davelepka

As soon as you get a clue, and start being honest with yourself, DZOs, and the jumpers around you. I'm guessing it will be 3 to 5 years.

Right. Anyone can be sued anytime for anything, however if the manufacturers halt their invovlement in post-purcahse use of the system, then they would limit their liability to the same level they incur producing sport rigs. They don't require a manufacturers rating to jump a sport rig, they build it, ship it, and move on. If a sport jumper goes in, and the manufacturer gets sued, they'll inspect the rig (or the report by the rigger) and determine if the rig was the casue of the accident. If it wasn't they simply say, 'The rig worked, we're not sure who the jumper was, where they were trained, or what they were doing. Sorry for your loss', and then go back to building rigs. As of now they are building rigs and rating instructors, so they assume responsibilty for the performance of the rig and the instructor. Between those two things, you'll find the casue of most accidents, and why the waivers are so important to the manufacturers. Without them they would be on the hook for the cause of most tandem accidents, and probably lose any resulting lawsuits. So if the USPA allows underage tandems, and a factory rated instructor on a factory built rig kills a minor, you can bet that the manufacturer will be a prime target. So if the manufacturer stops being responsible for rating instructors, they can stop being responsible for the actions of those instructors. They may have to briefly defend themselves against a frivilous lawsuit, but that's a risk they take just by being in business.

Nope, not misplaced. I don't like the OP, so I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to point out some of his shortcomings. He posted in several threads with some very strong opinions, contrary to what more experienced jumpers might think. He then went on to defend those opinions with a very cavalier attitude toward safety, and skydiving in general. He statesd several times that skydiving was 'uncool' because of some rules or regualtions, and that BASE jumping was the answer. He then admitted to lying to a DZO in order to jump a wingsuit when he had less than the reccomended 200 jumps, and even suggested that same course of action to another junior jumper. There's a case of skydivign suddenly being good enough for him when he wanted to try out a wing suit. Then, he posted because he lacked the expereince to tell if his three rings had been properly built. Again, he turned to 'uncool' skydivers for help because somehow us rule-laden jumpers know more about gear than he does. Finally, it's this rigger issue. He's in Pittsburg, within shouting distance of the legendary DPRE Dave DeWolfe, and long time, highly-regarded master rigger Moe Viletto, and the guy has to post online, again falling back on the skydivers he belittled, looking for help locating a rigger. None of this mentions the 6 or 8 other riggers living in or around Pittsburgh. So yeah, some anger, but not related to childhood and not misplaced. I just have no patience for those who want to show up and act like an ass, and then turn around and expect help, sometimes even with remedial topics like proper assembly of a 3 ring. So if he wants to act that way, I'll be sure to call him out on it every time. My bet is that the guy has around 100 or 120 jumps total, probably has never jumped anything but a Manta, and probabaly doesn't even know how to pro-pack. Despite that, he wants to act like a big shot, so let him try and then watch him fail.

That's the thing, in this business you have to turn a profit on every transaction to make it worth your while. Many of their other 'service' businesses they work with such as restaurants or spas, can justify a break-even or a slight loss on the deal with the hopes of making a name for themselves in the community and building a customer base. I go to restaurants I like all the time, and if I happen to get be there on half-price night one week, I'll be back (and paying full price) a couple times a month thereafter. A DZ, of course, is not that way. Each transaction should realisticly be looked at as your one chance to do business with that customer because the stats show that most people will never be back. I'm not suggesting taking advantage of people or price gouging, but just that you conduct your business with that idea in mind, and that every transaction needs to result in an immediate profit.

