pchapman

(Although it sounds like you are at a USPA DZ in Canada, my examples are from the CSPA system.) That question has come up at the DZ I'm at. Novices do want to do solo jumps between coach jumps to practice what they need to demonstrate next, and to do some fun jumps to celebrate their freedom. But it can be hard to have ground supervision of novices' progression by coaches. So some novices go off and just keep fun jumping, taking forever to progress towards their A. It's their choice, but it looks bad for the DZ. Unless the whole DZ mentality changed, it would be hard to force novices into a structured program. Looks like a cash grab to them, stops them from having any fun jumps or practice jumps, which the rules to allow, and require that coaches are readily available, to maintain the program's credibility. So I'm not sure how to give novices some freedom but maintain enough structure so some don't get lost.

Sorry about you getting your own Incidents forum thread! Don't know if you're ready to tell your own tale there yet. Heal up.

I kind of doubt that most experienced jumpers ever practice them. Certainly people do try to roll out landings if they get going a little fast on landing or trip. Better to get the rig dirty than going feet-knees-face. I personally wouldn't practice them on actual landings; I'd rather play around jumping off a picnic table. You do need to be mentally prepared though, think about it enough, for it to accessible in your mental toolbox when you're a split second away from a hard landing. You want your brain to think "Crap... PLF!" not just "Crap!", or "Crap...Stick limbs out!". So having the experience of rolling out minor botched landings probably helps when you need it more seriously. A PLF sure helped me a month back when I had a hard landing; people didn't expect to see me get up. Still, I hadn't twisted quite as much as I wanted in the brief moment I realized I couldn't pull out of the dive, so I wasn't thrown into a full PLF on impact, adding somewhat to the injury. (Nothing broken, back to jumping soon, but lots of bruising, strained tendons, doctor office visits etc.) So much for low spirals with a student canopy; I was glad to get back under my 88 after that.

Was that the Teuge (NL) Vintage weekend? Seems to me it didn't happen the last couple years, at least once due to bad weather. I had missed hearing tales from it. Anything else to report?

As likestojump says, a couple reserve rides are no big deal. Who knows, maybe a reserve with zero rides might sell for a tiny bit more money in some cases as being a little more pristine. (People do indeed proudly announce, "for sale, no rides!" It's not about structural integrity, more just a feeling that it may have gotten a bit of dirt on it, and is just more "used" in a general sense. But generally a reserve ride or three goes with the territory, whatever seems appropriate to the age of the canopy, and isn't a negative when selling.

I don't have any answers, just some thoughts on newbies & the Door Monster. Can you convince yourself that things will turn out OK because you have learned all the necessary steps properly? That the fear is irrelevant and has to be pushed through? Fear can of course be useful in life but here you need to learn to ignore some fear, if you can't find something specific that it is helping warn you about. Similar to someone's prior advice, work on using logic to convince yourself that while it is a little scary, throwing yourself out of a plane and surviving is something that humans can manage due to following certain processes. Keeping your mind busy can help -- it might help if your instructors can be interacting with you more than usual while the door opens (whether for you or others first). You don't want to have time to think about what you are going to do, you want to already be in action, whether that's shouting responses to the instructors' last minute queries, or moving in an organized way with your instructors towards the door. You want to be standing at the edge of the door before you know it, at a point where it really makes no sense to do anything other than your exit count and go skydive.

Taking wraps isn't quite as evil as it can be made out. While it is true that wraps would interfere with chopping, if you do so only at 200' on final that isn't a concern. Someone who knows what they are doing may indeed take wraps if they feel that the control lines are too long for them, whether it is an old F-111 style canopy or something newer. That can help the flare somewhat. (But if there isn't slack in the control lines to begin with, you'd be slowing the canopy down from full flight with a wrap -- counter productive. The way to get around that is to take the wrap shortly before you are about to flare to minimize the speed loss.) One can practice hard flares up high with a single wrap, to see if the canopy will start to stall during the flare (or if held a little longer). The problem with all this is that nobody wants to tell a student a way to make their canopy less safe and get closer to a stall! So, at what stage would one start to dare to suggest someone start using a wrap?? Maybe at a minimum after they have started to practice getting close to a stall up high, when they've already formally learned stall recovery methods. With a big docile canopy one may not really be practicing even an incipient stall without taking a wrap. But then you get into the cutaway issue. You shouldn't need to from a simple stall on a big canopy, but it gets hard to advise any student to do it. So it's almost like you have to get your A license first, because then you're responsible for yourself... Once you get more experience landing you'll get a feel for whether a canopy is just starting to fall back into a stall. Not a problem if you are already touching the ground, maybe a little hard if 12" off the ground, but you don't want to do it higher. On a poor performing canopy without a lot of energy, you may tend to need a sharper, lower flare. One can't just start gradually flaring higher up. So you're now armed with some info on flaring with a wrap... "but you didn't hear it from me and I'll deny everything."

amputee skydiver is what popsjumper is talking about

So on wingsuit big ways they actually try to formate on the rear float who exits first?? The "initial target" doesn't have to be the first off the plane -- in RW, floaters exit before the base, and expect to see that target soon.

