VTcnix

that guy was a photographer for our school newspaper... he got word that something was happening in Norris and was running toward it. The police apprehended him because naturally it looked suspiciuos. There was a report at about 11:30-12pm that the perpetrator was in custody,.. I think that this information came from an untelevised press conference... I can say that I was glued to the TV all day while it was happening and there was alot of misinformation reported,

Very well said Sweetpea.. it makes me sick how this so quickly dissolved into pointing fingers and politics... many fellow students, friends, parents, daughters, brothers, sisters just lost their lives way too early. I wish that people would let everyone have some peace before trying to find the "most interesting" angle to take on the story... Now is not the time to push your new "campus security plan" or your gun platform

I just wanted to give thanks to all of the skydiving community who have had the VT skydivers on their minds. We have had quite an outpouring of support on our myspace account. http://www.myspace.com/skydivevt Luckily, all of our guys are safe and sound, but I have already heard from one of our guys who knew some of the people involved. It is nice to know what a tight knit and supportive community we are involved in.

Thanks Justin... I'm so sad for all of the families who are getting notified right now... its just so unbelievable that something like this would happen here

i think its 32 so far... this is the saddest thing.. it's uncomprehensible

We got all got an email from President Steger,... he says we have 22 dead (including the shooter)... there's 28 in hospitals throguhout the county... so sad

sorry kevin i was trying to get updates out to everyone.. It's mass chaos here, but everyone's ok so far, and everyone has been released from lock down... Keep VT in your thoughts and prayers

I cant say anything any better than what has already been said by people who have way more experience than I do, but I feel the need to chip in since I am one of those people who struggled with landing up to about 200 jumps.. I think that my main problem was that I fubared a few and then let those really wreck my confidence about landing. I would be so anxious about screwing up in front of everyone and embarassing myself or having my DZO see me and kick me off of the DZ for being such a horrible canopy pilot. This anxiety led me to overthink all of my landings and resulted in the self fufilling phophecy of me rolling around in the dirt. No advice that people gave me about how to improve my landings helped because what I needed to do is to simply stop stressing about it and start "feeling the landing". What I did: I purposely started landing at the far edge of the dropzone... That way I wasn't right there in front of everyone who was spectating... If I fell, I fell and no one would see it... The extra walking was well worth the allieviated stress. Once I stopped worrying, and accepting that I was not going to get it right everytime I started have steadily nice tip toe landings.... those increased my confidence to start landing in the main area and things have been great ever since... Oter than that the best advice I have heard (I have heard quite a bit

I was under the impression that the whole idea behind beer rules was for newer skydivers to pay back apprieciation to the people who invested in their training... I never tipped my AFF instructors, but they've been drinking my beer for every first I've had for the past 200+ jumps

Hello! I'm a college student who jumps in NC too (Carolina Skydiving). Good luck with your progression to your A liscense! Maybe sometime we'll be able to make some jumps together You'll find several other college jumpers @ www.collegeskydiving.com Cheers! Christie

Whoever told you Sabres open slowly was misleading you... My Sabre seems to defy physics by seemly opening the instant I let go of my pilot chute.... You may be thinking of a Sabre 2

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2405204 "Smack my Bitch up" by Prodigy is by far the best music video.... YOU HAVE TO WATCH TO THE END!

That makes alot of sense

cool! Thanks alot that was very helpful,.... I definately want to jump with tandems alot before I put a camera on.... from what I know STAY CLEAR OF THE DROGUE! Yeah I think I'm definately going to move on from my Sabre,.. from what I've heard you arent supposed to have bruises on your thighs every weekend

yep, really easy... but you still need a computer I would definately recommend downloading this "uploader" they have for windows... makes uploading photos as easy as right clicking the folder on your computer

Thanks for the reply, I always get nervous that people are going to either simply tell me to do a search or tell me I have no clue what I'm doing

