davelepka

As others have sated, you don't 'need' a custom rig right off the bat, but you will need a rig customized to fit your needs. A smaller harness can be adjusted to fit you perfectly, and that typically adds $250 to $350 to the price of a used rig. Altering the type of deployment system, or the location of the handle is also an easy fix, and will probably cost an extra $100 to $200 depending on what options you go with. An extra short set of risers will help you reach the toggles, and new risers run between $100 and $150. If you factor in an extra $500 on top of the cost of a used rig, you should be able to have one altered to suit your needs. A brand new container with no canopies would be in excess of $2000, probably closer to $2500. You can find a nice used container for $700 or $800, so even after the added cost of the modifications, you're still at half (or less) the cost of a new one. As far as overall costs go, figure $1500 to $2000 to get fully trained and licensed (it varies depending on how many jumps it takes). Add to that another $5000 for all your equipment (used rig, new jumpsuit, helmet and altimeter), and you have a pretty good idea of what it takes to be a skydiver. Beyond that, upkeep on your rig will run you $150 to $200 a year. Then there's the price of jumps. They run about $25 each once you have a license and all your gear. Add $5 if you want to have your rig packed for you. So if you want to make 10 jumps a month, it's $250 or $300 a month to be a skydiver. If you want to make 10 jumps per week, it's closer to $1000/month. It's one of those things that can be done affordably after you have your license and gear, but very few people do it that way. Most spend all (or more) or their dough on jumps and worry about the rest later.

The adhesive mounts provided with those types of cameras have proven to be unreliable for skydiving. The obvious answer is to hard mount the camera to the helmet, which means drilling holes in the helmet. With only 33 jumps there is a fair chance the DZO, S&TA, or head camera flyer may find he is either not ready to jump a camera, or that the location or type of mount used does not meet with their approval. In either case, the OP has wasted time and drilled useless holes in his helmet. Sooooooo, step one - clear the idea with the powers that be at his DZ, step two - mount the camera in accordance with what 'the man' told him was acceptable. No time wasted, no unneccesary holes drilled in his helmet.

Add to that, if FFE was willing to supply the aircraft, but not at the agreed price, that would also void the contract. That appears to be what happened here. A verbal contract was in place, but FEE nullified it when they presented a new contract with a higher cost. Z-hills declined the new contract. It's a risk you take when you try to renegotiate any contract. Don't ask a question unless you are equally preparred to hear both 'yes' and 'no' as an answer.

Based on what? Your extensive experience actually pulling your handles in actual emergencies? AFF FJC course students are taught to pull, and practice with real handles in a training vest ad nauseum. A student isn't allowed to jump unless they can demostrate the pull procedure on the ground smoothly and without fail. Despite this, many of them are anything but smooth and easy when it comes to pulling an actual handle on an actual skydive. The times listed are very conservative, and that's the sort of numbers you should be using when evaluating your hard decks and EPs. If you are quick on the draw, good for you, you'll be open higher than everyone else. If it turns out you're not that quick or you run into a snag, you're not going to go in for cutting it too close. It's not a good idea to build a plan around you being able to do anything in less than 2 seconds or risk going in with nothing out.

It's never as fast as you think it's going to be. You'll be confused at first, then you have to identify both the problem and the solution, and then take action. First of all, ten seconds is being generous. Keep in mind that you'll be in a high stress situation, and probably going head low from reaching for your handles or even your three rings. You can't plan for the 'best case scenario' in terms of your reaction times, the malfunction itself is proof that shit happens. Beyond that, I would much rather have a two-out with the option to cutaway, then have my main leave in the direction of my reserve whenever it feels like. You can land a side by side or a biplane, and if they downplane you can cutaway the main without it going past the reserve. Two canopies deploying next to each other isn't that bad. There are no 'loose ends' swinging around, it's two closed loops bouncing off of each other. Having a main cutaway past the reserve is another story. You open one of the loops by cutting away, and now the ends of that loop (the risers) are free to wrap around anythying they want. Pull the reserve first, and worry about the main second. If they deploy at the same time, manage the two-out and deal with what it becomes. If the main stays put or partially deploys (still in the bag) through the reserve deployment, then pull the cutaway and clear the three rings then. The differences are twofold, and very significant. By getting the reserve out first, you stop the freefall and literally create time for yourself to work with. By deploying the reserve before pulling the cutaway, you retain control over the actions of your main canopy at all times. If you later find you want it gone, cutaway then. But to cutaway and then go through the reserve deployment process with the main 'unhinged' leaves the door open for it to depart at a 'less then favorable' time. Stop the freefall, and maintain control over the situation. Really.

