davelepka

Yes, you read that wrong. For the sake of my argument, I was offering examples of the 'bare minimum' required for a paid video jump, and the 'above and beyond' some camera flyers choose to apply. That description is of an 'above and beyond' type effort on a video jump.

The coach program at my DZ is way above minimums. They go above and beyond in every way possible, but that's not the point. The point is that the skills required are no different than any other 100+ jump jumper doing a two way with a newbie (this is leaving out the coaches privledges regarding the FJC and such, I'm limiting it to the coach jumps for the purpose of this discussion). It's just like flying a camera. You can exit RW stable, close in on your subject, and maintain safe proximity until break off or pull time, depending on what you're filming. That's all that's required. Lot's of guys will freefly the exit, jockey around to get the 'good' light, make sure key parts of the skydive or action are highlighted, look around for 'the shot', and interact with the student if appropriate. Those guys are going above and beyond, but that is not required, and in a discussion of who can get the 'job' done, a guy who can achieve the minimum requirements could be called 'qualified'. So when that poster continued to harp on the fact that you can be a 'coach' with 100 jumps, but not jump a camera until you have 200 jumps, and how that was some sort of injustice, I spoke up. The minimum requirements for performing a coach jump are much simpler than that of a camera jump. It's a basic two-way with a newbie, and the dive flow is predetermined. If you cannot perform that jump with 100+ jumps to your name, you have severely mis-managed your jumps to date, and missed out on some very basic training. To the contrary, I would not the least bit surprised to hear that a jumper with 100+ jumps, even a well trained one, was not ready for the distraction and added workload of jumping a camera.

Indeed, but the opinion is about the skill level or ability of a jumper with 200 jumps, and the snowflake hasn't even reached that point while the monkey has 10 times that number of jumps, it might be time to listen to the monkey.

You need to know that they'll teach you everything you need to know in the First Jump Course, which is one reason it will take all day. In terms of the landing, you'll be taught what called a 'Parachute Landing Fall' or PLF, which is a technique for rolling your body across the ground in order to survive a fairly good impact without injury. Pay close attention to this part of the training, and make sure you follow through with it on your actual jump. Being a bigger guy, you will be loading the parachute up more than the other students. Most student canopies are sized such that they are oversized for the average jumper, which is what you want. The oversized canopies will let you down softer than a more 'standard' sized chute. With you being of an above average weight, the 'oversized' canopy is more like a 'standard' sized canopy, so your dedication to the idea of a good PLF is key. Even with your higher weight under the student canopy, it is easily possible that you will have a very soft landing, equal to sitting down in a comfy chair. The gear is capable of providing that, but it is up to the user to make it happen. Being a first time jumper, nobody can say how well you will fly the canopy, so plan for the worst, and roll it out. Also, give the guys at The Farm a call and see what they have to say. If they can accomodate a jumper of your weight, send your business their way. They are a great bunch of guys with a solid reputaion in the industry. While the staff and instructors at ASC may be great guys as well, the owners of that place are straight up crooks, and not people you want to give your money to. Do a search on this sight for 'Skyride', and you'll see the way those guys do business, and why you don't want to be a part of it.

That's their function, they literally are a glorified jump buddy. Fast forward 10 jumps, and now you have a A license jumper with 28 jumps. If you, or anyone with 100+ jumps were to do a two-way with them, how would it differ that much from a coach jump? Wouldn't you dirt dive with them, and offer pointers in possible problem areas? How about give their rig a once over before walking to the plane? These are all things people do as a matter of regular business, but none of them are required. The un-licensed jumper has been cleared to self-jumpmaster, and should be expected to do so. If the coach going with them wants to double check that they are performing that task correctly, then so be it. However, the coach is expected only to fly their slot, and break off at the correct time. They are not there to signal a break off, they are expected to break off at the proper time just as in a 'real' skydive. They are not expected to pull for the other jumper, or intervene if that jumper has stability problems. That is not their job, and they have not been trained for that. It's a simple proposition - participate in a two-way with an unlicensed jumper. You will take the lead in the some areas because you are the senior jumper, but that is no different than any other jump. Yes, some jumpers make more of it than that, and in some cases that's good, and in others, not so much, but in the end being a 'coach' requires a very simple skill set, that of doing a two-way with a newbie, and should not be compared to flying a camera, which we have seen proven to be harder than it looks.

