GLIDEANGLE

It isn't about the TI's joy.... it is about protecting paying customers. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

I suspect that what you will find is that in the negotiations about USPA taking over the ratings, that one or more of the manufacturers said "We will allow you to take this over only if you require a medical, as we have required in the past." As I recollect, the FAA Class 3 became required by USPA because they found enforcement very difficlut without a clearly defined requirement... thus the Class 3. I recollect reading that they were getting a variety of "medicals" and needed some rule regarding what was acceptable and what was not. The really unfortunate part of this mess is that the current medical screening process gets all balled up in stuff that does not matter, and can't catch some of the more important (but tough to screen) problems. For example, any substance abuse or mental health history gums up the works tremendously. Yet, the current process won't detect coronary artery disease which has no symptoms. Thus, the currently mentally healthy and substace abuse free applicant is seen as a problem... but a guy who is about to have a massive heart attack may be deemed OK. The current medical screening process is a blunt tool. That said, I am not sure that there is a cogent argument against some sort of screening for jumpers who are taking paying customers for a tandem jump. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Yep. We have some priceless video of a jumper FALLING off the plane. She will NEVER live that down. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Door fear? None for me. I LOVE to sit in the open door on a summer day on the way to altitude. However, I know several experienced jumpers who are afraid of falling out of the plane prematurely. If they find themselves close to the open door on the way to altitude, I will often hold their hand or quietly put my hand on the yoke of their harness... they know I am holding them (and feel better for it) but it isn't obvious to others on the plane. DOOORRRRRR! The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Here is your challenge with that.... Who will sign your logbook for that jump last March? The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

I am pretty confident that you will find tandems counted as part of jump count totals in all US instructional programs. While tandems will likely count toward totals, your progression through an instructional program is driven by meeting objectives, not jump count. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Congratulations! I remember fondly that I didn't understand how to relax in freefall until my first solo... no "dive flow". The first phase of your license quest is done. Now you enter the second phase. There is so much more to learn! The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

I can't remember the story. However, I seem to recollect that Strong required a medical before USPA did. http://www.strongparachutes.com/Documents/PDF_Files/Tandemprerequisites.pdf The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

If you are asking "How long is too long between L4 & L5?" I think that you will find that most DZs adhere to the USPA reccomendation of 30 day max between jumps for students. If you are short on money, and given that the jumping weather is terrible in much of the country now and for the next few months, here is a plan to consider: Stay on the ground and save your $$$ until you have enough money to finish AFF and perhaps half of the remaining jumps needed for your license. I bet that by then you will have good weather, and you will be able to do the jumps in a prompt progression. This plan helps in several ways: --It keeps you from fighting lousy weather (if that is an issue where you live). --It lets you move through the jumps promptly, which will help you learn better AND will often help with the "jitters". --It keeps you from stressing about "I should go to the DZ... but I don't have the $ or nerve." You have already decided to stay on the ground for a while. Come back to the DZ with $, good WX, and an eager attitude... and you will be surprised at how fast you will progress! Yes, you will probably have to do recurrency training and re-do your last level when you return. Both of those are good for both safety and the jitters! I wish you the best!!! The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Really? That web site seems to have stopped capturing data about 24 months ago. I see NOTHING for 2010. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

At my DZ delayed beer payment is common. The DZ is located in a dry county. The nearest beer is a LONG drive. Many folks pay surprise beer fines the next weekend. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

