mdrejhon

Was that image created before the container was ordered? One of the reason that publishers require "proofs" of advertisements (i.e. JPG attachments that verifies the correctness of a full-size PDF/photoshop file) is as a safety checking mechansim. I think that it would also be an excellent idea to attach that screenshot to the Mirage order form, as a means for the container manufacturer to verify the correctness of the order. If the container manufacturer currently doesn't make it easy to attach a proof (i.e. mock up image) with the order form, then the container manufacturer could -- this could save a lot of grief for future, especially if the distributors are required to abide to including mock-ups that have been verified by the customer... I think that's why many canopy manufacturers now have a "Canopy Designer" -- and why many container manufacturers have a "Container Designer". This helps keep mistakes down, as long as the system is automated enough to generate forms automatically... Maybe this is already. (Then again, it was reported that changes were made to the order... Which is probably a complication, especially if this requires the changes to be done manually.)

Thanks for making things a tad more difficult for me But I totally agree with your reasons, and that's why I posted in the first place. Roll the dice: Dice lands on 1 - Bonfire ceremony Dice lands on 2 - Car cover Dice lands on 3 - Sell to a rigger for $50 Dice lands on 4 - Sharpie a BIG WARNING on the Raven Micro label Dice lands on 5 - Keep as backup when I lose my PD143R in a cutaway. Dice lands on 6 - Nude toga party Deal? (Seriously, it'll probably become a closet queen / desparation backup for now until I sell to someone rigger-league trustworthy, maybe a waiver signed with them claiming to have read ALL the dropzone.com threads I've ever written about the Raven Micro)

As I thought -- most people tell me this is a fine reserve as long as it's used according to manufacturer specs. If anyone else has arguments about to retire this reserve, I'd still like to hear them. Ultimately, I'll probably sell at an attractive low price with these major caveat and will repeatedly warn the buyer, let them know about these posts, and may require contacting his rigger/instructor directly to get their okay first. Personally I did decide to keep the reserve for three years after knowing its potential dangers. I memorized the approximate tight flare band ('no lower than shoulder height') in case I ever used it unexpectedly, to avoid accidentally stalling this canopy. And immediate controllability tests/practice of this knowledge upon first use, given enough altitude. That info may very well have kept me safe. But I am still concerned about my friend who broke a bone landing this same beast -- and he has told me he is retiring his Raven Micro rather than selling it. (So in comes the PD143R and out goes the Raven Micro, for me at least.)

I purchased my first weight belt in Perris during the 100-way camp, and decided to check it in my luggage. I put the weight belt on top of the contents, just in case someone X-Rays and opens my luggage. No doubt, my luggage got opened, contents only minimally disturbed. Also, I used a "russian doll" technique for my luggage -- I packed my smaller gear pullman sideways inside a larger pullman, and packed my other stuff around it. This proved handy, because I could separate the two as needed, and turn one overweight checked item into two underweight checked items (with a reasonable extra fee). Also, I left the large pullman in the IHOP while I brought the gear backpack and small pullman (helmet, weight belt, jumpsuits, little knicknacks) onto the dropzone every morning. This proved very successful so I'm going to repeat this on my next trip, I can combine or separate the luggage depending on whether the fees are cheaper for one overweight versus two underweight checked luggage. Regardless of checked, I always carry-on my rig in a gear backpack bag, and have no problems with that (except for the occasional double-take by the X-rayers on the screens), even though I bring two backpacks on. I carry one laptop/electronics carrying backpack in my hand like a laptop carrying case "personal item", and I wear the heavy rig-carrying gear backpack behind my back, so nobody at the airport questions me even though I'm carrying on about 40lbs of stuff, since I'm not clumsy looking with the items and look 'very narrow' (easily navigate an airplane aisle without inconveniencing people)

