SkySlut

that "back to earth" video that Ray was talking about is a riot. if you are looking for a good BASE jumping one..."First Base" is great, usually BASE videos are pretty poorly put together, but this one is very well put together and the soundtrack is pretty good too.

Instead of doing s-fold on top of s-fold...I usually recommend doing the top s-fold (the topskin s-fold) first and putting that into the back and then you have 1/2 of it in...then you do the bottom s-fold, by the warning label after. done and done. its the same way that PD recommends, but a bit easier to manage when you have a slippery ZP canopy.

Love em...best rig on the market. I have a G3 and an odyssey...I am getting another odyssey. Check out the gear reviews, but I just think that it is better in looks, safety, and its sooooo comfortable. I honestly forget that I am wearing it sometimes. This thing doesnt inhibit your flying ability in anyway whatsoever.

The Search was the best investment that I have done with skydiving!!! I went to the second one with about 100 jumps. The whole atmosphere was great, because you are with people that are really eager to learn...Everybody is at the same stage for the most part. (Which is great!) The problem with skydiving sometimes is that AFF teaches you basic survival skills, thats it. So when a jumper gets off AFF status they are stuck in a limbo state...the higher level jumpers dont really dont want to jump with the recent grad and the recent grad can get too anxious and flail on the dive if they do get the opportunity to jump with them...then they feel bad about messing up and that can snowball into a lack of self-confidence. So if a newer jumper doesnt get to jump with better jumpers, they are usually jumping with people at the same skill level...which can be dangerous, a lot of DZs wont let 2 people jump together if they dont have over 100 jumps combined between the two of them for safety reasons. From a learning perspective, you have two people zooming around the sky never getting near each other...how can you really learn from that??? You cant really figure out who was really doing what on those dives. The coaches job is to sit completely still, so you can get better overall body awareness in freefall. SDU teaches you to interact safely and efficiently in the air with other people. There arent too many places where a newer jumper can bridge the gap in a safe learning environment, that is what "the Search" is. It is a intensive camp that encompasses everything you ever wanted to know and things that you didnt even know that you wanted to know. You can jump demo gear from the major manufacturers and plus they have a raffle at the end of the camp...I won 50% off a Javelin Odyssey, whoohooo!!! That made the trip worth my money right there, but when I got back to my DZ they were impressed with the skills that I had attained. I hopped on a 4-way team with people that had 1000 jumps each and I got my AFF rating with 360 jumps. The camp may not make everyone a world champion, but its a great place to learn at your own pace and level of comfortability. The coaches are great, I still chat with my coach (Pete Allum-20 time British National Champion) from the search every so often, he was always glad to hear what kind of progress I was making. They are nothing but professionals-no attitudes at all. This years looks even better, canopy coaching from Scott Miller, 20 minutes of wind tunnel, 1on1s, 4-ways, sunny florida, Dr. John...its better than freezing your butt off somewhere thinking about skydiving.

from what i hear...(i havent seen it with my own 2 eyes), but a friend bought a g4 and he said that the freebag was black?!?!? so if you cut away, you can kiss that one goodbye and plan on buying a new one from mirage. good marketing plan, i guess. i have both an odyssey & g3. Javelin is my preferred rig...its like you arent wearing a rig at all, they are so comfortable!!!

yep, i went from making 250k a year to living for the look that a level 5 or 6 student gives me for a living...priceless!!!! I agree that having multiple ratings is the way to make a living, but I am not in it for the money...once you are making skydiving a job...you have lost your perspective. You end up treating your students like meat and you are pissed that you are broke all the time.

yeah, i was living in Manhattan at the time Clinton showed up...what a pain in the ass that was. I had to catch a flight out of town that day...what a nightmare.

I got a bitchin one about a month ago. A buddy of mine brought an artist to the DZ. I got a 4 way tribal Cat around my ankle with blue clouds surrounding it. She designed it up in a couple of hours and it took her about 2 hours to put it on. It looks great!

Check this out...the president came up to New England for the weekend and they restricted all flights. They specifically restricted "parachuting operations" in our area. Our DZ was shut down from friday through sunday. We didnt even know about this until thursday. My liver is still recovering.

actually, another really cool thing is the people that you meet and the places that you go. I have met so many interesting people from all over the world. The stories that I have from the times that I have spent with those people are worth more than anything that I own. (except my rigs, of course Material stuff comes and goes, memories last forever. At least, most of them do anyways...

