SkymonkeyONE

I am not sure how you could do that.

I have spent nearly five hours in the cone in a single day working with people at the Fort Bragg tunnel and yes I was tired, but I spent a lot of time in there for a few years (250 hours). An hour in the cone is not that big a deal if you are in any kind of limber shape. What typically happens after your body gets spent is that you lose your ability to arch. I would typically bring extra lead in for my sessions and would just add more as I got tired. If you are splitting your time with other people, generally you are not going to be spending more than about 3-5 minutes at a time before you get out and debrief. Chuck

In a rig with dynamic corners? I have been in the habit lately of packing my container with the grommet towards the BOC. If you are going to rotate your bag and NOT pack pin to grommet, then this makes the most sense. Grommet to bottom-of-reserve is how "normal" people pack. Chuck

I would say that is very subjective. Some of the very best swoopers in the world never lean forward. JC Colclasure sits pretty straight up with his arms in and his feet pulled up. Clint Clawson, on distance runs, leans slightly back and has both of his feet and knees together, piked straight forward in front of him. Extreme examples of people who lean very-forward are Dusty Smith and Mikeal Stevens. TJ leans pretty far forward as well. The bottom line here is that you are searching for whatever technique that works best for you which helps you do two things: decrease wind resistance and possibly snap your body into a tighter position when you enter the corner like "pumping" a transition on a skateboard. Watching Clint pike his legs forward at that exact moment and lay back gives me exactly that impression. Chuck FWIW: I lean well forward in my harness.

Which one? I own at least eight.

I compete at the professional level and absolutely devote days prior to meets in order to get "tuned up" to the type of courses that are to be run. Swooping water is very, very different than running PST-type courses, so time on the actual course is important. The great majority of competitors show up for meets several days early to train on the actual course. Sometimes, though, you have to make due with what you have. There is a PST meet in April that is going to have freestyle rounds (over water at Perris) where you have to complete maneuvers off a compulsory list: moves such as the "lazy boy", "can can", etc. While it's really hard to do some of that crap over land, if you were paying attention at the Eloy Holiday boogie you would have seen TJ Landgren, Jeffro Provenzano, and Jason Peters practicing them right down the beer line in the main landing area on every coached or organized jump they did. You either make training time like that or you simply fall on your face in competition for lack of currency or practice. I sucked ass last year in the two meets I actually got to make, finishing 3/4 the way down the list in both meets. I attribute this to lack of currency over water. Aside from that, I make every single jump, tandems included, accuracy jumps. Without accuracy you will never get anywhere in swooping other than the "ooh's and ah's" you get from whuffos watching from behind the beer line. I do straight in accuracy with Sigmas, but land both my Velo 79 and my Sabre2 97 exactly the same way, minus the difference in turn altitude between the two. Also, everytime the clouds are low we generally set up swoop courses and have impromptu meets. We set different criteria for people of different experience levels and always keep safety in mind. Chuck

Thomaston is a nice place to skydive, but it's quite far south of ATL. Conversely, ASC is quite far north of ATL. Monroe is slightly Northeast. I just moved to Augusta, so I will be roaming around till I find a place I want to call home. Chuck

A Spectre is a great wingsuit canopy, Steve. As to jumping several very-different canopies, I do it all the time. My time is equally spent under a Velocity 79, a Sabre2 97, and a Sigma 370 tandem main. Chuck

If you are an unlicensed skydiver, you must make at least one training jump per 30 days in order to remain current. At my last dropzone if you showed up uncurrent and were wanting to jump, you were going to pay me $45 to retrain you and depending on where you were on your A-card, you might end up paying for a coach dive. Chuck Blue ex-officio manager of RPC school and current gypsy skydiving instructor

Make no mistake, Chris, "monkey brothers" are not Skymonkeys. Lots of monkey mess around, but not many genuine Skymonkeys. Chuck SM-1

Bogies are a thinner airfoil than either the Rascal or Laser series. They were actually all made as seven, EIGHT, and nine cell canopies. I put the test jumps on every size of the canopy in it's smaller sizes (down to 150, the smallest). They were decent F-111 canopies and flew as good as anything else on the market back then. The original FTS canopies were built in Dave Davenports house right outside Fort Benning, GA and in my dad's loft in Opelika, AL. Chuck

There are some great streaming sites on the net, my favorite being www.digitallyimported.com (no clicky just to piss off the lazy people). That said, for driving around, Katie and I are absolutely loving our XM satellite radio. Channel 44 (Fred) is probably my favorite. It's older (generally 80's) alternative. Chuck

Professional skydiving instructor/competitor/organizer. Retired military (21 years).

Yep, Cancer Chris is ALWAYS up for some flocking.

I can flat pack any parachute most parachutes faster than I PRO pack, which is to say _very_ quickly. In general, I never, ever PRO pack anything larger than a 150 because it's slower with all the material. I roll pack those canopies every single time. My Sabre2 has been PRO packed, stack packed, and roll packed; the stack pack opens straightest for me every time. Your milage may vary. Chuck

Access denied, monkey lip.

Squawk 1200 and fly on, mister.

See you later, MONKEY! Chuck

Not in my opinion. To me, anything that gets you falling any faster than belly-to-earth, at least on a regular basis, is an incredible waste of money. Thanks, but I will take my two-minute-plus wingsuit flights for pure skydiving satisfaction when I am not hauling meat or doing AFF for fun money. The Atmotauti position is fun, but not that fun; not for me at least. Chuck

Yes, it's a variety of flat pack. Lay on side; roll nose to A's; flip A's on top of B's; pull C's on top of A/B's; pull D's on top of A/B/C's; set brakes; flake tail; pull up slider; stick it in the bag.

Agreed. The swoop park at Eloy is set up fine for the people that really need to be landing there. The "obstacles" add to the beauty of the site; I like them.

I agree to a degree. That said, I am not someone out there "experimenting" with HP landings; I do so professsionally. If the DZO (I am an S&TA) arbitrarilly banned such landings, it would have to have been because I havd been failing to do my job of keeping wreckless people in line. That is not the case. That said, if that were to happen at my next dropzone (where I won't be in any position of authority), then I would simply go to the next dropzone down the road. Like Spizzzarko, I have all my ratings and am not the kind of person that most DZO's would like to see leave. There are actually quite a few dropzones that have signs, clearly posted, saying they prohibit "hook turns." Very few of those locations actually enforce that rule, choosing only to use it selectively when needed. Chuck

I have over 200 jumps in a wingsuit under several different Cobalts and only ever had two problems, one brake fire and one incredibly bad spinner that almost killed me. The latter was due to me jumping a 75 that had been in the pond one too many times and was quite a bit out of trim. Chuck

Some gawk when I do it, but I always stack pack my Sabre2. I played around with it for a long time trying different methods and have found that the old-school stack pack provides the straightest openings. For reference, I load my 97 at 1.83. Chuck

SkymonkeyONE- working the BirdMan tent again. Same location as last year KatieBear21- there also