Hello, A few years ago, I posted about my concerns about my Raven Micro 150 reserve which is an old airfoil design, and is only safe at light wingloadings, and has a tendancy to stall easily when overloaded. Tiny flare band, with flare stalling at shoulder height. I finally have a PD143R on its way, which will be packed soon. I have already jumped and landed standup a 143 square foot PD reserve, so I know I can trust this one. Recently, a fellow friend of mine broke a bone landing under an overloaded Raven Micro, and is out of skydiving for a few months. The BIG ethical question now, is... Sell or Retire my Raven Micro 150? Argument for Selling: Many riggers have said it's very safe for someone at WL 1 or less with comfortable landings if lightly loaded. That it's just simply an older airfoil but not inherently dangerous unless overloaded beyond manufacturer recommendations. I'd sell with a MAJOR CAVEAT attached (maybe even ask a rigger to add a warning to the label tag, to the tune of "CAUTION: ONLY FOR PEOPLE 130 LBS OR LESS"). The buyer must hand-sign an agreement that he/she is 130lbs or less. (~150lbs geared up) Argument for Retirement: On the other hand, people still think it's safe to load any square parachute to WL 1.3 as long as they've jumped another square at 1.3. And if I sell, the future user might still sell it onwards to someone who may then overload this reserve and land it with a broken bone. The fact that I was even sold this rig with this Raven Micro, nobody along this chain really knew about the dangers of overloading a Raven Micro at the time. Many riggers still don't. Such a resale might happen again, with disastorous results. Bonfire ceremony time? eBay car cover?

To make tunnel REALLY count in the sky, I think you need plenty of tunnel time. I think that jumping with freeflyers who only has 15 minutes tunnel time, or even 60 minutes of tunnel time won't really show statistically. But people with as much tunnel time as freefall time (i.e. 300 jump person with 4 hours freefly tunnel time in the same time period, will probably perform better than a 500 jump freeflier of similiar time period), they tend to start to stand out statistically... They are the people who really put the money where their time counts. The professional teams, including those mentioned above, are an example. Basically, you can do 200+ skydives of freefly tunnel time (say, 4 hours) in less than one month -- and you only need to spend two weekends at the tunnel to get this much flight time, assuming your body is adapted to do 2 hours of tunnel time per weekend. (You need to ease in. 15 minutes can get you very sore on the first time, until you're tuned to it -- then 2 hours in eight different 15-minute sessions in one day, with 1 hour rest breaks in between, is no problem. That's like 120 skydives in one day). Tunnel is an excellent time management tool for some - if your time is more valuable than others -- and can't go to the dropzone every weekend. 300 jump bellyfliers with 8 hour tunnel time, can get more skilled in the same time period (while spending less time away from home and work) as 600 jump bellyfliers with no tunnel time. Tunnel can be used in the winter when dropzones are closed, a good thing for Northerners. Also, tunnel may be expensive, which means many won't go to the necessary "critical mass" of tunnel time necessary. Also, the right instructor is very important. That's why using tunnel to train for bigways, it's recommended to use a RW/bigway experienced instructor (who happens to also be a tunnel instructor) to teach you the correct skills that are the biggest help in bigways. Perris Fury at Skydive Perris is one example, and helped me into the 100-way club with the help of wind tunnels, among other tunnel time elsewhere (Team Evolution at Skyventure New Hampshire) So for freeflying, the right instructor is probably important -- so they can help you learn how it translates to the sky as well. Tunnels won't teach you everything (exits, diving, tracking, canopy, etc) but properly used, can be a force-multiplier in approximately halving or thirding the number of jumps required to meet a specific level in a particular discipline. Tunnel time is a long term investment. 15 minutes won't turn someone into anyone resembling a skygod (of the good kind) in a particular discipline -- but hours and hours of tunnel time COMBINED with lots of skydives might. Look at the best teams -- Airspeed, Fury -- look at most of the only World Team Members that has under 1000 jumps -- look at the 150+ jump russian that managed to qualify his way through multiple bigways all the way to a 100-way in Perris while I was there. Even some of the better freefly 3-way and 4-way teams. All of these people have HOURS and HOURS of tunnel time in common.

Lemonhead is a Canadian? Interesting. (Please PM me with more details) We're also looking for Doug Forth's contact information as he's a potential candidate organizer in our list (TK Hayes, Bruce Robertson, etc.) -- if any of you know his contact information, please let me know. And if you have other big names in big way organizers, who happens to be Canadian, let me know as well. Two people have told me about this recently. Interesting little-known Canadian skydiving history. We almost had the world's first 100-way in Canada -- the World Record -- not a Canadian record. Once upon a time, in 1986 (yes, 22 years ago) there was a 99-way over Canadian soil, shortly before the world's first 100-way completed. It never became a Canadian record since one was out of the formation, and it included many foreigners. Current official Canadian record is a 59-way. Time to fly a bigger formation above Canada for the first time since 1986!

Cool -- darn near exactly 14 foot in that tape measure! Although from the emails I got I think we aren't gonna fly 'tunnel testing time' in December but I'm definitely looking forward to flying by the end of this coming winter.

