Levin

yah, i think we covered all this already, but thanks for chiming in. next time please read the entire thread first.

obviously it's easier to say that than actually stepping up to the plate. looking down the list of incident threads, i don't see your name anywhere.

that's a cool pic. old looking though. doesn't look like anybody noticed the jet but the camera guy. actually i was talking about spotting loads at the DZ and watching out for jets. if ya don't see one from the door below ya, you may still get to see one above ya under canopy. lots of big jet traffic there but they seem to have it figured out. close calls seem to be pretty rare. i remember one that made the newspaper about 5 years ago. their caravan came arounda cloud and flew within 500' horizontal of an airliner. the newspaper called it a near miss.

you must be thinking of my first. i fought that one till there was no point. by then i was spinning fast enough that i went horizontal when i released it. my second i deployed my main at 1800'. it lifted me up with line twist and i chopped it just as it was finishing snivelling. it wasn't fully inflated when i let it go. did a half back flip and pulled the silver. the first one was my favorite.

you should try going to skydive dallas and spotting a few loads.

congrats!! i remember my first cutaway. it was a rush and alot of fun. i never wanted to get back in the sky so quick. and then i had my second chop 10 days later and haven't had one since. that was a little over 3 years ago.

and by doing so you leave everyone else to draw the conclusion that you are an incompetent dumbass since you did not come back and defend yourself.

i've witnessed more incidents than i can count on 2 hands (not involving me) that alot of people could learn something from if they were posted in this forum. i can assure you i am never posting anything in this forum again no matter what the incident or who it involves or what can be learned from it. now please......... end of discussion.

right on, crw definitely rocks. i've only done 2 so far. both times we did the stack, compressed, side-by-side and downplane. i think the side-by-side is most fun. i videoed a 6-stack. that was pretty cool but not something i see myself doing for awhile. hell of a big burble too. i accidentally got behind it.

i use to have similar problems. i started cleaning my ears out weekly with hydrogenperoxide and haven't had any problems since. I also take Allegra-D and that helps a bunch with my sinus' and allergies. not sure if it does anything for my ears.

belly flying with a big beer gut gives ya a good center of gravity. doesn't look very athletic though. i think tall skinny people have an advantage over other body types in freeflying. just my opinion.

what do those sponsored links cost? google and msn.

poor choice of words. i may have a penchant for being an aggresive canopy pilot. i may have a penchant for doing things that put me at a higher risk. i don't have a penchant for getting hurt. no one does. and when you do have contact, high top boots minimizes the severity over tennis shoes. i don't have a signature line. again, end of discussion.

quit the opposite. i have a tendency to let of the risers a little high in higher wind consitions (if i try to swoop at all). since that's the case i guess it should have dawned on me that high winds weren't keeping the canopy in a dive longer. don't worry dude. i've got that canopy dialed in pretty well. me too. on more occasions than i can count. i have alot of off airport landings. i usually don't think anything of it other than i hope i don't have to walk all that way back. i know every field around my dz that i might could land off in. i know which ones have plowed dirt. which ones have vines, weeds and thorns. which ones are safer in high gusting winds. which ones have dogs (nice or mean) and which fields have owners that specifically don't want people landing there. i know which ones have owners that don't mind if we land there as long as we don't step on the barb wire to climb the fence. i make it a point to know all these potential alternate landing areas because i (for whatever reason) tend to land off more than the average person. and because i know these areas so well i can stay in fun mode when i have to land in them. on the plus side i can focus more on my swoop since i don't have to worry about any traffic. that's it. since i'm hoping i'll never have to wear one again i decided to take advantage of the opportunity while it was available. the bone doctor did. he said if i landed on the cast and fell forward the top of the cast would break my tibia just below my knee. that didn't sound like alot of fun so i kept that leg behind me and raised it up so that when i touched down that leg wouldn't touch anything. i used a big fat spectre120 to make that jump. not my FX. worked like a charm. and since now i know it can be done and i know how to do it if i ever do winde up in a cast again i might not have to sit out all that time not jumping. and you can also minimize even more risk by allways only doing solo belly jumps and using raven4's. that's like saying you should only be swooping when doing hop 'n pops. and i know of one swooper who is one the best of the best that has had a love for swooping obstacles in the landing area since he started swooping. Look dude, the only reason i made this post (wishing i hadn't now) is because i believe that wearing high top boots is safer than wearing tennis shoes just like wearing a helmet is safer than not wearing one. i had two accidents the exact same way, 3 years apart. the bone i broke wearing tennis shoes sucked worse than words can describe. the bone i broke wearing boots was no biggie. i posted my experiences because i hate to think of somebody else having to go thru what i did on that first break. what inspired me to make the post was striking that concrete slab. and again the boots saved me from a worse injury. i bet most every swooper on these forums has had more than 3 ugly crash landings. they are just luckier than me in that each time they didn't get hurt. i'm thinking 3 crashes out of 1200 swoops isn't too bad. i don't think any change in my swooping criteria is in order. as for winding up paralyzed, my mom was paralyzed when i was 5 years old. i grew up around that. i have a better grasp of being paralyzed than any of yall. it's a risk i accept jumping out of planes just like i accept the risk of being killed. just like you accept those risk as well, otherwise you wouldn't be jumping yourself. end of discussion.

