davelepka

The simple fact is that silent demonstration is not the best method for teaching anything. The problem with that is it leaves room for the student to interpret your actions or intent with no ability for you to give feedback or correction in real time. Do you speak during your FJC, or silently show them the moves required? You speak, because it's the clearest, most reliable form of communication. Most instructors do both, but if you had to pick one, you would choose to sit motionless and speak to the class. They could demonstrate to you, and you could could comment on their performance (like when speaking over a radio), but you could not demonstrate yourself. How about in freefall? Do you use established hand signals, or do you fly out in front of your student and just show them the right way to fall stable? You use hand signals because then there is a clear line of communication between you and the student, and they don't have to guess what you're showing them or what they're doing wrong. Legs out, means legs out, and arch means arch. It's as close to speaking as you can get in freefall. I'll make my final point on this, as I feel that the comminuty has seen my side of the story sufficiently. My final point is that it was 15 years ago that you did the initial experiments, but since then it has not been furthered persued or developed, and as far as I know, is not in regular use anywhere in the US. If the idea had merit, and was 'the way', someone, somewhere, would have latched onto it and put it into use. The radio system is beautifully simple in that it 'fits' so many students needs. If they need lots of help, and special instructions, it does that. If they're flying like a pro, and need no help, it does that too, and everything in between. Given that most DZs won't let you get past jump 10 with a radio, and that it takes 25 jumps to earn an A license, there are no dependcy issues to be concerned with. A jumper will have twice as many jumps without a radio as with before they are licensed and free to jump on their own.

I think you're confused, or intentionally posting unrelated topics. There's a big difference between upping the per-jump pay of your instructors by a couple bucks, and offering a pension and health care. I agree that being a skydiving instructor is never going to be a 'real' job in that you can make a career out of it, feed your family, send your kids to college and retire, but that doesn't mean that the pay should stagnate for decades. The work hasn't gotten any easier, but the pay is the same as is was 15 years ago. Living expenses, gear and rigging, and gas to drive to the DZ all cost more, and jumpers are still limited as to how many jumps they can make per day, so I don't think that a 'cost of living' increase is out of the question. Maybe base it on seniority, once a guy has been working there for 2 or 3 seasons, bump them up a notch in pay. Once they hit 5 or 6 years, bump them again. Sure, it's costs more to send the senior staffers up on a jump, but those same people have been helping the DZ make money for years, and probably spending money there for longer. Again, it's a long way from a pension and health care. Kicking in another $3 to $5 a jump for some of your dedicated employees isn't asking much.

Repeating this does not address my questions/concerns, nor does it add anything to the thread. I had not read the artcles, but I went back and did read them before typing this reply, and all it did was generate more concerns about your idea. For starters, my original point still stands and has not beed addressed, that being that the FTL concpet is a one-trick pony. The only function it provides is guidance, there is no provision for providing any other type of advice or assistance. A radio, on the other hand, is adept at providing both, you can provide simple guidance as well as assist if things should go off-plan or the student needs more complicated instruction. Does your plan overcome that in some way, or do you just accept the reduced functionality? In terms of the phrase 'learn to move in a 3D space', which you used many times in your articles, how is that different than radio assistance? Guiding someone through an actual canopy ride, be it by FTL or with a radio, provides them the same experience of seeing the relationships between time/altitude and forward/vertical movement first hand. If you were comparing FTL to something like tracing a flight plan/landing pattern on an overhead picture of the DZ, in that case the 3D nature of the activity would be lost, and FTL would hold an advantage. but FTL and radio both work on the basis of in-air training (for the student), and both provide a real world experience flying through the 3D space. My final comment on your articles (you were probably better off before I read them), is that all of your examples involve jumpers with 20 to 50 jumps and were from 15 to 20 years ago. None of your esamples address the needs of the students with 1 to 10 jumps, and those are the vast majority of the jumpers who use a radio these days. Someone with the experience of 20-some jumps is in a much better position to be 'alone' under canopy, and then simply use FTL to tweak their accuracy skills. In that respect, it can be a useful training tool. However, in terms of primary training, for the first few times a jumper is under canopy as a student. the increased functionality of a radio far out-performs the one-dimensional idea of FTL. Furthermore, given the new(er) canopy performance requirements of the A license proficiency card, jumpers couldn't make it off student status without the basic skills that the FTL program could provide. Even if it's a good tool for jumpers with 20 to 50 jumps, they would already have those skills by virtue of the new(er) training requirements. FTL is not a bad idea, it's just as good of an idea as using a radio when you're talking about the first handful of times a student is alone under canopy. We use a version of FTL taught in the FJC, that being we tell students to look for (and follow) other canopies if they are having trouble finding the DZ.

