LawnDart21

Maybe that's the answer. I'm not paranoid, they really are out to get me..... In all seriousness, I've read threads over the last few years where it has been openly stated incidents are withheld from this board due to the rampant speculation that is always generated. Your right, if someone goes in, inevitably it will find its way here due to the media and our small community, but there are also injurious incidents that occur that may really offer educational value to others that are not posted on this board. I would wager that alot if not most people on this board know of atleast one major injurious incident that has occured during their time in the sport that did not get posted on this board). Thats all I'm really saying, I mean lets say there are 5 hook turn injuries all on the same type canopy, but only 2 incidents get reported. 2 incidents on the same canopy = coincidence. But if all 5 got posted, now we have uncovered a potential canopy issue. We all benefit. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Still waiting for something witty.......... -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Yes, it appears my hipocracy knows no bounds.... This isn't an injury or a fatality thread, and none of what I have suggested is outlandish speculation. It has been said many times by many people on this board that they in fact will not post about incidents due to the ridiculous amount of speculation that occurs. That is fact, not speculation. Do you not have anything beneficial to contribute to this thread? Or are you resigned to just making witty commentary for the sake of your own amusement? -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

And the fact that it will be picked apart beyond the absurd and ridiculously speculated upon is why alot of incidents that occur are not brought forward in a thread to learn from. This board (in the incidents forum) has created a whole breed of unqualified arm chair quarter backs that pontificate at nauseum about what "they think" happened. That keeps people from posting incidents on this board and that keeps information away from this board, plain and simple. And people will continue to not post incidents on here as long as the gossip queens keep that speculation machine rolling. Wouldn't you rather have more people willing to post threads about incidents that they otherwise would not have due to all this useless speculation, so as to learn from, rather than hve less threads with more speculations? You end the useless specultaions, you'll see less incidents withheld from here, and we will all learn more and be safer. But no, it wont happen, because just as everyone has an opinion, too many people feel they need to share theirs in an incident thread, much to the detriment of the thread. Skydiving is supposed to be a family thing. We look out for our own. And yes, while tough love is needed at times, there is a difference between being honest and direct for the sake of safety, versus what goes on in the incidents forum, arm chair quarterbacks tearing apart every fiber of a person or an incident so they can apparently abate their fears as you said. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Low # of jumps + low altitude + extraordinary skydive = recipe for potential incident. Glad your okay. Tom -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Yes, that's fair to say. But I am also concerned with situations like this example: Poster 1: "Freefall collision injured 2 today, not many fact available, I will post the facts as they are uncovered." Posters 2-102:"Did they hit a bird? I've heard thats possible." "Were they newbies? Newbies get into alot of collisions" "Where was the spot? No one knows how to spot any more" "They must have been doing a skydive above their skill level. People are always jumping above thier skill level" "What plane did they exit from? I've heard xyz plane has a high rate of jumpers colliding in freefall" "This one time when I got into a collision in freefall it was caused by a low tim jumper crashing the formation, I bet thats what happened." and so on and so on and so on and so on............ It ends up being decided (speculated) that an uncurrent low timer must have exited a Grand Caravan from a very bad spot and was wearing a green jump suit with no helmet, and that the jumper crashed into the other jumper at a high rate of speed due to low time jumpers over zealous closing speeds on other jumpers. Then an hour or a week later, when the real facts come in, the true story is simply: "RW flier accidently kicked in head practicing 360s with fellow teammate." This type of thing happens all the time as is illustrated by the often asked and just as often ignored request "Please stop speculating, facts will be given once we have them". -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Yup, but what's uncovered is done so by the facts. Not the wild speculation. Yes, but my point is that it is possible to reach the truth without being unneccessarily brutal. I'm all for fact and truth, what I'm not communicating effectively is that alot of threads go way beyond useful. Some people will continue to speculate on and on and on, about the most peripheral of possibilities, and I wish they would give more thought to what they are posting and why. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