Just wanted to add, there is a distinct difference between a partial mal, where the canopy has left the bag, and a 'total' mal where the canopy has not left the bag, and that difference is speed. You are still at full throttle freefall speed until the canopy comes out of the bag. Even a 'streamer' will slow you down considerably from freefall speeds. Not enough to survive, but maybe on the order of 15% or 25%, which gives you 15% or 25% more time to work. But when the canopy is still in the bag, you have no such luxury. Keep in mind that you only discover a deployment problem AFTER you decieded it was time to deploy. You wanted the freefall to end at that time, but here you are still in freefall some seconds later. Pulling the silver handle does not save your life, it just beings the process. You still have the possibility of a reserve PC hesitation (spring loaded, ya know), and all of the things that can wrong with a PC or d-bag swinging around behind you while deploying a reserve. Even once the canopy opens, you need time clear your brakes, set up for and exectue a landing. Preserve that time, and pull the handle ASAP.

Here's a fun video of an intentional horseshoe malfunction. This clip begins with the cutaway handle already pulled, and the jumper beginning to manually release the risers and ultimately pulling silver. Keep in mind that A) that's super-skydiver Billy Weber, who knew exactly what was going to happen, and what he was going to do, and B) in this instance, the main risers were already clear of the riser covers and standing free for easy grabbing. In the case of a PC in tow, the riser covers would be closed and the risers would be secure and laying flat against your shoulders. Keep an eye on the altimeter for reference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBzgMIdtJm0

Your instructors taught you to cutaway, then manually release the three ring on each shoulder before pulling your reseve handle? All of this while still at terminal, afer you have pulled, determined there was not the desired response, and looked over each shoulder? Have you mentally though throught the time line of what you're suggesting? I say it's 2 seconds before you realize there's a problem, then another 2 seconds (at best) for to check over each shoulder. Add 3 seconds to locate, pull and discard the cutaway handle, then at least three seconds per shoulder to clear the three rings. Add it all up, and that's 13 seconds from when you release your PC until you even start to look for your reserve handle. At terminal. You're a smart guy, do the math and figure out how far you fall in 13 seconds, and subtract that from your pull altitude. Maybe add another 2 seconds to locate and pull your reserve handle. See where this is going?

Consult your DZs DZO, S&TA, and head camera guy before doing anything. They will ultimately make the call if you or your helmet is safe to jump, so you might as well get their pre-approval before moving forward.

True. I should have specified that you don't (and can't) have the level of situational awareness needed to make taking the time to pull on the bridle a good idea. Since you don't know what's causing the PC in tow, taking the time to enact a 'possible' remedy is a bad idea. The 'sure thing' remedy of deploying your reserve is where you want to dedicate your quickly diminishing remaining time. If the PC in tow is 'unrecoverable', doing anything but dumping your reserve is a waste of time, and possibly the last mistake you'll ever make. Even outside the possibilty of going in with nothing out, or a paritally inflated reserve, you're wasting time you could use to deal with any resultant problems from dumping your rserve with a PC in tow. Main/reserve PC entanglements, main/reserve canopy entaglements, two outs, downplanes, etc are all possibilities when you pull silver with your main still in the pack tray and PC swinging around at the end of the bridle. As many Youtube videos have shown, truely horrific reserve deployment problems can and have been solved before impact, but it took time. Time you don't want to waste yanking on a lost casue (the bridle).

You can fly a skydiving canopy in deep brakes all day long too, if you want. The fact remains that once you are at your min. descent rate, you cannot go any slower. So if you are in deep brakes on top of the wire, and lose lift for any reason, you have no recovery. You'll mush down into the wire. Maybe you slide off to the side and get away clean. Maybe you hang up a ski on the wire or slide off inbetween the wires, and you're not as OK.

