Eule

hey there's always dz partys or at least a stripper bar. he's going to let him jump, so some naked chicks can't hurt. Three things come to mind... 1. Lots of laughter :) 2. "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6, KJV) 3. If you took your average 16-year-old to a stripper bar, I think you'd cause a nationwide shortage of Kleenex. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

If those prices were from 1965, here's about what some of them would be today, accounting for inflation: FJC - $238 All gear rental - $36 7200 ft jump - $30, each additional 1K $3 10 7200 ft jumps - $238 ($23.80 ea) Sport main repack - $18 1970: FJC - $200 All gear rental - $30 7200 ft jump - $25, each additional 1K $2.50 10 7200 ft jumps - $200 ($20 ea) Sport main repack - $15 1975: FJC - $150 All gear rental - $22.50 7200 ft jump - $19, each additional 1K $2 10 7200 ft jumps - $150 ($15 ea) Sport main repack - $11 A lot of those prices look pretty familiar to me, having started a year ago. But today, for about the same money, you get two squares, an AAD that works, at least 10K, and way cooler jump suits than back in the day. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I don't know so much about turbines. For something like a Cessna with a flat-6 engine, I guess it would probably be comparable to a US automotive engine from the late 1960s to early 1970s with about the same displacement and horsepower. The carbon and the other emissions would be about the same; catalytic converters and stuff that really knocked down the emissions didn't really get going until the mid-1970s or so. The US Department of Energy or perhaps the California Air Resources Board may have some numbers for you - CARB especially may have earlier numbers, because California started regulating auto emissions much earlier than the feds did. One advantage that piston/reciprocating aircraft engines have over automobile engines is that the aircraft engines operate over a much narrower RPM range than automotive ones. They can be tuned to be very efficient over that narrow range. Speeding up and slowing down is what kills your fuel mileage in a car; once you're cruising at a steady speed, it takes a relatively small part of the engine's output to keep the car moving. One source (Bosch Automotive Handbook, 5th ed.) suggests that for a conventional sedan form, with a drag coefficient of 0.4-0.55 and a frontal area of 2 m^2 (think a mid-80s Honda Accord, Toyota Camry (or equal), Ford Fairmont), it only takes about 34 hp to keep the car moving at 75 mph on a level road with no wind. (28 hp to push air and 6 hp for the resistance of the tires.) A typical car of that size in that era would have had an engine with something like 100 to 120 hp of peak output - you have to lug around three or four times as much engine so you can accelerate in a reasonable time, climb hills, etc. If you could magically use something else to accelerate and decelerate, you could have a 40 hp engine and double or triple your gas mileage. If you make the magic something else be a battery and an electric motor, congratulations, you just invented the hybrid car. :) One thing I do know about turbines is that they are not very efficient at middle power settings. If you cut the load of a piston engine in half, it'll burn about, say, half as much fuel. If you cut the load of a turbine in half, it'll burn about, say, three-quarters as much fuel. For a ballpark figure, you can find out how many gallons per load (or whatever) the Otter is burning, look up the heat content of Jet-A, and take around 30% of that figure for what gets turned into thrust; the other 70% turns into exhaust. Hard to say. Taking off and landing both take a lot of energy, and commercial flights tend to get a lot more time in between these events than jump planes. On the other hand, they are on a much larger scale. If you prod the Boeing and Airbus Web sites a bit, I know they will give you ranges in miles and you may be able to find the fuel capacity in gallons or pounds and you can work out how efficient they are. Someone else brought up that keeping an old 182 in the air is also a form of energy efficiency. It costs a lot of energy to make a new plane or car or whatever - especially for the plane because of the way that aluminum is made. If you keep an old plane flying, you're spreading that cost out over more useful work that you got out of the airplane. My personal guesstimate is that in the near term, if fuel prices continue to rise, mechanical fuel injection on reciprocating aircraft engines will get more popular. This may be followed by electronic fuel injection, if it provides enough of a boost. Further out, it might be interesting to stick one of the new, small, common-rail injection diesel engines being sold in Europe into a general-aviation aircraft. The diesel engine is probably heavier, but there's more energy in a pound of diesel than there is in a pound of av-gas, and the new diesel engines get a lot more out of it. I think that you won't see any electric or nuclear aircraft; they'll still have internal combustion engines burning a liquid hydrocarbon fuel, simply because of the weight requirements. If you can work out how much carbon/smog/whatever comes from a jump plane run, see if you can reduce that much carbon/smog/etc out of your or your friends' cars, etc. All of the silly little things they tell you to do (change the air filter, check the tire pressure, etc) only buy you 1 or 2% each but on the average unmaintained car, doing a few of them will save around 30 gallons of gas a year, which is a considerable amount of emissions saved. I hang out with mechanical engineering students that build hybrid cars from scratch for fun, so that's why I wrote such a dissertation above. :) I hope this helps! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Good point. Assuming you don't change your body position at all, there will probably be a rather narrow range of speeds (in the tunnel) that don't end up with you on the net or up by the fans. I don't know for sure, but it seems reasonable, particularly when you're trying to reduce speed. With some motors and motor drives, you could electrically brake the motor, but there is probably a limit to how much you can accelerate the prop before it comes apart. You might be able to do it with vanes ahead of the test section, but then you really are getting into the land of "lots of complication for little benefit", IMHO. I was somewhat thinking that this would be offered relatively infrequently - one afternoon or one day would be set aside as "cutaway training day." Part of this is the time to set up the tunnel for it. However, it's true that if the owner could be making $10 a minute on regular flyers, he won't want to make very much less than that on special training, which would mean you'd get to pay for all of the time climbing in, getting set, etc. I think this would be pretty easy to overcome. I am thinking something like holes in the side of the tunnel (with suitable reinforcement) threaded for large countersunk socket-head screws. Most of the time, these have countersunk socket-head screws in them, that fit flush with the wall and offer very little drag. When you want to put the supports in, you take these out, put a mounting plate over the holes, and screw regular hex-head bolts throught the plate and into the threads. I did mention that this was unlikely to be a quick process. This is a part of what I was after. Teach people that cutaways aren't as big of a deal as they might otherwise think. You don't want them to get so relaxed that they will cut away if the colors on the main clash with their jumpsuit, though. Like I said initially, I'm not an instructor, so I don't know how much of a problem this really is with the entire spectrum of jumpers. I think that the kind of training SkymonkeyONE described is probably about what Paige is describing - have handles on the rig that work and can be pulled out, but which are fastened to the rig so they don't cause mayhem in the tunnel. You left out the link to skydivingmovies.com. (Yes, I realize that it would be nearly impossible to take such a video and then show it to the public.) As a reply to the "why not just go jumping" question, I guess I was initially thinking of this as something somebody would do after they already had a few jumps, something like a canopy control course. Even if this were practical, I'm not sure you'd want to do it as part of a FJC. Thanks for the replies! Eule

All, I originally posted this at the end of another thread. There haven't been any replies (maybe that's a hint) but I decided to post it as its own thread anyway. I'm curious to hear what the problems and benefits that experienced tunnel flyers/operators might see in this. If this is a completely dumb idea, feel free to tell me that as well. :) This originally came about when Paulipod (Bodyflight Bedford) said they had a tunnel rig with a BOC as they do a lot of AFF training there. I ran with that idea to wonder if you could do useful cutaway training for students or experienced jumpers in the tunnel. Keep in mind I am a low-jump-number student, not an instructor of any kind. At the DZ I go to, the hanging harnesses have both main and reserve risers, and a working 3-rings. When students are practicing cutaways, most of the practices are done with a dummy cutaway pillow handle - no cables on it. However, for one cutaway, the instructor replaces the dummy handle with the "real" handle with cables to the 3-rings. When you pull it, the 3-rings releases and you drop a few inches, until you are caught by the reserve risers. It's not exactly what you would feel in the air, but it gives you a feel for what pulling the cutaway handle is like. I wonder if something like this could be arranged in the tunnel, to give students (or anyone interested) a more 'realistic' cutaway experience? You could have a tunnel rig with a relatively short set of main risers and a much longer set of reserve risers. Both sets would be fixed to a support in the upper part of the tunnel. The student would get into the rig, and then the operator would turn up the air until the student is in "free fall" - belly to earth and not hanging from the risers. The student would do a practice ripcord pull/pilot chute throw. When the operator observes this, he can either leave the air turned up (high speed mal) or turn it down substantially (low speed mal). When the student recognizes the mal and pulls the cutaway, the operator turns the air back up to "free fall" if it was down - the student is going back into freefall. The student will fall somewhat, but hopefully not to the end of the reserve risers. Once the student pulls the reserve