It's not my reading it that is the issue (the arbitrary, uninvolved outsider). Ask yourself how you would feel if someone you knew and cared very much about was overzealously speculated about and scrutinized, post mortem or laid up in a hospital, about everything about them from A to Z, when (here's the important part......) nothing beneficial to our collective greater safety came of it. Your right, I can read a thread, see a ridiculous speculation and simply choose not to read it, my day goes on. But consider the party with a substancial interest in the person involved, getting to read about all the possibities of the things that could have gone wrong, and all the mistakes that "might have been made". If a decisive conclusion could be reached in the end, so be it, it served a better common good, but that decisive conclusion is rarely, if ever reached. Its the friends and family of the injured/deceased that deserve that forethought on posts. They don't have a choice to not read it. Instead friends and relatives get to read wild speculation from arm chair quarterbacks. Put it this way, I challenge anyone that posts speculations in the Incident forums to ask themselves this one simple question before they post their speculation: Would you say what your saying on this board to the friends and family of the person involved, to their face? If you would, fine, go for it, post away. But go back and read some of the recent threads and the wild speculations that have been posted, and ask yourself honestly, would you say that to the friends and family in person? Given some of the things speculated/posted, I'd be appaulled if the answer to some of the speculations was "yes". Lastly, I do not expect this thread to stop or even slow the overflow of speculation that exists on incident threads. My only hope is that people will atleast stop and give pause to their conscience, and think about the friends and family reading it as well, and the effect it can have on them, before they feel the need to post what random unlikely possibility "could have been the cause" of such incidents. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

I understand your point, but I ask you to show me where one of these (hurtful to the person or thier family) speculations uncovered some new truth that made us all safer. That it uncovered somthing we didnt already know? I ask becuase in your scenario, people are being hurtful in speculation, and I say its without producing any new safety benefit to our community, and I find that very disrespectful. Thats the truth of it as I see it. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

My comments aren't aimed at any one thread in particular, this is more of a general observation about a recurring theme that I have observed on Incident threads and what they seem to evolve to. Observation #1: Most incidents that occur, injurious or fatal, are not "new" incidents, typically they are carbon copy mistakes or series of events of other incidents. IE, other than perhaps determining a frequency of the occurance, there is rarely ever any great informational breakthrough derived from page upon page of speculation after the inital facts are uncovered. Observation #2, unanswerable questions are just that, questions that cannot be answered. Continuing to go in circles speculating about causes that will never be confirmed, I find tiresome to the thread, and disrespectful to the injured/deceased and thier family. I think the term "grasping at thin air" is a good way to describe the tireless speculation that some on this board are dedicated to. That's it really, I'm just tired of the endless speculation some people seem capable of and intent on continuing in the incident forum. I think it is disrepectful to the friends and family of the injured or deceased subject of the thread and I wish people would put more thought into why they are posting and what it is that they post. In a perfect world, Incident threads would be not much more than a form: 1) Here is what happened 2) Here are the quantifable (not speculated) facts about the jumper and the gear 3) Specific recommendations (following say, the BSR recommendations) Thats would be it.....form posted and locked up. Maybe filter all incidents through the mods? You want to add frequency of incident to infer a trend? Fine, one more line on the form. Despite my perceptions above, I am not for censoring persay, as I believe any exchange where information can be gathered to increase our safety is a positive, but after reading multiple threads that include tireless speculation over and over again, it really makes me question whether or not some people simply need to post for the sake of posting. Here's an example: It's already genuinely accepted that skydiving drunk is a very bad idea. An incident then occurs lets say, where a drunk jumper hooks it in and breaks a leg. Simple, right? The thread should describe what happened on the jump including the fact the jumper was drunk, give jumper details like expeirence level, gear used, etc, and then conclude with the message: Skydiving drunk is a very unsafe thing to do. That short, to the point. You want to say DZ "XYZ" has had 2 alcohol related injuries (if you need frequency). Okay include that too. 4 lines and the whole thing is wrapped up, learning tool derived. Now in the real world, if this incident occurs, there will be a thread that will have page after page of speculation about how much the person drank, what they were drinking, someone will inevitably want to know why they were drinking, etc, etc. Another person will inevitabely offer thier own expeirence of someone they knew that jumped drunk. Someone else will add how long it takes for alcohol to leave the body and produce a flow chart, someone else will inevitably diagree with the flow chart and post another version of oxidizing alcohol in the body, etc, ect. Soon enough, thiere will be 5 pages of speculation. "Did the jumpers friends know?" "Yes!" says one, "No!" says another, and around and around we go. "What color socks was the jumper wearing?" "Did they eat anything while they were drinking? You know food absorbs alcohol".......and so on and so on, all of which does nothing to change the fact 1) it happened, 2) the clear reasons for it happening already have been uncovered, and 3) the "lesson learned" was not derived from all the speculation, it was rerived from the begining facts and most likely already well known, like "don't jump drunk". You dont need 5 pages of speculation to reach a conclusion that you already knew. Thanks for reading my vent. Tom -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Giving you clear/consise examples of where the real breaddown occured in your low pull makes me an idiot? Hmm, I can't wait to see what your posting on here when you have 100 jumps. You made a mistake, sure, but your a student, your supposed to make mistakes and coaches (and other rating holders) are supposed to catch the mistakes, not contribute to them. If you read back over all my posts in this thread (a waste of my time apparently) they have all been nonjudgemental and to the point. Your just so gungho on taking responisibility, yet you dont even understand what your trying to take responsibility for. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Your low pull was a direct result of your coach/dzo placing you in an overwhelming skydive, very much to the point of the thread I would think. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

