Orange1

I've got an entry about spottting whales in the bay from the plane on the ride up

Just to add to what Tonto said - Cape Town weather in May is not great (though i got a bunch of jumps done in May through July this year - judging by the gaps in my logbook it was August that really sucked) but AFF instructors are generally available 7 days a week - if you do happen to decide on it better to contact the DZ in advance and arrange it. They do recommend 2 weeks for AFF for overseas students in case of bad weather, allowing for some sightseeing etc, but I did AFF in a week even with some bad weather days though at end-April. Contact details on http://www.skydivecapetown.za.net/contacts.htm Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I think that could go under the "etc" bit of the "had to" option ... i mean, i could also have had an option "when i was the pilot" for the diverdrivers i suppose... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Just idly wondering... Option 2 for me (long ago. felt vindicated when of the 2 other students on the load one landed way out and the other got dragged on landing) (and yes, I realise this poll is biased as a number of option 2/3s would have stopped jumping!) Edited to add: in response to IanHarrop's post, please include under "had to" if you weren't intending to jump!! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

If by "live" you mean there is no static line, yes of course that's your first freefall!! What else do you call those seconds between when you jump and when you pull the ripcord? I can't answer the instuctor question.. we don't get instructors jumping with students on SL progression here at any stage. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I agree re the bits you can learn from (ie the mal) - kinda like reading incidents - but I do NOT want to see the end of it. Exactly the same as I know I can die driving my car, but I don't rubberneck at accident scenes to see the aftermath. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

20 seconds?? I was about to say - remember that your first freefall is exactly the same procedure as your DRCPs ... Kathleen, are you sure about that delay? i can't remember exactly but i think SL progression here you only get to 20 secs on about the 6th freefall or so (3 secs, then 5 secs, then 2 x 10, 15 and then 20...) anyway.. here's a post i made after my first freefall http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1565067;#1565067 Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Enough has been said on the wingloading question... Just be aware that sport canopies handle & fly very different to student ones - I didn't notice much difference between a 280 and 230 student but when i moved to a pilot 210... let's just say the beetle-to-sports-car analogy is very apt. I'd also gotten used to hard turning the student ones and got quite a fright doing the same thing on the pilot! Whatever size you end up jumping off student canopies - just make sure you take it slow. Oh, and find out about any differences. I panicked for a second because i couldn't peel the toggles off the (non-existent) velcro... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

It used to freak me out to watch other people jump at first too - i think it took about 20 jumps before i could watch... i guess it's part of the whole fear thing. once an open door in mid-air seemed normal - which still took a while after i lost door fear - it became ok. i've been in the sport nearly 11 months and it still consumes most of my waking thoughts (and sometimes dreams too!) Completely obsessed! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Hey - i passed all AFF jumps first go, then got stuck a bit later! (fwiw what i was struggling with has just all 'clicked' and i've just cruised my last few ISP jumps! so cool to FINALLY see that "A" next to my name...) One of my instructors has invented a new in-air signal - it means 'relax'! maybe you can talk with your instructors about this

Congrats! First freefall is a great experience. Have fun going higher and higher now! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Rather than just 'clock watching' after you stop work, maybe do ground-alti-ground-alti - i find this is good for increasing visual alti awareness. i still can't really tell the difference between 8000' and 9000', but I do know the difference between 3000' and 4000' . Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

caution: long answer Yeah... i can sympathise somewhat. My brief history includes 12 static line jumps (vs a minumum of 8 here), a brilliant first freefall, a switch to AFF where i somehow passed all levels first go, and then (with a number of solo jumps inbetween) half getting stuck on ISP jumps, the 7 coached RW jumps we need for an A. um.. 7 minumum that is, I've done 6 ISP jumps and have just managed to pass level 3, on the 3rd try. It wasn't a brilliant jump, but good enough to pass, and 2 important things happened for me: i'm great with alti awareness on solo jumps but was getting so caught up in "performance anxiety" that I had been bad on this on the ISP jumps - on the last one it clicked. The second thing is that i started realising what i was doing wrong in the air on my own (yup, i'm one of those simpletons who instinctively reaches forward to dock without realising it, which has the opposite effect). I guess what i'm saying is - eventually, it all clicks into place. And sometimes, as you've done, you do it right on one jump and then it doesn't work on the next one.. but slowly it all starts to happen consistently, eventually. And you have already made a lot of progress on some things you were getting wrong, so something positive is happening. I went through a number of times wondering if this sport was really for me but i love it and so here i am sticking around. Now, just a few observations: first, one thing that helped me is chatting to really experienced jumpers and finding out that almost everyone struggled with something, at some stage. second, you say your instructor "tells you everything you did wrong" - you need to know what you've done wrong, of cours, but are you getting positive feedback too on what you've done right and encouragement? this sport, to me, is so much a mental thing and this kind of stuff is important. finally, you say you've done all 31 jumps at the same DZ, but have you done them with different instructors? sometimes different people pick different things up. I'd also support getting videod, on my AFF there were things that i thought i had been doing ok, but could see in the video where i was going wrong. fwiw, we were taught that the easiest way to stop a spin is to look in the other direction, but i don't think you're asking for a tip on that. you're trying to find out if you should stay in this sport. i'm assuming that if you were consistently doing unsafe things, you would have been told to stop. some of us are just slow learners in this sport (me included) but if you love it, go for it. maybe another DZ will help; going for one "test jump" at another DZ can't hurt, i suppose? Good luck. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Hmmm. Apart from the issues already mentioned about weight and not having to do the FJC again... and terminology ("support pole" for strut?) if he reached "arch-17000" he would have been well below 1000'... he would have been about 3 seconds away from the ground, in which to do his "17 or 18" spins before the canopy opened ...and it sounds like he was trying to describe kicking out of line twists as something that could inflate a "ball of washing" canopy?? .. if he could see the plane get so small so fast, he must have been both looking up and stable - which would imply a decent arch rather than tumbling through the sky... and as a static line baby, all i can say it must have been one helluva long static line to only pull the pc out after 2500' foot or so the story is a load of crap. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Seems to me most of the arguments revolve more about the legal liability than the issue of does the kid understand what they're doing. If legal liability wasn't an issue, would 13 be considered too young? A 14-year old kid died a while ago here in a skateboarding accident. I guess it's a moot point whether a 13-year old on a skateboard is safer than one strapped to a highly experienced tandem instructor.. 13 year-olds surf and we get Great Whites in the ocean here ... I've seen an 8-year old go up and I think - for that particular kid - it was too young, but my friend's 10-year old went and loved it. However - as for MY child ... I doubt I'd let her up before 12 (assuming she wants to, of course, and only if she asks first). But by then she'll have been a DZ kid for 9 years and will understand a fair bit about the sport ... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Off topic, but we still have jumpmasters here ...(maybe they do in Australia too?) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