So there is or is not an acceptable definition of base in the SCM? I haven't seen anything quoted in this thread, although the implication is that there is no definition. If not, then it isn't of much practical use to say that one document does not equal another document. You appear to imply that if the SCM has a different definition than the SIM, for competition & records in a specific discipline, then that definition will apply to that more specific case. Makes sense to me. But if that definition doesn't exist, wouldn't the general definition provided by the same organization, USPA, apply instead? I'll probably bow out of this argument to let others with more experience debate it all. Plus, I can't even find a wingsuit SCM among all the other disciplines' SCM's on the USPA site...

Much of the argument seems to be around what the "base" is, and whether it has to be explicitly defined, and if not, whether you can make up anything you want contrary to common interpretation of the term. I'm surprised the following hasn't been quoted yet. USPA SIM 2012 Glossary: I think that wingsuit flight still counts as freefall. (Or does someone contest that definition too?) So, can the organizers show that the guy used as the base for the record claim (in the 2nd row?) was the initial target? I suppose people could argue that that covers only the INITIAL target, so that as the formation builds, a new base is selected, allowing the base person for the record application to be somewhere other than at the front. So then it wouldn't be impossible to have a record with a 2nd row base, but it can't be something selected based on a photograph afterwards, it has to be the guy everyone was looking for when they dove out of the plane. Or was there a definition in the wingsuit rules about the base, that supersedes the SIM definition?

If one wants to continue the slightly silly arguments about basically whether the military are a bunch of scaredy cat wusses, one can can ask this: Did any Staff or Students of The Jumping Place land on the base? Did their plane fly through restricted airspace? If not, one could argue that it is a matter between the military and the individuals who landed on the base. A ski lift operator can't always control people who decide to ski out of bounds. Still, it is natural that the military will still see TJP (and the airport location) as the ultimate cause of the problems. I'm curious, when was the airport built? While King's Bay (according to wiki) was army land since '54, it wasn't selected for a Navy base until '78. Info is hard to find but one very detailed airport directory says the airport was activated in 1941. You know how it is when it comes to airports and new subdivisions and complaining home owners: Clearly the right thing to tell the Navy is "We were here first, you know where you can stick your submarines!" I'm sure that will help the situation.

Who knows, maybe your body position had enough problems that the instructors weren't comfortable fully letting go on L3. If they haven't evaluated you flying free, before going to 1 instructor, then maybe that's why they'd like a repeat. Sounds like you might want a little more ground work to really figure out what they're looking for, and what you're doing, considering that they were giving constant arch signals despite you thinking that's what you were doing. There's a clear disconnect between expectations, actions, and intentions. The instructors might also have their own logging system for students, but I don't know the DZ. Still, you'll want a log book of your own as soon as you can. As for tunnel vs. a repeat L3, the cost will be roughly similar (I'll let others refine that thought). If you think you can fix the issues next jump "no problem", do the jump. But it sounds like there may be doubts about that, that it might take a little more work to get the right muscle tensions and body positions ---- in that case wait for the tunnel and solve the bulk of the issue before returning to the sky. Putting your skydiving dreams on hold for one more week isn't going to matter in the long run.

Bag lock is still one of those mals that seems poorly understood. I've seen it happen when someone went to all silicone elastics (Tube Stoes or Sillibands or Superbandz or whatever was or is out there), but I've seen it happen with all regular elastics. When talking about bag lock, the breakable vs. non breakable argument comes into play only when lines have already looped around each other. My guess is that keeping line bights well enough separated from each other is what prevents bag locks in the first place. That means having some decent stowing system where you aren't making giant bights just to hold the lines in. If you have lines closely packed, then the bights need to stay small. (For example, the line stows on a Phantom style round reserve diaper have a million closely spaced bights, which looks scary. But I guess it works, because the emphasis is on neat, tight stows with short bights no longer than 1".) It has been a good advance in skydiving to have line stow attachments set inwards from the sides of the d-bag. Although it increases the number of stows, it allows balancing the line masses better side to side without having long bights, and disrupts the stows less than when they get pushed around the edge of the bag when in the container. So I'm not convinced that a Speed Bag is the only way to stop bag locks, but rather that it provides one method of having secure line stows. (Benefits against bag strip are another topic.)

That's extremely thorough. Duct or gaffers tape would work too... In the few night jumps I've made, I've never found a need to have a light to look up at my canopy. It is close enough to see whether by natural light or whatever is coming off any glowsticks taped to your body. Most of the time you'll know without looking whether you have a malfunctioned canopy or not. Scenarios where you might want a light would be very rare, and usually can be dealt with some other way. (E.g., in the rare case of a canopy tear, a control check should usually be a sufficient test of the canopy, rather than a visual evaluation of just how many inches long the tear is.) Still I can see that a light shining up at the canopy (even if towards a corner) would be really good for letting others spot your canopy! As when attaching a glowstick to a riser, if the light were turned on before the jump, it would help find the canopy in the rare but potentially expensive case of a night cutaway.