A 3-page article spread with 4 full color photographs has been published in CanPara about Minna (gimpboogie). CanPara is Canada's skydiving magazine. Very nice article and congratulations to Chelsea Loney for the initiative of writing this article! I hope that you have a copy of CanPara well on your way to you but if you do not, let me know, and I'd like to make sure an extra copy is sent to you!

TC Weatherford has let me use one of the photos for the www.canadabigway.com website, where a group of us (myself included) is trying to make a 100-way happen in Canada. I'm the red-black one at 10 o'clock, above the yellow skydiver, in that photo. If you're a Canadian, who's interested in helping make this all happen one way or another, contact the email listed on the site. (We are recruiting Canadian big way organizers)

Excellent! I also hear 500-Way World Record and the Canada Big Way might also be in 2010 (www.canadabigway.com). So if I can make it (no conflict) I'd love to be at DWR2010 too! By the way, in that 100-way photo on the CanadaBigWay website, I'm the red-and-black skydiver at 10 o'clock, above the yellow skydiver. (I was deep diver, 3rd last out from left trail plane)

Pre-sales of tunnel time is now available. Some members of the skydiving community buying bulk during construction time may be able to fly during December (before Christmas) while the rest of the facilities are still being completed. This is assuming the chamber is complete and up-and-running by then, and they're allowed to fly people in the chamber.

I thought it was Star Trek -- "Scotty, I need more power!" at the LHC control panel.

It would be great to fly with you again. At least it's still the nearest tunnel, unlike the 7 or 8 hours we needed to get to Skyventure NH (still a great place!) Now we only need two more regulars, and we've got a 4-way team for Skyventure Montreal! It's just the price of 3-4 hours of tunnel time apiece, plus the price of a supervising coach such as a Team Evolution member... (at least to begin with) Skyventure Montreal is selling discounted tunnel time during construction, let's take advantage of this...

I also happen to be a touchtypist with my thumbs on my BlackBerry -- I can text effortlessly without looking at the keyboard, at about 60-70 WPM. (About 300+ letters per minute), each key typed, no autocomplete. Often, I do look at the screen (not keyboard) while typing, so I can easily correct my mistakes and grammar. Abliet, effort-wise, it takes about a week to adapt to a new phone model (QWERTY), and then it's effortless thereafter. Most text touchtypists (you've heard of those, too) use one thumb and can do it without looking, but me, I'm a QWERTY two-thumb touchtypist on my BlackBerry -- I don't like one thumb typing, although if pressed, I prefer SureType (Pearl) over the 10-digit T9... I do NOT use textspeak (except for certain easy words such as "U" instead of "you" if texting to cellphones that only accept 160 characters -- my BlackBerry has no such limitation), and actually prefer typing full full words. On desktop keyboards, I've clocked at 125-140WPM (Fastest was 140WPM at typingtest.com, Huckleberry Finn 1-minute test), so I type on a BlackBerry keyboard at approximately half the speed I do on desktop keyboards. Lipreading takes more of my effort/human brain, so it's more comfortable for me to type. Like riding a bicycle.