Well then, let's remember that not many years ago, there was no such thing as digital video. The smallest video cameras available were Hi-8, and those weighed several pounds, and were too large to side mount. A full face camera helmet you had to clamp onto your head was the only option. As such, shooting video was much less attractive to just about everyone, the few who stepped up to the plate needed help in just getting the camera helmet together. No jump minnimum was needed because the gear created the 'filter'. Now you can order a tapeless, light weight, HD camera for a couple hundered bucks, and it even comes with the hardware to mount it to any helmet you can think of. Not too many years ago, a 135 was considered a hot-rod canopy, and you had to sign a waiver to purchase a 107 or 97 sq ft canopy. Swooping wasn't even a word used in relation to canopies, it was all hook turns and turf surfs. Nobody worried about downsizing, or swooping too soon because it wasn't a problem. Now you can order a 79 sq ft canopy from the factory with no questions asked, and it's common to see jumpers making multiple revolution turns resulting swoops fast enough to fire a Cypres. You're right, we do need to re-evalute who should be doing what and when, but not the direction you're thinking. In terms of your continued comparison to the coach rating, let's keep in mind the real purpose of a coach. They are intended only as a 'jump buddy' to the un-licensed jumper. They are there to dirt dive, make the jump, and debrief. The un-licensed jumper is cleared to, and expected to self-jumpmaster. The coach has no responsibility for the un-licensed jumper from gear selection, to gear up, to gear checks, to exit order, to spotting, to stability in freefall, to offering hand signals, to break-off, or pull time, or flying the landing pattern, or landing. Their job is to be a jump buddy, reference in the sky, and a person to talk to afterwards. Don't associate being able to do a simple two way with a prewritten dive flow to jumping a camera, they are two different things.

The councilman beat me to it, but a pull out is OK as long as the rig is small enough (or your arms are long enough) to reach back and place an open hand flat on your pin cover. That's what it takes to retrieve a floating pud and avoid a reserve pull. Also, as long as you don't mind not using a packer, and not being able to check if your PC is cocked (in the case of a collapsable PC) on a pin check, then go for the pull out. In all reality, pull out and throw out are about the same in terms of functionality, reliability, problem areas, and maintainence.

You are 100% correct in your assumption. Reducing drag increases airspeed, end of story. Make your canopy ride as long as possible (half brakes, or some other input to reduce the descent rate), and go as fast as you can during that canopy ride (reducing drag as much as possible). When you say canopy coaches, you're saying that there was more then one of them, and they were all in agreement about 'getting big'? Very surprising to hear.

I'm not sure that any variation of possible setups would merit an alteration to the basic EPs, which is pull cutaway, pull reserve. RSL, AAD, or Skyhook should have no effect on your EPs. The exact sequence you use to accomplish those two steps is the very subject of this thread, and I'm a fan of two hands on each handle. Others seem to think that one hand per handle is the way to go. I think a universal position would be that holding on to your handles should not appear in your EPs, because that's nowhere near a priority at that time. It reminds me of a 'trick' I see students pull from time to time. They are taught to read their altimeter, wave off and pull at 5.5k. Every now and again, you'll see a guy read the alti at 5.5, and go right for the hackey, going as far as getting a hand on it, only to return to the stable freefall position and wave off before reaching back again for the pull. You and I both know that the pull is the important part, and that the wave off is fairly low on the list, but the training kicks in and they make sure the wave off happens, usually at the expense of 500 or 1000ft of alittude. The other issue is your soft reserve handle, which is the subject of many, many other threads, My feelings are that a handle you can hook over your hand or a thumb is a huge advantage over a soft handle. With a 3-ring release and hard riser inserts, the cutaway forces should remain fairly low and the pillow handle is adequate. The reserve pull force is subject to a handful of variables, such as the humidty at the time of the pack job vs. humidity at the time of the reserve pull, and plain old differences between riggers and pack jobs. I look at it this way, if I had to pick either handle to be harder to pull, I'll take the cutaway. Even if you can't cut away from a mal, as long as you can get a reserve out, you can probably survive. Of course, if you have a total, you really want to the get the reserve out. So for that reason, I'll take a soft cutaway handle, but not the reserve. If anyone wants to discuss the soft vs hard reserve handle thing, start a new thread just to keep this one on track. Feel free to use this post to start it if you want.

