the toggle down on a 220 and a 150 produce drastically different effects on the system. the smaller you get, the more touchy the canopy, the more touchy the canopy (when combined with an inexperienced OR experienced jumper's freak out), the more you pay for your mistake if you don't know how to get out of it. I just saw your thing about how often you plan on jumping. I put a little under 100 jumps on my 170 (have been jumping it since jump 14) in a 4 1/2 month period and I"m still loving it, the with jumping as little as you say you're going to, you will definately have fun with the canopy for awhile. the only guys i see complaining about their canopy being too big with less than 150 jumps that ar ejumping a 170 are those I see comming in straight-in every time, that obviously don't know anything about canopy flight. Edit to add: When I say "the smaller the canopy, the more touchY" I'm talking specifically for YOU and your weight, jumping, obviously everything changes when you start talking about different weights. BE THE BUDDHA!

when I decided on a 170, it was explained to me like this. "a 170 is a good canopy, it is fast enough to be able to get a good amount of performance out of, but forgiving enough that you should be able to walk away from most botched landings w/ nothing more than a few scrapes. When you start getting in to things like 150's, you're talking about broken bones" It is my opinion, that you do not really go anywhere with learning to flare, when you have someonen telling yoyu when to do it on every jump... I dunno if this is a concern, but w/ that wingloading, you're probably not going to be able to jumpm at many DZ's for awhile due to lack of jumps I think your progression under canopy will be slowed dramatically (if you buy a 150 rather than a 170) because, chances are, you'll be trying too worried about keeping yourself from smacking the ground, to really think about getting anything out of your canopy believe me, a 170 is more than enough to have fun on, I'm having tons of fun flying mine, when you want more speed, just start getting in to using risers and HP landings. I think people that downsize too quickly, downsize because they're compensating for lack of skill in getting everything they can out of their canopy. Early on in your progression, you WILL have a couple of lesson-learning landings. make it under something more forgiving. Besides, if you pick up a 170, you'll have no probs selling it off, every student wants a 170 BE THE BUDDHA!

would make for one hell of an eventful landing!!! and definately beer worthy! BE THE BUDDHA!

so that means you'll be comming in with one toggle and one riser??????? ....like...planning on landing it that way? if you need to throw in some rear riser input because your brake lines are too short, chop the other off or chop the canopy... Edit to add: if you did mean landing it this way, take a look at some diagrams about distortion of the canopy from different types of input (riser vs. toggle, shifting weight vs. pulling something down, pulling apart vs. pulling down of rears, etc, etc, etc) BE THE BUDDHA!

treedweller? is that you?!

assuming you mean w/ your rears, because your steering line will be flapping in the wind w/ no toggle to hold the line in the guide ring. I'm curious about what you guys mean by "holding the canopy stable" ?? BE THE BUDDHA!

know about seperation of people in the sky what's entailed with jumping new gear what altitude you start losing altitude awareness at on reg. jumps and night jumps I don't remember the rest. l8er BE THE BUDDHA!

....you totally missed my point. My point is that the more things you add in to the equation, the more likely you are to be injured. not that skydiving is more dangerous than other things. However, it is one of the riskier sports and, as you said, you have to get in to a car and a plane to get there. Besides that, that's one extra shower he's probably going to take to get out to the dropzone, I mean, geeze, look at the statistics on how many people get hurt/killed in a shower? actually...I just realized how ridiculous of a topic it is thaht we're arguing about, I'm done

Your biggest risk is in doing everything you're doing in every day life and adding skydiving, PLUS driving to and from the dropzone, to the equation. also, to add to skydiving risks, since we're talking anything, throw in airplane crash on take off, NATURE, because you can't predict if you're going to get gusted randomly, thermals, if a long spot or wind shift will put you over a woodsy area. add him screwing up during landing (something jumping in front, freaking out, toggle whipping it in to the ground), not plfing if something goes wrong, add that he's fresh in to the world of skydiving, which seriously increases his risk add little things like exiting the plane... BE THE BUDDHA!

I was going to leave it alone, I just find it interesting that you're so adamantly arguing points about how many jumps you should and should not have, how current you should and should not be, and when it's ok to start swooping, when "Do I have any interest in swooping? No. Because at 300 jumps in 1 year I don’t have the experience to be doing it" no harshness meant here, It's great that you have your opinion, but you should probably leave specifics, like what you should/shouldn't have, to people that actually swoop well, and survive. BE THE BUDDHA!