brettski74

Aside from the danger that this poses to you and everyone else on your jump, I'm also yet to be convinced of the effectiveness of this strategy. Let's say you pull it off, and you don't slam into someone's back at 50mph, what next? You're now down level with the formation, but you still don't have the skills to fly with it, so you float back up above it again. Get some coaching on fall rate control, body position and diving down to a formation. Learn how to do these things properly and safely. Not only will you no longer need to resort to dangerous stunts like going into a stand on a belly jump, but you'll also find that they're way more effective than that dangerous stunt you wanted to pull.

What's next? The Airbiscuit Strikes Back? [Wink] Nice! I had a few chuckles, although it did look like some of you turned to the dark side by the end of the movie.

Mine used to look like that when I first started packing it, but 50 pack jobs later, it almost looks like the d-bag is too big. Give it some time. Your packing will probably improve and it'll start to look less bulgey and messy.

What permission? If you're old enough to skydive, you're old enough to be making your own decisions. My Mum hates the fact that I skydive. Fortunately, she has no say in the matter. [Wink] While I was back in Australia last year, I thought it may help her become a little more comfortable with the idea if she came out and watched me do a couple of jumps, but she is so dead against me skydiving she refuses to go anywhere near a dropzone. As far as I'm concerned, that's her loss. My Dad seems a lot cooler about it. I don't think he would actually jump himself, but he's definitely more open-minded about such things.

That said, it does vary dropzone by dropzone. I think that bigger dropzones that attract a lot of foreign jumpers like Eloy and Perris are likely to be more aware of insurance coverage offered by some of the more common visiting organization's. I'm also CSPA, and I've also jumped at Eloy without problem, but I've jumped at another smaller USPA dropzone where they said I would need USPA membership. Fortunately, on the day, I managed to avoid that, though, because apparently sometime recently, the temporary membership was replaced with an "introductory" membership which is similar, but you're only allowed to have it once in your life. I suspect that if you can prove insurance, you're probably fine, but that's just a guess on my part. Your best bet is to ask the dropzone what's required.

Can I also point out that catching up to belly flyers is *NOT* what freeflying is for. Freefly on freefly jumps. Belly fly on belly jumps. I know this isn't what you're trying to do. Just want to make sure that you're not getting the idea that freeflying (ie. sit or head-down) is another way to solve this. Don't. That would be a bad idea.

I bought a shiny new Sabre 2 from the factory a few months ago and it took a few practice packs on the living room floor to get it happy, and it also took a couple of attempts for my first pack-job on a recent trip to AZ after a couple of months off, but to this day, the only pack jobs I've paid for were on camps where we didn't have time between debriefs to pack ourselves. I've done about 50 happy pack jobs on it now, and it doesn't really trouble me, now. For what worked for me is first, use the two stage, reverse s-fold method on sidsrigging mentioned above. You'll have much less slidey, slippery shit to deal with outside of the bag and everything that follows assumes that's what you're doing. If your trying something else like a psycho pack, I have no idea whether my suggestions will be useful to you or not. I started trying to describe the tricks I based on previous packing tips from other skydivers, packers and riggers and from my experimentation on the living room floor, but I think you really need photos or video. What happened when I first tried and what some other people I've seen have trouble with is that they have an s-fold and they try to hold it in place by simply applying force from top and bottom but the folds just get squeezed out and become a mess. To resolve, I changed my grips on the fabric to insert fingers into the actual folds so there was a physical barrier to stop them sliding out. The first of these grips is, when gripping the big s-fold around the side with your hand, thumb goes on top, but hold the s-fold by sticking your fingers *inside* the bottom fold rather than around the whole ball of snot. If the fabric is extremely slippery, you can sometimes stick your index finger into the top fold, but this generally is only practical on the one side and with practice you really shouldn't need to. You'll kinda get a feel for where your thumb should clamp down so that the top fold doesn't move, anyway. The second one is around the fold itself. Imagine your hand in front of you, palm facing up and fingers points away from you. Stick your fingers into the bottom fold of the s-fold with your palm wrapped around the curve of the fold and the thumb clamping down on top. I use this grip momentarily after getting one end in the bag. By this stage, the top fold is starting to be held a little by the bag as I'm placing it around the chute, so I just need my fingers in there to stop the bottom fold sliding out. If I had someone else here to take photos, I'd take some photos to show you, but hopefully that made enough sense to you. The bottom line is rather than trying to hold the big s-fold in place by just clamping down, actually insert fingers into the folds to physically block them from sliding out. Good luck! [Wink]