i use the url buttons, but i don't know how to make the word clicky work for a link either. i was just telling hooknswoop that i pretty much stay out of that forum because i think it is full of bad information. for someone like me who doesn't know all the technical stuff it can be hard to decipher the good from the bad. plus the egos are huge. but if that is a good discussion i'll find it and check it out.

when i was a kid i use to watch fishing shows as much or more than i watch jumpin' videos now. one that sticks out in my head is when roland martin and jimmy houston were fishing for peacock bass in central america and roland martin intentionally caught a camen on a top water. it's been so long since i was into fishing that i forget the name of the lure. it was a big top water shaped like the end of a broom stick. you jerked the rod tip downward and it made the lure zig zag across the water on it's way back to ya. i think it was called a 'walk the dog' technique.

i bet that was a hell of a sight for ya. i may be mistaken but didn't a copy of that video given to the airforce get them to divert the rest of their wildfire water flights around yalls dz?

if you are doing s/l's at the moent then i guess considering the broken nose that is a good thing. you have several jumps to go before you get a high enough altitude to really cause any problems if it is going to cause any at all. in the mean time try not to blow your nose or if you do, don't blow it very hard. that will only aggravate the injury.

nevermind, hooknswoop is explaining it to me in a pm. but thanks anyway.

the point i was trying to get across was to get people to consider wearing high top boots when swooping especially over the ground. the high top boot made all the difference in the world between the two breaks. the talus bone is a miserable world of hurt and fibula was nothing more than an inconvenience. that was the only point i was trying to get across. i figured better in this forum than the swoop forum because i didn't think there was anything to further discuss. perhaps i was wrong. maybe a moderator should move it to a more appropriate forum or delete the thread entirely. as for high winds not causing the canopy to dive further would you please post or pm me a link to that discussion. if what you say is true then i would like to see somekind of proof of that before i change my oppinion.

i use to bass fish alot before i started jumping. in the winter i liked to use larger live bait such as pearch. in the winter the water is colder and the fish's metabolism slows. they usually go deeper, don't move as much, don't eat as much but when they do they seemed to prefer bigger meals.

a few years ago there were some bombers flying over colorado taking water to a wildfire. a jumper got a good video from his view almost hitting one of those planes when he went on his belly. you see the bomber right below and by the time (split second) the jumper was on level in freefall with the bombers he looked their direction and they were a ways away. i'm sure pilotdave has that video clip somewhere on skydivingmovies.com