Ok, the students family (or long estranged brother after being solicited by a scumbag lawyer) sues, becasue of course, the student is dead. However, if you look at the way I cut your quote, it could now apply to a solo student (AFF or SL) and not just a tandem. So a student falls out of a single harness rig on an AFF jump, and their family sues everyone in sight. The manufacturer, of course, will refernce the riggers report sating that the harness in question was properly designed and built, and incorrectly used by the student/instructor, and that it was out of the manufacturers control at the time the errors were made. I never said that not certifying instructors would put manufacturers free and clear of ever being sued, just that it would put their liability on par with what they incur when producing sport rigs, which they seem to have accepted. You don't see them certifying jumpers to use their sport rigs, they build rigs and ship rigs, end of story. The safest way , legally speaking, is for nobody to be certifying or traingin instructors. Once you step forward as a business or organization and deem an individual as 'competent and safe' to do tandems, that becomes looked as a type of guarantee fo their performace, and that it will not result in an injury or death. Of course not having a formal rating system in place puts 100% of the liability on the DZ, who in essence is 'rating' an instructor as safe by virtue of putting them forward to do the work. I've done (a long time ago) AFF jumps without a rating, but only after the DZO gave me his 'blessing' and deemed me capable of doing the work. The real problem here is the liability in general. It exists and if you're going to have more than one entity in the ring, all of them have to agree on the terms. The USPA cannot expect the manufacturers to keep their hat in the ring, and then make decisions without their consent. If a proposed rule isn't unanimously approved by all interested parties, then that rule cannot stand, it's that simple. Especailly in this case, where the manufacturers are the only ones without a say. The USPA can make the rule, and agree to accpet the increased liability. Instructors, DZOs and pilots have a say in that none of them need to actaully engage in taking underage tandems, and therefore avoid the liability. The manufacturers, on the other hand, have no control over what the end users do with their product, but by virue of rating instructors, they remain attached to the liability of those actions. In the past, they had the power to revoke ratings, and the USPA on their side, helping to keep the instructors 'in check' and following the rules. Once the USPA jumps ship, and starts to work against the manufacturers, it becomes that much more likely that the instructors will follow suit. As previously mentioned in this thread, it's only matter of time before Ted, Nancy, and Bill just give up on civilian tandems. Just look at what the military contracts have done for all of the manufacturers and their delivery time. I see no reason that they wouldn't enjoy the deep pockets and bulk orders of the military for their tandem business as well.

Don't forget about the scheduling issue. Every time a Groupon tandem is taking up 2 slots, a rig, and instructor, those assets are no longer available for full price (full profit) tandems. Even if those tandems are a break even deal, you're still losing out on the income those assest could make with a non-Groupon tandem. Even in the case of a modest profit, you're still not able to take advantage of a higher profit non-Groupn tandem while servicing the Groupon customers. Now if you are a DZ with excess lift capacity, and you can cut a deal with Groupon where you could make a modest profit, and then you could schedule only a limited number of Groupon tandems for a given day, it might be a good way to fill your airplane, and keep all of your staff busy all day long. When you're counting on your guys to be there for you, it helps if every instructor and every packer can always count on putting in a full day's work. Maybe a good idea would be to include a clause in the coupon that all reservations need to be made 'x' weeks in advance. So you schedule no more than 10 or 20 of them on any given day, leaving the slots open for full paying customers. Then, as the weekend approches, say Thur or Fri, you can see if you have any openings for the weekend, and start calling the Groupon customers scheduled for the following weekend and inform them of some 'last minute cancellations for this weekend' and see if they want to come out this weekend. This way the Groupon customers become a 'filler' so you can always top off your schedule right before the weekend, and always be running to capacity. All of the above, of course, is dependent on making a profit off the Groupon customers. Even if you can only clear $20 after expenses, that's $20 in your pocket, $35 for your instructors, and $10/$12 for your packer.

Maybe he's looking for someone more professional than Dave DeWolfe or Moe Viletto. I'm not sure what planet you have to go to find a more professional rigger than either of those guys, but maybe that's what he wants. Maybe he limtied his search to the yellow pages under 'Riggers', or 'Professional Riggers'? He surely couldn't have called any DZ in the area and been refered to one of those two guys, or any of the other half-dozen riggers in the SW PA. Fuckin BASE jumpers. They don't need no stinking skydiving until something goes wrong, or they need some new equipment. Then is all 'I need a rigger, I need a rigger' or, 'I need a skydiving rig manufacturer to design and test new designs and technology'. After that, it's right back to, 'I don't need no stinking skydiving'. Oh, let's not forget about the times they want to break in a wingsuit, then they need a DZ to lie to about their jump numbers so they can jump it out of their airplane.