Ok, well I just offically bought my first camera. I am excited but also reasonably nervous. I have read through as many posts as I can about the questions I have but would like to pose them just to see if I can get any other helpful tidbits.. First off, I have 250 jumps, I know everyone recommends 200 and that I just have the bare minimun... just because I bought the setup doesnt mean that I intend to jump it right away. My next 30 jumps are going to be me jumping as if I had a camera without one... practicing exits, flying relative to something, deployment, etc... It may take me many more jumps than that to feel comfortable. When I do fly with it I intend to shoot tandems, coach jumps and some 4 way here and there. The set up I bought is a FTP with mounts on top for a HC 42 and a Cannon Rebel Still (probably wont jump that til I get video down). So here are my questios: 1. Head position on deployment- from what I have read there is not a large consensus about this. What I read that makes sense to me is to keep my head straight,... looking at the horizon. Is there any reason not to do this? 2. RSL... A big no no??? From what I've read everyone seems to suggest against an RSL,.. So a cutaway procedure from a spinning mal (which I've had before) would be cutaway... get stable, deploy reserve... correct?... so then, do you deploy a bit higher? 3. Cutting away- same head position? or do I look down? 4. Canopy- I have a Sabre.... ouch right? From what I hear Spectre is the way to go, but when I contacted someone he said that Spectres are know to snap too... I was a packer for several years and know most of the suggestions for slowing openings.. what are ya'lls perspectives on the Spectre? I've heard the Pilot has nice openings too but that the flare is lacking.. (I jump a 150, a nice conservative wingloading for my size) 5. Video editing- any special recommendations for software? I have access to Final Cut Pro on campus and love it, but cant shell out the money for it for myself. 6. Videoing coach jumps- any reason not to once I am comfortable with the camera? Any other helpful advise or suggestions? I think thats it, I'll probably have alot more as time goes by. I look forward to reading this section of the forum more. -Christie

I use smugmug too and have been very happy. Granted I am new to camera and havent gotten remotely close to selling shots, but the site is set up great and the customer service is amazing. It is very easy to email particular photos to people to view and the email they recieve is high quality html format.... You can also upload videos to your site from youtube or other such site (small mpeg videos you can host directly but only like 15sec). And since you pay for it, theres no annoying ads for you or the people who view your photos

hello! Welcome to the sport! I jump in NC too,.. you can't beat the view!

Here's one of my pup Meeker with her rig on... (with some photoshop help from Nathan)

Byron Bay has one of the best DZs that I have been to (I would take a 6 hr train ride from queensland to jump there). The jumpers are super friendly and the plane (a Cresco?) is one of my fav. jump planes. Jumps are a bit more expensive (35$AU when I was there) Byron Bay was my fav. place in Australia, you'll have a blast

I think this was a great post. I do believe that collegiates should be at a time that the collegiate guys could attend. But i think it would be beneficial to everyone if there was a different "bracket" for civilian/military. As it stands, the military teams are really only competing against themselves and I know for sure that the college teams will specify "Excluding the military, we came in 2nd". Winning gold metals does not only benefit military teams, it is a huge selling point for college clubs when we approach the annual budget board.