Have a look at the north end of the runway. The road is a good 10 or 20 ft from the edge of the tarmac, so unless a guy is trying to drop the mains right on the edge, there should be enough space. In reality, look at the displaced threshold lines, those are the arrows that point toward a solid white line across the runway, about 250 from the 'end'. Those lines are there for a reason, like when an obstacle doesn't allow for a low apporach to that end of the runway. Buildings, power lines, and roads are good reasons to displace the threshold. The runway still extends to all the way down, but this is for the purpose of allowing a longer take-off roll when departing from than end, but in terms of landings, the end of the runway short of the displaced threshold is a 'no fly' zone, and nobody should be wheels down in that zone. It's like a rig with or without an AAD. Without an AAD, you could throw your main PC at 1000ft and not expect a two out. With an AAD, you're almost guaranteed a two-out if you throw at 1k ft. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from throwing out at 1k with an AAD, you can phyically freefall to 1k and then deploy, it's just not going to work out in your favor. Ditto with landing short of the displaced threshhold. Is there runway surface there? Yes. Can you fly right down and plant the mains on it? Maybe sometimes, but you can't claim to be 'surprised' when it doesn't work out. Edit to add - I tried twice to link to a google map of the airport in question, but neither of them worked. Map ti yourself, it's the Northwest Regional Airport in Roanoke TX, and the 'incident' happened at the north end of the runway.

What happens if you have a cutaway? What happens if they have a cutaway? What happens if you have a traffic conflict? What happens if they have a traffic conflict? Your idea has some merit, but overall there are too many scenarios where your guidance would be limited or eliminated alltogether, leaving the student with no options. A radio provides for reliable communication from a variety of sources. The communication does not rely on the performance of rigs, canopies, openings, or traffic. If you have an operator on the ground, that person will be there and able to assist regardless of what happens in the sky. There are far more variables in the sky than on the ground, I have not once enountered an obstacle I could not overcome when walking to the radio to talk down a student. On top of all that, follow the leader only provides directional guidance when the curcumstances allow. It does not account for anything out of the ordinary happening to or with the student, and that's a big part of the value of the radio. If everything under canopy goes as per the plan, meaning that exactly what they were taught comes to pass, flying and landing a canopy is not that hard. It's when things change and go off-plan that students could use the experience and decision making ability of a ground based instructor to help them make the best choices.

Again, most every reserve and all 'stowless' main d-bags are just as you decsribed. Locking stows only, with the rest of the lines folded into a pocket or pouch, and they open fine. The point is that rubber band tension has nothing to do with the opening itself. All the rubber bands do is provide neat storage for the lines during packing and deployment. As mentioned above, a pocket or pouch serves the same purpose. What's important is that they are stowed neatly, and in a way that they will not effect the clean lift of the bag by the PC. If the lines were tight on one side, and loose on the other, it could lead to bag wobble or spin, which can lead to other opening problems. So if you want to 12lbs on each band, that's cool as long as it's 12lbs for all bands. Want zero tension, like a stowless d-bag? That's cool too, it just has to be the same all around.

No. Your opening is a function of your pack job, airspeed, and body position. Rubber bands have nothing to do with that. Some will try to argue that proper tension is required, but reserves (besides Racers) and a good number of main D-bags only have locking stows, with no rubber bands at all holding the bulk of the lines. Provided that your lines are neatly stowed in some way, and all the stows balanced in their size and tension, it will not effect your opening. In terms of size, I use the big ones double wrapped. They're easier to wrap, and easier to change, and I just like them better.

Don't miscatagorize what I said. I was commenting on the video of the winsuits 'flying' in place in high winds by being tethered to poles in the ground. I went on to make the comparison to a weather reporter being blown down a street by a hurricane, clearly making my point that those wingsuits weren't really 'flying', but simply being blown around by a strong wind. I did not make any reference to gliders flying anywhere, for any length of time or distance. You can keep swinging, but you're never going to connect any of those punches until you get on the same page as everyone here. We're all talking about one thing, and you're talking about another.

Let's say I'm at the top of a flight of 10 stairs. Frist, I walk down to the bottom stair. Second, I turn around and walk back up 5 stairs. Which direction did I travel (vertically) in my second action?

I don't get it. A Katana 120 is an expert level canopy. If you're an expert level canopy pilot, then you should be able to explain the above statement about WL to me. If you can't answer your own question, do you really think a Katana 120 is for you?

