schmit.paul

Fantastic! Thank you

Hi guys, I'm a new A-license holder and am hoping to get as many jumps in as I can in the near future to try to keep the momentum and learning going full speed ahead. Unfortunately, I just found out a couple weeks ago that I have a recurring tear in my right shoulder that's going to require a second, more serious surgery (first surgery was 4.5 years ago) that will likely put me out of commission for at least 4-5 months starting in June before I can safely skydive again. However, I'm doing my best to stay focused in the meantime and get better at the maneuvers and techniques I can do safely without any negative response from my injured shoulder, and I'm trying not to think about my upcoming forced hiatus until I absolutely have to, as right now I feel like I can continue growing as a skydiver in useful and productive ways. My question is, how many of you have had to deal with injuries (either skydiving- or non-skydiving-related, mine happens to be a non-skydiving injury), what did you do during your rehab to keep yourself sharp, and what was it like coming back to the sport? Thanks guys! "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge." ---Charles Darwin

Hi Everybody! I'm a new member on this forum, though I've been scouring these message boards since I did my first tandem jump a few months ago. Just got my A-license last week, doing most of my AFP program at Skydive Cross Keys and everything else back in AZ at Eloy (grew up in Phoenix). While I'm extremely new to this sport and eager to soak up every bit of knowledge I can from all of the veterans who post here, I work professionally as a laboratory physicist while I'm trying to get my Piled-Higher-and-Deeper (ph.d) in grad school, so hopefully some of my somewhat esoteric knowledge will come in handy at some point! I think it's great that such a huge forum exists that connects this community together worldwide, and I respect the hell out of all you guys for being serious practitioners in such an amazing sport. I'll probably be asking some questions on the forum about purchasing a first rig and working on fine-tuning belly skills real soon! Blue Skies, Paul "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge." ---Charles Darwin

To elaborate just a bit more on the vector interpretation of what's going on. Any time you have a system with a force acting upon it that is always perpendicular to the instantaneous direction of motion, a curved trajectory will result. This is, for instance, why objects in the solar system like planets, comets, and meteors orbit the sun in elliptical, circular, or hyperbolic trajectories (the gravitational pull is straight toward the center of the sun, even though most objects are inclined to move around it). This is also why when you tie a weight at the end of the string and swing it around above your head in circles, the harder and faster you oscillate your wrist the faster around the weight goes in a circle (rather than pushing the weight forward, the string tugs the weight in a new direction harder and harder). The concept is called "centripetal acceleration," and a similar effect results on a canopy any time there is a horizontal lift component directed perpendicular to the instantaneous horizontal flight path. This can be achieved by initiating a tilt about the roll axis, either via manual deformation of the wing through riser input/harness turns, or by establishing a spanwise vertical lift gradient along the wing through toggle application (causing the low-lift side of the wing to drop). While vertical motion may affect the magnitude of the lift vector, the curved horizontal motion is essentially an independent phenomenon...as long as that lift vector is tilted so that a component of it resides perpendicular to the flight path, a curved trajectory (turn) will always result. Curiously, Brian comments in his book on how a jumper can actually temporarily speed up a toggle turn by first initiating a toggle turn, and then in mid-turn applying more brakes evenly to each side. This is because once the parachute is turning, an even application of brakes (maintaining the offset between the left and right toggles) temporarily increases the magnitude of the lift vector without changing its direction, and thus the centripetal force increases, speeding up the turn (as if the artificial "sun" pulling us in orbit suddenly gained more mass). Of course, as the airspeed slows down this effect decreases, but initially it seems like the effect could be pretty profound. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge." ---Charles Darwin