To be fair, I don't think the OP would deny that he was wrong, but his feeling seems to be that the procedure itself allows for that type of error. If you were to use two hands on each handle, that type of error is eliminated. Of course, the remaining error is that you put both of your hands on the wrong handle, and deploy the reserve before pulling the cutaway. However, I do recall a recent thread about a jumper using the two handle technique who had an out of sequence cut-away and reserve deployment. I think the story was similar, that he had grabbed both handles (and possibly peeled both), and went to pull the cutaway but only pulled far enough for the short cutaway cable to release the one riser, and then either due to the 'jolt' of releasing a riser, or reflex action from practicing EPs, he pulled the reserve with one main riser still attached to the harness. I may be biased, as I was taught the two hand technique, but for students I think it's the superior method. Having one hand on each handle does leave the door open for pulling the wrong handle first. If you drill the two hand technique, and it's always 'right side then left side', you stand a pretty good chance that they'll get to the correct side first. If they can accomplish that, then the chance for an out-of-sequence EP is zero. Also, if you consider that all of the ground training with a training harness is simulating the handles in a 'no canopy out' harness position, and that in the case of an actual mal, the handles will be in a different position, the student will have to locate the handles in their new position, higher up due to the harness shifting up from a (partially) deployed canopy. If they are only locating the one handle in the new position, it will take less time. Once the cutaway has been pulled, the harness (and reserve handle) will return to the configuration they are familiar with, identical to the training harness. Locating the reserve handle will fall back to 'reflex action'. Additionally, with the requirement for an RSL on a student rig, and the growing acceptance of RSLs and Skyhooks, two hands on each handle looks even better. There's a fair chance that the one handle will take care of the whole job, so make that the focus, and try to eliminate the premature reserve deployments possible with one hand on each handle.

No matter what the situation, forget about the cutaway handle in terms of setting your emergency procedures. Not losing that handle should literally be NOWHERE in your mind or thought process in terms of being in an actual emergency, or even when planning for one. If you include it in your planning and practice, there is a chance it will rear it's ugly head during an actual emergency, and that's the last thing you should be concerned about. The cutaway handle is actually the one compoment that you can lose in a cutaway that a rigger can replace for you from stock. The freebag i ssized for the container, the reserve ripcords length is defined by the size of the harness, but any stock cutaway handle can be trimmed to fit your rig. Forget about it. Is your post correct when you say you have a reserve 'pud'? That being a soft reserve handle? If so, you really need to rethink your loigc that the 'reserve is unlikley to be a hard pull'. Without the mechanical advantage of a D-ring or loop you can pu tyour hand through, you're counting on the strength of your hand to connect your hand to the reserve pin. In the event of an inury to your hand/arm (this is an emergency, anything is possible), the pull could become very hard, not due to closing loop tension, but due to your ability to grip the handle. Beyond that, soft handles are more likely to fold under the harness or part of your jumpsuit. I'm going to hazzard a guess that you modified your EP's on your own, after your student training. For the above reasons, I would suggest you reconsider your approach, and stick to the basics.