Again, you're counting on the AAD working as designed. In that case, you might be right. With an AAD that is not working how it's supposed to, you don't know what you're going to get, and as such are unable to make judgements based on probability. You're not going to find it, because when an AAD malfucntions, like the Argus, they ban it. If you want to look at AADs that reacted as-designed to a situation that didn't need it, like an AAD firing because of a really fast swoop, that's another story. In that case, the AAD worked the way it was designed, but the user came up with a situaiton where an AAD fire was not wanted, but triggered the AAD anyway.

You're getting confused. In comparing AAD related deaths to AAD related saves, and then comparing that to seatbelts, and the lives that have been saved/lost as a result, all relies on the idea that the AADs and seatbelts were working properly, and then a situation came up that made them deadly. The Argus ban came about because the cutters were trapping reserve loops in place, and thus creating a hazard if they should release at the wrong time. Let's say that seatbelts began grabbing the steering wheel, and steering the car into oncoming traffic, in that case, seatbelts would be banned until the problem was solved. Nobody would say, 'Just keep using them, they save more than they kill when they work right'.

With proper care and maintenance, it will last for 20+ years and 1000's of jumps. If this is your first rig, this subject is the reason that you should look for a used rig to start off with. Your needs/wants/gear knowledge will change considerably over the next 100 or 200 jumps, and there's a fair chance that you'll want to swtich something about your rig. If you try to sell a new rig that's 1 or 2 years old with 100 or 200 jumps on it. you're going to lose a ton of cash. Used gear, on the other hand, can hold it's value fairly well and you could sell something after putting 100 or 200 jumps on it for about the same money you paid for it. Used canopies are also waaay easier to pack. If you're trying to do the deal where you get a container that will just barely fit what you're jumping now, so you can later fit a couple size smaller canopies in there, a new canopy is going to be a very bad idea. In a 'loose' fit contianer a new canopy is tough to pack, in a 'tight' fit container, it's a nightmare. Used gear will offer the same functionality as new, and cost half (or less) of what a new rig will run you. That money is much better spent on jumps. What you want to do is spend the leat amount of money on gear, and the most on jumps. Having a fancy new rig doesn't do you any good if you can't afford to jump all day, everyday you can get to the DZ.

That's a good estimate of the costs to get a license. AFF is just one part of that process. After you pass AFF, you'll be cleared to 'self-supervise', which means you can jump by yourself. This should take about 10 jumps, but you need 25 jumps to get a license. You also need to learn and demonstrate certain skills beyond AFF to get a license, so some of those 15 extra jumps will be with a 'coach', who will help you learn. All in, for AFF, coach jumps, and gear rental, $2500 to $3000 is a good number to budget with. Beyond that, jumps are about $25 each, and that buys you a seat in the plane. If you need gear, renting will vary in price, but it can be anything from $25 for a whole day, up to $35 per jump, depending on where you jump. Renting long term generally sucks, the gear doesn't always fit well, and students will get priority, so if you're a licensed jumper, you get bumped back until the students are done jumping. You can assemble a used rig for about $2500 to $3000, and then you can count on getting most of that money back on resale. If you buy a good, used 'beginners' rig, you'll have no problem selling it to another new jumper when you decide to upgrade or quit jumping. Overall, how much it will costs depends on how many jumps you want to make. Most people only jump on weekends, and most DZs are only really 'busy' on the weekends anyway. My advice right now is to just start the AFF program and take it 'one jump at a time'. You'll learn a lot about the sport, and will know all of this stuff before you get a license anyway.

Why is that hard to imagine? For many years, static line was done with rounds, where canopy control was less of an issue. Once DZs started to use squares, it became more of an issue, and some of them started to use radios. My first 4 jumps were static line jumps with square canopies, and I was given a radio. It was a big help for the first few jumps, and then after having flown a canopy a few times, I was able to stop using the radio and had 'good' canopy control on my first 'no radio' jump. Could I have performed that way on my first jump with no radio? Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm gald it was there in case I needed it, and it gave me the ability to experience canopy flight, and drop the radio when I felt like I could do it on my own. I don't see a downside to that scenario. Again, it's a tool, and it's effectiveness is related to how it's used. Use it wrong, and you'll get less out of it. Use it right, and you can help to accelerate the learning curve. In either case, you maintain that line of communication to your student should things go 'off plan', and that's the real value.