And you would be wrong. In a PC in tow, nobody has situational awareness, because the situation is behind them. Why is your PC towing? Is it not cocked? Is it something simple? Or has the pin stabbed through the bridle? Is the bridle half-hitched around a flap, or some other such, NON-RECOVERABLE situation? The reason that the rule is 'two tries, two seconds' is because you don't know what's going except that you are still in freefall when you already decieded it was time to end the freefall. Many jumpers have fought that same losing battle right into the ground because 'one more yank' was going to get it. Just one more..... The situational awareness that every jumper needs to know is 'two tries, two seconds', end of story. Anytime you try to add the 'what if's', you start down the slippery slope that turns into 'five or six tries in about 10 or 12 seconds' which is followed by a low reserve deployment without enough altitude for inflation. If you're going to invent stupid rules for yourself, please avoid sharing them with others, especially newbies who don't know any better.

Ok, I'll bite. How is it that both could possibly be aware of the risks when tandem wingsuiting is untested? Again, where and when were the test jumps completed with two experienced jumpers? What possible problems or malfunctions were intentionally induced, and what were the procedures developed to remedy them? The simple answer is that it is impossible for both participants to know the risks because nobody knows the risks, let alone a tandem student. The standard tandem skydive is designed such that the student is required to do nothing in oder for the jump to proceed safely. To back this up, the military does them with large, angry dogs, and other simialrly sizes cargo parcels. The point is that any rated tandem instructor should be able to safely deploy a drouge, main, and land the pair, regardless of what the student is doing. The reason for this, as anyone who has done or shot video of tandems will tell you, is that you never know what a student will do. You can never tell in advance how they will react to freefall, so the system is desgned that no matter what the do, the TI can do their job, and get the pair safely on the ground. With a drouge-less wingsuit tandem, we do not know if this is the case. The presence of the suits may allow the student more authority over the pair, and reduce the authority the TI has. In this case, the safety of the jump would rely on the students performance, and you cannot conduct tandem jumps on that basis. That's why they're tandems, they require very little training, and have zero performance expectations. AFF style training is not the answer either. We have all seen AFF students with 10 jumps or more simply go to shit. Either spinning out of control, or losing altitude awareness, it happens. If you intend to conduct a tandem jump where the performance of the passenger is key to the safety of the pair, you need to use a proven, experienced jumper. If you intend to conduct wingsuit tandem jumps, you need to prove that the students performance is not key to the safety of the jump by using a proven, experienced jumper to test that theory.

Don't. Your instructor, the DZ, and the USPA have already done that. If you pay each one of them some money, they'll share it with you. Until you have a license, contain your learning to the A license program at your chosen DZ. They have a complete program in place, and you need to focus on that, and not whatever you can 'research' on the internet. Don't muddy the waters of that program by coming up with your own ideas. Learn to become a skydiver in real life. The internet is a shitty place for primary training. It's barely passable for remedial training, and it works out OK as a place to shoot the shit.

This is, by far, the worst argument you have made on behalf of the devil. Despite the old adage, in this business, the customer is not always right. How many customers would have wanted to jump in questionable wind conditions, well past sunset, or when factors involving their health or physicality made it prohibitive? My guess is quite a few, but as is the standard practice, it is explained that the jump cannot be completed with the 'usual' level of safety, and they are politely refused service. The customer has certain level of say-so in this business, but when it comes to conducting jump operations, they have none. They deserve, and should insist on being treated fairlyand with respect, and honesty when it comes to the financial aspects. When it comes to how, when, and where the skydive will be conducted, their only input is to what will not happen, not what will happen. They have the right to say they will not jump for any reason, but not the right to say how they will jump in any respect.

See post 54, there's an 'official' opinion from a BSR (Blue Sky Ranch, I'm guessing) newsletter outlining their view of the situation. If they didn't want it to be made public, putting it in writing and distributing it through a newsletter is probably not the best idea. Seeing as they did just that, it should be no surprise that other, sometimes contrary, opinions will also surface. I would like to know the source of that information. I find it hard to believe that a jumper would be turned away, or even treated with anything but respect, at Z-Hills simply because they jump at the Ranch. If the jumper is in good standing with the USPA, and are for the sole purpose of skydiving and having fun, I'l willing to bet that they will sell you tickets, and treat you like everyone else.