This is an interesting point that many 'new' guys bring up. I'm sure you spend all of your free time and money at the DZ, and all of the time you don't have free you spend thinking about jumping. So what's your point? You've been at it for 11 months, and I'm guessing one, maybe two DZs.How about the rest of us who have done the EXACT SAME THING? I live in Ohio, and can only jump 7 months out of the year, but I have managed to average 300 jumps per year for the last 15 years. Do think that's the result of a casual interest in this sport? The thing that's getting you in trouble is the fact that you can't seem to recognize, or if you do you pay no attention to, the fact that there are horizons in this sport beyond what you can see from your point of view. You discount the value of advice or viewpoints just because they come to you via the internet, but you need to realize that the internet is what makes it possible for you to see beyond your own backyard. It's not the enemy, it's the enabler but you can't see it for what it is. The people you are interacting with are not anonymous avatars commenting on a Youtube video, these are established, real people, with a deep, deep pool of experience to call upon. I'm sure your local instructors are good guys, and you absolutely want to consider their input on anything you do, but realize there's a chance that what happens at your DZ isn't the same thing, or even the best thing, that happens at other DZs. An example (not to derail this thread, but this example comes to mind), the Dz in Lodi, CA, does not use a ground to air radio when training their students. Jumpers who learn to jump in Lodi, before venturing out to other DZs may not even be aware that ground to air radio is used anywhere in skydiving. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of DZ use a radio system of some sort, and industry wide it's considered the thing to do. Lodi students could argue that they were not provided a radio, and that their student jumps went well, but that doesn't mean that an instructor from another DZ who endorses the use of a radio doesn't have a valid point, and doesn't deserve some consideration. Open up your mind a little and try to imagine the fruits of your skydiving labors if you were to maintain your level of interest and enthusiasm for a decade or two. By the way, if you're uncomfortable with a steep glide and a short canopy ride, I suggest you stop speaking in such a cavalier manner about 'Knowing my emergency prodcedures', because an F-111 7-cell reserve deployed after a high speed, spinning mal is the dictionary defeinition of a 'steep glide and a short canopy ride'.

An RDS involves hooking your d-bag and pilot chute up to your slider instead of the top of the canopy. The line inside the d-bag is replaced with a lanyard a couple feet long that hooks to the back edge of your slider. When you deploy, and the bag slips off the canopy, it and the PC trails from the slider and not the top of the canopy. A full RDS has a removable slider which has a release (similar to the 3-ring release) at each corner of the slider, and a single handle to release all four corners at once. 'Cutting away' the slider leaves the big ring of the system around each riser, and allows you to reel in the D-bag and PC, and ball up the slider/d-bag/pc and stuff it down your shirt. Deployment system removed. A partial RDS will use a standard non-removable slider, with the d-bag/PC lanyard attached to the back edge of the slider with a snap shackle (like an RSL) or other quick-release type buckle. Once the slider is down, you unhook the lanyard, reel in the d-bag and PC and stuff it down your shirt. The advantage to the partial system is that it eliminates having to re-rig the removable slider after each jump, and the risk of one or more corners of the slider releasing during a deployment. The disadvatage is that you still have to collapse and stow your slider after you deal with your d-bag and PC. It's way faster in the air to pull the one handle, and have everything come off in one step.

I'm glad that method worked out well for you, but I base my opinion on radios and student training not on my own single experience as a student, but on the 1000's of students I have worked with over the years. See my post above this one for a link to a thread about radios and student training. The radio is not intended to be a replacement for good training, but a back up device for unforeseen circumstances. Instructors who use a radio are free to say nothing if all is going well, but they have the option of assisting the student if the need arises. Instructors without a radio have no recourse if things do not go according to plan.

So an not to further de-rail this thread, here's another thread about the use of radios and student training - http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3843772;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread

What's even funnier is that he made up a new one... I guess I was lucky my aerodynamics didn't kill me in my early days of jumping camera. I knew a guy who met a guy who heard a story about a guy who's camera helmet spun him up into line twists this one time....

He claims he did just that. Of course, more experienced jumpers have hard time believing that because PD has a reputation of being conservative with their demos, and would not send a Stiletto of any size to a guy with 100 jumps. See post 206 of this thread, where the guy who works for PD seems to indicate that EFS4LIFE was less than truthful when dealing with PD.