That would sound like someone would need several million dollars to buy SkyRide outright (including a clause for the former owners to never start a new skydiving/adventure/related booking agency ever again AND they MUST leave the company when Skyride is bought) and turn it into a more 'honest' and legitimate booking business. Assuming a Price-Sales ratio of 1.0, that's theoretically $8 million to buy SkyRide outright. (The profit growth may make it more valuable -- ala the PEG inflation commonly seen in the value of companies that grow fast -- but the lawsuit issues does reduce the value of this company, so this is the wild guess number I'm using, plus their business may have plateaued somewhat, making them ripe for a takeover -- I don't have access to the balance sheet and company statements of Skyride to make this determination, and many businesspeople know far more than I do of my very limited knowledge). Hopefully it's far cheaper to buy that company outright now due to any plateauing and negativity, since a lower price for takeover, gives less incentive for the new owners to use shady tactics to try to get a ROI (return on investment). Trouble is -- who's willing to pony up the cash and spend a few tough years erasing the blemish of the SkyRide name, with a good Bill Of DZO Rights (and Rules) strong enough to make it attractive to dropzones to re-sign up for a more honest and agreeable booking system that just happens to recycle the leftovers of SkyRide? (A name change may be in order, due to the damage of the previous SkyRide name) It needs to use more industry-standard and legitimate travel-agency-style booking practices, with full disclosures, including honest disclosure of the booking fee. Include value add's such as excellent mapping system (better than the actual dropzone's websites) for the actual honest location of the actually-named dropzones. And other value adds. Even a well-tweaked Google Maps plug-in is easy to start with, and would be sufficient for now and better/easier than 80% of the actual dropzone websites... I know people have inquired about this before on dropzone.com (the theory of buying SkyRide and turning it to a business with better reputation). But what about the people who bought dropzone.com , as a possible example? In theory, would the same people, maybe possibly, buy SkyRide and convert it to a honest skydiving booking agency, and cross-market with dropzone.com? Some may cry foul at this idea, but what if many reputable businesspeople with famous dropzone.com names (including some of you moderators), were invited aboard on the Board of Directors, to help reform SkyRide, or at least on some kind of business imporvement board? That'd win the support of at least a lot of us knowing dropzone.com members influence the reform of SkyRide, I'd imagine. I think more profits can be made if people (who also owned businesses) on dropzone.com helped designed the "best skydiving booking agency", so those people should be invited on board for helping. We'd be trading shady advertising for the full support of the target market, improving word of mouth. Much like even though I often will book airfare directly, I don't mind going through Travelocity or Expedia from time to time since it's just much easier -- if the booking site is so good, that actual skydivers eventually become willing to suggest to their non-nearby whuffo friends/family, to book through them, then that would quickly replace lost profits caused by current shady tactics... And by having dropzone.com and Skyride being owned by the same company, there are cost-saving measures such as borrowing dropzone.com dropzone finder and database (to help jumpstart the mapping system), and inserting links to the booking agency alongside direct links. Dropzones can opt-in and opt-out of this system freely at any time, by changing a setting in their online account, making far more comfortable with the booking agency system... Most will avoid it due to bad rep but over time, they may come back once the "much better reputation" kicks in, because it's such an easy checkbox to change in their dropzone listing... The 900 'ghost clone' websites could be replaced by a booking page for that particular state, that also discloses the actual, real, participating skydiving dropzones for that particular state (ala travel agency style, providing the fulle name, but skipping giving too much detailed contact info of the actual dropzone until booked, but still permitting visitors to google the actual dropzones and contact them directly -- much like I can google hotels from an Expedia/Travelocity search and book directly if I wished.) (Hey, after all -- many good companies bought disreputable Las Vegas places over the years from gangsters, and turned them to much-more-honest places. Although this may be a topic of debate of all its own in this matter. Read up on the history of mainstreaming and Disneyification of old disreputable Las Vegas -- lots of surprises. Still lots of shady stuff, but for many of the mainstream places, a far cry from the past...) Damage (from the current bad Skyride reputation) may take a quarter to half a generation to fully repair (i.e. 5 to 10 years), but the average skydiver spends less than that many years in the sport before leaving, which means that's a window to aim for. No perfect solution, there will always be people that disagree, and there will always be problems (like Travelocity and Expedia) but far less negative than now -- and with better support by business operators and better support (even if lukewarm) by the hard core clientile. Maybe this won't work. Pipe dream. Pie in the sky. I agree. You're right. But Bigger takeover surprises have happened before. I suspect at least one per of one thousand skydivers, if we won the lottery (or otherwise got a big windfall), would be willing to be persuaded to buy Skyride, rename it, and "fix it". And there are other more likely scenarios, too, even... Then we'll be seeing garden gnomes with parachutes being advertised on TV

Agree - It's sometimes 10 seconds versus 5 minutes. As a deaf person, the extra overhead of a phone call just to say a single sentence reply by voice, sometimes takes me five minutes due to the extra overhead of going through the necessary relay operator. (The operator types out what people are saying on the phone) Also, reading is faster (600-800 WPM for a typical normal speed reader) than listening (100-200 WPM), and for a deaf guy who relies on lipreading my listening speed is slow (50 WPM or less). So I subscribe to SpinVox, a service that converts my voicemails using voice recognition to text messages. It is amazingly accurate, with 95% transcription success.

Hey, I'd love to trade some photos. I have some little video clips I made on the ground, as well as during climb too. I'd have to send them on DVD, although I could probably transfer over the Net. What protocol does your webshare use, anyway? FTP doesn't work. Is it WEBDAV?

