faulknerwn

Sometimes they have to go to Germany - that's what takes a long time. Have had a couple over the years have to go there for repairs, and it takes a while. Had one recently here with that issue that wasn't back at 5 weeks...

I'm 5'1 (headed towards 5'0 as I get older).. Not too much taller than you. Have a couple people my height at the dz..

But you probably live near a tunnel.. Here in Texas, we'd have to fly to Arizona, Orlando, Denver, North Carolina, or California. There's isn't a tunnel within 12 hours driving distance... If I was teaching at Perris or Eloy, heck yeah I would recommend students hit a tunnel. I recommend it if people are traveling near one. I'd be hard pressed to recommend a student fly across country before they could do a level 1..

Being just near Austin, I tell all my students that its Austin's area code below 10k (512) Works well in this area :-)

I truly suspect that anyone hard core enough to be putting their brakes on their main lift web wouldn't be using a bag on their canopy :-) Its a very rare competitor who uses a dbag..

I teach all of my students to look out of the plane and then guess what their altimeter says on the way up. Its a great way to train your eyeballs.. Who would you rather have flying your plane - the old time pilot who successfully landed a jet with no engines in the Hudson River, or the Air France pilot who pulled up and stalled the plane when his instruments started giving erroneous readings? I'll take the old-timer any day..

I have landed a Triathlon 120 on rears.. I was dumb and had dropped my toggles as I prepared to do a flour accuracy drop.. (I lost miserably :-) When I went to reach back up to grab them, one of the toggles had flipped through itself and locked in place.. If this had been 2 grand, no problem. But I was now at 600 feet headed the wrong direction.. I just grabbed my rears, turned around and landed softly into the wind.. It was quite simple. I admittedly have a lot of CRW jumps though so I'm very aware of where the stall point is on rears..

A jumper bought out some old Parachutists today. Was reading them while watching the winds blow.. Check out the 2 sections below - both from Parachutists printed in 1992..

No kidding! Winds have been crazy this spring. But hopefully summer is almost here and the winds usually drop to 0 as the temperature rises to 110 :-)

The standard CRW joke is that if you need to use a hook knife, pull out your first one and throw it away because you were gonna drop it anyway. Then pull out your second and get to work ;)

I'm HORRIFIED that a jumper could see a fellow jumper in distress and continue on with the skydive with no concern for their friend. I'm not going to reiterate the reasons that everyone else did - obviously you couldn't pull for him but you could follow him down in case he ended up in trouble - but the fact that you saw it and blew it off just is horrifying to me. Have jumpers really gotten so selfish that they'll let a buddy get hurt/land off and not pay attention because it will screw up their $25 skydive?

Or you can just buy a drag mat - put the rig on that so that you're dragging the mat not the rig across the floor.

I've got a Reflex with the logo on it but have no idea who made it!

Generally with that much wind, 1/2 to 3/4 brakes should have you pretty much going straight down. Once your canopy matches the wind speed, you don't have to go down any farther unless you need to back up. On my 1.3ish loaded canopies, I can go backwards in deep brakes in a 15-20 mph wind. Straight down is easy. You will get a better flare if you release brakes, but it depends on where you are going to land. If you don't have room to drive forward without hitting an obstacle, flare from the braked position. If you have room, let back up at least 50 feet off the deck.

Something I was thinking about doing is writing a daily/weekly or something "article" about some aspect of canopy flight safety and emailing them out to our dz email list.. Then it occurred to me that lots of dropzones could benefit from this - it might get information out to people who don't jump regularly or who can't/don't/won't go to a canopy class but may read an email.. We could have multiple authors. Possible topics Canopy Separation starts from exit What to do if you're too high on final How to fix a pattern that's off Look before you turn Bad spot - now what? Why no swooping in the main area - yes that means you Lots more that I'm not thinking of.. We have so much knowledge in the community - if we just get people to write just 1 article and get it out there to people and get it out to people who can send it out to dz mailing lists it could get mass reading.. And education is an important step..

Here's an example - a few years ago we had several tandems on the load and I was doing video of the first one. Someone under a much more radical canopy than I was videoing a later one. I never spiral, and I always have a goal of letting swoopers land first. I do NOT want to land before them. In this case, I think my tandem pulled a little lower, and they were holding brakes to make it back from a long spot. I was watching them - I was doing a standard right hand pattern into the middle of the main landing area. (Swoopers are not allowed to land there now but could back then.) When I turned onto final, the other jumper was on the other side of the landing area, probably 500 feet above me. I knew he was gonna do a 270, but I hadn't the faintest clue where he was going to end up or where I should steer to avoid him. He ended up whizzing by about 10 feet away from me literally as I took my first step. It was close.. In my case, I saw him, knew he was there, but he was above me, and though I knew he was going to do a 270, I had not a clue where I should fly to avoid him. All I knew was that he was going to do a radical turn and land somewhere.. It sucked. I have never felt more vulnerable under canopy than then..

My favorite was when I sent several canopies to a friend of mine in Australia. He wasn't in a hurry for them so I sent them "slow/cheap" USPS. He never said anything so I assumed they got there. 4-5 months later I had a note in my mailbox saying I had a package for which I owed like $50 in delivery charges. I was very confused until I saw the box in the post office.. Apparently it had arrived in Australia, got there during a week when he was out of town on vacation, and since he didn't pick it up within a week they shipped it back - all by boat! Luckily he came back to the US for a CRW event shortly thereafter and I just hand-delivered them :-)

But a pants suit? I don't own anything like that. Nor dresses... What I described is the fanciest clothes I own :-)

I don't currently own anything that would fit that dress code! I own some nice looking black jeans (can pass for slacks) and a short sleeve polo shirt and a few sweaters but I don't own any business suits or dresses. For people where money is tight having to go out and buy nice clothing can be prohibitive...

99.9% of people getting knocked out could have been avoided by better choices on the ground. At one point I had an AAD, then had to jump without it for a while. I found myself suddenly second-guessing jumps I would have gone on without thinking twice before. If there is a jump that you don't feel comfortable going on without an AAD - don't do it with one. Simple as that. Your subconscious is telling you that there's something wrong here..

Yep. We can give you the A license card when you're here. Once you get off AFF, you can jump solo or with a coach. You're going to need to do coach jumps to get signed off on a handful of the stuff on the A license proficiency card. The earliest you can get an A license is 25 jumps. Most people if they're working on the card consistently can get their license in 25 jumps. Some do require more (often the accuracy requirements). Its good to find a weekend with good weather and just come down and camp out for the weekend.. Get a bunch of jumps in at once.. Wendy

These days I load my PD 150 out the door about 1.1. So its not that lightly loaded!

What's your wing-loading? F111 is not bad stuff as long as its not worn out or heavily wing-loaded. I jumped my old PD 150 today and loved it - it just flies itself home and practically flares itself.. :-) Generally you'll want to flare F111 a bit higher than ZP. And if it only has 70 jumps on it it is far from worn out.. A lot of modern skydivers who grew up in the ZP era will bad-mouth F111 for no reason.. Keep jumping it - if you start having problems landing it, consider getting something else. If you figure it out and are getting nice landings, save your money for jumps.. I have a ton of rigs, canopy sizes varying from 99-150 - and on no-wind days I prefer my old F111 PD 150 because it lands so soft with no effort..

And lived? Too many people have been killed or severely injured over the years from low downplanes. Break em high..

It took me 48 jumps to get off of student status! I have over 7000 jumps now with multiple ratings and multiple world records.. Glad my instructors didn't give up on me!