That's hard for me to say, because radios were in use when I started jumping in 1995. However, we know that they weren't around when students jumped rounds, and probably for the first little while when they switched to squares. It would have been the combination of the technology not being available (at a reasonable price), and just not knowing all that was going to be involved in teaching canopy control. What I do know is that before radios, DZs used paddles to direct their students. Some of them were different colors, or the operator would use a combination of movements/positions to indicate left turn or right turn. The overall idea is that people wanted to communicate with the students because the benefits were obvious. Think about this - how many times have you been standing at the DZ watching something bad happen, like a low cutaway or jumper making some really bad choices under canopy, and someone (or multiple people) start yelling, 'Pull!' or 'Cutaway!' or 'Flare!'? We've all seen it, and if you haven't, check out the video of the Russian wingsuiting lady who had the collision at Perris not too long ago. There are a buch of people shouting instructions to her, but she's way too far away to be able to hear them. The point is that being an outside observer to an emergency situation, you may have a better perspective or state of mind, and can more easily see the solution or best course fo action. In terms of a student with 5 jumps or less, there's a good chance you'll know more than them, and have a better idea than they will if something should go wrong. So would you rather be standing there shouting instructions to someone who will never hear them, or speaking into the radio, where you're probably the only thing they can hear?

It all depends on the time of year. The US is a bog place, and the seasons have a lot to do with where the 'best' DZs are. Ask this question again when you can throw out some dates of travel. Then you can look at the weather and what events will be taking place, and come up with a good route.

You are dumb as shit. You really think that anyone here believes you can dive and flare a wingsuit across the countryside? When we discuss the ability to climb, the starting point or ending point of the climb are irrevelant, as long as there is a point where the jumper is experiencing a positive rate of climb. What your non-skydive brain seems to overlook, is that without a wingsuit, and even with some older wingsuiits, there was no ability to break that magic barier and achieve a positive rate of climb. Data logging altimeters were available when the modern wingsuit hit the market, and from day one jumpers were always looking to go slower. Everyone wanted to see the lowest descent rate possible. So when the suits made it possible to actually go the other way, and show a positive rate of climb, that's a big deal to jumpers, even if the peak of the climb is much lower than the beginning altitude of the flight. Side note - get a grip on yourself. You're tyring to argue with a guy who's been flying gliders and planes for over 40 years (and still does), and has a PhD in physics and teaches at a major university. You claim to be educated yourself, but you obviously haven't learned the value of experience.

I have. Do a search for threads about radio use, and even the one about the gal at Lodi who hit the telephone pole, and you'll see I mention all of the same things, and more. Radio is a tool, and how a DZ uses it (or abuses) it does not change the fact that it can be a huge asset and given the cost, it's more or less a 'freebie' in the world of skydiving. You're not going to build dependency or stem initiative over the course of 5 to 7 jumps. Even if you told the students every turn to make on all of those jumps, when you remove the radio, they will have to learn in short order, and once they do, any dependency will be lost, and your point moot. I'm not syaing that it's the only way to teach it, or that every place uses them the right way, but at the end of the day, having the ability to guide students who are under canopy is clearly a benefit to the safety of all involved. To pass on that because of cost, or pride, or stubborness is doing a dis-service to the students. If you don't want it used the wrong way, then enforce that with your instructors. Tell them to keep quiet until the student makes a mistake, and even then just offer the needed correction and go back to radio silence. This way the student gets the benefit of learning 'on the fly', and the back up of an experienced jumper in their ear if they should make a wrong turn or get into trouble.

How many jumps you make is not as important as what type of jumps you make. Let's use flying as an example. There's a big difference between a sight-seeing flight in a 172 on a calm sunny afternoon, and a night-IFR (actual) cross country in a Malibu. If you're a low time pilot who only flies a few hours a month, the hop in the 172 would be 'safe', and the trip in the Malibu would be pretty bad idea. Skydiving is the same way. People with no jumps can make a 'safe' skydive, but they need all day to train, special gear to jump, and several instructors to help them be 'safe'. The flip side to that is a current, experienced jumper who just needs a slot in the plane, and can take care of everything else on their own. So the trick for every jumper is to figure out where they stand in between those two extremes, and proceeding accordingly. The catch is the same as you see in flying. When a guy builds up 100 or 200 hours, and has been flying for several years, they begin to feel 'entitled' to conduct themselves like an 'experienced' aviator. You and I know that 200 hours isn't all that much, and that just because you have been flying for 5 or 10 years doesn't mean that you have skill or experience, but those things are easy to see from the outside. To that pilot, they feel like an 'old timer', and want to act like one too. We see the same thing in jumping. You jump as little or as much as you want, and if you can accurately guauge your skills and abilities, and tailor your jumps to suit, then you'll be fine.