People will be curious how you came to be using the M2 because it has been very quiet here in N. America about the M2 after the initial publicity. I have missed hearing any announcements by manfacturers saying that they approve that AAD in their rig, nor does Alti-2, the N. American distributor, even list the M2 on their web site. Mars itself has a broken link to any English manual, and lists no manufacturer approvals on its English language site. Czech, Polish, and Russian manuals are available. So things are pretty low key.

Time to pull out my 1991 Paragear catalogue -- that thing has been so handy over the years! For the 177 sq. ft. 5 cell Swift, it lists 180 lbs as max suspended weight. (However, it doesn't address the certification issue as Jerry was doing.) When the Swift came on the market, I kind of doubt that only those of 155 lbs or less bought it...

Yay, they kept Bill and his beard! (Students have fun commenting on that, even if Bill is a bit scary looking.) Classic line: "your instructor [...] may need to touch areas of your body in ways that might otherwise seem inappropriate."

That's interesting about the Jumprun software. Where I am, they put up a computer by the packing area, with a google docs spreadsheet and a data entry form as the front end. So the software isn't integrated with anything but does capture pack jobs into an electronic format.

I dunno about that exact timeline, but skydiving students can get pretty wound up with the experience, making it all quite fatiguing later on. Even the more advanced students are sometimes wiped out after a few jumps from the stress & excitement. Make sure you are eating and hydrating adequately, which may not happen when excited. Be aware of whether you are relaxed or not. Being excited is fun but there are times where one needs to be relaxed instead of keyed up all the time.

Sure, she's not supposed to be rude. But the point is that some things may SEEM rude & offensive to a listener, when the person saying them thinks it is a straightforward fact. Whether it is rude or not can be debated. Remember, I'm not defending her behaviour in general, but explaining statements about language ability. Courtesy and patience do cost something ... staff time -- on the phone, in training, and supervision of other staff. You can't give potential customers everything they want -- but you sure can try to manage their expectations and try to give them sufficient attention not to drive them away.

I'm not defending her unhelpfulness. However, on the phone a DZ will often lay out a bunch of rules in a straightforward manner, without having a long lead up conversation -- especially if they are busy. That might include something like: "Students must be below 240 lbs. Students over 40 must have a note from their doctor. Students must sign a liability waiver. Students in the solo course must be able to speak & understand English." So there you are, thinking she's calling you fat, old, and mentally incompetent to communicate in English. But I bet a lot of DZ office staff will say something about the language issue, especially if there's any hint at all that some people in the caller's group (not just you yourself) might not be able to communicate well. Better to mention a bunch of restrictions ahead of time, instead of disappointing students when they show up. (People with poorer communication skills may get shunted to tandems. It isn't that they can't be taught, but everything is based on teaching people certain things within a certain range of expected time.) So it may still be abrupt and possibly rude, but there is a reason for it.

Indeed I think body position is why even for solo jumps, when someone says "I was line twisted and spinning!", they so often add "on my back". A de-arched sitting position is 'unstable' in the freefall sense of not being stable belly to the wind. Arching and sticking limbs out to one side can help to start untwisting.

To lessen the time to individually analyze the video, can you explain what was happening to the reserve in the video? Some sort of bucking. So was it stalling? I know the VR 360 reserves do open on the edge of stall. It was unusual though that things weren't symmetrical, that the tandem pair were swinging left and right, almost to the point of line twist. Was that self induced on the toggles, or was that from going in and out of stalls? I don't know, but that seems unusual, as normally I thought such stalls on opening are pretty symmetrical with no twisting. I suppose the stalling cycle was encouraged by the manner of cutaway: A very slow speed situation from a fully open canopy, with airflow from behind due to flying backwards with line twists. (We don't fine tune our reserve brake settings for the type of jump expected, unlike say the DBS in BASE...) All that probably helped get the reserve into the stall-unstall cycle, without it having a good chance to get some forward flying speed. If the canopy opens without quite stalling, then it can be fine, but if it rocks at all, it can get into a self-sustaining cycle of stalls. (I personally barely experienced rocking on my one Sigma chop, but I once had a Parafoil that exhibited that type of behaviour on opening.) A friend on a Sigma recently had a cutaway from a mal, and on the reserve got the stalling cycle, AND some line twists. Now that combination was less than fun! - but he managed to untwist.

Someone solidly built... AND really flexible. That's good for surprising instructors! Which shows others how easy it is to criticize on the internet, how hard it is to be perfect as an instructor on every single jump. Newbie instructors. They should be on DZ.com more and learn how to really fly. Sounds like your next AFF jumps should go a lot smoother. Have fun.