Chubba

I tried to fly (and more importantly flare, at height obviously) my canopy with 1 arm because I was curious and it always comes up as a topic. Extremely hard The bad thing is you're at the mercy of the wind, it's all good getting both toggles in 1 hand, but on your final you will be probably blown crosswind/downwind and you can't correct it without dropping a toggle... and I definitely wouldn't want to land downwind with no flare.

Chances are you will be on radio for your canopy flight. You will be given a student canopy, trained on canopy flight, plus you get to witness plenty of jumpers landing throughout the day. I did traditional AFF my first jump and loved it.

Yeah it's not much money, but it's easily enough to cover rent/food/travel, I did it for 2 full years out on my own. Then skydiving ruined it No seriously, I would still be unemployed living the chill student life if I didn't do that AFF1 on a whim after having a win at the casino. My first rig is arriving TODAY! though, w00t Infinity/Sabre2 170/PDR 160/Cypres2, can't buy that on government welfare unfortunately. All the fun things in life are free,I have never needed any money, damn skydiving

Yeah that's bollocks, the American college system is harsh. In Australia, University costs me $6000 a year, the government pays the rest. The $6000 goes on "HECS", a government lifetime interest free loan. Repayments aren't required until you graduate and earn a full time wage, did I mention no interest EVER. Also the government pays $200-250 a week to study at university, so not only can you attend university for zero costs up front, they actually pay you to study so you don't have to struggle working a crappy part time job to feed and shelter yourself while trying to get ahead in the world. I honestly feel sorry for people that don't do tertiary study purely because of financial costs.

Why would you think I don't get "laid"? I may spend an abnormal amount of time playing games but I'm still young, very healthy and go to university. Even people with shit social skills meet other rejects

What games? I've been a hardcore gamer for the past 10+ years, at the moment I still sink 60 - 80 hours a week into Team Fortress 2 (see pic). It's unhealthy, good move getting away from it, I got terrible social skills. I like skydiving though

My first piece of gear was my Alti-track, it was awesome checking out my freefall speeds/freefall time and where I'm deploying, plus everyone needs an alti

My AFF 5 involved 2 x 360 turns + docking which I did reasonably quick. The plan given was after I completed the tasks, just relax, have a geek at eachother and keep track of my altitude. I decided to rip a few quick 360's... he thought I was spinning... came in and did a tackle. He wasn't happy with that

I get weird stuff like that too. I was flying a Velocity that couldn't have been more then 30ft around my house! On the backrisers! Gliding around through the hallways, when I would get near the floor I would flare and pop back up and soar around some more. Made no sense at all.

How does that grey look in real life? The whole top row of Set 4 look awesome if the grey turns out good.

Just a thought. If you have the wallet to prepay brand new custom gear, you have the money to get exactly what you want in "new" used gear. My first rig is arriving in 4 days. Infinity container (18 jumps) Sabre2 170 (48 jumps) PD Reserve (0 jumps) Cypres2 (6 months old) If you have the money, you can get EXACTLY what you want... the exact canopy, the exact size, a top quality container, 0 jump reserve and a new/near new AAD. The only thing you will miss out on is the colours (hey they might be good anyway) and the harness sizing (you can resized if it's really bad). The bonus is you get to jump it now... I'm with you, I never wanted to jump an old used rig, I didn't want to buy a less then ideal canopy or a different size then I desired... so I paid top dollar (but still considerably less then new) to get exactly what I want with low jump numbers. Something to think about. Go jump... get to know your gear.

The fear for me went away VERY quick, don't worry about that. By jump 5 it started getting easier, by jump 10 I had zero anxiety, by jump 20 I would be itching to get out the door into the air. I had terrible door fear through AFF, but now I love climbing out and hanging off the strut enjoying the prop blast. Now the fear is starting to come back, buta healthy fear of REAL danger... not some sickening anxiety for no reason. Start your training asap, go sign up for AFF

Have you tried a 210 Sabre? I've jumped both the Spectre and Sabre in the mentioned sizes (although loaded WAY lower) and I found a drastic difference between the 7-cell and 9-cell. Landings were so much more fun on the Sabre, even loaded at 1.0 and a conservative flare you can surf them out.

I have a large amount of low pull dreams (I'm talking 100ft). I absolutely slam into the ground with a snivelly canopy, I'm always unhurt... and the CI/DZO usually comes up to me angry and gives me an earfull. Then I walk back to the hangar and everyone stands around going "you should try to pull higher next time". When I first started I would have some crazy dreams doing BASE and freeflying at the same time, they were quite interesting.

