tdog

His rigger note in the profile does say chest, not back. I agree - anyone who has landed a round once earns my respect... A few thousand times, and I am real interested,

That would be me, one time, broken A-line on an old DC-5. Flew okay til I flared and stalled prematurely. Good PLF but I still ended up on crutches. Another jumper broke their back with the same situation. Other times prevously I had landed broken lines, no problems. Now I chop. So guys, educate me... I have done hundreds of practice flares up high - and many full stalls high up... If I had a broken line or two, and I did a full flare before chop-altitude... How likely would it be that I "feel" the flare is "defective" or "stalling"??? I.E. Can you "test" a canopy with broken lines accurately so you don't get one of the hard landings posted on this thread??? Call me silly, but in the back of my mind I always wonder if the reserve will be any better... Seems I would keep a canopy that "felt" normal even with a few lines, but I may be wrong to think that, huh???

Ok, so 46 in one day... The longest day of the year has about 15 hours of sunlight in L.A. (I picked a random city)... That makes 3 jumps an hour from sunrise to sunset. How fast did you run from the landings to the plane???? Tell us how you did it.

A 1099MISC form, line 7, "Non-employee compensation?" If so, that is required by the IRS. Our company, with millions in revenue, and hundreds of employees, receives the same form from our customers every year. All it tells the IRS is that you received money from another business, which is revenue you can expense against. While I don't want to say my comments about skyride, if they DID NOT send this 1099 form, they could have been fined by the IRS. Sounds 100% legit to me.

Just after making sure my canopy is open and good and the airspace is clear I open my visor. I can do it so quickly I often do it while looking for other opening canopies and counting my 4way team mates... I find the wind in the face, along with zero possibility of glare/frost/fog to be refreshing while landing. I don't think I have EVER landed with my visor closed... But that is just me.

Tell us more... Working jumps, like vid or tandem, or did you actually do them as fun jumps with friends/training?

I agree... I quit paragliding and opted for skydiving because paragliding was too dangerous for me. Seriously – running downhill on a very rocky launch point tore up my left knee (dislocation on uneven surface), broke a friends ankle, and killed another friend. And, unlike swoops gone bad, these were conservative launches with tame paragliders. I have many paragliding flights where I barely got 20' off the ground... One of which a branch got stuck in my Ds and I was airborne before I could shut it down - so I ended up landing with little control as I was using my right toggle at 50% to fly it straight. But, on topic of the first post - I read the article about learning to ground launch for non-skydivers... I found it really weird, meaning different, because I learned ground launch before skydive (paraglide) – and my progression was much different... I learned by spending a day kiting the wing in a park... Once I could run for 2 minutes with it overhead (talk about aerobics) - then I progressed to the "bunny hill." My first flight was a sled ride 500' down the hill followed by a flare and tip toe landing... Repeat a few times... Then launches from the top of the mountain. Always on radio, but much less instructor interaction. I never had a tandem on the learning progression until I was licensed and went up with a friend, and I found my paragliding progression much faster than what they teach in that article...

You want to try it sometime??? I am in, but I think I can only afford 1 day, so we will have to take our day score and multiply it by a week to guess what we can do.

My two cents... Talk to your instructors and figure out where you want to be in a few months, so you can order now... It takes a while to get a new rig, so order now then wait... But, used is better way to go for the first rig, if you can find one. Oh, and as someone else said, you can get a lot of enjoyment out of a "boat". I load my canopy at 1.15 to 1 and plan on staying there for a while as it is real fun and I have a lot to learn...

How much money you got??? With a packer, two rigs, and some serious 4way training - you could do 2.5 loads per hour... With one rig and a packer, on a training day, I got 6 jumps in 4 hours... So, a week for 100 jumps - easy with the gear, packers, and planes leaving every 10 minutes...

I jumped back and forth between sea level and 5200' a lot between jumps 30 and 100 as I visited 4 different DZs... I learned at over 5000 feet MSL then went down to 0 in Puerto Rico and California for vacations and training camps... I am not going to even think I am qualified enough to tell you how to fly differently at higher elevations, however I can tell you what I experienced... As soon as I came "home" the landings felt real fast... The key, for me, was to remain calm and fly instead of panic and say, "shit this is fast." And, not that I recommend any changes (again, I am not an instructor nor seen you fly) but I found my flares to be too low/late at higher elevations when I returned home. For the record, I have had my two worst landings (crashes) at sea level and all of my best at a mile high MSL, so it is how well you fly, not the altitude, that determines how well you land, in my experience.

My response was to someone who said ALL the base jumpers they knew limped... I agree BASE has more risk, but not all of them limp... Just most.

That is not such a bad thing... It is better to land safe than land near. As one of my friends says, "Your problems are nothing 10,000 jumps won't fix." In all seriousness, work with your instructors/coaches and mentors... Canopy will become fun, and I know I am still learning a lot on every jump, and know I will be learning a lot for a long time...