The FAA doesn't make a habit of showing up at DZs to look around and make sure everything is above board. There's a thing called a 'ramp check', where they do show up and make sure all the paperwork is in order, but 9 times out of 10 a ramp check is the result of a phone call from someone who has reason to believe that a DZ won't pass a ramp check. The FAA does not have agents in the field roaming the countryside performing ramp checks. What happened at Lodi was step beyond a ramp check, and involved grounding the entire fleet while the FAA investigated their maintenence records, and if they actually matched the condition of the planes. In all fairness to Lodi, this came on the heels of a double fatality which had nothing to do with the DZ or it's procedures, and a collapsed gear on a plane during landing which may or may not have been the fault of the DZ. Either way all of the 'buzz' caught the attention of the FAA, so they end up with the planes on the ground. One example of how Lodi is 'different' than other DZs is that they don't use radios with their student jumpers. The majority of DZ will put a radio on a student where the instructor on the ground can talk to the student under canopy. They can assist you with finding the DZ from under canopy, and make sure you're following the flight plan taught before the jump. Lodi chooses not to use a radio, with the idea being that it creates a more self-reliant student. The counter argument to this is that if a student is performing well on their own, the instructor does not have to say one word over the radio and the student can fly the canopy on their own. However, if the student is not flying in the right direction, or following the flight plan, the instructor has an avenue to correct this. A few years back a student at Lodi was not following the flight plan, and ended up in a bad situation. Being a student, she did not know how to get out of that situaiton, and flew her canopy into a telephone pole with her body hitting the actual pole and sustaining some severe facial injuries. If she had a radio, an instructor could have told her to turn back toward the correct area much sooner in the canopy ride, and avoided the incident all together. This is just one example, and to be fair there are other DZs that do not use radios, but they are in the small minority. As far as I know, Lodi is the only 'big' DZ that doesn't use a radio system. If you think a radio is a good idea, maybe include that as one of the questions you could ask a possible DZ when making your decision.

That's some attitude you got there pal. You're giving Dave's everywhere a bad name. Ever thought about just moving the riser? Duh? Why would you want to drill holes in your camera helmet? Just move the riser elsewhere, and your problem is solved. Get rid of the thing all together, you another one, right? Hell, if you count reserve risers there's four of them. What is this, a riser collecting convention? Sometimes the simplest answer is right in front of your face, or beside your face right after slapping you in the back of the head.

I do think it's neat how I have a lot of good stuff to say, right up until I disagree with you at which point I'm an old-timer who doesn't get the 'new style'. It never occurs to you to think that maybe I continue to have good things to say, and that I did already take my time to write several lengthy posts in this thread so I must think that this is an important topic? Really?

What does that mean? My profile states I've been jumping for 15 years. The ZP square has been around for 20. I've got about 20 jumps on an F-111 main between my student days, and a handful of odd jumps here and there. The other 4900+ were on a ZP sqaure (or eliptical) just like you're jumping. You're reaching for some justification, and the 'modern era' defense is not applicable here. Your beeper is taking care of something you should be spending your time developing, situational awareness. The more you jump, the smaller your canopies get and the faster you go, the more you will need a highly developed sense of situational awareness to keep yourself in one piece. You will reach a point where a device can no longer keep up with what you're doing, and when you reach the limits of the device's usefulness, you'll be shit out of luck if you can't fly 'manually'. I've been in your shoes, and I've been in my shoes, and it looks to me like a beeper to keep you in line under canopy is taking it a bit too far. A beeper in freefall is another story as that's a different environment where things are happening a lot faster, and you're trypically interacting directly with others which can distract you from the situation. In fact, if you wanted to use a beeper to call break off from a CReW formation, I'd be all for it because, again, other people are there distracting you from the matter. Once you're under canopy, moving at a relative snails pace, all by your lonesome, it's time to put on your big-boy pants and shut off the electronic babytsitter. Your description of your under-canopy procedures relies way too much on your beeper beeping, and less on your brain actaully thinking, and that needs to change.

I agree, but how you use it has a lot to do with how much you learn from it. An audible in the pattern will tell you your altitude at preset intervals only, and in between you have no idea where you are. A visual altimeter, on the other hand is always available for your reference. If, for example, the winds or your pattern entry height was differernt than you had planned for, you would need to adjust your pattern to suit. An audible will still beep at the preset intervals, but the visual will allow you to identify other altitudes than those you expected to be working with (like when you programmed your audible). As to how you use the visual altimeter, the trick is to first use your eyes and guess your altittude, THEN look at the altimeter to check your accuracy. Adjust as needed for the next time. While your eyes may not be as accurate as the mechanical altimeter, they are a lot more reliable as they'll always be available to you. The lower you get, the more accurate your eyes will get, and you should be able to eyeball your altitiude under 500 or 600 ft to within 100ft in a matter of a couple dozen jumps. Being able to accurately eyeball your turns onto base and final is key to landing off safely. Pattern entry altitude on an off-field landing is not much of a concern as you're not trying to 'fly nice' with others, and given the unusual circumstances surrounding an off-field landing you may or may not have a traditional downwind leg anyway. But the turns onto base and final are how you make an accurate approach which can be key to safely landing off. Being able to put together the bottom half of a pattern with just your eyes can make the difference between setting down in that backyard, or the trees surrounding it. Yes, use an altimeter in the pattern. Make it a visual one, and only use it to 'check your work' after eyeballing the altitutde on your own.

