Scubadivemaster

EXACTLY what I tell my wife about sex!

Back on the subject . . . Chris, I don't know where you were standing, but I saw enough nakedness to keep a smile on my face for a month! Good jumps, good friends, pretty ladies, lots-o-beverages. While I agree that its a shitty thing to do to try to compete with what is a real tradition, fuck those who missed it! I drank your beer and slept with your women!

Sigh. Been there and gone. Now I'm back at work. I know many of you are still enjoying the last day of the Boogie. Tasha and I had to come home yesterday so I could work yesterday afternoon, but we crammed a hell of a lot of jumping, parting, and boobies (they make Shawn smile!

Of course! We registered back in January! (That way we got a free left-over T-shirt). I wonder what she will put on the shirts this year? The rest of the drunken hover-round gang will be there as well. I'd love to be in on the round jump this year, if you still have room.

Odd. My wife's suit never has fit right, and mine started showing damage in non-normal wear areas within the first 6 months, 50 jumps. The zipper blew out on mine (No fat jokes please). Even using the recommended washing directions my bright yellow turned a sickly mustard after washing. When I called about the damage and the zipper they quoted an obscene price for the repairs and to refit my wife's suit to actually make it fit. I just gave up and we kept jumping them, figuring on buying a Bev suit next time. I guess I should have gone ahead and sent them in for repair to see what they would actually do. Maybe if they had the suit they would have said "well, clearly this isn't the user's fault, we should just fix it for him and apologize for the inconvenience." Matter of fact I think I will send them back and see what happens. I'll let you know.

. . . and now that chance has passed. I guess we will all have to spend more time (and money) on flight lessons now.

The question is: What do I do if I am in this situation? A safe skydiver tries to prevent these situations, but asks important questions like this. You need to have though through situations like this and have a plan in mind, so this is a valid question, and one that we should all have a plan in place to deal with. I, for one, plan to cut it away with my hook knife. I know that the spin will get crazy once I cut away the lines on one side, BUT, if I have to deploy with a screwed up reserve out, I feel like my main will have a better chance of deploying cleanly with at least one side of the reserve lines cut. With enough altitude, I believe I can cut both sides away, but by 1500 feet, my main is coming out. As it has been said, Go not calmly into that dark night. Fight until your goggles fill with blood.

I'm sitting at my desk laughing and crying. All my employees think I'm nuts. I've got to stop reading this shit at work.

I was 24 when I first dislocated mine badly. With PT 3 times a week for 2 months I was able to use it pretty well again. I dislocated it a month ago for the second time, not nearly as badly, and after very intense PT, I hope to start jumping again this weekend. Note that the labrum was NOT torn in either incident. If you have not actually dislocated it, I wouldn't think you have torn your labrum (WTF do I know?), so I suspect that PT and strength training would prevent further problems. You are at the stage where you are trying prevent a real injury, not trying to fix a major one that has already occurred. The way it has been explained to me is that having all of the large AND small muscles around your shoulder joint in very good condition will help hold the ball in the socket, preventing the stretching and tearing of the ligaments and such. It is when your body has to rely on the ligaments and the joint to hold itself together without the assistance of those muscles that you end up hurt.. But again, WTF do I know?

Search for "Shoulder". There are several thread about this. Your arm position puts your shoulder in a naturally weak position when flying boxman or making turns using your arms flying mantis. Strength training helps greatly. Don't get back in the air until you have your shoulders in really good shape. Is this your right or left shoulder. Dislocating a left shoulder in freefall can be scary. Dislocating a right should, because of standard BOC placement, can be terrifying or even deadly. I feel your pain, I am waiting to get my shoulders right to get back in the air again as well. Again, there are many threads on this, search them and spend some time reading them and thinking about how you can deploy and perform emergency procedures, steer, and land, without the use of one arm.

That was exactly my thought, though I agree with Chris's point that at larger more commercial dropzones finding locals to jump with you might prove difficult.

