mdrejhon

I did two more jumps today. I got a 10-pack of surgical gloves and wore a pair under my Newmann tacky leather gloves (vinyl gloves, since they were out of 10-pack latex gloves). That helped quite a bit, especially on the first jump at -10C for a 4K jump. Although I still got my hands very cold on the second jump when the temperature fell a bit further to -15C and I used a 10 second delay from a 5K jump. Is there a difference in warmth between latex gloves and vinyl gloves as an inside layer for my Newmann gloves? Thanks for the link to the other gloves, I saw someone wearing a pair of those, so I might get those as well.

That's a great one too, I have that as well! Though I'd suggest reading "Parachuting: The Skydiving Handbook" first, before reading that one. "The Parachute And Its Pilot" appears to be a book usually purchased when one is already skydiving, although it will help tide the time if you can't wait to read more about parachuting before jumping. (Just skip the chapter about how to swoop...that's advanced stuff that can hurt a beginner)

Exciting to see the fans and the chamber already there! But there's a dreaded Nor'easter ready to slam the construction site. We need to make a sacrifice. Throw a virgin 100-jump wonder with the sacred Golden Parachute rig, into the volcano to appease the SkyGods of the Blue Skies, to scare the Nor'easter away.

I want to be able to fly Canada 80-Way attempts in June 2006. So, ideally, I would like a RW coach that can help with that. (Ideally I'd like a variety of things - maybe four separate 15 minute blocks with different fun and challenges - spread throughout the day or over a 2 day period) (I'll go to a number of RW camps at dropzones as well, beginning in April when the season starts around here)

Hi, In the meantime, it's great to whet one's appetite with "Parachuting: The Skydiver's Handbook", one of the favourite pre-student skydiving books (it's a pretty popular book before the first jump) It is not 100% representative (some pages have old information) and you should always listen to instructor (their advice overrides the book), but it will help answer MANY questions that you may have before paying for a jump... Also, do not get a rig before skydiving school -- Pretty much all skydiving courses in North America include a student rig, so you don't need a rig while going through it all. Student rigs that weigh 30-35 pounds on your back, are very forgiving of mistakes because they use bigger parachutes. Modern sports rigs for an A license holder (25+ jumps) weigh only about 20-25 pounds on your back are slightly smaller parachutes than the big student rigs, and they often have better landing flare (and softer and more fun landings) but less forgiving of landing mistakes that can hurt if you jumped one of them as your first jump. The right rig for you can't really be decided until you are already jumping. Confused at the terminology? Go read the book. And, don't listen to me... I'm not an instructor... Some of my information can be wrong...

The surgical gloves are a good idea, I'll see if I can make a quick stop at the drugstore. Yes, I was already aware of the dangers of the ski gloves. That's why I dirt dived them, and also why I did not jump with gloves last time. But were others aware of the dangers of the ski gloves when they had problems or were killed jumping with them? And why do a significant number of Canadian winter jumpers seem to persist on jumping with ski gloves, even instructors? They wouldn't let a student jump with ski gloves, but let novices like me do it. And why am I given permission by two separate instructor-rated people to jump with them? I guess that's Canada, eh. I'm more worried about my cutaway handle than the hackey, though, but I have also resolved to "cutaway" (remove and throwaway) my gloves if I ever have 1 second of glove-related difficulty in the process of getting a good canopy over my head, and to adjust my pull altitude accordingly. Perhaps there are unforeseen effects, such as airy gloves ballooning, slippery gloves dropping a toggle, no pulls if hackey shifts and becomes impossible to feel with gloves, or glove sweating making it hard to pull off gloves in an emergency as could happen, (although my skiing experience has shown this to not be a problem.), or any other unforeseen issue. Though I am personally trying my best to be aware of such issues... Nontheless, I now see there's a known compromise solution -- latex/surgical gloves from the drugstore, under my existing Newmann gloves. (But if my hands freeze despite latax layer, I may have reconsider the ski glove option for the next jump of the day -- we'll see -- depending on how cold it is at altitude. At least I will skydive aware of the glove risk, if I do.) Thanks for the tips!

No doubt, I think a Skyventure Chicago would be a good idea. That territory is very lacking at the moment. And a relatively inexpensive city to fly to.

Question. When the time comes to make a roadtrip in May (hopefully), will there be an RW-experienced tunnel instructor available?