ripcord, the operator turns down the air, and leaves the student hanging from the reserve risers. Problems: The student either has to be briefed on what to expect - how to "know" he's got a malfunction by what the air is doing - or given some signal. Perhaps something as simple as a lamp mounted on the thing that the risers are mounted to - if you practice pull/throw, look up, and the lamp is on, you have a malfunction. The advanced version would be to have a TV monitor up there playing one of the "you pulled, looked up, and saw *this*" videos. The monitor would have to be hardened against 120+ mph airflow, though. The main risers need to be tacked to the reserve risers just above the three-rings. Otherwise, when the student cuts away, the main risers are free to flail about at their full length in the tunnel. If your tunnel is a sucker, the idea of having loose cutaway handles/ripcords is probably not great (fan/motor damage). Even if it's a blower, it's probably bad form to shoot a handle out the top and have it land in the car park. How does the student get into the harness in the first place? The risers need to be anchored several feet off the net to allow the student to "go back into freefall", but that makes it hard for them to get into the harness. You could bring a ladder into the tunnel, have a second entry door higher up, or maybe install a winch for the riser anchors - student dons rig, stands on net, instructor connects risers to winch, student is hauled up to the appropriate height. Also, when the student is done with this exercise, he is hanging in a harness a few feet off the net. Maybe an instructor can help him get out, or with the winch, he could be lowered to the net. This requires some kind of support for the risers that is inside the airstream. You probably wouldn't want to leave this there for general flying. On the other hand, you would probably offer "cutaway" training relatively infrequently, and it could be done at the beginning or end of the day, to avoid losing too much time while the support is installed or removed. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I started in June 2005. You've already done the first thing I'd say, which is to do a tandem first. I started right in with AFF 1 and I wish I'd done a tandem first. Get a good night's sleep the night before your FJC. At least plan your schedule so that you can crawl into bed at a reasonable time, even if you stare at the ceiling for a while. Skipping breakfast is the wrong idea, but so is eating for an hour at an all-you-care-to-eat place. Eat something relatively inert. Listen to your instructors. They will listen to you too - I can almost guarantee you that they've heard the questions that you are too embarrased to ask several times before. So don't be shy. This isn't really going to help your anxiety level. :) I'm sure there are some videos on there of uneventful AFF jumps; you might look at a few of those to see what happens when all goes well - _that_ may reduce your anxiety, I think. One note, though. Your instructors' word should override everything you watch or read on the Internet, read in a book, hear from friends, etc. You might see something done differently in a video and you can certainly ask your instructor about it; he will almost always be able to give you a good explanation of why he is asking you to do it another way. You'll get tired of hearing this, but relax! It took me several jumps to figure out how to do that. If you have to repeat an AFF level or three, it's not a big deal. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

You probably have done this, but make sure you download those *directly* from their manufacturers - Lavasoft for Ad-Aware and Safer Networking for Spybot-S&D. There are lots of programs that want you to think that they are Ad-Aware or Spybot, but are at best useless and at worst vectors for more spyware. You may want to consider downloading a clean copy of the anti-spyware programs and updates on your known-clean work machine, and transferring them by flash drive or CD-R to your home machine. It may also be helpful to boot up your home machine with no network connection when you run the anti-spyware programs. I don't have much experience with this, but if you install one of those software firewalls like ZoneAlarm or similar, you might at least be able to figure out the name of the .exe that is doing the deed. These programs are fairly useless for daily use, but it might help solve the immediate problem. I second the recommendation to switch to Firefox. Besides the better security, you can use the "block images" function and get the Flashblock extension and basically not see ads anymore. Don't laugh too loud, but if you are still running 98 or Me, consider an upgrade to Win2K or XP. The security in 2K and XP is marginally better than 98 and Me. Whatever you run, make sure it's got the latest patches from Micro$oft. You could go off the deep end and never worry about this crap again. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