This is a good one too. I had Kate Cooper's version of this printed before the Big Way camp. One thing I do want to append to pre-bigway-camp training suggestion (tips that really didn't exist 5 years ago) to new big way jumpers, is that wind tunnels are now becoming widely acknowledged by major bigway organizers as a major asset (when balanced with good skydiving) to bigway "red zone" skills. I wrote a big post about this, linked in my signature. Without tunnel time, I would not have been in the Perris 100-way, or afforded the time and money necessary to skydive the extra number of times to compensate for lack of tunnel time. There still seems to be a wide perception, especially in some countries, that one needs 1000 jumps to be in bigways like these. Low jump numberd bigway attendance, including myself, VanillaSkyGirl, and many others, have tunnel time. Impressively, there was a 150+ jump russian who was safely part of the successful 100-way thanks to large amounts of tunnel time combined lots of RW jumping with World Team members that vouched for him, and jumped at the Perris 50-way camp immediately prior to the 100ways before being invited to the 100-way camp. (I did not have that headstart advantage, so I was subject to the listed 250-jump requirement of the camp)

Context, I realize. I should have said "I am a deaf skydiver. As a deaf person in general, I am totally unable to use a telephone without the help of a Relay service."

As a deaf skydiver, I am totally unable to use a telephone without the help of a Relay service. A relay service inserts an interpretor into my telephone conversations that I'd rather not deal with for more private conversations, and many people do not like taking phone calls from a callcentre (which is how most telephone relay interpretor services operate.) Texting is an important feature on my cellphone. There are other reasons, other than during disaster response (Katrina), that texting is useful. I can do email as easily as texting too -- my phone is a BlackBerry P.S. My skydiving training used the rotating arrow, instead of radio, for the same reason. Many deaf skydivers were trained this way, or by using a flagman. (Source: www.deafskydivers.org and Deaf World Record)

I asked instructors about this three years ago, and was basically told that either procedure was legitimate, but that it was important to stick to only one as a student - both handles, because it was easier to memorize. There are a lot of debate in the past. Not cutting away a high speed malfunction has actually killed skydivers (example). The converse is also true: Cutting away a high speed malfunction have also killed skydivers too. So it's pretty much crapshoot, the word frequently used here in dropzone... So most dropzones, including mine, teach to go to both handles -- as new skydivers for a simpler one-fits-all emergency procedure.

