MarkM

Pull at altitude. Even on the off chance you get a bad chute from being unstable, odds are it'll slow you down. Which gives you more time to cutaway, get a good reserve above your head and make a safe landing. That's a cop out. If you have a strong solid arch you'll be stable(mostly). If I'm unstable up in the air it's no one's fault but my own. Whether it's my first time up or my 100th.

Yeah, but freefall experience isn't the only part of training. As long as you can: 1> Exit the plane safely. 2> Deploy at altitude. 3> Deploy stable. 4> Land safely. You can skydive. AFF sort of does it all at once where SL drills it into you one painful step at a time. Personally if I want to work on my freefall skills I'll hit a wind tunnel. But then I'm only 3 hours from Orlando, not everyone has access to one(unfortunately).

AFF will give you good free fall skills. SL will get you used to jumping out at any altitude, spoting, more canopy work, and give you more jumps under the eye of an instructor for your money. If you're a serious about skydiving both systems will get you your A license just fine. And then you can really work on building your skills up.

It's actually easy to get entangled during a SL jump. My 5th or 6th one I did an impressive backloop on exit and threaded my SL through my legs. Ended up upside down under a perfectly good canopy with my legs up in the lines. Pissed me off more than anything else(I knew I had blown my arch) and gave me a nasty bruise/scraps on the inside of my leg where the opening shock of the chute slammed the lines against me.

Well if you're not too far from the coast, you might try sailing. There should be a Discover Sailing program near Boston that would take you out to see if you like it. And if you do there are plenty of clubs that are always looking for extra ballast for races.

Hey SkyDekker, sounds like you have a really good head on your shoulders. I remember my 3rd, 4th, 5th jumps. The hardest part was pulling into the DZ parking lot, was nervous as hell. Then I remember on my 6th jump, the ride up I kept asking myself "why the hell am I doing this"? But it's all good once you leave that plane and after a few more jumps the fear sorta turns into a comfortable nervousness. Next time when you PLF keep those hands in! I banged up my wrist pretty well reaching for the ground myself last summer.

Holy shit. Did the number of freaksisters just double on us? How the hell is the world gonna handle two of them?

Eh, you don't HAVE to be stable to get a good chute out, it just helps. But then as a static line student I have a lot of experience doing cartwheels out the plane door with a chute deploying off my back. My first jump ever was at 3000 feet. I don't get how some people find hop and pops scary. To me half the sport is about the fun of a quick hop and pop.

There's something about blonde hair that immediately draws the attention of me and my friends when we're out cruising. It's like, blonde hair, you're a guy, you just look. But I think red would really suit you. That and I don't need another blonde out there, it's getting downright dangerous riding around on my motorcycle getting distracted by all these platinum blondes running around.

Um, feel free to fuck up. From my own observations skydiving is a sport choked full of fuck ups, so you should fit in just fine with us. And in skydiving when you fuck up, you're usually doing it 2 miles up at 120mph with no plane so you're at least fucking up in style.

It might be that because the equipment is getting so much smaller and lighter, more and more people are taking it up. Plus as more people hit the DZs and do their single tandem and split, more and more video is probably getting sold. Condolences to the family. Anyone who's thinking about getting into skydiving photography might want to consider if the added risk is worth it.

I'm Mark. I design and write web based applications for several insurance agencies across the US and manage their web servers. Raised in Indiana. Recently relocated to Florida. Skydiving makes me feel alive.

Personally I wouldn't have been comfortable with some guy deploying my chute for me: I was a SL student and liked that my life was in my own hands.

When the last Star Wars came out the entire geek subculture was flooded with "Natalie Portman topless!" polls/top 10 lists and what-not. Took a good five or six months for it all to calm down. It's sorta like that "All your base belong to us" quote.

Hmmm... Boxster 60k.... C182 60k... Boxster 60k... C182 60k.... Decisions, decisions. Not that it's one I get to make, but hey, gotta have something to drive me to work those long hours.

It'd be a hell of a lot easier to score if I didn't drive a dodge neon in a town where everyone drives a porche. But then, as I once told my boss, no real skydiver would be caught dead at the DZ driving a porche. I mean, for that kind of cash you can buy your own plane and jump whenever you wanted! And don't think I haven't thought about just that either... it's no accident three of my friends are pilots....

Two words: Holly Wood

I love you, will you marry me?

"Well, just call me slow but how can I vote for somebody if I can't read the ballot??" Don't ask me, I live in Florida.

LOL @ Anonymous

Big enough to notice, not large enough to make you fall over when you're running around.

Olav's home DZ: http://skydiveamericapb.com/ More on the first school of modern freeflying: http://www.1olav.com/

Ahh yeah, back in the days when drop shadows ruled all.

The first jump? Easily. But over the entire course of the training? SL and AFF both cost about the same over the entire course, yet you'll do twice the number of jumps with SL. Does that mean AFF pulls in more money for the overhead? After all you're charging the same amount of money for half the jumps. But then you have two instructors to pay for some of those jumps and all those jumps are from a higher altitude. So then does SL bring in more money? Not if you have a fuel hungry turbine, then you're better off with those high alt exits. Circling around at 3500 wouldn't be economical. I don't think it's as simple as: SL rakes in more cash for the DZ. Agreed. As a student I would've been very uncomfortable exiting the plane with two people holding onto me. With SL I was in control of my own life and didn't have too much to remember(pretty much just fall out of the plane and make sure you have a good canopy). And the problem with both methods is you may control the student in flight or can make sure he gets deployed, but once they're under that canopy all bets are off. And I've seen a lot of students screw up under canopy, it's real easy to get confused up there the first few jumps. IMHO the "best" training system would be: Couple tandems to get the student familiar with the environment, teach landing and canopy control. Couple SL jumps to get the student used to checking main, flying themselves down, exiting. Several coached sessions in a wind tunnel to teach body control, freefall skills. On to AFF to put those skills to use in flight jumping with an instructor.

How much profit is the DZ seeing on the 2nd plus jumps when the student costs go down to 45 per? At max load at my old DZs, at 3 students and 1 instructor in a C182 at 45-50 bucks per student, the DZO was just about breaking even when you figured in fuel and rig costs.