the preventable injury i was refering to was the broken talus bone which really sucked. after breaking my fibula i realized that the talus bone was copletely preventable by wearing high top boots. absolutely! for example when swooping in high winds you have to let off the risers a little higher because the wind pushing on the top of your canopy wants to keep you in a dive. ocassionally i word some of my post like that to see if i can bait somebody into a debate. i like to debate. especially the pick your post apart types. you have a good point but on the other hand you should not be pushing the limits in a car. especially while drunk. i've only got lazy twice in the past almost 1000 jumps and it hurt both times, but i didn't die. i have a spectre120 that i load at 1.18 according to the dropzone.com wingload calculator. i can swoop the spectre about 10 - 15 yards but beyond that i didn't think it was really possible. but 3 jumps ago we broke a downplane off at 80' and i had a killer swoop off of it. in that case i disagree with your point that a bigger canopy means a lesser injury. had i been lazy on the flair coming out of that downplane i don't think it would have hurt any less than a botched swoop on the alpha84 that i use to jump. but that's assuming the grass is mowed. if the grass is more than 3 inches high then it may not be possible to to do a 15mph standing up double feet slide. what if you have to land on concrete. unless you are jumping in cowboy boots, the concrete will grip your shoes and slam you on your face if you attempt to do a 15mph standing up double feet slide. i know cowbot boots will work in that scenario. i made my first 40 jumps in them. i'll keep that counteracting brake tip in mind. i don't have alot of experience with having to counteract harness turns while running. with the exception of the 2 incidents listed above i am always able to bring my FX close enough to a complete stop that i usually never heave to take more than 3 steps before i pull the canopy down in front of me. the alpha i use to jump a few years ago was a different story. i use to have to run my ass off at then end of those landings. on the two incidents i listed above i turned because i tried to run a landing out while going about 15mph. i didn't allow myself the luxury of putting an arm out to break my fall. hence why i said i got slammed. On just about every landing i've made with my FX, I come to a complete stop and it is hovering motionless over my head and i pull it down in front of me. if you are talking about carving turns on landing, i've been working on thse quit a bit. the wingover looks cool. that's where i'm headed with the carving turns. when i had that alpha i was a master at sliding. i haven't had to slide out any landings with the FX. right after i broke my first ankle on the alpha i sold that thing and bought my FX. glad i did. i don't see how i survived those alpha days. the alpha flew really good up in the air but as for openings and landings that canopy sucked. you're not kiddin'. after i struck that slab of concrete the bone doctor gave me a perscription to be gellin' like mcgellin. those rubber heal pads help alot with anykind of hard landing on your feet. especially concrete or asphalt. i think all skydivers should be gellin'. like a said above i had that modified sliding plf down to an art when i had that alpha. but other than the 2 bad landing i listed above i haven't had any bad ones on the FX. i think you are right about upsizing if you crash more than once every 100 jumps. had i done that with the alpha it probably would have saved me several tears and holes in my jumpsuit. i learned the basics on stilettos and my alpha. i load my FX at 1.9. i don't know if you intended to but you make it sound like 2.1 is a light loading for an FX. That simply doesn't jibe with "But it's never worth the risk when it's preventable." Decide whether it's acceptable to take unneccesary risks BEFORE they put you in the hospital (or worse.) i couldn't pass up the chance to make a cast jump because you never know when you will get the chance again. i prevented any additional risk by checking with the bone doctor first, thinking it thru beforehand and using my spectre loaded at 1.18. but in anything you do you can't rule out the possibility of murphee's law. i got about a 5 yard swoop on that landing and during that i cannalled the heel of my cast thru a huge fire ant bed. i kept my toes up so that i wouldn't trip on the cast and break my leg again in the scenario that my bone doctor warned me about. i landed on my good leg keeping my cast up and behind me and fell forward breaking my fall with my arms and hands. nothin' to it. true, but it's good to know how to land downwind. one day you might find yourself in a situation where you have to land downwind. if it's an emergency situation and you've never done it before then there is a much better chance you might get hurt. besides downwinders when done correctly are fun. true, but how often are conditions perfect? that's like saying don't swoop on the sunset load, when the ground is wet, when there's a little turbulence or an obstacle in the landing area, or 22 other people in the air with you headed for the same landing area, or when you are landing off. all of these scenarios are not black and white rules of thumb. they depend on the pilot. for what's it worth i do not swoop in high gusting winds. i'll take a good swoop and land off anyday, but in this case i was on a back to back load and opted for whatever set me down closest to the loading area which happened to be on the other side of the landing area where i landed. had i decided to 180 it into the wind i would have missed the next load. you may be thinking that i missed it anyway because i busted my foot and in the end you are right. i made it to the loading area and was ready for the back to back load after hitting that concrete. on that praticular load hardly anybody else was ready so the pilot shut the plane down anyway. after i showed the video in the packing room, Meg grounded me until i went to the doctor. had i known those concrete slabs were in that ditch i wouldn't have landed down it. which was the point in me posting the incident. know your landing area. now that's got me thinking about a swoop obstacle course. maybe set up some cones or something. theirs a field north of our DZ that is full of 5 and 6' tall mamoossa (sp?) trees. mamoossa (?) trees are tall, thin, soft and very flexible. fun to swoop around. you hardly notice it when you run one over. i definitely recommend swooping mamoossa (?) trees to learn obstacle avoidance.

i've never jumped a round so i really wouldn't know much of anything about them. Doing CRW with them sounds interesting. Do you have any pictures of a round 2-stack? Is it possible to compress the 2-stack? I got a picture of a compressed 2-stack with rounds in my head and it's funny looking.

do you mean a broken nose or a busted nose? my idea of a broken nose is broken facial and sinus cavity bones which i think is a very bad idea to jump with. my idea of a busted nose is a bad nose bleed from busted blood vessels in your sinus cavity.