A week which included 3 days off for weather. Managed to pass all levels first time. My favourite was the first solo jump because, well, it should be obvious why!! I should add however that before AFF it took me 4 months to do 12 static line jumps and 1 freefall (H&P) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Delayed response as I haven't been online here a few days. I don't see how your comments about giving advice with my jump numbers and learning how to skydive from the internet tally at all with what my comment was: Well, maybe talking about it here will help someone. Maybe after reading this one of those wannabe or current AFFs will pay a little more attention to the bits in the FJC about how to PLF and holding your flare if you start too soon. Or at least ask their instructors before the same happens to them... (note - in both these examples it is the instructor who teaches!) All I was saying was that reading about something here might make a student pay a bit more attention or ask his/her instructor something. That comes from my own experience with reading things here that made me wonder what to do in certain circumstances, and taking the questions to my instructors. Which is in accordance with the sticky at the top of this forum about the advice here. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Well, maybe talking about it here will help someone. Maybe after reading this one of those wannabe or current AFFs will pay a little more attention to the bits in the FJC about how to PLF and holding your flare if you start too soon. Or at least ask their instructors before the same happens to them... (note - in both these examples it is the instructor who teaches!) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Hmmm. I was told I became a 'skydiver' when I did my first free fall - I had just been a 'parachutist' while doing static line. But that's just a technical term. I like both Quade's and RhondaLea's answers, even though they seem to be 180 degrees apart. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

My symptoms: I become a very aggressive driver!! When I've been jumping regularly, I get very relaxed behind the wheel... now, with the past 2 weekends off due mainly to weather (and looking like this weekend off due to aircraft issues) I'm driving like a demon again I've noticed this relationship before too! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

That's how i learnt static line, but you can dive out too (much easier!) - on your haunches in the door, and jump! To get back to the original thread, witelli, you'll probably find yourself a bit nervous on the 1st jump of the day with a few weeks between jumps at your stage (i'm hardly any further than you) but you should be fine!! Potential problem with leaving that length of time is if you don't get to jump (weather, whatever) you may have to g\undergo recurrency training by the time you do get to jump again. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

No, I think the instill it into themselves. There's a bit in Brian Germain's book - I don't think he says it explicitly but implies that novices will believe the sport to be safer than it really is because it's just about the only way they can actually get themselves to jump out a plane. The more experience you get, the more you can "allow" yourself to recognise the dangers. For myself, in my very limited experience, this is true. If not for this website, I would probably still be believing skydiving is safer than it is, though. So awareness of the risks is an important part of being safe. Having said all that, AADs etc do help make the sport safer (not safe), and that can't be a bad thing. As a static line baby I have no problem with hop'n'pops, and (much to the dismay of some people here) I have jumped without an AAD. But I will have one in my own rig (which is just waiting for me to be able to downsize into it) because, in the words of one of my instructors, anything that may help save your life is worth getting. There's a fine line to be trod between making sure students understand the dangers, and frightening them away from the sport. It's not an easy one. Having said that, in my very limited experience, I believe that the dangers are downplayed somewhat, but not only due to the existence of the various safety items. Someone once posted here something along the lines of "when you jump out a plane, you're effectively dead until you do something to save your life". THAT is something I think students need to understand. Just my very newbie 2c worth. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Not painful, just scary - I just had horrible visions for a second of a horseshoe i wouldn't have been able to cut away from properly... then i shook it free and everything went as normal. I'm using a rig with a hacky now

my husband calls it the umbilical