That's just silly, and you know it. Using a radio for the first 5 or 6 jumps does nothing but help the student to ensure that they have a safe canopy flight, and if used properly, they can help the student learn faster. Train the student as if there was no radio, and remind them that it could fail at any time, but in the end what could be better than having an experienced jumper literally in your ear during your first couple of solo canopy rides? Again, the reason we have AADs and AFFIs is because you don't know how a student will perform. You plan for the worst and hope for the best. If you believe that the skydive is not over once the canopy is open (as I do), why would you stop the 'teaching' at that point when you don't have to. Most injuries and fatalities these days happen after a good opening. To simply abandon a student at that point for no reason is non-sense. We help students though the first few exits, we help them though the first few practice (and actual) pulls, and we should be there to help them through the first few jumps under canopy. Even if a student stays on the radio for 10 jumps, they'll have more than twice that many jumps by the time they get a license. Any dependency they have on a radio will have to disappear within 5 or 6 jumps of taking the radio off, or they will never meet the accuracy rewuirements for the license. We're not talking about dependency of GPS, or an audible altimeter, which would be present on every jump made well past the student training days, the radio is just another tool to help teach students, and is a valid and simple part of a good (and prudent) student training program.

In all fairness to the OP, he did also start a thread in the canopy control forum where he was looking for info on canopy control courses. I'm 99% sure the other thread came first. I don't know the guy at all, but from both threads, I don't get the vibe that he's on the wrong path. I do mention this, but back it up by letting him now how quickly some guys veer off the right path, and not to be that guy.

All 3.5 seconds of it? How could you miss that???? I actually have the same memory of my first jump (also static line). Very vivid recollection of the time in the plane, and the climb-out, then a bank space from exit to opening, and then clear memories of the canopy ride and landing. I think most jumpers take some time to really 'tune in' to what's happening right out of the door. I'm talking well past student status before a jumper can really recognize and react to what's happening just out of the door. So when you translate that to static line, it ends up that you don't recall any of the 'freefall' as it's just not long enough for your brain to 'catch up' and really regsiter as to what's happening. Case in point, I was on a modified static-line/AFF training program where I made 4 staic line jumps, and then did a short AFF style program. Either way, when I got to the AFF part, again, I can't recall actually leaving the plane. I recall shortly after exit I 'woke up', and I can remember most of the jump aftrer that, but the exit is just a blur.

The problem with trying to comment on this situation is that there's no point. If your DZ approves of a guy with less than 75 jumps flying a camera and filming an unlicesed jumper, then nothing I can say is going to convince you that it's not safe. To that end, however, I will comment on what you say here - If you consider yourself to be intelligent or perceptive in any way, you have to realize that you are not doing the student any favors by looking to be 'challenged', or by enhancing 'your' jump at all, right? The point of jumping with an unlicensed jumper, or any jumper looking to you for instruction, is not to cater yoward your needs, it's cating toward theirs. Sometimes that means flying a rock solid base and throwing the right hand slignals to get them performing, and sometimes it means shooting just the right video to highlight the teaching points you're gong to make in the debreif. In any case, your 'challenge' and 'enhancement' should have nothing to do with it. If and when they do, you become just another schmucko having a good time on someone else's dime, and not offering the benefit of good instruction that they deserve.

Another factor that you may or may not be considering is that the 'window' of what's acceptable will shift a little based on jumpers both bigger and smaller than average. In your case, you're bigger than what I consider 'average' for a male jumper, and as such you might be able to err 'slightly' on the side of a higher WL. The reason being that for you to be at 1 to 1 puts you on a 210 or 220, which is still a fairly large canopy. Consdier the other end, a small female with an exit weight of 145 lbs, she would end up on a 150 sq ft canopy to be at 1 to 1, and that's a fairly small wing for a new jumper, even at a lower WL. With all that in mind, the Sabre2 210 doesn't seem like a bad choice. Provided that you (and your instructors) are comfortable with your skills and the idea of you jumping a 210. Choose a day with steady, light to moderate winds, and pull high to give yourself some time under canopy to check the stall point and do some practice flares (ask an instructor for the exact procedure fo both). Pulling high will also let you easily land last, with no traffic around. I don't get a bad vibe from you 'yet', and said the same in your other thread. Lot's of guys take a turn for the worse once they get a handful more jumps and have some success with new skills. We call them 100-jump wonders, and the basic idea is that they start to overestimate their knowledge and abilities. Don't turn into that guy.