On the ground, my FJC instructor and video guy is doing the interview for the video. FJCIAVG: "So, what are you about to do?" Me: "Jump out of a reasonably good airplane." Maybe he was humoring me, but he seemed to think that was a funny alternative to "perfectly good". Of course, then it got screwed up and that bit of the interview didn't make it onto the tape. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Random thought. Keep in mind I am a low-jump-number student, not an instructor of any kind. At the DZ I go to, the hanging harnesses have both main and reserve risers, and a working 3-rings. When students are practicing cutaways, most of the practices are done with a dummy cutaway pillow handle - no cables on it. However, for one cutaway, the instructor replaces the dummy handle with the "real" handle with cables to the 3-rings. When you pull it, the 3-rings releases and you drop a few inches, until you are caught by the reserve risers. It's not exactly what you would feel in the air, but it gives you a feel for what pulling the cutaway handle is like. I wonder if something like this could be arranged in the tunnel, to give students (or anyone interested) a more 'realistic' cutaway experience? You could have a tunnel rig with a relatively short set of main risers and a much longer set of reserve risers. Both sets would be fixed to a support in the upper part of the tunnel. The student would get into the rig, and then the operator would turn up the air until the student is in "free fall" - belly to earth and not hanging from the risers. The student would do a practice ripcord pull/pilot chute throw. When the operator observes this, he can either leave the air turned up (high speed mal) or turn it down substantially (low speed mal). When the student recognizes the mal and pulls the cutaway, the operator turns the air back up to "free fall" if it was down - the student is going back into freefall. The student will fall somewhat, but hopefully not to the end of the reserve risers. Once the student pulls the reserve ripcord, the operator turns down the air, and leaves the student hanging from the reserve risers. Problems: The student either has to be briefed on what to expect - how to "know" he's got a malfunction by what the air is doing - or given some signal. Perhaps something as simple as a lamp mounted on the thing that the risers are mounted to - if you practice pull/throw, look up, and the lamp is on, you have a malfunction. The advanced version would be to have a TV monitor up there playing one of the "you pulled, looked up, and saw *this*" videos. The monitor would have to be hardened against 120+ mph airflow, though. The main risers need to be tacked to the reserve risers just above the three-rings. Otherwise, when the student cuts away, the main risers are free to flail about at their full length in the tunnel. If your tunnel is a sucker, the idea of having loose cutaway handles/ripcords is probably not great (fan/motor damage). Even if it's a blower, it's probably bad form to shoot a handle out the top and have it land in the car park. How does the student get into the harness in the first place? The risers need to be anchored several feet off the net to allow the student to "go back into freefall", but that makes it hard for them to get into the harness. You could bring a ladder into the tunnel, have a second entry door higher up, or maybe install a winch for the riser anchors - student dons rig, stands on net, instructor connects risers to winch, student is hauled up to the appropriate height. Also, when the student is done with this exercise, he is hanging in a harness a few feet off the net. Maybe an instructor can help him get out, or with the winch, he could be lowered to the net. This requires some kind of support for the risers that is inside the airstream. You probably wouldn't want to leave this there for general flying. On the other hand, you would probably offer "cutaway" training relatively infrequently, and it could be done at the beginning or end of the day, to avoid losing too much time while the support is installed or removed. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Did any of them give a reason? If it was something like "I don't know how to run a computer", then yeah, maybe the membership needs to elect people that don't have that problem. (If you're involved in the management of a national organization in 2006, not knowing how to read and send email is pretty much equivalent to not knowing how to receive or place a telephone call, IMHO.) If it was something else, like "The mail server kept giving me errors" or "I get too much spam", _those_ things are fixable by adjusting the software, and should be fixed. As far as the idea that USPA management doesn't post on rec.skydiving or dropzone.com because they get flamed too much... well, it's the Internet - thin-skinned people need not apply. I note that dropzone.com had a forum for the USPA BOD elections, so it seems reasonable that Sangiro might be willing to create a general USPA forum (and a BPA forum, and a DFV forum, etc). dropzone.com already has all the infrastructure in place, so USPA wouldn't have to host it on their own machine (which would fall over anyway). Also, as has been noted, dropzone.com is probably a slightly more popular destination for skydivers than uspa.org . It might have to be moderated more heavily than some of the other forums, but I think it would serve a useful function. Also, as far as I can tell, the USPA doesn't say anywhere "If you want to bring something up, here's how to do it." You can get the contact information for the regional and national directors from the Web site or Parachutist, and