andm31

Hi guys and gals! I'm really starting to think that a beginners guide of some sort is needed for all those strange and odd things you need to know about this sport (this is btw a post on silly things you can do that aren't dangerous so feel free to post any reply keeping with the feeling of this post). So I needed to buy some rubberbands for my newly bought first rig (tube stows or whatever they are called in English) so I went to the online skydiving store and looked up rubber bands... it turns out they are sold by weight and then I just realized that I have absolutely no clue of how much a rubber band weighs! Googled it without any answers popping up so I tried to figure out a reasonable weight to buy, came up with 0,5kg (about 1,1 lbs) so I ordered it and got it in the mail today... man I got five rather big bags of rubberbands!!! It would take me a couple of years to use all of those things!!! (and I know they'll go old long before that) So I guess I'll sell them off to other skydivers but man I just found another thing they didn't teach me!!! Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

The landings are really cool even coming from a student Navigator 260 Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Man that sucks! How long until you can get back to jumping? Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Ah, that's one of my long standing passions... or long but I've played for the last six years or so, it's great and I love doing it but my focus kind of shifts between my different hobbies, sometimes I photograph like crazy and then I play guitar for a while and cook or whatever but the one hobby that's always stuck with me is flighgtsimmin which is so cool (and so nerdy) Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

I'm really excited and happy with it even though it was a lot of money... but then again, I've spent more on cameras the last few years and none of them have the real potential och saving my life from certain death Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

I paid about 3800 usd and it has about 500 jumps on it (not sure if that's pricey or not). The problem with rigs over here is that the SFF (swedish version of uspa) had a thing called "the new deal" were they put a lot of new jumpers through AFF which was great, except for the prices on used gear that is about right for a new jumpers, so prices has gone up quite a bit. Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

So I finally got the rig I bought from a skydiving buddy. Had the reserve repacked as it had expired (got to jump it like four times the last day before it expired) and I went down to the same dropzone where the rigger hangs out and she repacked it :) Made a total of ten jumps and it was awsome!!! (to quote Stump) It's a PD Silhouette 190, a PD 160 reserve, a Javelin container and a Cypres AAD. http://www.anderssamuelsson.se/bilder/rigg1.jpg http://www.anderssamuelsson.se/bilder/rigg2.jpg http://www.anderssamuelsson.se/bilder/rigg3.jpg http://www.anderssamuelsson.se/bilder/trunk.jpg (had to buy a big trunk to keep all the things and rig in) Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Hmm... I don't know his motives for it but to me it seem really stupid. But then again some people will do almost anything to get some attention (I'm basing the attention perspective on the fact that they managed to take a bunch of photoes of it... if he only did it because he wanted and purely for the adrenaline kick he wouldn't need any photoes right!?!) Ah, well... some people are born to push the envelope... some just overdo it... edit: I didn't read the article the first time around... so he's making a video... well... then the motivation is a combination of thrill seeking, fame and money I guess Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Absolutely and that is great but since my field, background and proffession is people (psychology and currently working as a family counselor) I'm not that convinced that it works by just telling people that the radio is a bonus and that batteries fail and that sort of thing because most people don't think about things in that way. For instance, we know that people always somehow evaluate the odds of something happening (like the radio dying, or the car breaking down, or ending up in some sort of accident) the problem is that we are pretty much worthless at doing it... why would otherwise people speed down the highway? Ride horses? Swoop or whatever, we underestimate things where the danger isn't that clear. (yeah I know swooping is a bad example as it, at least to me, seems awfully dangerous)

First off I'm a complete newbie and I didn't have any radio during my first jumps. During the ground training phase we spent a lot of time going over landings, landing patterns, practiced walking around (looking pretty stupid I might add

Yeah, I think most of us have done that a couple of times

Congrats!!!

Another weekend gone by over here. Me and a jumping buddy went down to skydiveskane.se and jumped the entire weekend, Saturday was rellay cold (around freezing) but no clouds. They didn't really get the whole thing running very fast so I only gotto make three jumps. Today was better with the temp up to around 10 degrees Celsius and they got that de Havilland Beaver (turbine) running all day so I got to do seven jumps (a new record for me... man my fingers are sore from packing those parachutes!!! remember I'm just a newbie :) ) So ten jumps in total was pretty cool, some nice jumps with other a couple of really good landings, a lot of freefall time (over ten minutes) and a lot of laughs! :) Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