No no no. That's not what this is for at all. Jumpers are more than welcome to jump a larger canopy than the Chart suggests. The point is to provide a general guide for what is appropriate at any given stage of development. I know - I was just kidding (wink indicated) - The problem is that there is a potential for newbies to misunderstand: . . . . "Jumpers with less than 500 skydives must downsize according to this chart" It almost sounds like downsizing is required. Believe it or not, newbies are sometimes dumber than you think. You already know that, Brian. It's pretty obvious to people like us but unfortunately I think you have to change the wording in order to make the wording pretty idiot-proof. We need to make the wording newbie-proof. My point is that I suggest this wording: . . . . "Jumpers with less than 500 skydives must not downsize beyond this chart". Or . . . . "Jumpers with less than 500 skydives must not downsize below the minimum parachute size according to this chart". But I think you already got the idea - you adopted one of the suggestions. If the wording makes it into documentation that newbies might read, we have better make sure it passes the idiot test.

Hi, A group of us from the area (Ottawa) are going to do winter jumping again tomorrow Saturday at a small town DZ that is confirmed open tomorrow. It'll be freezing at about -10 degrees, but mainly sunny at very slow 5 kph winds. Some of the much more experienced jumpers use ski gloves. They (more than one, including one of the owners) have already permitted me to go ahead and use my ski gloves if I wish. However, I have observed that ski gloves are slippery on hackey handles and my cutaway pillow. I've resisted and used my Newmann gloves, but it was a warmer winter jump day earlier. But not this time... On dirt dive tests in my bedroom testing all my gloves for their safety, it's quite obvious my Newmann sticky-tack gloves win. However, this will be the coldest I've jumped, so I am thinking I want something warmer. I was still able to dirt-dive my ski gloves though, knowing what my hackey handle feels like now. I know that in a dirt dive pratice pull, I can feel and pull my hackey with my ski gloves, just simply needs a stronger grip on the hackey. If there's any reason I can't pull with my ski gloves, I can just throw them away (I tested emergency glove throwaway in my dirt dive) to pull using my bare hand. Time elapsed is about 2 seconds. But let's be safe, round that up to 1000 feet. EP's are a little more difficult with them on, so let's give me more than 5 extra seconds just to be safe. In case I have difficulty pulling or doing EP's with the gloves on. So I figure pulling higher at 4000 feet with ski gloves should be okay, considering I can easily "cutaway" my gloves anyway by pulling them off and throwing them away to continue with EP's or pull if I have difficulty. (in the very unlikely event I am unable to with my gloves on). The extra altitude gives me more than enough time, and my ski gloves are easy to pull off. They are cheap (Boxing Day $10 Special) so I don't care about throwing them away if I unexpectedly have problems with gloves. Better that than frostbitten hands wearing thin sticky-tacky gloves, since we may be doing some (heaven forbid), FREEFALLS in these temperatures! Bad thinking? Reasonable thinking? I'm seeking additional opinions beyond what I've heard from others already.

I might already be flying mantis in the windtunnel -- just that I don't know the terminology. I'll go find out. (I'm a deaf guy, so I don't always get to hear the terminology when being coached)

Good one! Downsizing isn't mandatory... "Sorry. You're banned from making a jump here anymore. The new USPA downsizing rules require you to downsize to a 150 before you can continue jumping."

You know, you might already be the third -- The Airkix tunnel was the first, the Colorado one was the second.

One of my home dropzone videographers (and my carpool partner) has his Astra mounted in this manner.

Hi, I don't know, but I believe it was a fluke in 1984. Try checking historical newspaper records. It is not a cure for deafness, but if true, her ears probably had a long term blockage that cleared up in skydiving. There is a deaf skydiver website at www.deafskydivers.org and none of us regained our hearing while skydiving.

Hi, When as a lurker watching the dropzone forums, I have noticed that a negative attitude is often given to jumpers that does not contain accurate information in the profiles. There are frequently legitimate reasons why a jumper has to anonymize, but the world is full of skeptical people and it is just easy to leave the sport because of the flak given by others. It may help if you filled at least approximations of your skill level (i.e. If you are a 1000 jumper, then round numbers to the nearest 100, and indicate license A/B/C/D without specifying number). Then at least you stay anonymous, but people are no longer picking on you. It's just the dropzone.com culture to not trust people with blank information... I am a newbie (but with accurate information recorded in my profile) so I don't have any experience doing demo jumps. However, my dropzone has a cornfield immediately adjacent to the landing area. So being a few meters off the landing field means going into a cornfield. I have landed in it, near it, or walked through it, enough time to learn a lot. So let me make an observation about cornfields sometimes being deceiving. After it was freshly mowed (mechanically with some sort of cheap old combine probably), there were really sharp stalk remants (i.e. 6 to 12 to 18 inches of sharp, dried cut leftover cornstalk poking out of ground). Could severely cut my leg on landing, it looks almost as strong and sharp as a jagged broken broomstick pole poking out of the ground. Times thousands of these scary jagged remains of stalks of a mowed cornfield left to dry out and harden for a couple weeks. It looks like broken dried and hardened bamboo stalks with sharp edges if not mowed fully to the ground, cornstalk hardens surprisingly well after drying. Heaven forbid butt landings -- gulp. Haven't landed in a cornfield in that condition yet but it's easy to rather land in fresh tall corn than a field dense with sharp mowed dried cornstalk leftovers. Unless, it was freshly tilled or past the winter so that the dead sharp cornstalk leftovers were gone. Or that a good combine mowed it all the way to the ground very cleanly, I'd have to visit and inspect the field myself to be completely comfortable landing there (a good idea for any non-DZ jump, I'm sure!). I sure learned a lot about cornfields as a first-year skydiver only because the cornfield is next to the landing area. Fortunately I stopped landing there after the corn grew more than 2.5 feet tall. (Without a location in your profile, it's a bit hard to even make a wild guess about cornfield state in your part of the world). This paragraph is also addressed to all skydivers about the hidden dangers of cornfield landings. Someday I wanna do demo jumps, but I realize that these kinds of unexpected pitfalls like these, the field that looks good from the air actually is a minefield, etc. And I am too low jump to really learn swooping in full swing. I've focussed my learning efforts on RW. And of course, since I am a newbie -- I don't carry much reputation here, of course -- so it is probably best to ignore me -- but I enjoy being on dropzone.com especially during these winter months where I can't easily skydive here in Canada!