I only know one Ray from AZ, so I assume we're talking about the same guy. Yes - he's awesome to watch. He has this uncanny ability to just fly anywhere and hold seemingly any position - often that make you scratch your head in wonderment at how that can possibly be stable. Meanwhile, he's laughing or making faces and just having fun as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Jason Peters is my other favourite to watch from AZ. His flying looks a little more "serious" than Ray, but the way he flies looks so effortless.

As a general rule, I try to avoid using painkillers of any kind as much as possible and have never really used them for sports-related pain. There are two types of pain that you will encounter during any kind of physical training. There's the pain and stiffness that you get from the build-up of lactic acid in the muscles and other normal fatigue effects of training. This kind of pain tends to reduce and disappear once you start becomeing active again (ie. running, swimming, flying, etc). You shouldn't need drugs to deal with this, since the act of getting back in the tunnel should make it feel better and probably be more effective than an over-the-counter drug would be anyway. Even afterwards, the best way to manage this kind of discomfort post-training is light exercise - walking, cleaning the house - anything that's gets you off your butt and moving. The other kind of pain is the kind that gets worse once you start becoming active again. That's a surefire indication that you've injured yourself, either by overdoing it and producing a repetitive strain type injury, or from something more sudden like hitting a wall or a "ungraceful" exit. You *could* try to manage this with drugs, however, I would caution against continuing your training if you really feel that drugs are a route you need to take. Your body senses pain for a reason. Trying to mask this with drugs only prevents you from knowing just how badly you're hurting yourself. If you choose to continue, whether it be tunnel-flying or any other sport, I personally would choose to do so without any kind of drug just so I can monitor the injury and know when I really do need to cut my losses and stop. In terms of what drugs, while I don't use them, I've only seen people use NSAIDs like ibuprofen and aspirin. Acetaminophen (aka paracetamol) is a different class of drug and since I'm not a doctor nor a pharmacist, I couldn't comment on it's applicability or effectiveness.

I imagine that the chance of a cargo or passenger plane having a jump door on it would be pretty slim.

Ah yes... I should probably be aware of that. [Wink] I didn't take the time to look the OP's home DZ.

As far as pilots go, I somehow think that's beyond the scope of this forum, no? I'm hoping that this was part of their private and/or commercial pilot training. As far as jumpers go, are you not taught on your first jump course? I know I was. The following information is paraphrased from the Canadian Parachutist Information Manual in the interests of brevity. I'm sure that there is more detailed information in most national organization's training material. For an inflight emergency there are only two options, but don't take any action in an emergency until directed by the pilot. He/she is in command. Option 1 is to stay in the plane and prepare for an emergency landing, which means fasten seatbelt and adopt a brace position to protect your head and neck. Option 2 is an emergency exit. If the pilot says something like "This is an emergency. Exit!", then take note of your altitude, exit as quickly as possible and as soon as you're clear of the aircraft, deploy your canopy. Altitude will dictate whether you go for your main or reserve. In either case, however, the golden rule is still shut up, sit tight and wait for pilot instruction. This is pretty much what's in the PIM and was something we went through during the first jump course and before every jump while I was on student status and reviewed again as part of each licence progression (at least for A, B and C). I'd also note that I've been told more than once that in a real emergency situation where exiting the plane may be helpful, getting out of the plane may be difficult or impossible due to the forces involved. Not that that changes the basic rules, but just something to be aware of.