I reviewed the 2010 USPA Fatality Summary today. I was not surprised that Canopy Flight related deaths were 70% of all fatalities. Nor was it a surprise that canopy collisions and intentional hook turns accounted for most of the Canopy Flight Related deaths. What did surprise me was that “hard landing in strong/gusty winds” claimed as many lives as hook turns and almost as many as canopy collisions. 2010 USPA Fatalites Total (all causes) 21 -----Canopy Flight Related 15 ----------Canopy collision 5 ----------Intentional hook turn 4 ----------Hard Landing in Strong/Gusty winds 4 ----------CReW entanglement 1 ----------Dropped toggle on high W/L canopy 1 -----Non-Canopy Flight Related 6 I am delighted that collisions and intentional hook turns are getting attention and discussion here and at the USPA. However, I haven’t heard much about the “strong/gusty winds” issue. I don’t have enough information (experienced or novice, current or not, what kind of wings/wing loading, etc) to make any sort of reasonable suggestions for corrective action. At the very least I think it deserves discussion. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Dear New Jumper (or other jumpers who are trapped on the ground by winter weather): Congratulations on your new skydiving license! There is so much to learn to stay safe in this sport. Earning your A license is just the beginning. Below are some documents which will help your further development as a skydiver. You don’t have to read them all at once. If you read one a week, you will be doing GREAT! General Information: USPA Skydiver Information Manual If you aren’t familiar with sections 1 through 5 in this document, now is the time to review them. Reviewing at least part 105 of the FARs is a good thing too. You can defer most of section 6 and all of the other sections for a while. The Safety articles on Dropzone.com These articles vary by topic and age, many are really relevant and useful. Note that these articles have been selected by the website editors for their accuracy and relevance. They are NOT the usual internet discussion board stuff of dubious quality. A variety of useful articles on collegeskydiving.com . There are articles about canopy flight, relative work, rigging, freefly, and mental aspects. All are worthwhile. (Note that this is a multi-page list. Also, some of these articles have been borrowed from sites listed below.) Canopy Flight: The leading cause of skydiving death in the USA is pilot errors while flying a perfectly functioning canopy. Canopy flight and landing is the one thing that all specialty disciplines in skydiving have in common, so it is one thing that we should all study earnestly. The place to begin is with the USPA SIM Section 6-11: Advanced Canopy Piloting Topics . Don’t let the word “advanced” put you off, this content is quite relevant to all licensed skydivers. Brian Germain's Downsizing recommendations This 22 page document is way more than just information about downsizing safely! It has lots of information about how to learn more about your canopy by flying various drills which he calls “Essential Maneuvers”. Canopy related safety articles by canopy manufacturers. If you fly a PD canopy (and the odds are fairly good that you do), read the PD document on your specific canopy’s performance: Sabre 2 Spectre Storm Pulse Almost all of the manufacturer supplied information below is NOT product or brand-specific. Performance Designs Choosing the Right Canopy prt 1 Choosing the Right Canopy prt 2 Control System Malfunction Get the Best Out of Your Canopy How to Prevent Hard Openings PIA Dual Square Report Survival Skills for Canopy Control The Low Down on Low Turns Turbulence, The Invisible Hazard Wing Loading and It's Effects Aerodyne Aerodyne Flight Recommendations Big Air Sportz There is a variety of wonderful stuff by Brian Germain here . Never hesitate to make canopy drill hop & pop jumps! They can be a great way to get in the air when there is a low ceiling which prevents freefall or when you can’t find folks to jump with. The canopy drills in the SIM and described by Brian Germain are quite worth your time. There is no doubt that those drills have saved me from injury several times. If you read a lot, ask a lot of questions, and practice a lot with your canopy up high, you will grow to be a safer skydiver. Blue Skies, Jim McGraw D-30292 AFF-I The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