I knew after I posted it that I oversimplified that, and should have worded it differently. I'm aware that anyone can sue anytime for any reason they see fit. My assertion is that if the manufacturers take themselves out of the instructor certification business, they take themselves out of being in any way connected to the performance of said instructors. When you take on the responsibility of training and rating (and renewing) instructors, you're saying that each instructor is properly trained and qualifed to use your product in the way you design it. If that use should result in an injury or death, the connection an ambulance-chaser can make is that you produced a death machine, and certified an executioner to use it. If you remove yourself from any of the post-purchase use of your product, you can no longer be held responsible for its use or mis-use. For example, if I take a chainsaw and use it to cut down trees on your property, or kill a family of four, nobody is going to sue Husquvarna because they produced the chainsaw. They built it and shipped it, and then called it a day. The tandem manufacturers would reduce their liability to the same risk they assume when producing a sport rig. They are responsible for designing a functional rig, and then building it in accordance with the TSO and to the standards of modern rig manufacturing. Maybe you could look at it as they take on additional responsibility becasue two people are at risk for every jump on a tandem rig, but some of that is mitigated by the fact that one of them is a rated professional (I'm not suggesting nobody should certify instructors, just not the manufacturer). In the case of a sport rig, for all they know the rig could be going to 'that guy' who had 16 re-jumps during AFF and has no business jumping. 'That guy' is an accident waiting to happen, but the manufacturers have no concern about that because that have no hand in who jumps a sport rig. I know that Cessna has no hand in certifying flight students, meanwhile the 150/152 and 172 have a bigger market share of the flight training market than any of the tandem manufacturers have in their market. The majority of flight schools have a couple of those airplanes on the flight line, but Cessna is in no way involved in rating CFIs. Is anyone here familiar with how it works in paragliding or hang gliding? Both of those industries produce tandem models for the purposes of training (or offering rides) and I'm 99% sure you need a specific rating to fly either of those. What I don't know is who provides those ratings, is it the manufacturer or some sort of national organization?

I can't see how this is possible. If the product was deficient in either design or manufacture, and that deficiency lead to the injury, then yes, the manufacturer would be liable if they trained the instructor or not. However, if they sold the rig outright, and the owner accepted the rig as complete and built to their satisfaction, and the instructor accepted the rig to their satisfaction such that they were willing to jump it, then the liability for a resulting injury is with the instructor, not the manufacturer. For example, I go out and buy a Honda off road bike. I then take said bike to the track and jump it, resulting in a fall and broken bones, I cannot sue Honda for selling me a dirt bike. Now if I took that bike to the track, and before I got a chance to jump it the front axle snaps, releasing the front wheel and I go over the bars, resulting in broken bones, in that case I certainly could sue Honda. To take that one step further, there reaches a point where the dirt bike becomes 'used' and you can no longer hold Honda responsible for its performance. If the manufacturers would get out of the business of assembling the rigs, it would shift the responsibility to the rigger for correct assembly and packing of the rig. It would reduce the manufacturers responsibility to that of correctly designing and manufacturing rigs, and they already have a pretty good handle on that. I can't recall the last incident where a rig was properly assembled and used, and the rig failed resulting in an incident, and if it did happen, then the manufacturer should hold some responsibility. The activity of parachuting or motorcycling involves risk, and if you undertake either activity, you accept some responsibility for that risk. If there is an incident you can trace back to someone elses negligence, then you can hold them responsible, but in the absence of negligence, you only have yourself to blame for jumping out of a plane (or jumping a dirt bike).

I can't see this as being a barrier. Maybe 20 years ago when tandem was newer, you might have a point, but by now the entire system is fairly mature and there are good standards in place. USPA has no problem training an instructor for SL, IAD, and AFF, so why then should have they have a problem training instructors for Strong, Sigma, or Racer? I see no reason a qualified jumper couldn't hold a USPA Sigma I/E rating, or Strong Course Director rating. The fact is that this should be an easy shift as the systems are already in place at each manufacturer, and the USPA just needs to pick up the reigns. As far as this issue goes, the USPA needs to shit or get off the pot. They cannot make decisions that effect the legal and financial well-being of the manufacturers on one hand, and then require them to keep their feet 'in the water' on the other hand by forcing them to be a part of the post-purchase use of their equipment.