Don't forget Fayard Enterprises. I believe they're based at Carolina Sky Sports. You could contact the dropzone there and they could probably put you in touch.

I haven't jumped there personally, but last time I was in Oz, people talked about York - aka Skydive Express. You'll find them listed in the dropzone database. Look for Squeak. He comes from out that way. Also, it may be useful to check out the Australian skydiver forums at http://www.skysurfer.com.au. A lot more of the aussie skydive crowd hangs out there.

The $25 minimum does make some sense. Order something cheaper from somewhere else and see what the shipping and handling charges are. You'll probably pay more for the shipping and handling than you will for the item. Minimum order value helps ensure cost-effective and viable shipping and handling practices. I'm wondering why you're buying a log book if you're not jumping, yet. I'm sure you'll love skydiving, but why not wait until you know you want to take up the sport and know for sure before spending money on equipment. By that time, you will probably have a better idea of what's available and what you like, also. If you're really hell-bent on buying yourself a logbook and some goggles, you can't go past Sorz. They're cheap and durable and while they're no gatorz, they still look reasonable.

I'd suggest hanging out at Burnaby. There's a couple of four-way teams that will be training there this year, although I don't know whether anyone has a free slot. In any case, Burnaby is also the only place in the area with a twin otter, which is hard to go past if you want to do 4-way. There may be a few others there who are interested. Best bet is to just come down and hang out once the jumping gets going in a couple months time. I am on a team, but there's no free slots at the moment. I'm sure we could do some fun jumps together, however.

If you want lots of people to come and play for a week, find yourself some good coaches and organizers and put on a bigway camp. You've got the planes to support it and with a new world record coming up in 2009, I'm sure that there will be plenty of people on the eastern side of the continent looking for some good bigway practice and coaching. I can't speak for everyone else, but personally, the kind of things that will attract me to an event is the special stuff, whether it's a boogie or a camp - good organizers, good coaches, good camps, special jumps, specialty aircraft (eg. helicopters, biplanes, jets, balloons, etc) You guys have an awesome fleet, but to be honest, during the summer, I can do 10 jumps per weekend from a Twin Otter at my home DZ. If I'm travelling for the sake of skydiving, I'll be looking for something that I can't do every weekend at my local DZ. Having a reputation for a cool fun vibe can help a lot, too, but you'll probably need to have a few successful events first to develop that and/or get people talking about your cool, fun vibe, so I'd start with the other stuff I mentioned to get the first people to come. That's my $0.02.

Well their website says that they only occasionally get to jump from a cessna 182. [Wink]

In Eloy, I'm pretty sure that it was just A licence or better. That said, you need to take responsibility for your own safety. If you're not nailing your landings consistently, then balloon jumps are perhaps not for you just yet. You'll most likely be landing off dropzone. Depending on how good you are at determining the wind direction, you could possibly end up landing cross-wind or downwind. The winds will be very light (otherwise the balloon won't have gone up), but even a couple miles per hour of tailwind will seem like a very fast landing if you're not good at your landings. I'm also curious as to what restrictions might apply in more populated areas. I remember some debate a little while ago on here about some guy with a friend and a plane who wanted to know about doing sly jumps in the middle of Buttfuck-Nowhere, SK or somewhere similar and there ensued some discussion about whether or not this would require an EJR and all the other exhibition jump funsies like insurance and such. At the very least, Eloy is surrounded by wide-open patches of desert. When we selected a landing area, we generally picked the patch of desert, not the neighbouring cotton field. Even if you find some nice wide open spaces up here in ON, it's probably going to be agricultural land and I doubt farmers will take too kindly to bunches of skydivers being dropped on their fields and damaging their crops periodically. I know we get the odd off-DZ landing hitting neighbouring farmers fields already, but that's an odd skydiver every now and then and I wouldn't be surprised if dropzones had some kind of arrangement or insurance to compensate neighbouring farmers for crop damage due to off-DZ landings. This is a load of perhaps 10 skydivers, all of whom are going to land in his crop. Might there be insurance requirements or similar? Would this be considered an exhibition jump under Transport Canada regs?

