MarkM

Thanks for the testing Hoops.

Yeah, that was most likely smoke off the nearby factory towers. No way a skydiver would ever jump through clouds.

Haha, don't have a g/f. Hey! Wait a minute! Now I'm sad

Heh, kevlar. Still in service? Imagine this question: "Son, WHERE exactly did you lose your helmet?"

Hmm, sounds like a relationship issue... you tried Viagra?

Maybe that's the whole point. Some sort of Zen thing.

Yep, that's a batwing.

Why? It's not like you'll have to land in the thing... A batwing! Do a batwing for Mark!

Any chance you have a DZ with a well stocked gear shop nearby? I drove up to Sebastian to buy an oxygen, but ended up with a Z1 because it fit my head better.

So you don't know Jack? Damn, too bad. I used to know both Jack and Shit, but Jack left town so... I don't know but Shit these days.

But do you know Jack?

That sucks Lisa. I hope your cousin gets his tranplants. My father went through heart failure for several years and spent his last 6 months in a hospital. He was never an organ transplant candidate, but did a try test program for a left ventrical pump. Being sick for a long time or being the loved one for someone who has a long term illness is hard. Best you can do is to be there for them, it may not feel like enough, but really it's the number one thing they need.

Alright, so basically keep it real gentle when I start getting low and maybe even keep one hand on the cutaway handle in case things go bad. Don't take away an option up high(this looks like something that will land) if I can still take it away with the same risks down low(whoops, just downplaned, cut!). Thanks guys.

I've always been taught that a side by side 2 out was something you land if it was stable, but with the recent downplanes I'm wondering if the risers/lines aren't tangled and it looks like your main would clear, do you cut it away? What's the bigger risk, your main fouling your reserve or it suddenly downplaning when you get close to landing? Any thoughts, opinions?

Yeah, good post.

I don't mean to come across as trying to stir things up. But I don't think experienced jumpers are immune from being contradicted. Out of the 2001 low turn fatalities, 4 had 200 or less jumps 5 were very experienced skydivers. I'm sure they knew what they were doing, had the experience to back it up, but made an error and died anyway.

I'm guessing that's directed at me since I'm the one with the whole 17 jumps. I'm sorry if you think my lack of jumping means that my opinion that if you respect the dangers in the sport, don't get complacent, advance slowly, and follow the examples and advice of those who have been in the sport for a long time without serious injury you can skydive safely is flawed. But it's just that. An opinion. It doesn't mean I wasn't listening when Billvon wrote why he doesn't jump a sub 100 main or don't respect Lisa's opinions and advice.

I don't see anyone saying that. And they can go after rock climbing, street ludging, cave diving, snow boarding, skiiing, canyon hiking, spelunking, hang gliding, motorcycle/car racing, ocean sailing, and about a thousand other high risk sports or activities a lot of which are more dangerous than skydiving.

Hahaha, yep.

Think the link showed a 22 per 100k licensed driver fatality rate, but that also included pedestrian kills, etc. Remove that and you're down to 18 per 100k or so, I don't know. In the US we average 30 skydiving fatalities a year? How many total skydivers jump each year? But then also figure how many hours of driving each year does the average driver do compared to the "hours" of skydiving an average skydiver does. Per minute, skydiving is going to be way more dangerous. But it's all kind of stupid. You can make numbers say anything you want.

My legs got tangled up in my main lines on opening during my 4th jump, the opening shock turned my lower leg black for a month and left a scar that lasted a year. I put my arms out on a PLF on my 7th or 8th jump, the sprained wrists kept me down for a month. My instructor got a bruised eye from pulling the SL in from a jumper, the end whipped up and caught her in the face. The next week a student didn't flair and kept his legs locked when landed, dislocated his right leg. I don't personally consider minor injuries something that makes a sport safe or unsafe. Never broke a bone in my life, don't plan to, but if I do life will go on.

I'd have to agree with Hook on this one. I don't look at my instructor who has 1600 jumps and think she's on borrowed time, that eventually jumping will catch up with her and she'll go in because it's inevitable for all skydivers to burn in. Part of this arguement is everyone here is going to have a different definition of "safe". I wouldn't consider skydiving safe if there was an eventual fatal or extreme injury outcome of jumping, likely to happen to every diver, that simply could not be avoided. Putting a student under a lightly loaded canopy is safe. Putting one under a VX 78 is unsafe. Why? The student is likely to screw up a landing sometime in the future. Under the lightly loaded canopy that will probably result in a broken bone, under a heavily loaded canopy it'll kill them. Right. But that doesn't mean it has to kill or maim you.

Before this blows out into a "what's safe" "what isn't" thing. For me, unsafe is a situation where there's an eventual outcome that's bound to happen you can't escape from. Driving a car down a busy street at 100 mph is unsafe, you can't avoid that eventual moron that pulls out in front of you. Safe is that while there's still a potential for something lethal to happen(we can all die in a car accident) it isn't an eventual situation you can't avoid. We all know we will have a mal in skydiving, but we can escape from them. It's not a sport were eventually we will all encounter a situation we can't escape from. That sadly does happen, but hopefully we'll keep nagging each other enough about safety to keep it rare. Peace people. Feeling a little under the weather so I'm going to bed. Promise I'll play nice tomorrow

I can die taking a shower tomorrow so bathrooms really aren't safe. There were probably more bathroom related fatalities and injuries last year in the US than skydiving. But it's a matter of the degree of safety. If you truly felt skydiving wasn't safe, you'd be a fool to stay in the sport. Yes it's dangerous. Yes it's high risk. But those don't translate into unsafe. An aircraft carrier deck is the most dangerous place in the world. It would be unsafe for me to be on one, but is it still unsafe for a crewman trained to be there? Training can make high risk scenarios "acceptably" safe. I think everyone here believes that skydiving can be "acceptably" safe, if you're properly trained for it. So then why wouldn't I think swooping to be safable? Can't we train for that? To a point, sure. But how far can you train base jumping to be safe? How many base jumpers are walking around with 3000 bases under their belt? Why wouldn't you see a base jumper with 10k jumps, if he was really really skilled and good at what he did?

There's certainly a skill element. I personally think swooping should be taught, so you don't have moped skill riders riding at the wall on a R1. Which is where a lot of accidents are going to happen. You have more skill, you can ride the wall more safely. There's a new race track opening up in north Florida my friends are excited about. It's designed specifically for bikes, no cars are allowed on it. It doesn't have walls on the turn ends. The bike tracks in Europe also don't have walls, they have run offs you can slide on. I totally support your right to swoop Hook. And I agree approaching it a certain way greatly reduces the risk, but I'd never call it safe just because of that lack of an out when things go bad. Racing a motorcyle on a track designed for cars(walled up), isn't something I'd call safe even if you were Matt Maladin.