Aka, "How to be on well on your way to World Team in less than 500 jumps". A 150-jump russian did his first 100-way at the Perris Big Way Camp. How? He jumped with many World Team members (lots of RW) AND also had tunnel time. Other people, under 400 jumps, myself included, are now members of the 100-way club. What is in common with all of us low-jump members of the 100-way club? TUNNEL TIME! So this is what this post will be about, to help people understand how tunnel actually helps bigways. Also, very few members of the 400-way World Record had less than 1000 jumps. Only 9 had had less than 1000 jumps on World Team '06 -- according to TheWorldTeam.com '06 Team Members Listing. I was able to talk to some of them, as well as other people who know them. Although there were rare exceptions, the vast majority of those had tunnel time. Below are generalizations about bigway-relevant tunnel coaching based on my encounters with multiple coaches that teach all the below techniques, including Team Evolution of NouvelAir (Chris Lemay, Vincent Lemay, etc), and Perris Fury (Christy Frikken, etc), in my near-5-hours of tunnel time and my recent entry to the 100-way club. These techniques are not normally taught by most tunnel instructors. ______________________ Tunnel Training Techniques -- Useful to "RED ZONE" in Big Ways Fallrate Training The coach commands the tunnel operator to crank the tunnel down as slow as possible. You try to keep flying as motionless above the net without bumping into the walls or the net. The coach commands the tunnel operator cranks the tunnel as fast as possible. You try to fall fast, keep flying motionless without rising more than a few feet above the net. The coach may fly up and down too, suddenly stop movement, you're also supposed to quickly match the coach's level, and stop on a dime. This can be very challenging when the wind tunnel is cranked slow, and can feel like a waste of tunnel minutes at first, but this pays dividends later. Why This Benefits Bigways: It is surprising how many jumpers, when they get low, begin to fly unstable all over the place below the formation, because they can't fall-slow stable and turned 90 degrees. They panic and end up flying under multiple people, taking some of them out. Tunnel time solves this dangerous problem in a hurry. Especially if you forgot to wear your sweatshirt or slowfall jumpsuit in a more-challenging-than-expected slot, or just simply went low for whatever reason even not of your fault. You pop right back up instantly back into an empty space in the stadium, and redo your approach smooth. And being able to stop at level on a dime, helps in part to prevent you from going low in the first place, and quickly adjust for sudden fallrate changes in a formation and help damp out level-uneveness in a formation. Distorted Body Training You try to fly in the middle of the tunnel next to your coach. You mimic your coach in body distortions such as reaching your back with one of your hands, or one knee down, or arms in strange positions and motions, without bumping into the walls or the trampoline net. Swimmng motions, strange body positions, etc. Why This Benefits Bigways: In a bigway, you'll experience distorted body positions as your docked neighbours pull and push on you, or bump into you unexpectedly, distorting your bellyfly shape. You need to be able to deal with this and still fly stable, and even successfully resist this in later stability training, without being taken out or being funneled. Stability Training You fly in the middle of the tunnel, as motionless as possible. The coach pushes you, pulls you, bumps you, puts a leg and arm under you, and even flies briefly underneath you. Your job is to stay as still as possible. Your distorted body training helps ready you for this training. Why This Benefits Bigways: Red zone is full of tight flying, sometimes with somebody's arm and leg accidentally underneath you. You become much more burble-resistant and automatically 'fly the burble' seamlessly, and your body automatically does evasive manoevers. I had a quick recovery from a 'red zone' flying on one of the 36 bigway camp jumps, thanks to such tunnel time. Also, stability training is useful for locking your position in the slot, and damping out waves in the formation. While you must dock gentle initially, however, unlike in 4-ways, in a bigway you often can't have finger-light grips in a bouncy, wavy big way: You must resist action with opposite action: You must press when pushed and you must pull when pulled -- to prevent yourself from being moved around in your slot when others push or pull you around. When everybody does this, the resonant waving/ripples from somebody's momentum docks on the other end, is damped out before the ripples reach the other end of the formation. Your stability training helps makes the formation stable. Follow The Leader - Docks The leader randomly moves around the tunnel, sometimes threatening to fly into/over/under you. You chase the leader and try to dock satellite on him/her as quickly and smoothly as possible, while doing evasive action to avoid being 'taken out'. Why This Benefits Bigways: Again, red zone is full of tight flying. Although you MUST keep your eyes on the center of the bigway formation, you need evasive skills to avoid being taken out by someone flying INTO you (or you INTO them), especially if your levels are different to the point that a funnel is possible. This exercise trains you for automatic evasive action and speedy recover, an excellent Red Zone skill to have. Follow The Leader - No Docks The coach flies in all directions, up, down, left, right, forward, backwards, and superpositions of such (i.e. diagonally, of a 3D motion). You must copycat quickly and smoothly fly in sync with the leader, side by side or face-to-face. Why This Benefits Bigways: When you get good, you're able to stay in sync as much as possible, so that it looks like synchronized ballet, anticipating the coach's unpredictable movement quickly, and you're moving in sync with the coach as immediately as you can. By being able to have fine movements, you're able to for example, move diagonally to better fine-tune your lock in your radial in your stadium without being fearful of your neighbours taking you out. Another useful application is that you're able to sheepdog your formation neighbours inside the redzone more closely without being fearful of the sheepdog taking you out or vice-versa. If your sheepdog suddenly stops, you're able to stop before you bump into your sheepdog, etc. Being closer to your sheepdog means you're closer to your slot, and can make a dock more quickly on cue, and gently without rushing to the slot from a distance that might end up being an unstable momentum dock. Flyovers & Flyunders - Burble Training You fly over and under your coach intentionally, to fly as seamlessly as possible through their burble. As you get better, you fly slower and lower above your coach, which is more challenging because of a more difficult burble. Why This Benefits Bigways: You can more resist being funneled by a neighbour that might take you out, or as a quick recovery from an occasional accidental red-zone collision that might have actually been your fault; a quick recovery for both you and the other guy, makes this a more forgivable offense that prevents you from being cut from the bigway jump. This is valuable skill to have to prevent yourself from being cut from the bigway record attempt, especially if you also carefully execute your recovery to the other person's benefit; i.e. getting out from under someone quickly before the burble interferes too much with his/her flying. 2-Way Practice (And 3-Ways and 4-Ways) Essentially RW in the tunnel. You fly with your coach in the tunnel and score points. Sometimes the coach will fly with 2 or 3 other people. Why This Benefits Bigways: This is useful, because it helps exercise various skills, including fallrate matching, being able to turn without bumping into someone or the plexiglass walls of the tunnel, and being able to transition between points more easily. Although most bigways are 1-point endeavours, you might end up having to turn 90 degrees inside tight bigway traffic and then dock soft initially. And you may have multipoint bigways too, that requires you to let go gently without popping/falling low/backsliding and taking a neighbour out between points. Generic RW skills are always useful for bigways, and sharing the chamber with multiple people also cuts the cost of a portion of tunnel training, in a carefully balanced mix of tunnel training. You also stare across the middle of the 4-way, while being able to keep other people in the corner of your eye for smooth docks. This is also relevant to smooth docks in a bigway and reducing "grip fixation" which is bad in a big way. Due to being able to split the costs of sharing the tunnel chamber, my personal 4-way experience is that 4-way in a tunnel can be as low as one-tenth as much per minute as a skydive, which makes it one of many useful method to get to bigways at lower cost and fewer jumps. Doing 4-ways in tunnel, should not, however, totally replace one-on-one tunnel coaching from a good RW/bigway instructor, but as a healthy mix of tunnel time along with jumping in the sky too. ---------- NOTE: There are also other tunnel training techniques as well. Also, tunnel time is NOT a substitute for skydiving in the sky. However, combined with RW formation jumping and bigway camp experience, it is developing 150-jump to 400-jump people, myself included, that are new members of the 100-way club -- and potential future recipients of World Record provisional invitations, according to the organizers of the Perris 100-Way Camp! It is also critically important that low-jumpers have excellent canopy coaching, with the scary canopy traffic a 100-way can potentially bring. This is beyond the scope of thsi post, but should be part of any low-jumpers journy to the bigways. Extensive RW jumping with multiple World Team members is another useful technique. Based on my personal experience at the Perris 100-ways, every sub-500 jumper seemed to have plenty of tunnel time. Amazingly, we had a russian in the 100 way camp that just passed the 150-jump mark. (He jumped a lot with World Team members who vouched for him, and also had lots of tunnel time) It is my and many other people's opinion (including the bigway organizers at Perris Big Way Camp) that tunnel is helping low-jumpers make it into bigway leagues. Perris has its own wind tunnel, which has been helping them innovate in tunnel training techniques that show relevance to bigway camps. There were several jumpers at 150 jumps through 400 jumps at the Perris 100-way camps. (As of this writing of this post, I have 358 jumps) Every single person that I was able to ask or ask a friend about, they had tunnel time that compensated for the low jump numbers! Skyventures that weren't yet built back at the time of the 300-way world record, 357-way, and 400-way, are now built reasonably nearby. Which means it's easier for more people to learn "red zone" skills than ever before, that are applicable to bigway camps and beyond. There are new bigway-relevant tunnel training techniques, that were not really common in say, 2004, that are routinely being done right now in more places than ever by more instructors than before. Tunnel sessions, with a RW coach familiar with bigway skills can exercise the above listed skills. Examples include members of the Perris Fury team, with special tunnel sessions scheduled during the Perris Big Way and 100-Way Camp. Others such as Airspeed, Team Evolution (Canada), and many other tunnel instructors have excellent tunnel coaching that have similiarities to the coaching techniques described below. Glossary for the new ones who may not have progressed past 4-ways and might be interested in bigway camps someday... - Stadium being the cloud of undocked bellyflyers around a big way, resembling points in a big, invisible bowl with the base at the bottom of the bowl. - Red Zone defines the innermost part of the stadium inside a Big Way where you have to carefully fly without bumping into nearby flyers. - Sheepdogging defines following a neighbour to the bigway slot, typically in the corner of your eye while you keep your eye at the base. ...You will have to learn the rest at an actual bigway camp. However, this will help understand the terminology in the rest of this post. These training techniques are NOT usually taught by ordinary tunnel instructors: You frequently must bring in an outside bigway/RW instructor, such as members of Perris Fury, or Airspeed, or other good RW team members that have tunnel coaching abilities, and tell them you want bigway-related tunnel coaching. Almost any tunnel time is useful, but some people get dissapointed at their tunnel instructor and feel that their tunnel training is overpriced and not useful. So experienced flyers who never had more than a few minutes of tunnel time, might find this useful too... (I kind of wish I knew this information earlier) Tunnel coaching does not solve everything (delta, tracking, canopy control, etc) which must be trained during actual jumping, but red zone skills is a HUGE part of bigway skills. By using tunnel time combined with persistent participation in bigway camps (to the point of becoming skilled enough to be part of bigway events at www.bigways.com), one can more easily become World Team league at, for example, 500 jumps instead of 1000 or 2000 jumps as has been shown by many of the members at the Perris Big Way Camp. This leads to many new jumpers thinking it is impossible to be on The World Team in year 2010 in less than 1000 jumps, when it just takes a lot of tunnel time and persistent participation in bigway camps. Many 1000+ jumpers are often working for dropzones or are primarily freefly, which while helpful, does distort the picture. Also, some people like me, occasionally has struggles with currency. I had only 20 jumps between the May Big Way Camp and the beginning of August, but a big 17-jump 3-day weekend of RW and 15 minutes of tunnel time in Perris before the bigway camp, kickstarted my performance at the Big Way Camp. Then I had 50 jumps in Perris. That brings my 5-week jump total to 70 (I had only 288 jumps 5 weeks ago, now at 358), and now I am sufficiently good enough to participate in a a portion of the formations listed at bigways.com which I plan to apply to, such as 60-way league events. Climb up from there, to state records such as the Texas or California state record, and keep re-attending the 100-way camps. I still have lots to learn, 100-way camp might not automatically qualify me for say, a California State Record 160-way (have not tried applying yet), but my chances of being accepted in are likely greatly increased, especially if I attend at least one more camp before then. It's easier than one thinks, to be a World Team member. Kate Cooper's inspirational speech drives many of these points home. To reach World Team league stuff in well less than 1000 jumps or even 500 jumps, requires a formula that also includes: - Healthy focus on RW jumping. 4-Ways. 20-Ways. - Jumping with World Team Members from time to time. - Plenty of good tunnel time! - Bigway Camps. Perris is world renowned with one of the best bigway camp in the world. - Persistence. You'll be cut from some bigways early on. Don't take it too hard. Keep working. You'll be accepted the next time. I wasn't good enough for 100-ways in May, but I was this September. - Great coaching. (I had Jan Meyer, originally as interpretor but ended up becoming my personal bigway coach as well) - Plenty of air time (tunnel and skydiving) as often as you can. - A good eye on www.bigways.com. Initially, one won't qualify for most of these at first but catch the good "Camp" events like the Perris camps, typically in May and September every year. -- Camps such as Perris' that have a huge number of the upcoming 500-Way World Record organizers who will witness your flying. And attend the camp again even if you get declined from the 100-way. You'll eventually get a provisional invitation to World Record if you keep it up and try, try again, and then go beyond with the invitationals. - And for those times you DO become uncurrent (bad summer weather, and still waiting on becoming good enough to go to bigway events), refresher RW and tunnel before going to a bigway camp, especially if you have moments of uncurrency between major bursts of skydiving like me.