Just to put the thought out there, but why do the manufacturers continue to play a role in the rating of instructors? If you removed that aspect of the situation, wouldn't the liability of the manufacturer end with the successful design and production of their product? For example, I haven't seen any opposition (from the manufacturers) to allowing 16/17 year olds to jump via AFF or static line, and I have personally been involved with countless underage staic line jumps using Racer containers. Does Nancy object to that, or does she see the actions of the end user of the product none of her business (more or less)? If the USPA wants to allow underage tandems, why not let them be the ones to solely certify the instructors, and remove the manufacturers from the sitution once the rig has been accepted by the customer (with the obvious exception of recalls, ADs, or other manufacturer related problems)?

The entire Groupon concept is a winner. The business owner gets to set the coupon price, and also gets to set a minimum number of coupons that must be sold in order for the deal to happen. So a DZO can agree to sell tandems for $150, but only if (for example) 50 people buy them during the sale period. If less then 50 people agree to buy the coupon, then no coupons are sold. I think in terms of a DZ, a big issue will be the scheduling of the tandems. They would need to be careful to only sell enough coupons at any one time that they could realistically service those customers in a timely fashion along side their other customers. Let's face it, every DZ has a limited number of tandems they can process on any one day, and the majority of customers will be looking to jump on a weekend. If your DZ can only turn 50 tandems per day, and you sell a couple hundred Groupons in addition to your normal bookings, things are going to start getting backed up. if you throw in a couple of weather days, it get's even worse. The end result could be some very bad publicity, with some very 'skyride' sounding stories. "Jane Smith paid $150 for a skydiving coupon from Skydive Smalltown, but every time she wants to jump, they're too busy jumping with other customers to get her up in the air". One other area of liability, along the same lines, is that the 'unused' coupons may just be people waiting until they feel like jumping. Until those coupons expire, you run the risk of all of them calling at once wanting to redeem them. Let's say you give them six months to redeem before they expire, you might have a flood of customers looking to jump the last week of that six month period, keeping in mind that all the coupons are sold at once (in case somebody isn't aware, the Groupon deal is that the coupons are usually only for sale for 24 hours, so as a customer you have to jump on the deal right away, or lose your chance). The last problem area I could see is for seasonal DZs. They would have to be careful not to sell coupons valid beyond the end of their season. To even expand on that a little, if there is a 'rush' toward the end of coupon validity period, even having that flood late in the season could present some problems as the fall weather can be spotty. In Ohio this year, Oct and Nov haven't been great, with maybe one weekend with two clear days, and a handful of weekends being a complete wash. If the sceduling issue can be made clear to the customer beforehand, that would be a start. Maybe incluse the idea that, 'all jumps need to be scheduled at least 4 weeks in advance' in the pre-purcahse information. Then, when they call to schedule, if you happen to have openings in the next four weeks, you can offer those earlier dates to them, but the customer understands that they might not get to jump the weekend after they buy the coupon. If DZOs of seasonal DZs are willing to extend the expiration dates to any customers who run into the end of the season, that would take care of that problem. Otherwise, it looks like a great marketing tool for DZs. If you can sell 50 tandems at a reduced price, and even 3 or 4 let the coupons expire, that's free money to help offset the discount you gave everyone else.

Once again, you have completely bypassed the point. I clearly said that the time you posted was of no consequence to me, but once you did read the thread and take the time to post, you didn't reply to my earlier posts with relevant questions to YOUR thread, you replied to a later post in YOUR thread, and on top of that, the reply you made didn't represent any real contribution to YOUR thread. In fact, all your post did was state your displeasure with Hvance, who's own post was just about the fact that he too can see right through your bullshit. Once more, and slower this time - I know people have lives and better things to do than post on DZ.com. However, if you are going to start a thread and then return to read the progress of your thread, AT THAT TIME if all you do is add a useless one-liner, and leave the substance of your own thread no better than it was before, that is bullshit.