It seems like yesterday that our chief instructor asked me “So when are you going to become an AFF instructor?” Thus began the adventure of earning my rating and taking students into the sky. I want to talk about the things I learned after earning my rating. Some of these things I already “knew” but gained a new clarity and urgency. Many of these things may seem obvious… but I am a slow learner and often need obvious things driven into my thick skull. If any new or aspiring AFF-I finds value in these lessons I learned… I have accomplished my goal in writing this. If any experienced AFF-Is get a chuckle out of this… even better! • Every jump is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you are going to get! • Any AFF jump can go completely to hell at any point. Students can be doing really well in the top and middle of the freefall, but become completely spastic fools at pull time. • What you get on the ground, you will get in the air. The mistakes students make during the dirt dive, you will see in the air. Dirt diving to perfection and beyond is important. • AFF spotting needs to account for L-O-N-G student set-up and exit. The spot can be fine when you check it… and be crap by the time the student moseys to the door, gets set up, counts and goes. • Stay close on release dives. Staying close makes everything easier… and far less nerve wracking for you. Flying six inches high is better than six inches low. • When dirt diving flips… make sure the student knows to wait for your signal to begin. Students doing a series of flips who don’t wait for you before each one, can get REALLY low, REALLY fast. • Estimating student fall rate for release jumps is CRITICAL. It is essential that an AFF-I learn to predict and accommodate student fall rates. Few things are as scary as a student getting high or low and the AFF-I having trouble getting there. Use all the tools at your disposal: your jumpsuit (I have three: fast, medium, slow), the student jumpsuit, weights on you, and possibly (the controversial) weights on the student. • On Caravan/Otter/PAC exits, the reserve side can salvage many bad exits by aggressively turning the piece 180 degrees counterclockwise on the hill. This is very easy and very powerful. A strong leg turn will flatten out most high main side instructors. • On Cat A&B (Level 1&2) the reserve side instructor should expect the student to go head down at pull time. Having a grip on the arm gripper and being ready to keep the student’s left shoulder up can make pull time much less exciting. • Don’t accept the student dropping the chin to reach the BOC PC during dirt dives. Dropping the chin leads to going head down at pull time. • Boring AFF jumps are the goal… exciting ones can be WAY too exciting. • Main side needs to stay until the d-bag lifts off. On this one I was smart enough to learn from a really scary video rather than having to do it myself. In the video the student pulled but didn’t release the PC… and the main side left when the PC came out of the BOC. The reserve side AFF-I had to deal with this… from the “wrong” side. • Start re-currency ground training with EPs at the training harness. I have found this to be the best diagnostic to help me assess how much re-currency training the jumper will need. In addition, if the jumper discovers that they don’t know the most essential stuff (EPs)… it is usually very easy to get them to agree to a long re-currency session on the ground. • Re-currency jumps with strangers are very unpredictable. Just because someone claims hundreds of jumps years ago, doesn’t mean that they can maintain stability in freefall today. Once again, I got lucky enough to learn this from a video shot at my DZ. • Spinning students can slide horizontally with great speed. Stay close! • An ugly spin stop early is WAY better than waiting for a “clean” approach and letting the spin speed up and “helicopter”. • Just because you have a radio, doesn’t mean you have to say anything. • No matter how busy the schedule, never be afraid to say “This student isn’t ready to jump” or “This weather is unacceptable.” • Hold students to high standards when advancing to release jumps…you may regret doing otherwise! • Polarized sunglasses and LCD altimeter displays don’t play well together! • On busy days, keep an eye on your partner. Sometimes you will note that your partner is dehydrated or hungry before they notice. Taking a break is good for everyone. • On hot, busy summer days, HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE. • During your own landing… stay focused on getting to the ground safely. Keep your mind in the present moment… not the freefall behind you, or the next student waiting in the hangar. It is no fun to be an injured AFF-I lying in the landing area whimpering, as the student walks past after her great landing. • The AFF-I rating is nothing more than a “license to learn”! Many thanks to all of the AFF-Is and students that I have had the privilege of jumping with. I have learned so much from each of you. You have been tolerant of my many FNG errors. I hope to keep learning on every jump. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Have you considered some of the big canopies offered by Flight Concepts? http://flightconceptsint.com/ They sell a variety of large main canopies. Some are 7 cell, some 9 cell, some ZP, some presumably 0-3 cfm fabric (aka: "F111"). Model / Area / Max. Susp Wt. Manta 290 / 290 / 319 Man-O-War 320 / 320 / 352 Startrac I / 265 / 291 Startrac II / 290 / 319 Startrac III / 320 / 352 ZP Manta 320 / 320 / 320 ZP Manta 290 / 290 / 290 The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Your story illustrates the importance of a quiet skydiving skill, the ability to stay in the current moment and release what happened earlier in the jump. To perform well on skydives I have found it necessary to stay in the PRESENT moment. I cannot let a bad exit pollute my emotions and distract me during the rest of the freefall. I cannot let a badly executed point in the skydive distract me from the current point. I cannot let a lousy freefall distract me from a good break-off and track. I cannot let anything distract me at pull time. I cannot let any earlier part of the jump distract me from safe canopy flight and landing. This sounds trivial but it is VERY important, as skydives often have ugly moments. If we allow those to distract us from the current moment, we can hurt ourselves or others. There is always time to ruminate over what went wrong AFTER a safe landing. Letting negative emotions leak from one part of a jump to the latter parts is a great way to waste a jump and increase EVERYONE'S risk. Remember the definition of a good skydive... You walk into the hangar. Anything more than that is gravy. I am delighted to read that you had a good jump! Blue Skies, The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Check out the text and table in SIM §6-3 for more on this topic. (it is brief) http://www.uspa.org/SIM/Read/Section6/tabid/169/Default.aspx#978 The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

