chrismgtis

I don't think it's usually allowed till something like 100 jumps, but I'm not sure if that's up to the DZO or USPA or what. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

I bet the DZ is going to be slam packed with tents. I've got an 8 person tent I'm going to bring down as early as possible. Hm, I guess I need to invest in a large cooler to stock the beer in for the weekend. You guys have any idea how early I need to have tent up on the DZ to get a spot before it's slam spacked? Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Always thought it was something cool that I couldn't really imagine doing, but thought about it a few times. I saw the Golden Knights at the air show in Ohio in July 2006. In August I decided I was going to do it for my birthday (September 8th) and made the call and jumped on the 9th. Was hooked after that and determined to get my license. Haven't went a weekend since without jumping (willingly). Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

You're going to have bad experiences with any company sooner or later. Sometimes you just get unlucky and one of your first experiences is the bad one. It doesn't necessarily mean the company has shit customer service. They all make mistakes at one point or another. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

It won't be too long before you can't do anything in the United States, simply because every organization with any say so in the USA wants to impose every ridiculous restriction that their little minds can think of. It's a huge problem. It's not just a problem with the FAA, but with copyright law, satellite radio, movie ratings, the patent system all the way down to the people that complain about smokers in bars of all places. The government really needs to make some major changes to laws. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Damn. You know after all this talk about safety - last weekend I went into my jumps with what I thought was a good flight plan. I made two jumps using about the same flight plan, just modified for better accuracy (pulls at 9k). In the end what happened was I ended up turning half breaks into the wind at about 200ft to prevent from landing on the runway. On the last two jumps I ended up pretty much landing without any kind of PLF and hit my knee so hard on both jumps that by the second bad landing I could barely walk and my knee swole up. The only thing wrong with any of that is I was paying too much to my horizontal speed and didn't think about bringing my legs together and getting ready to PLF and my flight plan was off. Lesson learned though. It only proves the point to myself even more that you need to slow down and take a step back sometimes. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

You can say what you want but I don't exactly see saying "You could do this, but it's not smart" as "bad advice". So to each his own. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

I think one of the funniest things I have seen so far is a jumper pull out a sandwich and start munching away like he is at a picnic. I yawn on the plane all the time though. It's just a matter of learning to relax. The only thing that really gets to me anymore is standing in front of that door. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Nice. That's the exact jump I finally thought "what the hell am I doing" on the ride up. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Realize that the sentence you quoted me for also said don't do it. You guys need take the entire point into consideration (not directed at anyone in particular). Don't read half the sentence and say "That's wrong". Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Which is exactly why I said to use them and not take the chance. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

I don't think theres any reason you will have to worry about being able to keep your legs spread out. A belly to earth arch doesn't require a lot of muscles. It's a pretty relaxed posture. When landing your preparing for a parachute landing fall, so your feet are together. You shouldn't really need a lot of strength to do anything in this sport. Trust me on that one. Most of the young girls in this sport can lift more than I can. Packing takes more strength than anything. You can always pay someone $6 to do that for you if you own gear or just rent gear. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

I'm going to make "educated" guesses at some of these questions. How low is too low? First off, as I was taught, it takes about 10 seconds for your canopy to resume normal flight, so any turns (other than small adjustments to keep on a straight approach) that will cause any significant increase in descent rate are probably not a good idea in the last 10 seconds of your approach. IF you are going to make a turn below 200 ft., I suggest it is a braked turn (or small toggle inputs) and that you do not lift the toggles back up until you are safely on the ground. You might not have as much room to flare on your toggles after executing a braked turn low to the ground, but releasing your toggles will cause you to drop (which is obviously bad) and if you're coming in faster than you can land softly - that is why we learn to PLF. Not doing a PLF hurts. I found that out this weekend. Twice. A student rig of that size is going to be pretty forgiving and I highly doubt you can put enough toggle into it to screw yourself into the ground or get killed, but then again... let's not tempt the reaper. I would guess that canopy your jumping makes pretty flat turns. I know when I jumped the 230's (I weigh 168lbs) they turned like a tank in deep toggles. If I were to do that with my 175 at 300 ft... well.. my mom isn't going to be very happy. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Well the bad pack job was my own, so it's not like I'm blaming a packer. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Well, as of this weekend ya. I landed on my knee. Ouch. No problem. Went up again and landed on the same knee again. Damnit. Swole up pretty nice. I'm sure I'll be out jumping again next weekend. I hope. Yes, I'm too stubborn. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Haha. Can't help but laugh at this weekend. I did terrible at everything. Bad pack job and got line twists, went into crazy spin on exit and busted my knee because I didn't PLF. It was just one of those days. I was jumping the twin otter when I went into the spin. Which is what I've jumped on about 44 of my jumps. Who knows, I doubt I'll ever be able to explain that one. I was like ok damnit, I'm arched, what gives? Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

On one of my jumps this weekend I exited and went into a wild uncontrollable spin for about 8 seconds. I was arched the whole time and got stable what seemed like pretty randomly (if I remember right I got "stable" on my back and just rolled back over). That has never once happened to me, ever. I have no idea why it happened. It scared the crap out of me because I was thinking theres no way opening like this is going to be good. Any ideas why that happened? With about 48 jumps I've never once really been unstable (except for a little trouble with turns in AFF). Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Skydive Carolina has a massive landing area between three runways. I don't know how students manage at some of these DZs. I guess you put a lot more emphasis on that part of the training. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Sweeet. Let me know if that works out. I'm curious if it's something people would really want to do. So like say we came up with a sort of "Essential Skills Club" type deal. In that we work on accuracy, basic CRW, basic to more advanced spotting, learning to fly your canopy, etc. Then build on that with the accuracy contests, possibly some sort of canopy relative work events. From that you might see some people get involved in other aspects of the sport. I don't see a lot of CRW at our DZ. I know different drop zones have have jumpers that focus on different skills. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