Congratulations! I had my first 100-way and 99-way too. It was nice to see you at the Perris 100-way camp, although you were in Group 1 and I was in Group 2.

I'm a new member of the 100-way club! The weekend's over, and I did ten full 100-way attempts (some were 101 and 102 way attempts). I managed to make my slot (more or less) for either parking or docking on all jumps, except for one where someone from behind me flew under me in the "Red Zone" on one of the earlier attempts. We succeeded in "pratically" completing a couple of the formations. Including one jump where just as one docked, someone from the other side of the formation broke off. Got a photo of a 100-way that looks complete. Sunday was a lot more fun because I was now trusting myself to make the slot. I docked every single time on Sunday. My 'spare jumpsuit' (new slowfall jumpsuit) paid off here. The main dissapointment was that a friend of ours got a little bone broken during a reserve landing. With over 50 jumps (36 official camp jumps over two weeknds, plus 14 fun formation loads including a 23-way tracking jump), I've been thrown into every slot on various plane -- base, inner, outer, anchor, whacker -- from various exists -- front float, middle float, rear float, door, middle diver, and deep diver -- from left trail plane, lead plane, and right trail plane. Finally, for the first time, I now feel I can do any slot and keep up in a 100-way... Now I have to hit my desk hard at work. After 50 skydives in one vacation and 70 skydives in one month, I sure could use a little break -- never going to be able to jump as often as many 1000-jumpers (who often get paid by the dropzones, rather than jumping mostly RW like me), but I will be working to stay bigway current in the months to come, since my new skydiving goal is now...... Project 500! I need to practice more in not letting myself get sensory overload of al these bellyflyers near me in freefall and concentrate more on the base. Everyone did a good job, the organizers, my interpretor (who doubled as a personal bigway coach), MakeItHappen, and everyone else who helped... Now time to apply at bigways.com ... (as dozen other new members of the 100 way club!)