I wrote this email to my school's listserve, but out of boredom I thought I would post it here to see if anyone had any thoughts. I know that there is already a thread on the decline in the number of skydivers, but my email deals specifically with the idea of increasing the number of collegiate skydivers. It's extremely long, but I didnt want to take the time to edit it down "So, I know that I am a month behind, but I just recently finished reading the September Parachutist. I noticed that both the Capital Commentary and letters to the editor had to do with the decline in number of skydivers. Chris Needles points to the aging of the baby boomers, whereas the letters to the editor point to the increasing cost of the sport. I looked up the numbers on uspa.org and, from the data they have available, this is what I found: In 2000- 34,217 In 2001- 34,322 In 2002- 33,664 In 2004- 32,057 In 2005- 31,276 So, there has been a short term steady decline in numbers of jumpers (at least in jumpers registered with USPA). However, it is hard to draw any firm conclusions since the only data I could find is for the past 5 years. (I’m just going to take his word about it) So what can be blamed? Is it people getting older? Is it the rising cost of jumping? The increasing wussy culture of society? The decline of the economy? Chris Needles states that the solution to this problem is for the skydiving community to support and foster the collegiate skydiving clubs. From the 5 year data that I found in 2002 students made up 5.3% of all skydivers, in 2005 they comprised 5%,… not a huge change (although, since the total has gone down, the total number of college skydivers has also decreased). However, like I said, it is hard to draw any conclusions since the limited range of the data. So I am guessing their goal would be to increase this percentage of college skydivers. Pointing to the fact that most schools do not have a skydiving club, his idea is to encourage the starting up of new clubs in these schools, and to encourage the growth of already established clubs. That sounds nice and all, and makes for a good capital commentary, but I am interested about what USPA’s plan for doing this is. The first thing he says that they can do is “raise the visibility of college skydiving” by (1) help clubs become group members by making membership desirable and affordable (2) help with details on how to sell the club program to school administrators. First off, I don’t think that the cost of USPA membership dissuades college skydivers from skydiving. Our club used to pay for the cost of membership for members and it really wasn’t a huge selling point. In fact, we got rid of the program and no one said anything. I think that the biggest problems for college clubs are making themselves visible and convincing people who are already living on a tight budget to foot the bill for the huge cost of training. Advertising costs money and takes time/effort. If USPA would like to help clubs, they could start by providing clubs with advertising materials such as t-shirts, posters, flyers, banners, free parachutists etc. They could donate tandems for clubs to auction off or help clubs to organize events to promote skydiving on campus. The second idea, of having USPA aid clubs on how to sell the club to school administrators seems to have some promise. USPA should seek out a council of representatives from every school program to discuss what routes each took to build the programs they have and what methods each use to build their membership. From this council they could appoint members from different areas who would be responsible for mentoring people at other schools interested in starting up a club. USPA could go beyond just working with school administrators to start up clubs, and could also aid clubs in their ongoing negotiations with school administrators in such things as funding, starting up collegiate teams, and having demos on campus. Our club has been unsuccessful with these things, and would probably have benefited from USPA’s help. The next area that Chris Needles touched on is that “dropzones need to get involved” He says that DZs need to view colleges as a new source of talent and a new source of business. I think that this is important. The club’s relationship with Adrenaline Air Sports has been the reason that we have been able to grow into the club that we are. The tandems that we bring out to the dropzone has been our #1 steady source of income. I am a firm believer that clubs need to have a home DZ. It fosters the sense of community within the club and helps to connect the collegiate jumpers with non-collegiate jumpers. While I think it is important that people travel around and experience different dropzones, I also think that it is important that young jumpers become involved with their local dropzone community. There, new jumpers will get to know experienced jumpers and that will be beneficial in developing their skills. Jumpers will also become deeply entrenched within that “skydiving family” and will develop long-standing connections outside of the club that they will be able to rely on for a long time after they graduate. Dropzones should not only support clubs financially but should work to build a cohesive community between the club and DZ. Finally, Chris Needles mentions Collegiates, saying that “wouldn’t it be great if we doubled the number of schools and quadrupled the number of competitors in each of these upcoming years?”. Our club has already discussed the problems with Collegiates. The one national competition that we have is dominanted by fully funded military teams. If there were separate divisions for military and civilian, those clubs that are not funded would be able to compete amongst themselves. Since Collegiates is located on the far end of one coast or the other tends to prohibit the participation of clubs that are located far away. It is already expensive enough to send the club to Florida, I do not want to think about what the cost is going to be to send them to Arizona. USPA could acknowledge this and perhaps hold one competition for those schools on the West Coast and one competition for those on the East Coast. Beyond that, I think that it would be beneficial for USPA to sponsor small division “meets” or competitions throughout the year. This would facilitate the intermingling of clubs and increase cohesion within the collegiate skydiving community. This would also help clubs to be recognized as teams by their schools and would increase their funding potentials. I sent an email to USPA last year detailing these complaints, and never heard back from them. Anyway, I think that it is interesting to hear a representative from USPA acknowledging the importance of college clubs. They have played no role in our club, and it would be interesting to see how they could benefit us and the collegiate skydiving community as a whole. We have recently seen a drop in our membership and the number of tandems that we are bringing out. Hopefully this is due to a fluke and is not part of some larger trend. We were lucky to see huge growth in the past few years and now have a rather decent club. We cannot forget that this was a result of many people’s effort and not something that happened over night. We need to continue to strengthen the cohesion within the club and work hard to incorporate new members into that group. Most of the new members we’ve had over the past few years have stuck with the sport because of the friendships they formed. Remember those members that you recruit today will probably be those people you are jumping with 10 years from now. (by the way, I'm from the VT club)

i dont think anyone will match us this year. If you thought you saw debauchery last year, just wait... we're pulling out all the stops Fallatio #4 Duckpond #1

On a cross-country jump last winter I lost my beloved Z-1 with my new pro-trac in it due to a riser strike... bummer...