Suavel

Yeah I'm gonna have to go with: Dresden Dolls = good music

It's a problem though when his parents say "Fine, go be an adult." and pull his college funding. Then he has a skydiving addiction and a tuition bill. (read: oil + water) I'm just glad that my dad drove me to the dropzone the day I started static line.

Not that simple. I totally agree. The best course of action would be to jump with a coach, instructor, or decent videot to try and pinpoint this problem. It sounds like it's a pretty consistent problem at a predictable point in the skydive. It could be that spence tends to tense his legs in a particular way when he pulls, or something even more obscure. I had a problem with being thrown wobbly at pull time, I wasn't bringing my arm over fully. That could be one of the things that spence can look at on his next skydive.

Make sure you're bringing your left arm over when you pull.

I don't get too nervous until about 8,000 feet while in the plane. That last 2,000 feet (cessna dz) is when I get ancy and start thinking "come on now, guys, lets get this door open. I don't really know what it is, but that's where I get noticeably more ancy. It used to be when the door opened, but towards the middle of the summer(in Alabama) I was looking forward to it. COOL AIR! Now the only thing I dread about the door is that same cool air in December.

So FS is brit RW?

Sorry for my ignorance, but what does FS stand for? If it's Freestyle, then why are we talking about belly flying? I thought Freestyle was the artsy freefly discipline.

My favorite is Batboy.

The fibers on pull up cord material run lengthwise, as someone said before. She insinuated that the thread used to attatch the cord to the risers was able to pull through the cord fibers. So it basically came out of the stitching.

WHOA thanks for the tip!

I had an opening on my Sabre 120, it was a bit brisk but many of my openings at the time were a bit brisk(packing without finesse). I looked around to clear my airspace and moved to collapse my slider to find it completely collapsed already. So I either packed it collapsed, or subconsciously collapsed it while I was clearing my airspace. My guess? It was collapsed.

Emory University and University of Alabama in Birmingham(UAB).

My grandfather really did say that.

I wasn't sure if I should've revived the elder topic, so I start again, a phoenix of text. If anyone remembers me asking for advice on a college entrance essay on skydiving, here it is! In it's semi-completed form. I am happy to accept criticism and critique. Is this what colleges want? Is this an original essay or is it the same thing they see over and over, only with "skydiving" pasted over "visiting grandma's house"? It's about a page long: ------------------------- “Skydiving” or “Why I Jump Out Of Perfectly Good Airplanes” When I first tell someone that I skydive, I immediately receive a barrage of questions and comments ranging from simple acceptance to the more complex declaration of my insanity. Skydiving is portrayed as a daredevil activity, a crazy-man’s death wish. I, however, know skydiving in another, more intimate way: A life-changing sport. I made my first skydive at 16, a tandem jump with my uncle. I was strapped to his front and, as my grandfather told me, “All you gotta do is kick and scream!.” I remember very little from that first jump, just little pieces here and there. I do know that it was one of the more significant experiences of my lifetime. It opened my eyes to a world of adventure, campfire stories, long road trips to drop zones (where skydivers do what they do best), and above all, fun. That first jump opened my eyes to the world of the skydiver. There are as many ways to see skydiving as there are skydivers. Skydiving is a sport. Skydiving is a job. Skydiving is a hobby, a lifestyle, an addiction. Skydiving is a fast paced dance between any number of people; weaving over, under, around the others. Skydiving is an exact science of fall rates and air flow, controlling freefall to the inch. Skydiving is a chance to see the world. Skydiving is jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet above ground level. To me, skydiving is a passion, a diverse sport full of emotion. There’s nothing like dropping off of the plane and diving down to dock on a formation; feeling the wind over your body, resisting at just the right place and time to turn, roll, slide and ultimately fly your body. Then comes the snatch of the harness as the parachute unfurls and halts your fall from over 120 miles per hour to a mere float. This jerk, followed by the lofty flight to the ground, is as anticipated as a child’s Christmas. The task then moves from flying your body to flying the parachute, or canopy(the term used most affectionately by skydivers). Canopy flight takes it’s own place in skydiving. It is arguably the most fun and definitely the most important aspect of the sport. In fact, many expert skydivers purchase smaller canopies for more extreme flight potential. Less experienced jumpers, like myself, consider canopy flight an exciting ride to the ground. Every skydiver, regardless of skill, develops a bond to his canopy, and I am no exception. My parachute is an embarrassing array of blue, orange, pink, yellow, and black in alternating stripes across it’s arc and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The canopy responds to my every input, diving, turning, swooping across the sky in an impressive display of unwieldy color. The open parachute is the welcome picture of safety and comfort to every skydiver. Even the term “canopy” paints a picture of warm protection. Skydiving is the only thing that I have yet experienced that has allowed me to focus absolutely on the single thing I’m doing. There are no wandering thoughts, no stray ideas, there is only complete and total concentration. Some Buddhists spend months in silence on tops of mountains to experience complete calm, what they call zen, when they ought to put on a parachute and jump. A monk in my own right, I spend time in the sky to reach my calm. I like to call it zen skydiving. ---------------------------- Thanks for reading, guys! I also have to write another essay for a Scholarship program, any ideas?