the S&TA contacts from the Web site. But I'm not sure that there's much to tell J. Random Jumper "if you have something you want to bring up with the USPA, talk to the S&TA, then the RD (or whatever is appropriate) - here is how to get ahold of them." It might be good to have some information like this on the Web site, in Parachutist, and maybe even on the letter that comes with your new membership card. Another idea might be an announcement-type email list for things like meeting notices and agendas. The keys here would be to keep it relatively low-volume, like one or two emails a month, so people would pay attention to it when it comes, and to NEVER RENT, SELL, OR GIVE AWAY THE SUBSCRIBER LIST - in other words, don't make it yet another venue for spam. Going a little further afield, I wonder if it would be useful to have Parachutist online? I know it's being laid out on a computer; these days it's not hard to generate a PDF of exactly what went to the printer. It might be a good idea to require a login with USPA member number and password to read it. This would tend to take a lot of bandwidth and would probably make the uspa.org server fall over, though. Anyway, those are some thoughts on how communication between the USPA and the membership could be improved in both directions. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Maybe you just wanted to add to the thread and replied to my post because it was handy, but if you were specifically replying to my post, I don't think I made that claim. From my experiences outside of skydiving, I think that having some kind of formal instruction in how to teach is better than having no formal instruction in how to teach. But I don't think I said that a three-day class makes someone a teacher. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

$ ./freefall.exe -bash: ./freefall.exe: cannot execute binary file $ Dang. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Uh, is there anything that _isn't_ taxed? :) Yes - according to http://www.gaservingamerica.com/how_work/work_funding.htm, federal tax on avgas is $0.194/gal and on Jet-A is $0.219/gal. State taxes vary; Googling on aviation fuel tax turns up the info for several states. The traditional way is to purchase legislation exempting yourself from it. If you can't afford this, you get to pay the tax. Maybe, but if they're like most other small business owners I know, they know about every tax deduction, credit, break, and dodge they can get their hands on. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Disclaimer 1: If you didn't hear it from one of your instructors, discuss it with them before you even put a rig on. Disclaimer 2: I don't have very many jumps. Having said that, I had a similar problem. The thing that helped it a little was realizing that for whatever reason, when my brain said "your knees are level", they weren't. So, I would get my legs to where I _thought_ they were level, then lift up my right knee a little more, even though it "felt" wrong. This tended to at least greatly slow down my unintentional turns. The thing that helped it more was half an hour in the tunnel. Just like you, when I would tell other jumpers of my difficulties, everyone and their cat would tell me "go to the tunnel". I balked a little at the cost and a little due to hard-headedness - I figured I would "jump my way out of it". The cost appears high, but most tunnels are priced at about one half the cost of getting an equivalent time in freefall by buying normal jump tickets. Compared to an AFF jump, the tunnel time is usually one-tenth the cost. There is a tunnel under construction in New Hampshire, but it won't be open for a few months, at least. Your best bet is probably to drive to Detroit, Cleveland, or Buffalo and get a Southwest ticket to one of the tunnels. Check the wind tunnel forum for lots more info. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

During the week, between AFF jumps, I have done "practice arches" on the floor to help improve my muscles / muscle memory. Essentially, you lay on your stomach, go into an arch, hold it for 10-30 seconds, relax for a while, and repeat. I did ten of these in a row. Probably anything that involves your hip area being on the floor and your legs and arms being off the floor will help, but it might be best if you can get an instructor to show you an "official" arch before you do it, so you don't build some bad habits. I also did a search and found some other suggested stretching exercises here. One was a funky kind of push-up, and the other was: lie on your back, bring one knee up to your chest, hold for 10 seconds, relax, bring other knee up to chest, hold, relax, bring both knees up to chest, hold, relax. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