I wouldnt say that I have totally blindfolded myself, but I may want to get back into the real world at some point. I have plenty to fall back on with my past job experience, college education, and all the stuff that supposedly makes you successful. But for me right now "success" isnt met by how much crap you own, but it is more based on quality of life.

I gave up a 2000 Convertible Mercedes for Ragu sauce??? I gotta be out of my mind...but I would rather wake up on fire than go back to the real world!

sometimes i could even afford Ragu sauce!!!! by the way, i havent been able to get the roasted garlic kind in New England....I could only get it down in Florida. I cant wait to get back down there and start eating like a king again...

we had 8 attempts due to weather....most of them were from 15 grand, but the best one was actually done from 13 grand.

I cut away with less than a year in the sport and about 200 jumps, i got my aff rating with 6 hours of freefall (360 jumps or so). I have a USPA coaches rating & Skydive University rating. I dont have tandem because you have to be in the sport for 3 years...kinda funny that you can be an aff instructor but you cant be a tandem instructor. whatever. Anyways, what I did was quit my job, and started working selling gear & manifest to pay for my certifications. I got my AFF rating in January and I have done about 300+ AFF jumps this summer and I will be going to Deland to work windtunnel AFF for the winter for Skydive U. Word of caution, I lived on 1/2 pound of pasta (the generic kind) a day for 4 months while i was getting my ratings. You have to really want it. I dont regret one bit of it though. Its kinda like getting paid to get blowjobs!!!

the only thing that i know is that it can take up to 4 months to get an oxygen, if they dont have it in stock. I used to work for Deland and it was awful...nevermind having lenses rip off in freefall and I have also seen 2 helmets in the past month get cracked from riser slaps alone...

dude, get PS2 and the game Navy Seals, they have a really cool scene where they skydive into the area where they need to kill a bunch of people....great game!

good luck...skysystems service is awful...

i have seen a "pull" signal confused for a "track that way" signal on a level 6. it ended up with a student being pulled at around 3,500 or 3,000 and an instructor with 2 canopies out due to a cypress fire. not me, but i really only use the pull signal on 2 jumpmaster jumps. I usually tap on my altimeter to tell the student that they should be a bit more aware of altitude and that usually works...

yo...drunk again after another long weekend of jumping!!! anyways, jeff from mirage called my buddy and said that it was indeed a manufacturing issue dealing with how the pin was bent when it was cut. From what they had said, they are changing their manufacturing process to fix this problem. hmmmm...

sorry, i was pretty drunk when i wrote that post... the pin actually broke in half, it wasnt out of the loop or anything like that...the thing just snapped in half when he opened up the reserve flap to check the pin...pretty scary.

I have a mirage and a odyssey...go Javelin...the best rig on the market. Try on of those bad boys and you will love it. One of the things that pisses me off about Mirage, other than the fact of how the company was started (PD source) and how their customer service is, is that if you were paying attention to when Javelin had the chest rings and mirage didnt....Mirage said something to the fact that "we dont believe that the body articulates at the chest therefore we do not offer chest rings". Give me a break...Derek Thomas has a kick ass rig. I have never had an issue with the new odyssey (its cheaper, by the way...option for option). Go Javelin, I have both with all the bells and whistles and I will take a Javelin anyday!!! And by the way Lisa says hi!!!

I have a Velocity (which is cross braced and packs like a 107) in a TJN (made for a 135) and it doesnt look that bad at all. Only when its really humid and I have some extra time to pack, it looks a bit funny...

Let me just preface this that this is not a manufacturer issue... One of our camera guys had just gotten down from a jump and when he had his rig packed up he noticed that his reserve flap was not totally tucked in, so he checked it out. When he opened it up the reserve PC blow out in his face!!! Upon inspection nothing looked odd, there were no real wearing on the grommets...the pin wasnt bent prior. Whats up with that???From what everybody has seen (riggers), they seem to think that it was a manufacturers defect in the pin. It could have been a rushed packer for all I know getting a little amped and putting a knee down on the reserve flap while closing the main container tray. Anyways, check your gear on every jump...imagine what would have happened if he would have been on the camera step when that thing popped???

Quit your job and start skydiving for a living!!!