Curious. What is the practical upshot of this for visiting foreign jumpers? I have a Vigil 2 in my rig (Yes - I'm one of those beta testers [Wink]) If I was to visit a dropzone in Norway, would they have an issue with my rig?

If you're on Windows and have Windows Movie Maker, you could use it to recompress your video into .wmv format - probably use one of the "Video for broadband" settings. Smaller numbers mean smaller files, but crappier quality, too. Experiment. This is a no-brainer way to do it. If you're looking for something a bit more powerful/flexible, a good place for some simple tips might be the video compression tutorial on skydivingmovies.com. There's a few tips and various software in there that you can look into. It's a website that you can use to host your video for upload, too. YAY! If you have Mac, iMovie should be able to do something similar, but I've never used iMovie, so I don't really know. From what I understand, though, it runs rings around Movie Maker and most Windows software unless you actually buy a commercial non-linear editor. And that brings us here... I'm assuming you're all ready to go and just want to scale and compress your video for smaller filesize suitable for internet upload. If you actually want to edit the video and just cut out the bits you want and put them back together with music and pretty transitions and stuff, you will want to look into a non-linear video editor, too. There's a few apps to check out for this in the photography and video forum FAQ - down near the end... That's probably more than you wanted to know, but hopefully there's something in there that helps.

It doesn't have to be all in one hit like a triathlon. It could be more like the decathlon or heptathlon where there is a series of 10 or 7 events, all run separately and competitors score points in each event which are weighted and added together at the end to come up with final standings. To make it a decent number of events and a decent test of "all-round" skill, it'd have to be a team event. Maybe 4-way FS, 4-way VRW, 4-way CRW rotations and swoop zone accuracy, and call it the tetrathlon. 4-way VRW could drastically reduce the number of viable teams, though. Is there a more mainstream-accessible freefly team event? Maybe we could lobby to make it an Olympic event. They've got plenty of other -thlons.

Well, it's been a month, but the recent bump made me notice this. Google is your friend... http://www.orthokeratology.com/

Maybe you should have put that in the question. (ie. "Top 10" Turbine DZs") The way it was phrased makes it sound like a Cessna dropzone can't be good. I'm sure that wasn't the intent, but it does come across a little that way. Blues.

Best by what measure? I like turbine's as much as anyone, but there are some great dropzones out there running 182s and 206s with great people and a great vibe. I big plane is great, but it would get old pretty quick if there was nobody there worth playing with or talking to. I've been to one dropzone that had two twin turbine aircraft (Otter & AN-28), but it was difficult to talk to the locals. I've been to another dropzone where they were only flying an AN-2 (slow single radial engine biplane), but it was easier to talk to the locals even though their english was much more limited. I'm still new, though. I've only been to 10 dropzones in total, so I'll name four that stood out for me - not that the other 6 sucked, but it seems pointless to name my top 10 when that's all I've seen, and while I'm sure that places like Deland and Perris are great, I've not been so I won't attempt to comment. 1. Skydive Arizona because of good vibe, good memories, great aircraft and the wind tunnel. 2. Skydive Ramblers in Australia for fantastic people and vibe, good planes and lots of great memories. 3. Skydive Burnaby - it's home, it's the only place near home with an Otter and it's where all the most exciting stuff in Canada's been happening since I've been jumping. 4. Skydive Eden North - great vibe, great people. Sure there's only 2x182 and a 206 now, but I had an awesome time here nonetheless - and besides they're getting a Caravan next year. Actually, I should probably give Hervey Bay an honourable mention, too. I only spent a long weekend there, but I jumped my arse off out of the skyvan and the views out over Fraser Island and the surrounding waters were magnificent.