Orange1

Hope your ankle heals quickly. Can you explain exactly what you mean by "funky" winds? I've twice been lifted and dumped by the canopy after starting my flare, both times in pretty thermic conditions. In the first instance the same thing happened to a TI on the same load (i.e. I do believe it was the conditions rather than my experience level). 2nd time was on Monday when I had a very nasty final approach - canopy kept on feeling like it wanted to collapse (this after a rather edgy canopy flight through a number of thermals, needless to say I didn't jump again that day). Both times I just held my flare where it was till I felt I was low enough again to finish it, but of course there's not enough speed left for a decent landing. Couple of questions maybe some more experienced guys can answer: 1 - does WL affect this kind of thing? (i'm only about 0.75 at the moment) 2- what IS the best way to salvage a situation where your canopy feels rocky on final? I kept it in full flight as taught but am wondering whether it wouldn't have been better to fly in some brakes and take a PLF. Then again, if I had done that, like jumpjunkie I may not have had enough flare left to land ok after I got picked up? 3- any other suggestions re handling a "pick up"? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

slightly off topic, how do you know what your average speed in the track is? (unless you do it for half the dive and get it off the protrack that way...??) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

And of course, the Mamba is a slang Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

1. Stay safe 2. Go overseas for some tunnel training and intensive coaching 3. Get my B-licence (need 20 more jumps, & to finish Cat II and do Cat III for this) 4. 100th jump. (Preferably overseas, locals will know why!) 5. Hopefully do some jumps in Switzerland when I am there in May. 6. Start practising for Nationals 2007 in either junior 2-way and/or junior 4-way. 7. Attend at least one skills camp. Longer-term.. continue aiming to be at an experience level when I can start putting back into the sport. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Thanks guys for the info and video link! By current "legal" you mean unlinked exit? what elese? What does "behind the diagonal line" mean? Sorry for the dumb questions, i'd seen the term speed star before but otherwise learnt all i know about it from the movie, which is dangerous Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

wow, pretty colours! have fun jumping it! (is the reserve puff grey to approximate for silver?) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

ok ... any info on those? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I watched "Cutaway" the other night (ok, i'm still quite new at this ) .. and it got me wondering... do people really sit in the door while their rigs at the other side of the plane? More seriously , what I was wondering is: what is the record for an 8-way speed star? and what is the largest speed star done to date, and the time? (I did a search here but couldn't seem to find it.) Any other speed star trivia welcome! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

fyi... went back to the manual - they are very specific on this for ringed harnesses especially: Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Most jumpers I know fasten leg straps first and then chest strap. Reading the Javelin manual the other day I saw that they say it is safer to do up the chest strap first. (I'm not sure why this is and would welcome an explanation?) What do you do? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I had a partial collapse (though not on SOS system), low. Turning onto final, thermic activity, half the canopy collapsed and turned me round, it reinflated itself but I knew I was too low to turn back and took a downwind landing - my scariest moment in skydiving so far - first looking up and seeing laundry, and then winds that were almost at max for students so my downwind ground speed was really fast AND i had to dodge a couple of trees. Think I was on jump 8 or 9. I was fine, though completely coated with sand inside and out! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Never had it but... on FJC we were taught flare twice to clear it, if doesn't work then chop (we were jumping SL without altis so everything was on a time system ie don't try more than 2 attempts/longer than 5 seconds to clear a problem). Now I would try clear it flaring/rear risers but would chop if not down by decision altitude. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Do I live my life like that? Probably not. Do I skydive like that? Yes. Because I never want to be in a situation where I find myself hurtling towards the ground below 3000' at 120mph thinking "I don't know what to do". Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Ours have them as we do SL and our BSRs require planes dispatching SL students to have knives on board. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yeah, I'd be more interested in seeing posts from instructors saying "students who do 5-6 jumps a day are much better skydivers". So far, there aren't any. I doubt that any such advantage, if it exists, would last very long anyway, unless you continue doing 5-6 jumps a day in perpetuity. There's no argument that the more experience you get the better, but sometimes you get good (different) experience hanging around dropzones chatting too. I've learnt a lot on the ground. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