That's cool... but how do you tell an experience skydiver that he/she will have a malfunction within the next ten jumps? Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Here's my opinion as a jumper pretty fresh out of training. I took a static line course (the only kind we have at our dz) and I can see some pros and cons with it. One problem is that it takes a lot of time, to get your license, here in Sweden you need to pass 24 different jumps, six to get of the static line for instance. Something that takes more time mean that more people are hesitant to put that time in and you loose som jumpers that might have passed the course if it had been faster. One guy at another dz told me he had switched (on the recomendation of his instructor) from SL to AFF as he couldn't get stable as he jumped of the plane, kept tumbling, with AFF he was able to become and stay stable. Me myself I never had a tumbling problem and was pretty much stable from the start. I do however not regret going through all those jumps (took some 37 jumps to pass the course) because at the end of the day I got to fly and land the canopy 37 times and that was really good practice. I'm not scared about doing hop n pops at all, whereas a lot of the AFF people are really scared about jumping low, and I still got to do the high altitude jumps so I'm not scared of those either. I think, doing SL courses lets you build up your confidence in a completely different way, but I do understand that a lot of instructors and jumpers like AFF better, but quality wise I feel SL courses are better when it comes to what the student can manage after completing the course. Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

That would be so cool! :) Also if any of the jumpers with high number of jumps would like to do the same it would be cool to compare to us newbies :) (btw I have 16 numbers after training so I have 53 in total... over here in sweden we start over at 0 when we get our A license so I am really a A license holder and not a student ) Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

I thought that too, but then it seems just like a missreading, it's a heart rate of 230 which is way high (I'm in no way that fit ). We use a Cessna 182 and getting in is that much of a hazzle... Do anyone else know of any studies of heart rates and skydiving? I know some have been done but I don't know how to find those. Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Hi a fellow jumper asked me last saturday if I could wear one of those heart rate watches (or whatever htey are called) and then a tandem pax did the same, the comparison is kind of cool, guess he was much mor nervous during the ride to altitude than I was?

Oh maybe I should clarify that this was the only example I thought of when writing, danger can be introduced in all parts of skydiving I guess

Good advice! I'll certainly do that! Over her it's called the SBF aka "the bible" Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Hi guys and gals! Just wanted to introduce myself here.

Oh, sorry pressed the wrong reply button :) Absolutely, i'm not in disagreement with you there, just wanted to make a point that at the end of the day we're all humans and as such makes bad calls and mistakes. No absolutely not, in fact I did it yesterday, but that was because yellow cross we use had been shaped into a T and they hadn't noticed that the wind had kicked up and shifted... interesting landing :) but we all walked away from it with a laugh (and some grass stains on our behinds) I think in the example I gave the guy got grounded because the woman in charge on the ground (not sure what the English title would be for her position) had a serious talk to him about the importance of landing the same way when you have ten jumpers in the air and then he did it again. Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

The fact that you can't see the reason for this is part of the reason it's there. In South Africa, you need a PRO rating to jump a balloon... because... You can't steer a balloon. So when you get out at 6000ft (or whatever) and you're over a forrest, or a mountain, or a village, or a freeway etc.. you have the skill to deal with those situations. Your alti is set to where you took off, not where you are. If you can't judge the difference, you're in a bit of trouble. t Ah, good i do understand it now! But I just want to clarify that I did not in anyway doubt that there is a good reason for it being that way, my point was that as a newbie I don't know the reason behind the rule. :) Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

Hey! Cool and congratulations Max! Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se

To answer the question: Yes I think minimums should apply to me and reasonably to all others to, mostly because I jump with them and don't want some idiot crashing into me because he decided that wing suits are cool way before he knew how to handle them! As a newbie (which I am and will be for a long time and maybe even forever, you know the more I learn the less I know I know thing) I feel that minimums are there to protect us from doing stupid things, I do stupid things sometimes, I make mistakes even though I really try not to... and so do all of you others too. I wish I had the experience to know in which circumstances not to jump but that won't always be true... I ask my fellow skydivers to check my gear before I go on a jump, not because I feel uncomfortable with the way I checked it but because I just figure four eyes are better than two! (I'm going to try my best not to kick that habit). In the end I'm only human, I can get stressed out, I make mistakes... even though some of the minimums over here in Sweden are a bit odd... why do you need 200 jumps to jump off a hot air balloon? I don't know but I guess it's set to that number of jumps for a reason other than just to piss off jumpers! I trust the people with more know-how to make better decisions than I'm able to. With that said I went to another dz than my home one, talked to a danish instructor that was visiting the same dz, he had a bit over 400 jumps and seemed to be a nice guy... later that day he got grounded for landing downwind twice in a row... I saw the second one, he just barely avoided slamming into the hangar... scarry. My point is that even people how seem to be experienced aren't always that, I mean you could be experienced at doing stupid things too. And even the guys with thousands of jumps have bad days right! So conservatively set minimums I feel is the way to go. (but I do recognise the fact that reality is much more complexed) Blue skies! Anders Samuelsson www.anderssamuelsson.se