Not the ones I know.

I have 4.5 hours of tunnel time now - and I find it still challenging to fly in the tunnel. In the sky, if you track away 10 feet from your friends, you can come back with a smile... In the tunnel, I was doing some 4way, and I tracked 6 inches away from the formation and ended up falling out the door or up against the glass... But, it is, in my opinion, the best way to build freefall skills... Here is my arch story, and maybe it is what is happening to you... As you change your arch, you also can change your forward and backward movement until you build the skills to "fall down the pipe" at any speed/arch... Are you doing what I did in my first 15 minutes - having a hard time changing your arch because you are finding it "linked" to your forward and backward movement... Hence, your range is much less in the tunnel than the sky because your mind does not yet know how to correct the forward/backward movement at the different arch positions??? The two drills which helped me a lot... 1) Hover for 2.5 minutes 6" directly off the center of the net as the guy behind the glass slowly changes the wind speed. 2) Fly with a coach/friend/tunnel rat... They go up and down and suddenly stop. You follow them and stop where they do... Once you get good, use the complete range of the tunnel so you start high, go down quickly, and stop 6" off the net without "bouncing" or "overcorrecting". (Think of a car slamming on brakes at a stop sign as opposed to a spring loaded stop with a bounce.) That is my best guess from my experience. Or it could be much more simple... You say you were stiff... Were you fighting fall rate, where a good arch would have you falling out?? If so, start with that arch and let the operator see you need more speed to get you up... I did that too, and once the wind was turned up I was much more comfortable than fighting falling slow because the air was slow.

Ya, and I have been there when you have done that, and I have to say you are really skilled at it.

Hook, Not only is it a good list, but most, if not all, ring true at the DZ(s) I jump at (more than the one listed in my profile, work takes me all over the country so I have jumped at a few DZs). Lets not get confused here... Skipping a $30,000 plane phase inspection is putting profit above safety. Upselling services, like video to tandems, is focusing on sales and revenue, something every business owner must do to be sucessful... (and to pay for those phase inspections.) I think sometimes jumpers get frustrated at the "upsells" and mistake this "profit motivation" to be negative. Just my opinion.

Awesome weather... Are you coming to play?

Mile Hi will have an Otter again this weekend... Anyone want to do some 4way... I have some things I want to practice and my team does not have a training day scheduled... Or, more specifically, I just want to have a fun weekend flying with others.

I was gonna post this, but you beat me to it! Hey, anyone want to "play 4way" this weekend??? (or 3 or 5 or 2 way???) If so, let me know, it would be fun to do a few planned RW jumps... I think it is real cool the DZ is spending the money to provide facilities for experienced jumpers while the DZ owned Otter is "under the knife" and tandems and students are on the King Air when needed to keep the Otter open for experienced folks... Thanks Frank and Tom for spending the $$$ to ferry in Otters and Skyvans!!! Travis

You and I might be in an unique club... I only have 140ish jumps right now, and have no desire to downsize (much) either... My long term goals are to downsize 20 to 40 sqft to 1.3 WLish... I never see myself with a pocket rocket velo.... But I do see myself as a great pilot able to fly my wing, regardless of WL, the best I can... I love the canopy ride, almost, maybe more than, the freefall...

So, my friend... Did your stuffed animal AFF level 1 pull his own main, did you pull it, or did the AAD save it's life???

If the weather was good, the plane was getting full altitude, and the winds were less than what the DZ lets students jump, often 14MPH.... Then, you should not have had to wait without some explanation or good customer service... If your reservation was bumped for a walk-in tandem, then the DZ has it's priorities upside down, often called a tandem-mill... They should honor reservations weather permitting... But again, tandems can go when students can't because of weather, so make sure you know why... You might have to go out of your way to remind the office staff you are still there, but they should go out of their way to get you jumping or at least in communication with instructors once you show your smiling face... If you don't jump, they should clearly explain to you why.... After all, when not to jump is a very important training lesson.... So, that being said, if you went out of your way to make sure they knew you were there and not just hiding in the corner, and they did not clearly communicate back to you - find another DZ in my opinion.... If you were a bit shy, give it another try before moving on...

Not that I am trying to call you out.... But, my default picture viewer shows the "date picture taken" tag when you open photos (you can also see it by right clicking the file and choosing advanced properties)... This file reads 11/22/04 at 7:52AM... I was not digging for dirt, it just showed it on the screen.... So, in your defense, your camera date might have been off, just like my VCR often is, as the sun looks high in the sky for a morning shot...

One of my best skydives yet was just that, at sunset, with a few friends... We played chase and follow the leader thru all sorts of spiral dives, and other no-contact CRW... I love it up there!!!!