You're free to read or reply to any posts any time you please. However, when you skip over my posts #8 and #10, and reply to only to post #11 with a reply that adds no useful information to a thread YOU started, it's bullshit and I'm calling you on it. Like I said, along with many others here, I'm sick of your bullshit and I'm going to call you on all of it. It does seem like you have an awful lot of 'experience' for a guy with 100-some jumps, maybe a little too much. Like any other 'experienced' jumper, you can expect your posts and opinions to be examined under a microscope, and any tiny imperfection to be highlighted and pointed to as a weakness. Such is the nature of those operating at a high level, the broad strokes are a given and it's the fine details that become the focus of attention. Typically the degree of that focus varies based on the source of the information, and less experienced jumpers will be held to a lower standard. With the wealth of experience and knowledge you claim to have, we can forego those 'kid gloves' and hold you to the same standard as our best and brightest.

Not from where I'm sitting it's not. It doesn't help that you skipped right over responding to my posts to reply with your 'editorial' to hvance, when answering my posts would have also 'answered' hvance. So what is it? Do you now, or did you then, even own a Vigil? Are you embarrased to admit that you just made it up when you filled out your profile, or embarrrased to admit that you bought a Vigil and now are switching to Cypres? It's seems odd that a guy would be so excited about getting a Cypres that he would start a thread about it's arrival would have ever bought a Vigil in the first place. Why is it that you have all the answers in the world to every other question in every other thread you post in, but I can't get any response out of you in your own thread? Tread lightly, my friend. I'm sick of your shit around here, and you can expect a letter by letter dissection of everything you post from here on in, be it in your own thread or commenting in another. There will be no PAs, but you can sure as hell expect some probing questions, all of them worded to make you look like the partially-informed newbie you are. I'm not telling you not to post anything, I'm telling you not to post anything without being careful.

Generally speaking, it is wrong, however most could get away with that if that's where they wanted to to end it. If they wanted to use it as a car cover, or shred it up and use it to insulate the attic, they could probably get away with it as nobody would be aware that they had it. When they post it on CL, or try to 'extort' money from the jumper or DZ for it's safe return, then they bump into that law and are bound to return it. The guy being from Ottawa, home of the largest and busiest DZs in the midwest, makes it tough for him to argue that he just 'found it' and had no way of knowing who it belonged to or from where it came, especially if it was on his property, as that would put his property within a mile or three of the DZ, and right under a jumprun/canopy flight area, making him well aware of the DZ and its activities.

I agree. I'm a Cypres guy all the way, but I'm still confused about the OPs situation. I know both AADs won't fit in the rig, but why remove an already installed Vigil? Was there a problem with the operation? Concern about recent misfires? Did the guy win the Cypres in a raffle? I just can't get my head around it.

Think it will fit? According to your profile, you have a Vigil in your rig, and I don't think both will fit. Are removing the Vigil? If so, why? It's certainly not timed out (no life limit) and it's not due for maintenence (no mx schedule). Why dump it for a short-lived, high-maintenence Cypres? Did you ever even have a Vigil in the first place? I'm confused, help me to understand.

That was my standard operating procedure. Upsize the slider to keep the openings in check until a line broke. Replace the line, and keep jumping until another broke, then reline or sell the canopy. Worked like a charm. I sold two of them with one new line, one broken line, and the rest in sad shape. It was always fun to explain to potential buyers that when I said 'needs a reline' it meant it really needed a reline now, not in 50 or 100 more jumps. I also played around with moving the brake setting further down the brake line to get the openings better, but that didn't work as well as the slider 'mod'. I think the combination of a badly worn line set, and non-standard brake settings were just too much 'different' for one canopy. At least with the slider trick, the line shrunk/streched as a complete set. I'm not sure if it's old age, a better paying job, or just being more afraid of my Velo, but now I just send it in every other year for a reline, and that seems to work pretty well too.

The advice was either given incompletely, or by someone who was just parroting what they had heard. The idea is that it does have a shorter recovery arc than any x-braced canopy or anything like an x-fire or katana. If your goal is big-time swooping on an x-braced canopy, then learning and spending time dialing in your turn from 300 or 400 ft on a Stiletto might not be as beneficial as doing the same on an x-fire or katana from 500 or 600 ft. if your ultimate goal is to be turning at 700 or 800 ft on a Velo, then the better move would be the more 'divey' canopy. In terms of the Sabre2 angle, I think that issue comes down to WL. The Stiletto is very sensitive to WL when it comes to it's recovery arc. Anything around 1.5ish and below will produce a very short recovery arc, and magnify the 'problem' outlined above. It seems that when you start to push the WL up, the amount of dive increased then the increase in WL. For example, a 10% increase in loading above 1.5ish might produce a 15% increase in dive. The Sabre2, on the other hand, seems to have a more linear change in recovery arc. You'll get similar performance out of it at 1.3 as you will at 1.6. Of course it will dive further at 1.6, but the increase over 1.3 is more in line with the straight increase in WL. For this reason, at lower WL, the Sabre2 might be a better stepping stone up to a real 'divey' canopy. If you were looking at the two canopies loaded at 1.8, I think you would find them to be similar in their recovery arcs, with the Stiletto building more speed and being far more 'twitchy'. Again, two different canopies built for two different purposes, with both canopies meeting their design goals pretty well.

Much like your eariler posts, you have fully missed the point. You wanted to select a rig that you thought would protect your pin as you dragged your rig across the floor while 'butt scooting' to the door, when in reality the real solution is not to expose your rig to that type of treatment regardless of the pin protection. Now you defend your statement by suggesting that an 'out of control' student with booties is a danger because they could hit you from behind. The point you have missed is that any jumper lacking basic directional control (due to lack of skill or adjusting to booties) should not be on anything bigger then a two-way, at which point there is no excuse for you to lose visual contact with the other jumper. If you cannot maintain visual contact, or manuver yourself out of harms way, you have no business jumping with a jumper at that level. The solution is not to remove the booties from such a jumper, but to more carefully select the type of skydive that jumper participates in. The same lack of control that could lead to a freefall collision presents dangers in other parts of the skydive to all on the jump. Every skydive needs to have a certain 'average' level of skill to maintain safety. If you have one very low timer dragging the average down, all other jumpers involved need to be that much above average to compensate. Two low timers requires a very experienced jumper to organize and direct such a jump, and even then it's pushing the concept of keeping up the 'average'. I have tried repeatedly to offer some good advice as to your viewpoints and methods when it comes to jumping, but you seem to dismiss them just like you dismiss everyone elses comments. I have also (for some unknown reason) tried to be nice in doing so, and avoided harsh terms or striaght-up PAs. I would not expect that to last much longer. Keep in mind that people read this board for the sake of information gathering, and some use it in place of actual training. For this reason we need to be sure that the information presented is accurate and specific so that it cannot be misconstrued. Your continued posting of erroneous information and presenting it as fact is damaging the site as a whole, and presents a danger to those reading and follwing your lead. Just stop. Read, ask questions, and learn.

Speak of the devil... This year we had a student go through the FJC who thought he was going to take his phone with him on his first jump, presumably to take pictures or something (I'm guessing under canopy). The AFF I caught wind of this, and of course put a stop to it. What does this genius do? He routes a lenght of clear fishing line through the lanyard attachment on the phone, and loops the end of it around his thumb. Then he slips the phone up the sleeve of his jumpsuit, past the elastic cuff, in an effort to smuggle it on the jump anyway. Of course his instructor also caught on to that plan, and again put a stop to it, but it's proof positive that students can and will do anything under the sun, no matter how stupid it may be.

One of the bets videos online. I remember when this first came out, it was online for a day before it disappeared, I'm glad to see it back up again. I don't think this was in the US based on the Porter, and the fact that the title is in French. Also, this is not a vertical dive, there's a horizontal compotent to what they're doing. You can see it in the body position of the flyer closest to the plane, both in his shadow on the wing and in the second camera view. Huge respect for the outside camera flyer. The move where he backs up, out of the action, to frame up the entire plane shows a real awareness of the camera. What he was looking at up close was epic, and flying that close to the plane had to be cool as shit, but he thought with his camera and not his ego, and backed off to really show full width of the aircraft and it's relation to the jumper. Top notch flying from all involved. If this plane and pilot were a regular fixture at my home DZ, I might never make another jump without the plane/pilot as part of the plan.

That's not correct at all. The short recovey arc was not a design decision, it was a design by-product. The high apsect ratio and eliptical planform were design decisions, and both of those lead to high efficiency and creating a lot of lift, which leads to short recovry arcs. The Stiletto is an excellent swooping canopy, and again I'll reference my 1000's of swoops, and the millions of other swoops performed on Stilettos over the years. The argument people make that bacause it has a shorter recovery arc it is not good for swooping is wrong. It's similar to saying that a stock Corvette is not a good sports car becasue the Corvette Z-R1 is faster or the Corvette ZO6 handles better. The fact remains that a base model Corvette is a very fast, great handling car that would be thrilling to drive on the street or the track. Yes, there are higher performance cars available, but that does not subtract from the desirable qualities of the base model Corvette. The majority of my jumps on Stilettos were on 107s loaded between 1.9 and 2.1. My swoop of choice was a 270 front riser dive, which I would start at about 400/450 ft. Last time I checked, that's higher than the tallest roller coaster on earth, and diving down from that speed into a nice 200+ ft swoop is certainly a nice way to end a skydive. Beyond that, the same high-lift characteristics make the Stilleto a breeze to land (and stop) on the rear risers, and allows it to carve easier and further than an X-braced canopy. When was the last time you saw a full 360 degree carve on a Velocity? A Stiletto (in the right hands) could pull that off, and I routinely set up traffic cones in a zig-zag pattern because the turns were so quick you could swoop through a left, right, left, right, combo and still go 50ft past the cones. The bottom line is that the Stiletto is a great canopy, but it is a different canopy then the X-braced swooping machines that seem to be the 'standard' these days. For the record, I now jump a Velo becasue I'm addicted to the 900ft dive I get out of a 450 degree turn. However, I realize on every jump that I'm trading off many of the good features of the Stiletto for the one good feature of the Velo (the 900ft dive).

Amend that list to just a log book. There are a dozen different options when it comes to altimeters, and you have no idea what you will like until you jump some of them. You'll be provided an alti for all of your student jumps, and most DZs make them available along with rental gear, so you really don't need to hurry up and buy one. Jump what the DZ has, and look around at what other jumpers are using. Ask to borrow whatever looks interesting, and see how you like it 'for real', on an actual jump, then buy whatever you like. Most alti's are in stock somewhere, so you can have one in your hot little hands in less than a week once you make a choice. The suit is another story. There are 100's of choices to make when buying a suit between picking a manufacturer, a type of suit, type of fabric, what cut you need and what options you want. Again, put some jumps on the suits the DZ provides, and see what works for you. The suit does far more than just protect your clothes, so you need to select one very carefully. See what you're instructors put you in for the first couple of jump, then talk to them about why they chose what they did. Once you're jumping solo, you'll still be able to use the DZ's suits, so try a couple of others and see how that goes. Again, look around the DZ at what everyone else is using, and ask them what they like or dislike about it. It's pretty tough to jump someone elses suit, so that's probably out, but asking questions will go a long way. In the end you'll need assistance to get properly measured, and your best bet for success is to find a dealer for the manufacturer you select. They'll know how to measure you the right way, and will be able to consult with you regarding your choice of options. Planning ahead and research are always good, but in the end you need to just show up and jump. The FJC, AFF, and the A license program are designed to make a skydiver out of someone with zero knowledge when they walk in the door, so everything you need to know will be included. Be sure to 'back burner' all of your research and pre-study when you do get started, because there are ten different ways to do everything in skydiving, and the only one you need on your mind is the one the DZ is training you to use. If your instructors are expecting you to act in one way, and you fall back on something you read online, you might have a problem. The best way to make sure everyone is on the same page is to start with a clean slate, and just do it the way they teach. Once you have a license, and are jumping on your own, you can look back at what you researched, compare it to what you were taught, and consult with your instructors as to why there is a difference between the two.