All, Even though I'm pretty new, I might be able to add a little to the debate about instructor/coach ratings and coach jumps and teaching from a new guy's perspective. Or, I might just be coughing up a pellet of mouse bones into the middle of the dinner table. First, I will say again that I am a new guy - I started jumping in June 2005. I never went through any of the changes in requirements for licenses or ratings that have been mentioned. If I didn't happen to read about them on here or see them in an old copy of the SIM or whatever, I wouldn't know they existed. So I can't speak much to if the "old way" or the "new way" is better. About the idea of knowing how to teach. I have very little experience with teaching "physical" things - skydiving, dancing, playing football, things like that. But I do have a fair-to-middlin' amount of experience with learning and teaching "mental" things - computers, electronics, and even a little mechanical engineering. When I was going to college, I had some professors that clearly knew a lot about the subject, but were not very good at _teaching_ it to someone else. In one case, it was because English was his second or third language, and he didn't know it very well. In another, it was a native speaker of English who just couldn't get his points across to most of the class. These profs were in the minority, but they did exist. Also, since then, I have been in a position to teach things to others, even though I don't have any formal experience in "how to teach". Usually I seem to do OK, but sometimes I have a hard time getting my point across, and I feel like if I knew more about how to teach, it'd be easier. So, I have to agree with the idea that knowing a lot about a subject doesn't mean you know how to teach it. About the idea of required "coach" jumps. I have jumped, as an AFF student, at a DZ where their student program required several coach jumps (something like 5 to 7; I don't remember exactly) after one finished AFF. I had a couple of more experienced jumpers pull me aside and advise me to finish AFF, and then go to some other DZ where coach jumps weren't required, so as to save money on the costs of training. One of them had a C license and about 300 jumps, and the other had at least a couple of hundred jumps. Nobody likes to spend money they don't absolutely _have_ to spend, but I thought it was interesting that somebody would tell me that. Maybe some more experienced jumpers wouldn't have told me that. About the idea of "all coach ratings/D licenses are not created equal", or "I'd jump with this one guy that has 100 jumps but I'd never jump with this other guy that has 1000 jumps". I think some of this is inevitable when you're dealing with humans. But some of it is due to the way the training is set up and/or controlled. In the US, you've got over 200 dropzones, all potentially having people earn higher licenses and ratings there. It is probably _possible_ to ensure a reasonable uniformity of training and requirements across those 200+ DZs, but from what little I know of how the regulation works, I'm not sure that this is being done. Again, this may be a bold statement from a new guy, but that's what I see. The contrast to this might be someplace like the military, where the training is tightly controlled and fairly uniformly delivered. One goal of the training is to turn people into interchangeable parts - everyone who has the same specialty will have about the same level of knowledge. If the Army says "this guy is a helicopter mechanic and that guy is an artilleryman", you _know_, with a high degree of confidence, that the first guy will know how to fix a helicopter, and the second guy will know everything you can do with a mortar. We could have this in skydiving, but then the training would probably look a lot like boot camp. Another somewhat-related thing to "all licenses are not created equal" is this. There has been some discussion of people getting higher licenses or instructional ratings because they dig it, and people getting them because they want to make some money. I went to college to get a Computer Science degree. I noticed that you could split the students into two broad groups. The first group, if they didn't have anything else to do, would go and fart around with a computer for fun. The second group seemed to have looked at a list in a magazine of "Jobs that will make you a lot of money" and just picked one. A few of the people in this second group came to enjoy what they were doing and be reasonably good at it. A lot of them, though, seemed to have a harder time of the classes and projects - they saw it as a chore they had to go through before they could get the bucks, rather than something fun. Since I have seen the different motivations lead to different results in one field, I don't doubt that it could happen in another field. Unfortunately I don't know how one separates the people that dig it from the people that just want the cash, or even if it's a good idea to do so - 'wanting the cash' has also been known to spur innovation and improvements. Again, all this is just my opinion as a relatively new guy. Feel free to correct, flame, agree with, or ignore any and all of it. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Aw, sh-t, they know me by name now... :) Keep at it. Out of the people I have talked to, in person or online, who have gone through AFF, the percentage of people that have gotten through it in the minimum 7 jumps is relatively small. Most people repeat at least one level. I liked some of the levels so much I did them several times. If I can do a good exit next time, I'll pass level 7. I spun a lot, as well. After one good jump, I had the following conversation: Instructor: "That was a good turn. On your next jump, you'll do a 360 degree turn." Me: "Hell, I've already done _dozens_ of those!" Instructor: "Well, it has to be _on purpose_ to count." I started in June 2005 and in late July I went to the tunnel for 30 minutes. It helped a little, but my progress was still slow. In January I went to a different tunnel for 30 minutes, and that seems to have helped a lot. It's expensive, but it's cheaper than the equivalent amount of freefall via jump tickets. Also, in October, I went to a different DZ for a few jumps. This wasn't a "magic cure" and I didn't expect it to be, but I did learn some things from having different instructors see and comment on what I was doing. Story time: I went to the new DZ for the first time and talked to an instructor. He was looking at my logbook and saw where I had gotten video on one of my jumps and asked if I had the video. I went to get it out of my car and when I got back, he and three other instructors were looking at my logbook - I knew right then I was a special problem child. :) (I wasn't mad - I thought it was funny.) That night there was a party at the DZ and several of the locals introduced themselves to the new guy. When I explained myself, I got "So _YOU'RE_ that guy!" more than once. The only thing I could do was laugh about it. Hang in there. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Hang out at the DZ eh? People wont be like "what the fuck is clown doin around here?" If they _are_ like that, maybe that's a clue... :) What I have found (at more than one DZ) is that the DZ staff, and to a lesser extent the regular jumpers there, know right away if someone they haven't seen before walks in the door. The staff will usually ask the new person if he/she wants to jump, and that's when you tell them you want to hang out and watch and maybe ask a few questions. Both of the places I went to were totally cool with this. I watched some landings, talked to the manifest person, talked to a couple of the instructors and video guys, and all were quite happy to answer my questions. Now, if you go in the middle of the afternoon on a nice sunny day when they're slammed with jumpers, they may not have as much time to talk, but if you go first thing in the morning or on a slightly colder day, it will be slower and easier to talk to someone. Disclaimer: The DZs I have visited have all been in the southern US, which is allegedly more laid back. Maybe it's different on the East Coast... everyone up there lives in the big city, is rude and impatient, has all their teeth, and doesn't even know which end of a cow to milk. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Something I did when I was starting (June 2005) was to go to the dropzone just to hang out and ask a few questions and check it out in general. I went to two places near me and ended up at the second one; the vibe was a lot better there and so far I haven't regretted it. I realize this is a little harder for you to do until it warms up a bit, but you can hit one DZ on Saturday and the other on Sunday and see what you think. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Haven't stopped working at it yet. :) I did get some tunnel time, which has helped me progress faster. If I'd had a better exit last time, I'd have passed AFF level 7. But I get to do it again and do better on the exit. Then I have to do a hop-n-pop, and some other stuff. Since I'm well past the minimum number of jumps needed (25), I just have to work through the list of required skills/tasks for the (USPA) A license. Off the top of my head, I've probably got a minimum of about 10 more jumps to go. Again, congratulations! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

What are those sets of concentric rings up by your hip? I don't mean the ones that are looped around the replacement upper femur - the ones I mean almost look like tiny pilot chute springs. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Congratulations! [deep_announcer_voice]Mike111, this is your life![/deep_announcer_voice] On 20 July 2005, you wrote... Seeing this gives me hope that even I will eventually get my A license. :) (I started before you did and still haven't got it, and I don't have the excuse of the weather in the UK, either.) From a quick Web search, it appears that it's mathematically possible, in the UK, to get your parachute license before you are even eligible for a driver's license - were you able to do that? Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

I'm still a student myself, but for what it's worth, I think this is a good plan. Get some bucks together and then you can hit it hard. Again, I don't have many jumps, but I agree that doing one jump a month isn't the best idea - I think it's good that you are holding off a bit. Maybe this guy feels he's helping you by talking trash to you - he thinks that it will motivate you to prove him wrong. Like everybody else has said, as long as you're doing it for yourself, ignore him. Does this guy talk trash even when you're not at the DZ? Maybe he's trying to impress somebody at the DZ, or his girlfrind, or whatever. Maybe if you talk to him somewhere other than the DZ, you can come to some understanding. From your second post: IMHO: Ignore the crap you're catching. I know a guy that started about like you, with several tandems. Then he started AFF; he has posts on here from October 2003 during his AFF. Since then, he's got 800+ jumps, a D license, and in November 2005, he got his AFF Instructor rating. I was his first AFF student and I'm still here, so he must be