Yep. The 'student' pattern, or 'classic' pattern of downwind, base and final is what it is for a reason. The downwind leg allows you to 'hold' upwind of your LZ until you hit pattern altitude. Being upwind, of course, is where you want to be because you have the most flexibility from that position. Anytime you get downwind or crosswind of your LZ, an increase in wind speed can limit your ability to get back over your LZ when you need to be. By holding upwind, you have the wind available to you if you need it, and if you don't can always just hold longer before turning in. The downwind leg also lets you overfly your LZ at a relaitvely low altitude and check things out one last time before you 'commit' to landing there, and more specificaly, your chosen touchdown point. The two 90 degree turns in the pattern, onto the corsswind base leg and the into the wind final leg, allow you to use the length of both of those legs to make last minute adjustments to your flight path. By changing the length of the legs, you can alter where you will end up. The thing to remember is that swooping is just flying a canopy like everyone else until you start your turn. Just like Joe Jumper with 100 jumps, who uses the pattern to fine tune his accuracy and try to land in the peas, you can use the pattern to fine tune your accuracy, and arrive at your turn-in point right on time. In the case of a 270/450 where your 'final' heading before your turn is 90 degrees from what the 'final' leg of a standard landing pattern would be, simply plan to arrive at your turn-in point high and just off to the side. Then you have built in the room to 'reset' yourself from the final heading of the pattern (into the wind) to your 'final' heading before your turn (90 degress off the wind line). All of the lessons, tricks and tips they teach students and newbies to use the pattern to help them with accuracy can work for you too. The only differnece is that their end goal is a spot on the ground in the LZ, and your final goal is a spot 700 or 800ft (or whatever) above the LZ. The techniques you use to arrive there are the same because they're all just parachutes in the end.

If the work had been done, and techniques developed to deal with the unique challenges created wingsuits on a tandem to the degree that the factories supported the idea, then in that case, yes, it is really only the instructor who needs to understand that full scope of the risks being taken by adding wingsuits to a tandem skydive. Yes, that is also correct. The student obvisouly does not know the 'ins and outs' of even the most pedestrian tandem jump, but what they should be able to understand is that this product we're selling has been fully tested and is ready to be 'brought to market'. For the jumps in question here, none of the above has been done.

That's your answer right there. Until you have a long term employment situation, don't enter into a long term financial obligation. Your old car will be paid off, and yours for $0 per month soon after your employment contract ends. It also won't be that old, and being a Scion (Toyota) it should run reliably for many more years. Trading in your car at the dealership is 99% guaranteed to lose you several thousand dollars in value, so unless you have money to burn or some reason you cannot privately sell your car, it's a bad idea. If you insist on buying a new car, sell your car yourself to get the most out of it. Even if you are in a rush to sell, just mark it down to below market price, which will still be well above trade-in value. How about this, pay off your old car and bank $400 a month into savings like a car payment. If you can keep up the payments until you get a new job, then buy the new car and use the savings as a down payment. After you sell your old car yourself and add the savings, you'll have $7k or $8k to put down. You'll be financing less and in turn paying less interest (do to the lower loan amount).

That is incorrect. What the student understands is that they are at an established dropzone where they are offering tandem skydives to the general public with a minnimum of training for the student. The assumption the student rightly makes is that the tandem skydive itself has been tested and developed to the point that it involves the minnimum risks possible within the realm of making a skydive. Everyone knows that skydiving has risks associated with it, but the assumption once it is extended to the general public is that the risks have been minnimized to the highest possible degree. This is why we have tandem instructional ratings, specailized equipment, required AADs and RSLs, and specialized procedures for conducting tandem jumps. We you introduce an untested methodology, such as freeflying or wingsuiting, you are failing in your duty as a 'professional' skydiving company to offer a 'professional' level of service. There was a time when tandem jumping itself was an experiment, and in fact the FAA regarded every tandem jump as 'experimental' for a long time before they would aknowledge that two people could make a safe skydive with one dual parachute system. Those days are long past, and with our current level of experience and knowledge with tandem jumping, there is no excsue for any operator to force an unlicensed jumper back into the role of making an 'experimental' jump. Given the number of ways that donning two wingsutis changes the procuderes for making a tandem jump, there needs to be extensive testing and develpoment of a new set of standards and practices for making such a jump. Note the existance such standards and practices for making a solo wingsuit jump as they differ from making a non-winfsuit solo jump. Even then, the differences between a solo with and without a wingsuit are less than the differnces between standard and wingsuit tandem jumps. Without the development of such standards and practices, and a system for teaching a rating instructors to use them, you as a tandem operator are failing your customer by putting forth a wingsuit tandem as being a 'safe' way to make a skydive, when it is anything but.