You guys are weird. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Do any drop zones have any kind of accuracy contests for different ranges of experience like say up to 100 jumps, 101-300 jumps, 301-500 jumps, 501 to 1000 jumps, etc (just for example). That would be cool for fun. Might promote accuracy skills. Something else neat would be coaching for basic CRW skills. If you can fly around another parachute then you should be able to navigate in traffic a lot better and avoid a collision (hopefully :P) Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

Well I agree. I've noticed friends buying camera helmets when they have an A-license. I'm not even sure that is allowed. I'm in no hurry for the four ways and things like that. It can wait, cause I'm still having fun just jumping by myself and getting to know my canopy. I realized theres more important things right now than just how much fun can I have on one jump. Then again, I could do all these things and still work on other skills under canopy too on that same jump. Not to pick on DZ friends or anything, it just makes me go "wait a minute, why are they doing this?" when I see all these people working on four ways, or talking about camera helmets, or whatever. It would make me feel a lot better if they said yes when I asked them if they were working on accuracy skills or any of the basics actively. Some of the PD guys this past weekend were talking about how they tried to get into swooping early on and realized later how stupid that was, then had to start over again at he basics when they had like 500 jumps. And that their view was "That's cool! Thats what I want to do!". Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

So according to ESPN, spelling is a sport, but skydiving isn't. Wait, what if we were SPELLING SKYDIVERS...... ha. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

I can't answer that question, because I lack the time in the sport, but I think that may be the case for a lot of people. I'm not saying that no one at all cares about learning the important things because plenty of us do and plenty of us are interested in learning more, but I find that until you realize how little you know and how much there is to learn besides free fall skills (tracking,formations,freeflying,etc) and having fun in free fall, you don't know how much you really can learn besides those things. I've heard instructors tell us plenty of times "Your skydive is not over until you're safely on the ground". I realized how true that was and your chance to learn is also not over until you are safely on the ground which is probably what some of them meant too. You know, this also got me to thinking and I'm going to mention this to our DZO and DZM and see if we can get together some kind of program for newly licensed jumpers (or anyone for that matter) to promote learning more about safety, basic canopy flight, spotting, accuracy, etc. to complement programs that teach skills in free fall. Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

I fairly recently received my A-license and took Scott Miller's course. I realized how little I knew about canopy flight and the flight pattern. Also, recently I've started to notice how quickly newly licensed jumpers start to participate in four ways and free flying. I don't see any problem with learning those skills, but it makes me wonder how many people are working on essential skills. I've asked "Are you working on your flight plan still" to people who recently took the canopy course and they said no. In the time I've been jumping I've spent a lot of time at the DZ and started to notice trends. Students will complete the skills on their A-license proficiency card and mostly never think of them again. Or some of us may take the canopy course and not really continue to work on the skills we were taught. I know this because I'm guilty of it myself and it took 10 hours of instruction to make me realize it. The reason I find this alarming is because taking that course made me realize how blindly I was flying and how important a lot of the skills were that I didn't think to learn more about. I plan on doing this for a very long time and if that's going to happen I don't want to find myself at another drop zone or in one of those situations that I don't know what to do (a long spot, having to make a low turn to avoid an obstacle, etc). We can learn the free fly skills and four way skills in free fall. The really important part comes when it's time to pull. Personally, I'm concentrating on those things and waiting to do the rest later on, but we can do both. It's no big deal to jump in a four way and work on canopy skills on the same jump. I don't think a lot of people do it though. It seems like so many people are just worried about getting in those four ways. I've realized how little I did know about canopy flight. It was sort of an eye opener because I look back and think "damn, I was flying blind out there" because now I know how little I knew. I basically had the thought process "fly in a triangle, start downwind, then crosswind and land upwind and keep your eye on traffic". Ok, so I knew a little more than that, but still. It seems like so many students that just got their A license recently in the last 6 months seem to want to get into four ways and sit fly, but they don't really think too much about their canopies and the skills they can learn after they track away from their formations and start flying the parachute. Flat turns are something I didn't experiment with very much. I did what was required on the card and didn't think a whole lot about it afterwards. Another thing is flight patterns and traffic awareness. It's probably not such a big deal at smaller drop zones that don't have a lot of swoopers flying around, but we probably shouldn't make that assumption. I was taught pretty well the very basics of the pattern and what to be doing, but I'm glad I know about verticle seperation and that kind of thing now. I don't think it's necessarily a problem with the AFF program or student status. What I'm seeing just concerns me a little, because it makes me wonder how many people actually care about the skills that are going to save their life or someone elses instead of just "I want to get in that four way and learn more". So it's more of a trend in what people are concentrating on learning (or not learning). I've been pulling high (at 8000 ft) and playing with my canopy as much as possible in the last few months and now that I have my own canopy I can do that a lot more often and will probably do it as much as the conditions permit. It gives me a lot of air to play with the toggles and when I'm at 3000-0ft there isn't usually anyone around so I can really work on accuracy. So the point I guess is that those of us that are new at this (maybe even people with a couple hundred jumps already) may be flying around with really basic skills and not attempting to learn more or asking "why?". Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033 Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan