MarkM

I just wish Neptunes supported Linux so I could import the logs into Paralog. The only thing that's held me back from buying Paralog is the lack of syncing with Neptunes under Linux, which isn't a Paralog issue so much as a Neptune one.

Depends on what you want out of the experience. Tandem: - Don't want to spend 8 hours in ground school. - Don't really plan on getting your license(you just want to try it out). - You don't want the added stress of being completely responsible for dealing with emergencies, etc etc. AFF: - You think you may not want to do just 1 jump, you really want to give the sport a go. - You want the responsibility of being totally in control of your skydive. If you have an emergency, you'll live or die based on your training and decisions. A Tandem is certainly safer than doing an AFF jump, but then staying at home and not jumping at all is safer yet. If you just want to experience free fall and be able to say "I did that", then do a tandem. They're great for that and there's nothing wrong with going that route. But if you want to get a much more in depth intro into the sport(7-8 hours of training), be 100% responsible for the jump, and are thinking about giving skydiving a serious try, then you might as well do an AFF jump.

Hit ZHills, Deland and Sebastian for sure. You can skip Titusville. It's pretty much a tandem factory these days. Hit the calendar at http://www.skydiveseb.com/ for when you'll be down. I'm sure ZHill's and Deland's websites have similar calendars. Base a schedule around that and expect to do a lot of jumping.

And this is just a .5 FnD. Nice.

Pay for AFF as you go and you can quit anytime. Buy a used rig after AFF, and if you don't want to be in the sport after jumping for a bit more, you can resell the rig for pretty much what you paid for it.

Really? What's a student canopy? A Falcon 300 in Indiana, a Triathlon 260 in Florida or a Sabre2 170 in Chicago? Maybe the "more experienced jumpers" understand more of what's possibly out there so they give advice that err's on the side of caution. The problem is that at 20 jumps and 1 year in the sport you really don't know much of anything, and what's worse, you're probably in that stage where you don't know what you don't know.

Cool shit. Wonder what speeds he reaches.

Yeah, let's lock down the forums and prevent people who are capable of: 1> Reading the sticky at the top of the forums. 2> Reading the jump numbers next to the name of the person who's giving advice. 3> Taking anything they read on here and asking their instructors about it, prior to making life and death choices on it. Because 1 guy heard that "low turns are bad", made a decision based on that information, and had a perfect landing anyway. Students aren't pounding themselves in because of these forums, or at least I'm not seeing the incident reports that are showing it, and I know when I was a student I got better information here for some things than I did at the DZ. In the very least it was a sounding board for me to compare and contrast information I was getting at home.

Just have them call the DZ that knows you.

Outside of changing the batteries, there's not too much room for operator error with Neptunes. I've owned 3, 1 went dead after 3 years of use and was replaced for free and the other 2 have worked fine. It's an electronic device and it can/will fail at some point, but I wouldn't trade my Neptunes in for anything else. They're dead simple to use, really accurate, and the customer service is top notch. I think a lot of the issues have been solved with the later generations. I know they had a real hard time getting the battery life indicator to work right and a lot of failures I saw were due to low battery power on the early model one I owned.

When I used kenpo to save my life, I sure as hell didn't think it was overrated. The OP isn't talking about life saving skills, but their kid not being bullied in school and I'd have to agree with lawrocket that psychology is a lot more important than learning how to fight. I had martial arts training when I was young which didn't do much when a kid twice my size came at me. It wasn't until a month or so later when I got real tired of being picked on by him and slammed him into some lockers that he learned to leave me alone. You don't have to win to be left alone by bullies in school, you just have to be not worth the trouble to bother with.

Camping is free and there's plenty of space, good showers, etc. Pip and Judy also rent out trailers, but they usually book up pretty quick. You can call the DZ and ask for their contact info.

Under a grand shouldn't be a problem for what you listed. But I'd try for a laptop with 2 gigs of ram. If you daughter lives anywhere near an Apple store, you might consider a Mac laptop with a good support contract so she can just take it in to them if she ever has a problem. Go to http://forum.notebookreview.com/ and post your requirements in the "What notebook should I buy" forums. You should get some pretty decent advice there and maybe even some links to deals.

I got my B as soon as I could so I can do night jumps. You only need to be B qualified. I had taken the other route - never got the A, got the B instead. I know it used to state B qualified, because I skipped by B due to that. But looking at the SIM now it looks like you may have to have the B license itself. Not that most DZs would care or anything.

So you spend $80 instead of $29 to run Windows on Intel Mac hardware. There's nothing wrong with Macs except there's just a lot of hype and fanboy-ism surrounding them and right now they're very trendy because of iPhone/iPod. I still think most people are going to be happier on XP. I've been a Linux user since 1992, a Linux admin since 1997, and still recommend Windows for most people because it's the most compatible OS out there for hardware and software.

- Gravity sucks. - If you can't die doing it, it's not a real sport.

I used to go through mental conversations that would go something like, "Why am I doing this? I don't have to do this? I could be sitting at home doing something else."

Woah, news, grats Matt. Will probably be up at ZHills this weekend too. Haven't been in awhile.

The hardware is locked so you need Boot Camp to run another OS, which you'll need to pay $29 for when it goes final. Every Mac I've setup has asked me for registration info when I've installed it, and annoyed me with "Wanna buy .mac?" ads. Mac OS X doesn't need to activate because you can't install it anywhere except on your specific type of Mac hardware. I've had to dig up 10.4.3 disks to reinstall a Macbook Pro because the 10.4.6 disks give me the "this version won't run on this hardware" errors. The iPhone is another classic "you can do anything you want with our product, as long as it's what we want you do to" Apple-ism. And really aside from video editing, OS X doesn't do anything Linux does without having to fork over the $$$ or being locked into one company's vision. At least with Windows you can play games know that the printer you pick up at Best Buy will work when you plug it in. But Apple does make really nice hardware and if you're okay with being locked in by them, they provide a really solid user experience.

Apple stuff is pure hype. Their products have all the DRM and lockin of Windows(much more, actually) with none of the hardware and software support you'd get from an OS that dominates the planet(Windows). We use Macbook Pro's at work and the best thing I did was install Linux on it and that was after using it for 8 months, so it's not like I didn't give it a chance. If you're not sure about Vista, just get a PC with XP on it. You can always upgrade to Vista later on.

Very common depending on what you use. I've had Neptunes freeze up on me 4-5 different times. The main thing is to always have 2 methods of detecting your altitude. Maybe it's looking at the ground, maybe it's when your buddy does his pre-planned breakoff, maybe it's your audible, etc. But never rely on just 1 source.

I tend to average low 60's usually. So I'd love to know the secret too. Though I'm thinking I could probably lower my exit weight some over the fall.

Totally! I was walking back from a jump one day towards a hanger and one of those evil swoopers buzzed by me and scared the crap out of me. Made me drop and lose my joint, which really made my next jump not so fun. I really think swoopers should land on the runway with the planes. They can wear those shoes with the wheels in the heels and get really killer surf on the pavement.

So they're better off jumping alone than with someone who has years of experience? Considering fewer people are entering/staying in the sport, maybe something in the current system is broken. How about anyone with a C license, under instructor supervision, can jump with AFF/SL grads. Every "coach" jump like this can be signed off by the instructor and would then count towards earning a coach rating, which requires X many of these jumps. That earns you your coach rating, which would be required for other instructor ratings or helping an instructor with ground courses.

Nice. Isn't there already a mach out there that's blue with white Monarch butterfly markings on the wings?