How does someone answer when they are eg both 4 and 9 (stats training working in finance)?? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Just realised this overlaps with http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=56935; fwiw according to Brian's chart Shayna's reserve was at minimum recommended, my 150 will be at minimum recommended, and no-one should be jumping a 135 at min recommended till they reach 100 jumps. Ian, btw was that 135lb you mentioned with or without gear? (And why don't you put your real jump #s in, huh?) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Sorry badly worded - I didn't mean comments for me, I had no problem at all with the advice I was given - I meant for students in general on the canopies size issue. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

OK, you all know where this comes from, I just wanted to escape the heat in the other thread. There is a clear distinction between people who think the reserve size was OK and those who don't, and a poster who says that at her DZ students are put out at just under 1:1 on their first jump, that the smaller girls even get 150s. [Maybe our guys are just really safety conscious here but I'm only just about to start jumping my 150, which will be just under 1:1, with my instructors having wanted me to wait till 50-60 jumps. This isn't because I can't fly a canopy btw, the feedback from a # of instructors at my DZ is that I am a good and conservative canopy pilot. ] First: I think maybe some of those especially with hundreds and thousands of jumps, maybe forget what it is like to be new. Wasn't that long ago for me, I remember. Second, and this is constantly repeated but seems often forgotten, WL is not the be-all and end-all. A 170 loaded at 1:1 does not fly the same as say a 230 at 1:1. Sure, they probably CAN be safely used - but my concern (OK and maybe I'm just totally anal about safety, that's fine, that's the way I like it) is that when something goes wrong on - whatever - anywhere between a 150 and 190 - the canopy is just far less forgiving than a boat. An example that is often used in articles etc is the tendency of people to put out their hands and turn unintentionally close to the ground - far more likely with a new jumper - rather be under a 230+ than a 170 when that hapens? I weigh the same as Shayna and I can tell you that I would NOT have been wanting to have to fly a 170 in single-digit jumps (admittedly I've never flown a 7-cell so it's not quite comparable). Now, as I'm still completely green in this sport, I would like some general comment on what is seen as appropriate for students, preferably from instructors, canopy course coaches and experienced jumpers. for example: is 1:1 OK for 10 jumps regardless of canopy size? what is generally considered appropriate for a 1st jumper? etc... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

This bit disturbed me from Shayna's post: I was taught: expect the possibility that you might have to use your reserve on every jump. The thing is not put there to make your rig look nice. (The discussion about whether or not the reserve was, in fact, "big enough" at ~0.9 WL on 9 jumps is in another thread so i'll ignore that bit.) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

My medical aid, and i believe most of the major schemes in SA, cover skydiving and other "extreme" sports as a routine part of their benefits. (Life insurance, however, is a different matter) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Not your average newbie then Welcome to the forums! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I did say it was a recommendation, not a rule... Kelpdiver: in my experience i would agree with that - the day i did my first jump, one was enough! a friend on the FJC with me wore his heart rate monitor on his jump and the readings were quite something, especially at the door when it spiked dramatically - and this is a guy who is extremely fit - his mental exhaustion was about the same as mine! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

A question that doesn't affect me any more but something I keep on wondering about because it comes up in threads every so often. There are a number of posts about students doing 5 (sometimes more) jumps in a day, including on AFF. Here, we have a recommendation (not a rule) that the optimal # of jumps for a student in one day is 3, which I guess is to do with being overwhelmed, the amount of new info you can take in, getting tired, etc. I know the argument that the more jumps you get in the more you learn.. but... would be interested in comments from either the students who pushed themselves like that, or instructors. (fwiw, I know that for me personally at that stage 3 jumps in a day was all I could manage.) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.