The answer is that it doesn't matter. The reason is that there is a time period after you release the brakes where the canopy will not respond to input. Release the brakes too low, and need to flare? Too bad, you're going plant yourself pretty hard in the LZ, no way around it. Keep in mind that the majority of tandem canopies are 350 to 400 sq ft, and typically loaded right around 1 to 1, similar to what's reccomended for a new jumper with 20 jumps. Now consider that thses canopies are being flown by TIs with at least 500 jumps, and the ones using the brake surge typically have many more. The way they handle their canopies, and the conditions they jump in are not examples for other jumpers to follow. In regards to Shah, you may be correct about his landing. If that was the case, then he's lucky he didn't snap his leg again. The catch 22 to making a low, flat turn is what you do afterwards. If you're high enough you can return to full flight, if not, you need to be ready to return only to braked flight, and be willing to land in that configuration. Many jumpers miss that part of the 'flat turn' concept, and feel that becuase they can turn in half brakes they're all ready for anything. Avoiding an obstacle or collision is only half of the battle, you're still flying and still have to land safely.

What do you think a dytter is, genius? It's an altimeter, and truthfully if you're going to use one for flying your pattern, the audible one is what will keep your eyes up and looking for traffic. The visual one will have you glancing back and forth from it to your surroundings, reducing the quality of your traffic scan. How about not using either one? Use your eyeballs to fly your parachute where you want to go? As a student, you can reference it AFTER you have looked and determined you are at the correct altitude to check the accuracy of your 'eyeballing', but after that you should just be flying your canopy with your brain and eyeballs.

If you have to do a flat turn to end up within 10m of where you planned, then your pattern is not right, and you're (literally) cutting the corner to get to where you want to be, and that's not good. It's really simple, you have a goal and the way to reach it is through science. Create a hypothesis (your flight plan), conduct an experiment (your jump) and formulate a conclusion (your conclusion). Like any scientific experiment, the quality of youre conclusion will result form the quality of your hypothesis and experimentation. Write things down, plan the flight to the best of your ability. Jump. Write down everything you can remember soon after landing. Take your time and look at the data. Draw your conclusions, then bounce them off a more experienced jumper, and use them to write the plan for your next jump. What you want to do is plan the entire flight, fly the plan accordingly and then end up within 10m of your intended touchdown point. If you can repeat that for 5 or 10 jumps, you've figured it out and can just wing it from then on (no pun intended). In terms of soft landings after a flat turn, you got lucky (maybe). I say that because if you look at your experience with that chain of events, you've done it once (or a couple times) but nowhere near enough to make a hard conclusion that a flat turn will equal a soft landing. The truth is actually to the contrary. Your best flare will be with the most speed going in, and your canpoy goes the fastest in full flight. As previously mentioned, you want a good ten seconds of zero-input full flight before the flare on every jump. The turbulence issue is along the same lines. Just because you noticed something once or twice does not mean that's the way of the world. Maybe is was just that day, just that canopy, or just that variety of turbulence that caused what you noticed, but the one thing to remember about turbulence is that it's not predictable, and avoidance is the only sure fire cure for it. Avoid jumping in turbulent conditions, and avoid flying in areas where object turbulence is likely. Remember that object turbulence becomes more of a factor as wind speed increases. It's a good thing to pay attention to your canopy flight, but make sure that you're not handicapping yourself because of your injury. You're a big guy who was jumping a ragged out student canopy. You had less than ten jumps, and didn't PLF your landing. It's no surprise that you got hurt, but it's not because you have something wrong with you that makes it hard for you to fly a canopy. With a little bit of thought, canopies are easy to fly. From reading your posts, while you might be a bit of a 'character', you're certainly smart enough to fly a parachute, so just do the work for a few jumps and everything will work itself out.