doing something right. :) Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Your post sounds familiar to me, probably because I wrote a very similar one four months ago. To continue the story since that post: I made a few more jumps at that DZ, then I switched to one further away. I didn't expect that someone at the new DZ would push a button and fix my skydiving, but I was thinking that maybe a new instructor would see something differently or explain something in a different way that would help. I did pick up some helpful ideas there, but my progress was still slow. I started jumping in June 2005. After noticing that I was a slow learner, I went to a wind tunnel in late July 2005. I had 30 minutes and that helped somewhat, but I didn't have the "Eureka!" experience many people have talked about. I switched to the further-away DZ at the beginning of November 2005, and lots of people there said I should go to the tunnel again. I got sort of hard-headed about this and halfway decided that I was going to jump my way out of it - after all, didn't people learn how to skydive before wind tunnels existed? I passed L-4 on jump 39, exactly six months after I started jumping. (39 jumps total, not 39 just on L-4.) I was starting to break down and think about a tunnel trip. Since I passed L-4 in early December 2005, I decided to lay off for the holidays and ponder my options. By the first of January 2006, I had made my decision and booked 30 minutes at the wind tunnel - a different one than I visited before. I went to the tunnel in mid-January. My 30 minutes got split into two chunks over two days. After the first session, I felt a little better, but I still wasn't sure. After the second session, I felt a lot more sure of myself. I came on back home and went for a jump and my instructors were impressed with the change; so was I. :) I'm not doing one-jump-per-level yet, but it's taking a hell of a lot fewer than it was. Remember, it took me six months and 39 jumps to pass L-4. Since I got back from the tunnel, it's taken me three weekends and 6 jumps to pass L-5, L-6, and *almost* L-7. So I am happy with the results so far. This is my full report on that tunnel trip. Here are some random pieces of advice. You've probably heard many of these before, but here they are again. Note that I still have a low jump number, so take with a grain of salt: - Relax! This is not the easiest thing in the world to do when a large planet is coming at you at 120 mi/hr. But when you do, everything smooths out. - Practice your arch. First do it at the dropzone, maybe on a creeper but definitely in front of a mirror and with an instructor, so you know what a "good" one looks like. Then practice it at home, during the week. What I did was arch for twenty seconds, rest for more than that, repeat nine more times (ten in all). I did this once a day, and it helped. - Consider some tunnel time. When you first look at the price tag, you will freak, but then work out how many jump tickets you'd need to get that much free-fall. I'm talking about regular "experienced jumper" tickets, which run US$20 plus or minus here in the US. You'll probably find that the tunnel is about half the cost of the jumps. This doesn't seem to be your situation, but if you compare the tunnel to an AFF jump, the tunnel is usually less than one-tenth the cost of the jump. - Try to get video. I tried this a few times earlier this summer. I just paid for the camera guy's jump ticket. Of course, the first time I tried this, my dive went fine. The second time, the camera guy fell off of the plane a few seconds before me and my instructor left, so no video. I decided I wasn't destined to get video of my jumps. But if you have better luck, it may be helpful. - I found that my jumps seem to go better if I'm not rushing around on the ground before the jump. I'm not talking about the normal thing of watching which load you're on and getting ready in time; I'm talking more about things like "I have to hurry and do this jump because I have to be back home in an hour" or "I want to try and get one more before sunset". - If I had a bad jump on Sunday morning, sometimes I would try to end the weekend on a good note by trying again Sunday afternoon. This worked about half the time - I'd have a good second jump. The other half - not so good. I may have been trying too hard. - If you've been going every weekend, take a weekend off and see how you feel. I tried this and by Sunday evening I was kicking myself for not going to the DZ. So I figured I really did like it. :) Anyway, I hope all this helps. Keep chipping away at it; you'll get there. Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

Direct link to PDF. Agreed. _Sometimes_, the individual images are in the PDF. You can extract them with a tool like pdfimages from http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html. Every once in a while you get lucky and the crummy, small image you see on the screen is scaled down from a nice high-res image that's contained in the PDF. I lucked out on a line drawing of a PAC 750 XL this way. Unfortunately, that didn't work this time. That PDF is three images - each a full-size image of its page. I did put all the helmet pictures on one page and attach it. I hope this helps get the helmet back to its rightful owner! Eule PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.