I had a baglock on my first Hop-n-Pop. I've told this before but it was jump 5 or 6 and I hopped and didn't bring in my left arm when I went to pull the ripcord. Not bringing my arm in sent me tumbling and the spring-loaded pilot chute went through my legs and wrapped one wrap around my right leg. I thought "oh shit" and kickd it off but it was just flopping around(at least that's what it looked like to me, in hindsight I probably didn't give it time to catch air), so I cut it. Never did find that parachute...It landed still in the bag in a big area of brambles. Looked for that thing for two weeks.

You should get WUFFO. My dad used to drive an old school Mini Cooper. His vanity plate said EDBD. My mom's car has SKOPADL from when we used to be on the river whitewater kayaking every weekend.

When I saw the title I thought this was a Violent Femmes thread...

I jumped out of the Robertson R44 at Rantoul '06. It was probably the coolest jump I've made thus far. I keep thinking about asking the local hospital's helicopter to take me up

Damn! Thanks guys, I'll do my best and I may post the essay when it's finished.

Pre-Script: If this should go into the Bonfire, please move it, and my apologies. Hello, my name is Tucker, I am 17, and I jump out of perfectly good airplanes. I have 90 jumps, my grandfather is DZO: Skydive Opelika, and my uncle is SkymonkeyONE. I'm also applying to Emory University this month, and I was considering writing one of my required essays on skydiving. They said to take something that means a lot to me and write about it to show them something about myself that they won't see anywhere else on the application. So what do you guys think? What do you think the main focus should be? I'd gladly except any advice on the idea. I thought it would be an original essay that would educate and entertain. Also, what is skydiving to you? Is it just good fun, or is it something more? If it is something else, what is that special something? Thanks guys, Tucker

What planes are ya'll jumping out of? We jump Cessna 182s and we just hang from the strut and let go, arch.

No sarcasm intended but: I did my first head down at around jump number 75, it was with a very experienced skydiver and we were holding each other's rig at the shoulders. Arms length apart. He informed me before the jump that one of the big risks of newbie head-down was slamming into each other with accidental forward movement. Having four different contact points and four different arms holding each other at length negates most of that risk. Were we being unsafe? I've done a similar jump with someone slightly more experianced than myself, same grips, same orientation. I noticed it less stable but again, I didn't see it being particularly dangerous(as far as skydiving goes). Am I disillusioned? Again, I'm not being sarcastic or intending to be disrespectful.

I whitewater kayak in addition to my Skydiving habit. I've love the local class III and have managed to slide through at least one class IV. I've been kayaking since I was 9. I'm not exactly advanced, but the first many years was just riding the river with my family, only semi-recently have I started trying to rip it. I'm not great, but it's fun. The kayaking has been going downhill since the skydiving started though.

My HnP was from 4500. I was Static Line trained. Five seconds from 3500 puts you right about 3k to pull...yeah? Sort of low for a student hop'n'pop though..

And for the record, I got at least some semblance of a breifing when I showed up in registration. They said when jumpers with lower numbers(I had 52 at the time) show up, they like to show them the overhead photograph and give them a rundown of aircraft and skydiver landing patterns. The only reason I used "some semblance of a breifing" is because I don't know how intense you expect a breifing to be. What I was given was great for me, and the worst injury I got was a slightly skinned knee from landing on asphalt.