Let me preface this by saying that I hesitated all week posting this in hopes that one of those involved would post something here. It feels like it is their right to have first crack at it, and it almost feels like I am violating some confidence to post this. Nonetheless I was forced to change my perspective on some things by this incident and would feel worse if someone who could have avoided an incident with this knowledge is hurt by the lack of it. I mean no criticism of those involved, they are both far more experienced and skilled skydivers than I am, and very nice people. On Saturday, two visiting skydivers to my home DZ lost altitude awareness and one had the opportunity to experience a cypres fire, and two-canopies out situation, a down-plane and a tree landing. Miraculously he suffered only minor cuts and bruises, though I am sure his back will take a while to recover from the jarring landing. Both jumpers are experienced jumpers. The jumper experiencing the cypres fire has 1100 jumps.) Both normally jump at a turbine DZ where they exit between 13500 and 14500. We generally exit at 9500. The two have been learning to sitfly (have between 60 and 100 sitfly jumps, most or all with each other). He is using one of the old style dytters with the dial that only has one altitude warning and a wrist mounted altimeter. She is using a Skytronics Dytter and presumably a wrist mount altimeter. I did not see a chest mount and didn’t ask her if she normally wears one. The pair exited at 9500 and fell for about 45 seconds in a sit. At that point she realized they were low, turned and deployed. He deployed an instant later, and reports that as he came under his main saw his reserve come off his back. He was at about 700 feet and headed into a wooded area. The two- out settled quickly into a biplane. He reports that he remembered an article in a recent Parachutist that said he could steer the main (front) canopy and attempted to do so to avoid the trees and aim for a clear area to the right. As he steered, the two-out evolved into a side-by-side (400 feet) then into a down-plane (200 feet). He was over the trees in a down-plane when he cut away. As soon as he cut away, the reserve surged from behind him to in front of him (or he swung back, depending on the perspective) and the reserve dove him 180 degrees to the left and into the tree tops, which are between 60 and 80 feet high. The trees were dense enough that the canopy collapsed as he passed through the trees, apparently going straight down. He was still upright when he hit the ground. The other jumper opened low but uneventfully and landed in a clearing and came back to him. Both state they never heard their dytters. On inspection hers was inoperable. I am not familiar with Skytronics, but another skydiver said that it acted as if the batteries were dying. His appeared to be working but emits what is to my ears a pitifully quiet beeping. A Protrack screams in comparison. He stated that he cannot see his wrist mounted altimeter in a sit and was relying on the audible, which he never heard. They both state that they are so accustomed to the greater altitude that their mental clocks were not telling them that the skydive should be over. Not belly flying, they could not see the big green altimeter coming up at them. He was very shaken up and made the statement “You read about people doing things like this in Parachutist (incident reports) and wonder what people were thinking. I can’t believe I lost altitude awareness!” He was incredibly lucky not to have been badly injured. I had seen him open very low earlier in the day and very gently called him on it. On reflection, I think I was so gentle that he didn’t realize I was serious. Lessons learned: 1. Don’t rely on an audible. 2. If jumping at a new DZ, try to jump with some local jumpers for several jumps. 3. If jumping at a new DZ, plan to open higher than normal. 4. If sit flying, make sure you have an easily visible altimeter. 5. If using an audible, get one that would wake the dead with its flatline. 6. If using an audible, be familiar with low batter warnings and check it often. 7. When mentally rehearsing how to handle a two-out, realize that you will probably be below 750 feet. Silly as it is, I had never considered that. All the training videos show them occurring with lots of altitude to work with. That is the image that was in my mind. Not anymore. 8. Be ready to steer the instant you cutaway. 9. When you read the incident reports, don’t assume that the person was just suddenly overcome by “dumbass” and that you will never do that. Carefully consider how you could inadvertently put yourself in the same situation, and what you have to do to avoid it. (Not saying the jumper involved dismissed the incident reports this way.) 10. We have a duty to make others aware of their low openings. If you have a visitor at your DZ, or even someone you just don’t know well, don’t hesitate to call them on opening low. I saw his nice gear and smaller elliptical canopy and said to myself “This guy knows what he is doing and doesn’t need any flak from me.” Had I taken a few minutes to talk to him I would have found out then that he is a very gracious person and would certainly have appreciated and listened to my concern that he had opened low. Even if he had not been the type of person to accept that criticism, I neglected my duty to him by not clearly offering it.

I had the opportunity to jump a main with the brake lines not routed through the slider last year. The opening was like getting hit by a truck. I broke one steering line and was so dazed I didn't realize it until I was too low to consider cutting away. I can't imagine the jolt you would get on a reserve rigged like this. The rigger who assembled this should have to jump it.

Did you ever learn anything from Ebay? Were they able to explain their inaction? I know that there are many honest people who make their living through Ebay, but it is lack of responsiveness to issues like this that keeps potential buyers away.

No, typically at this point the scammer will ask for the money to be sent some way that is outside Ebay's payment policies. They will threaten bad feedback, etc if you do not pay. You are within your rights to refuse to wire them the money or use a money order when the auction listed Paypal as the method of payment. They may put an unpaid item strike against you, but if you use Member messages for your communications with them, you can always easily refer Ebay to the saved messages to show that the scammer did not act in good faith.

Did you also mention the seller's other auction (RACER SST) to Ebay? Both of these auctions were allowed to go to completion. I wonder who won the other one?

The winning bidder should pay with a fake money order.

Funny thing is one of my friends called last night about the auction you posted, asking me if it would be a good rig for him. I didn't even realize it was the same seller. I told him it sounded like a scam. Both auctions still going on Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200059083065&sspagename=ADME:L:RTQ:US:1 Original ad. I'm surprised the link still works. (Posted in case you start to second guess yourself for believing me that it is a scam )

Yeah, I always ask for an additional picture of something obscure. "Can you give me a closeup of the inside of the main tray?" "Can I get a picture of the rig with the risers stretched straight out to the sides?" Then at least I know they have the rig.

Yeah, I alerted Ebay. The problem is scammers use 3 day auctions, and Ebay rarely reacts that fast. Someone may still get caught in the auction before Ebay removes the listing. I was able to provide them with the original item number yesterday, and they may get it down in time. Replying to someone's post further down, I'm not upset at all, just trying to warn any innocents away from the rig. It is not stolen, I bought it from the original posting of this ad at the end of last year and still have it. I just recognized the pirctures and description as being an exact word-for-word repost of the auction when I bought it. Again, scammers do this. They watch for a popular item that sells well, copy all of the info and pics from it, and then repost it under a hijacked or falsified account later. I see two or three of these a month that I remember well enough to believe that they are a scam, but since I actually own this one, I can state with authority that it is a scam. It would be funny if someone wasn't in danger of getting fucked out of their money. USED TO BE, you could contact the bidders to warn them, but EBAY has taken that possibility away with the blind bidding process.

Imagine my surprise when I saw pictures of my rig on Ebay! Even has the cute little bumble bee sticker on the helmet. Someone has shamelessly reposted a rig I bought on Ebay last year. If any of you are considering bidding on it, beware. Another scam brought to you by EBAY. http://cgi.ebay.com/Complete-Skydiving-Rig_W0QQitemZ330132332033QQihZ014QQcategoryZ106980QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

What kind of rig is it? Dacron lines? A lot of the old student rigs I have been around have a vague locker-room dirty sock smell to them. I think it's the years of fear-tainted sweat that has soaked into them

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