News flash, another thread on e-readers about halfway down the bonfire page. I guess my research didn't include reading the bonfire, sorry.

Five minutes of research has shown the Kindle to be a top choice, but no color. The iPad is out because he already has a smart phone, and I think the iPad comes with a monthly bill to make it do all it's cool tricks. I know that e-books cost money too, but they still cost money on an iPad in addition to the costs for the other stuff.

Looking to pick up an e-reader for my 12 year old son. He's a reader and always has a book on him, so it seems like a good fit. Based on almost zero knowledge or research, I'm leaning toward the Nook Color, just becasue it's color and seems like the newest thing. I'm literally going to post this, and then google some reviews and general info. Anyone have any info to share? I'm not stuck on the Nook, I just figured the color thing gave it a leg up on the rest. Anyone got anything to add? Bueller? Bueller?

It seems to me like you get about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way to the rear riser stall before you need to transition, but it all depends on the speed you start with and how you apply the inputs. We all know that the faster you go, the more effective your control inputs will be, so a small input early on in the swoop will produce a bigger result than that same amount of input later on in the swoop. With this in mind, you can see that the further you go, you have to increase both the amount of input and the rate you apply that input to maintain level flight. We also know that the more input you add, the more drag you induce, which is not good for going far. The closer you get to the rear riser stall, you reach a point where you are inducing more drag flying rears at a given speed than you would be on toggles at that same speed. Once you get to that point, you've gone too far. All of the technincal mumbo jumbo aside, you can really feel the full range of rear riser flight if you just fly them to the stall several jumps in a row. The nature of the rear riser stall is that once you feel it start to break, you can release the risers and drop your hands down to about 3/4 brakes and lose less than a foot of altitude. It's a small enough loss that if you fly the rears just high enough that you have to reach down to drag a toe in the grass, then you tucking your feet up to your ass will give you enough room to make the post-stall transition and not hit the ground. Of course, you might fuck it up and stall it too deep and just hit the ground. You might also blow the transition and hit the ground that way. The good news is that you flew the rears to a stall, and you shouldn't be going all the fast, the bad news is that you end up hitting the ground. Nobody ever said swooping was safe. Anyhow, by flying the rears through the full range to include a stall, you can feel where the canopy beings to sink out, and it starts to really take some input to keep it going. At the beginning, the risers are 'alive', and produce a lot of result for a little input. Somewhere past halfway to the stall, they start to die off, and you can sort of tell that you're fighting a losing battle. Another down side to flying the rears too far, in addition to all the extra drag you induce, is that you get into the toggles on the slow side as well. Just like the risers 'die' toward the end of their usefulness, so do the toggles. If you fly the risers so far that you have to really dig into them to keep the canopy going, you'll hit the toggles so slow that all you can do is dump them to 'full flaps' and shut it down. If you get to the toggles earlier, you'll hit them when they still have some life left, and you get a little boost before you have to dump full toggles and end the whole thing.

Two other quick points, first, if the rig is sized for 200-ish square foot main and reserve, then having a 'man' sized harness might make it easier to sell when the time comes. Second, you might be able to negotiate some of the cost of the resize off the price of the rig. You have the rig already, want to buy, are ready to pay, but you're facing a bill for the re-size that sours the deal for you. The owner could have the rig shipped back and go through the trouble of re-listing it, and dealing with endless e-mails and more shipping to unknown buyers, or they could work with you, and get a check for the rig within a few days minus $150 or $200 to cover a portion of the resize.