You were not a licensed fun jumper on that jump, you were a student, a student of that dropzone. The DZO and the coach that put you on that jump were responsible to ensure the appropriateness of the jump you were making using thier gear. Then he brought you into his (or her) skydive, and irregardless of how inappropriate a 4 way may or may not be to do with a student, your coach assumed responsibility for your safety by placing you on that jump, to the extent any instructor can be, ie, knowing the gear you are using and making sure the jump wasnt beyond your abilities to perform safely. Once you get your A License, yes, I would agree with you. You can blame yourself all you want once your licensed. As a student, your instructors share the responisbility for your well being. To catch the mistakes you don't even know your making, like this one. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

I can't see any coach knowingly letting a student do a 4 way with new gear. Which would lead me to think: 1) The coach didn't know the gear his (or her) student was jumping on the jump. HUGE PROBLEM IMHO. or 2) The coach did know and didn't think it was a big deal to let an unlicensed student jump new gear and go on thier 1st 4-way. Another HUGE PROBLEM IMHO. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

AAfter reading this thread, I'm kind of surprised at the fact that a coach would allow a student to do anything other than a solo with a new rig on? Maybe I am being overly conservative? But I think it down right foolish to give a student a new piece of gear to use and then put them on a 4 way on the same jump. The issue you described in not being able to find your PC handle right away is, well not an uncommon experience for some students on new gear. The fact that your coach didn't recognize the need to have you do a solo first to feel out the gear really baffles me. Another point, was anyone supervising this coach/jump on the ground? (Not that its required, persay). I work on a busy DZ, tandems and AFF all day, yet our DZO always seems to know what each student is doing and what their jumping. No way that jump would have occured on our DZ. Anyways, I'm just curious what other people think about new gear and a 4 way on the same student jump. Inappropriate or am I being too conservative? Edit to add: if the response is that the coach didnt know you had new gear, then that is big problem. Your coach should know exactly what gear your jumping, including size of main and reserve canopies on every jump, otherwise they are not doing thier job. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Does anyone else find this question ridiculous and serving no collective good? -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Yeah, just wait until you have all these Canadians crashing on your couch when they come to use the tunnel. Your condo will be filled with toques, back bacon sandwiches and 2-4s of Molson........ Hope you like watching hockey, eh? -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

How did he take the request? -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

2 Points: 1) I would NEVER trust an AAD with the job of cutting me away from my main, EVER. There is a point of simply giving up too much control, and that crossess the line. What happens when someone on a cell phone near the landing area causes the 3 ring aad to fire at 100ft? Build it and it WILL happen. (maybe not by a cell phone, but it will happen). 2) While your at it, why not create an AAD that opens the main too? You want to remove human error from all aspects of emergency procedures, why not build an AAD for the main too? You could even buld a packing machine for mains, so that main malfunctions will never happen. Your quest for creating a better back up in aads, while an admirable intent, is missing an essential component of skydiving: WE ARE RESPONSIBLE TO SAVE OUR OWN LIVES. We are responsible to open our mains. We are responsible to follow through our EPs if we experience a malfunction We are responsible for performing our EPs at an appropriate altitude to allow our reserve to inflate. No amount of magical AADs will ever change that. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Dave DeWolfe showed our class his "patent pending" line sorting device. It was/is pure genius. To look at it, you'd laugh, but it's been a huge asset. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

I'm not arguing that its perfect, I'm saying it works, and pretty well at that from what I've read. What your referring to, swoop cypreses and waterproof cypres 2s, those are evolution of 1) people exceeding the gears limits (in swooping), so it makes sense to alter the limit. No arguement there. Thats progress. People get better (faster) landings, they need/want the gear to catch up. Even the Cyp 2, waterproofed for pond swooping. People get wet at comps, meaning the environment changed for people (swoop ponds), progress would dictate that SSK (or anyone) meets the need of the jumper as the current design limit (getting wet) was exceeded by jumpers in ponds. Cyp 2 is the progressive answer. Thats great, I'm all for that type of progress. But to be clear that is not what Nathaniel is arguing for. He is arguing for the need for an AAD to account for a dumber skydiver, one that would still be in WS flight at 750. He wants a perceived deficiency in the jumper to be made up for by the gear. Cyp 2 and the swoop AAD make up for a deficiency in the gear, not the person, to meet the new demands placed on the gear by jumpers pushing the limits of our current gear. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

You continue to make it sound like cypres misfires are a high frequency event, and they simply are not. When certain conditions are met (speed vs alt) and the units are turned on correctly, they really have a very very high sucess rate. You keep speaking of the current design as though people are having errant cypres failures on a regular basis, which they are not. I don't want to see anyone injured or killed. That said, there comes a point where a line MUST be drawn. Its called "The Bowling Talk". If a person exhibits certain mental deficiencies that preclude they will inevitably make a big hole inthe ground, they are asked to find another hobby. That is a good thing in my opinion. Someone dumb enough to become distracted in freefall on a wingsuit jump and cruise through 750ft should not be skydiving, period. You want to create a device that will prevent the really dumb from getting killed when they do something really dumb. Right? I say there is a better solution. Prevent the really dumb from doing really dumb things that might get them killed. Skydiving is not a right, its a priviledge, and a hard earned one at that. Some people despite the best training and most patient of instructors simply lack the ability to skydive safely. The best solution for those people is simply not to skydive. You want to make better devices so these people can stay in the sport. I couldn't disagree with you more. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

Already answered (my fault for showing up late.....lol) links stay with the reserve. I got a reserve to attach to a container once, with no links, lines were everywhere.........lol -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

I think the reason the wingsuit training works is because, compared to how many HP canopies are sold each year, there are considerably less wingsuits being sold. (that my change over time of course). Wingsuit buys are a smaller group than HP canopy buyers. HP manufacturers do have some criteria for purchase at the moment. If I wanted to buy a VX today, I would need 1000 jumps according to manufacturer recommendations, and while I cant speak for Icarus directly, I know PD will call DZOs, instructors, etc to get a recommendation/assessment of the buyers ability. The problem with that method of course is aftermarket/used canopy sales between jumpers. I think a viable solution for jumping any canopy above a certain wing loading is to require a modified version of the Pro Rating pertaining to HP canopies. Prior to purchase of an HP canopy above a certain wing level (Lets arbitrarily pick say 1.6). The jumper must perform 10 controlled landings within a certain distance of a target. Like a pro rating, the jumps would be predeclared and observed by the S&TA or some other arbitrary/rated person (preventing the jumpers friend from just siging off the landings. Not a perfect solution, but maybe it could work. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.

If your in the US I think its 120 days. -- My other ride is a RESERVE.