It took about six months for me. I started as a student at the worst possible time of year here. I spent many, many a weekend watching the wind blow. Once the weather cleared up, I took about to jump 35 to get the required accuracy landings for my A license. It takes as long as it takes. As proof that student struggles and later success as a skydiver are UNrelated see the logbook linked below. It is the student logbook of a world-record holding professional skydiver who has thousands of jumps. http://crwdog.servebeer.com/CRWdog/HowCRW.html The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

I too got hurt in Sept. I returned to jumping this month. I did a hop & pop as my first jump back to ease into things. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

I started jumping a 7 cell exclusively at about 20 jumps. The best way that I can describe the manner in which my Spectre (7 cell) is "docile": It behaves well when I don't. It has bailed my stupid arse out of a number of sorry situations without harm. I find my Spectre to be rock solid in slow flight with the barkes at the factory settings... that stability gives me lots of options when the going gets wierd. Demo, Demo, Demo before you buy. Side note: Almost all modern ram air reserve canopies have only 7 cells. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Thank you, Sir! That is exactly the man & site I had in mind! http://www.deadmike.com/ A sobering tale.... The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

My worst was only a dislocated foot. However in 4 years of jumping my friends: •Fractured femur (last Saturday) •Serious tibia/fibula fracture. (landing in turbulence) •Quadraplegia from a premature main deployment. •Femur AND pelvis fracture. (swoop) •Dislocated RIGHT shoulder in freefall (think through the consequences of that!). •collarbone fracture (swoop) (requiring surgery). I cannot remember the name... But there was a guy who had a canopy collapse while landing and who got REALLY badly hurt with a long ugly recovery. He had web site about his injury and recovery. It was pretty graphic and had a catchy name like "Dead Chris". I cannot find the web site. Perhaps someone else will remember and give you the link. Those who say this is safer than driving are just deceiving themselves. It is a dangerous sport, but there is a lot you can do to manage the risk. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

So.... Did you walk into the hangar? If so, it was a good jump! (Not all L1 (Cat A) students have "good jumps"!) You aren't the first or last student to blow L1 (Cat A). Listen to your instructors and go do it again. I'll bet that a lot went right on that jump: Stable exit? Stable in freefall? Handled any canopy nusiances? Navigated back to the DZ? Safe pattern? Safe landing? Any of those are successes!!! Smile, breathe, relax. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

A few thoughts: An AV fistula in the ARM would prbably not be a problem for a tandem. An AV fistula in the LEG might well be a problem due to the potential alteration of blood flow in the leg due to the leg straps. The problem is that alteration in flow can lead to clotting within the fistula... which is why measuring BP with a cuff on an extremity with a working AV fistula is forbidden. The tandem passenger nausea problem that has been attributed to passenger harness/leg strap design would be an example of the sort of alteration in blood flow in the legs that I am referring to. Beyond that, I would want the nephrologist to approve due to the other issues that renal failure patients commonly have such as: Anemia... this is relevant due to going to altitude and the risk of hypoxia. Hypertension/anti-hypertensive drugs... might increase the risk of poor response to hanging in the harness for a while. Altered Calcium metabolisim... which can lead to weak bones. Patients who are undergoing dialysis can be VERY medically complex. Involving the nephrologist in this discussion is VERY PRUDENT. The guidance for physicians on the back of these two British Parachute Assoc forms might help your nephew's nephrologist make an informed judgement. http://www.bpa.org.uk/forms/docs/form%20114%20-%20declaration%20of%20fitness[2].pdf http://www.bpa.org.uk/forms/docs/form%20115%20-%20tandem%20student%20declaration[4].pdf I hope that your nephew can work this out and jump ... safely! The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

Reflex had a dual reserve pilot chute arrangement called the "catapult". It was controversial. As I understand it, the idea was that if the pilot chute at the end of the bridle became entangled, the pilot chute near the free bag might deploy the reserve. As I understand it at least one person was saved by that feature, and one killed by it. Apparently, adding the second PC added a new failure mode... One PC on each side of the jumper with the bridle running between them under the jumper... Resulting in neither PC deploying the reserve. I seem to remember being told that the manufacturer allowed the second PC to be removed if the owner desired. All of the above is my recollection of what I have been told by riggers who I trust... I have no other sources to point you to. The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!