I wasn't giving him advice, it's not my place. Just as it's not yours, he's not your student, he should be talking to his instructors. The only advice I gave him was talking to his instructors, 25 jumps or not it's the right thing to do, now you got a bloke talking to a bunch of strangers on the net filling his head with contradicting ideas. Go talk to your instructors. This thread has reiterated that indeed I'm not allowed to comment on anything bar the occasional bonfire thread till I got 1000's of jumps I'm out.

Relax a bit, skydiving is supposed to be fun Like people have said, some dropzones/AFFI's allow passes for a no pull on stage 1. DZ.com is a very dynamic forum and it's best to talk to your instructors before you do something hasty like demand new AFFI's or change DZ's. I've seen no pulls on AFF1 walk away very happy and come back for a killer AFF2... it seems like this post has just killed your confidence and been counterproductive. Talk to your instructors!

Welcome to DZ.com If you enjoyed your first tandem that much, don't have any second thoughts and go sign up for AFF, it will blow you away The first jump is always a blur, after you get over the sensory overload everything slows down a lot... freefall is quite long and you will be able to relax and remember it. It's very nice

I got one from Saturday. Landed ~30ft from the hangar on a 25 knot wind day attempting to get my last landing requirement for my A license. Got hit by turbulence, my flare provided ZERO lift at all and to top it off I lifted my legs up and landed on my ass instead of PLFing... lucky I'm not in a wheelchair, my body is still very beat up but no injuries and I'll be jumping again this weekend. The CI/DZO ripped me a new one after that landing Wide open spaces from now on for me.

Hopefully that day never comes. I start getting worried around 5k visually so I think I would be alright... by the time 3k comes the ground is moving quite fast.

Well done Every skydive is a learning experience, don't let your toggles back up, you don't want to break yourself so early in your jumping career. Radio's fail, mine failed on my AFF2, make sure you're fully confident to fly by yourself. I had the same situation on my AFF4. My rig caught the door on exit, started off terrible. I span like a rocket when I looked at my altimeter. I dislocated my shoulder on deployment (turning + spanker opening). He said I did good and passed me... AFF5 was one of the best skydives I did. Trust your instructor.

I typically cover these points. Type: 2-way, tracking, (attempted) freefly etc... then I add in either "solo" or the peoples names I'm with Exit: Dive exit, poised exit, linked exit... whatever I can write. I also write how the exit went, whether it tumbled or the linked exit screwed up etc. Dive: I typically cover everything I can in the dive in as much detail as possible. How many points, where we stuffed up, anything particularly good we did, I also record breakoff altitude. Deployment: I record whether it was soft, hard, snivelly linetwists, onheading... I got an altitrack so I record my saddle height too. Landing: Hard/soft landing, turbulence, I try to comment on my pattern or what I typically did (flying my pattern on rears or in deep brakes). Whether I PLFed or not, whatever I can think of. One additional thing I do is add in special comments if I'm on a special load. On saturday I got to be on the same load with my AFFI that trained me. He was doing a flag jump with a tandem rig and MASSIVE (must have been 30 x 60ft) Australian flag, so I was under canopy watching him fly around... when I look back I will enjoy reading it, even though it didn't directly influence my jump. I got a few jumps in the 182 next to naked 100th jumpers so I typically right that in also. It's a small dropzone, we're all good friends, when (if ) I'm old and senial it might bring back memories.

This has been driving me nuts! I keep reading about experienced canopy pilots being able to swoop very large (student?) canopies in various threads... a lot of people talk about videos of these swoops. Where are they? Who has the videos? I haven't been able to find them. There's no substance to this thread, I'm just genuinely interested.

Give Cookie a break, they make excellent products. I agree, and the sticker even states that they offer NO protection at all. That being said, I bought a Cookie Rok helmet and I believe it will definitely offer protection against knocking your head on exit / knocks in freefall... little shakeups. If you have any sort of "crash" impact, the thing is going to split straight open. Absolutely orgasmic in terms of comfort.

Talk about getting onto a smaller canopy. I had similar problems (150lbs) on high wind days with the 240+ canopies. Once I setup my final @ 900ft, DIRECTLY above the treeline / 30ft from the target. Still landed in front of the target In 900ft of decent I barely moved foward 5 - 10ft and nearly landed in tree's.

So do it all? Go freefly, nothing is stopping you... get a safe rig, do a solo and start playing around on your back... tada freeflying. Do your 200/250 jumps then learn wingsuits from a instructor... till then grab a tracking suit and start flying. Base jumping, go find a willing mentor or attend Bridge Day after 100 jumps or something similar. Swooping, do the steady canopy progression like everyone else. *insert thread with sub 100ft velocity/2.0 wingloading @ 300 jumps* Ground launching, same as above. Same... I could die right now and be happy with my life. I couldn't handle not being able to walk though