lawrocket to the rescue -- Our favourite dropzone.com lawyer. Yes, that looks good, too!

YAY! Fans installed! Comparing the Skyventure Colorado (seems nearly identical to Skyventure New Hampshire) at that stage versus now, June/July seems to be the most realistic opening timing? Skyventure Colorado had fans about 5 months ago and are still not yet open so that is how I am extrapolating, assuming the design is similiar. Or will you be able to build faster than Colorado did -- how are the construction challenges there comparable to New Hampshire? Of course, things start to warm up after March, which makes construction easier. And Colorado construction probably was slowed down by holidays and the full brunt of the famous Colorado winter. And you're probably avoiding a few of the delays Colorado had as a learning curve of North America's first recirculating Skyventure wind tunnel. Of course, we all hope for April/May, but just making observations about Colorado's progress versus New Hampshire's progress! Comments?

A compromise action: Ask for contact information for her family. That way, you can report when the cheque bounces (but do so in a calm manner without profanity) and request the refund of all fees. You can pull this off using "legal" means: You could make a new lease agreement and require her family act as the co-signer, necessitating addictional contact information and additional responsibility.

The UTA siren just went off. (Unfamiliar Terminology Alarm!) For this windtunnel newbie, can you please describe the mantis position compared to the boxman position? I should comment that last time (my first) I was in the wind tunnel, I flew a slightly modified boxman where my hands were moved closer together. Is that the mantis position? Also, since I want to fly boxman, is it acceptable procedure to insist to the next tunnel instructor that I fly like I skydive instead, keeping my hands apart? I want to spend an hour at Skyventure New Hampshire when it opens, and I want to get every minute's worth of it.

For whatever it is worth, one day was pretty low wind. Almost zero. The windsock kept changing directions 180 degrees. People were not landing in a clear direction -- I landed in the opposite direction of someone landing in the peas (I flat turned to land about 100 feet away). The swooper traffic confused me at the time. All in all, there were three directions of landing by different people within a 200 feet area. Then the DZO just took down the pea bowl windsock and told everyone to land in a preset pattern (there was another windsock on top of the hangar if we needed it for other reasons such as landing out). Everything became much safer then. Just another data point to contribute.

The AAC does seem to be the closest if what you say is right. But for Northeast dwellers, keep in mind of Skyventure New Hampshire opening. That will be the one nearest Boston / New York City / Toronto / Montreal / Ottawa residents.

It's CNN after all. Enough said. At least it wasn't FOX News *ducks to dodge flamethrower fireball* But that aside. Damn shame it happened. I hate to see stuff like this happen.

I jump through "industrial haze" at certain dropzones, but I often modify my dive plan on it. For example, no tracking through industrial haze if it can be avoided. (A lot of my solo jumps are tracking practice jumps). At dropzones where only 4 people are jumping at a time, over sparse airspace, it's very interesting scenery during freefall. I HAVE ridden the plane down with a whole plane load in a CASA though, but generally as a rule of thumb -- if most people are exiting, I'm probably exiting. I do my best attempt to check the spot, and if I trust the pilot's spotting history. I always monitor the sky when going to altitude, and often modify my pull altitude to a good safety margin while enroute.

Two words: Tunnel Time! A 10 minute tunnel time block ought to fix your spin permanently. PS: Forum member Eule can provide some inspiration -- He's almost 50 jumps and still hasn't finished AFF. (I'm impressed at his determination though)