davelepka

I've given this advice to a bunch of guys in the past, and it always works out well. I've also gotten some shit on this site for suggesting this, but here goes - Go find a much youger, better looking, and better built guy (I usually say girl) and have a one (or two, or six) night stand. Show yourself that there are other fish in the sea, and that you can have your pick of any of them anytime you want. You'll forget about the old (pun intended) guy, and take the pressure off yourself to 'hurry up and find someone'. Once you know they're out there and available to you, what's the rush?

Regardless of what you find, remind her that patten entry altitude is 1000ft, and that she should only be making 90 degreee turns below that, except in the case of collision avoidance. That's the real lesson here, not to see what a newbie can 'get away with' or not. Fly the canopy and the landing pattern properly, and you won't have to worry about an accidental AAD firing.

When you pull the riser straight down and end with your hand right next to your 3-ring, you allow for a ton of slack in your riser. Pull your riser down to a position a couple inches out front of your shoulder. That will limit the amount of slack you create under your dive loop, and with no slack to loop over your hand, you have no problem.

How is that possible? If you wave off at 'X' altitude, and then have 1000ft opening, then it would be the altitude you burned waving off + 1000ft showing on your Neptune. You're doing something like 150/160 feet per second at terminal (conservatively). So if you take 2 seconds to wave off, you'll burn through 300 ft right there. If you're seeing 1000ft lower, that's a 700ft opening. If you're seeing 750 ft, that's a 450ft opening. A 1000ft opening is very, very slow, and very long for an opening. It's abnormal, and as mentioned above, much more scientific or standardized means of measurement is needed to make this thread worthwhile.

Even if the jumper was not tyring to 'sugar coat' the description, what is the definition of a 'moderate turn'. 'Moderate' wouldn't be 'gentle' or 'easy', so you might assume that a turn of less than 1/2 of the toggle stroke could be called 'gentle' or 'easy', and that 1/2 to 3/4 might be called 'moderate', leaving 3/4 to full toggle input as 'extreme'. Also, if the jumper had been in the habit of 'dumping' one toggle down to their hip, and letting it ride for a turn or two up at altitude, they might describe a slower stroke down to 3/4 toggle for one 360 rotation as being 'moderate'. In comparison to their other turn behavior, it would fit that description. In any case, we teach students not to cutaway or make turns greater than 180 degress below 1000ft. The cutaway thing is obvious, but the turn limitation is both to discourage bigger turns below pattern altitude, and to keep them from setting off a Student Cypres. Regardless of the jumpers characterization of the turn, any 360 spiral at 800ft with a Student Cypres on your back is a mistake on the jumpers part, and a Cypres fire as a result is certainly not the fault of the Cypres.

That's what I was talking about, travel and accomodations would have to be at your cost, along with a possible bump in pay as well. Again, I can stay home make my regular pay rate any weekend. If you want me to go to the trouble to travel somehwere to work, I would want to make more money for that trouble. Either way, if you're covering all of those costs for the staff, that's where you would need to charge more for the tandems to cover those costs for yourself. If you sold tandems for the going rate in, say, Italy (which is nearby), you would have to add in the cost to ferry an aircraft down to Malta, and bring all the staff down as well. Those are costs that an established Italian DZ would not have, and the 'average' price in the region would reflect that. You, on the other hand, would have those costs to contend with, so you would need to price your jumps accordingly. I'm not saying that to discourage you, just as a point of business to consider. It's not uncommon for jumps to be priced higher at an exotic locale, or during a special event, due to the increased costs of offering the jumps there.

A Caravan can take 15 jumpers (5 tandems plus video), and you can run two loads per hour. So if you're looking to do 10 tandems per hour, it would fit the bill. Another thought here, it sounds like you don't have any jump experience, or organizing experience. If that's the case, I would second the idea to contact DZs close to where you want your event, and see if any of them can provide a 'turn key' solution, where they send the plane, pilot, instructors, video guys, rigs, packers, and ground crew. There are a number of details and decisions that will need to be made during the planning and actual event, and having someone with experience on hand will really help to make things go smoothly. Another thing to keep in mind is that it's going to cost money to set up and staff a temporary DZ. For example, I can drive 30 min to my home DZ, jump all day and make some money, and then go home to my own bed. Now if you want me to spend the time and money to travel and stay someplace else, you need to make it worth my while. Aircraft and pilot costs are one thing, an airplane that is available 'for rent', and the pilot, expect to be travelling from place to place, but the staff is another story. So between the costs to bring the aircraft in (ferry fees) and the premium you're going to have to pay the jumping staff, you should plan to charge 30% to 50% more for the tandems to cover those costs.

Like I said, many posts get to the point that I'm posting for the benefit of others, not the person I'm replying to. In this case, I feel like I've made my point, and I'm content to let the general public decide who they think is right based on what I've already written. It's clear to me that you're not going to be swayed, so I'll refrain from continuing on. However, I'd love to see hear your thoughts on what you wrote after you log another 500 to 1000 jumps. I didn't always look at things the way I do know, and I can think of more than one occasion in my early days when I made some really bad choices that I was sure (at the time) were right on the money.

Do the weight math while you're at it. The 15mm weighs about twice as much as the kit lans, and the 10-22 is another ounce on top of that. Also consider the size, the 15 is smaller than the kit lens, but the 10-22 is bigger than both of them, so the extra weight is hanging further out from your head.

That's going to be a big plane, and you're going to need a day's worth of those loads with 7 tandems to pay for the ferry fees and day rate on the plane. If you have 75-100 tandems per day, you can swing a plane of that size. Otherwise, you're going to have to look for a smaller (cheaper) plane, and just fly more loads. The basic idea is that you need to keep a plane flying at least one load per hour to make it work. If you can't fly at least 10 to 12 loads per day, you're going to spend a lot of money to look at a plane sit on the ground. Think about a Caravan. It can fly 5 tandems w/video, and turn (at least) two loads per hour, and that's with one engine. Trying to fly 7 at a time is pushing you up into Twin Otter/Skyvan type planes, which are much more costly to operate.

So this fellow got spoken to? Last time I checked, 800ft was pattern height, and starting a turn at 800ft would have you completing it even lower, so this guy was spiraling in the pattern. As for the Cypres, this was not a misfire. The Cypres did exatcly what it was supposed to do. The prolem here was either jumper behavior, or incorrect equipment choice. Your comparison to the Vigil misfires is incorrect. In this case, the Cypres worked as-designed, and in the way it was designed to function. A Vigil that fires when the plane door opens is working as-designed, but not in the way it was designed to function. No jumper I know (or AAD manufactuter) is looking to save jumpers from an open airplane door (or closed car trunk). The real problem with the Vigil is their refusal to admit to, and correct, the obvious short comings in their software. There are just too many instances of Vigils firing at odd times due to incorrect circumstances for them to stand behind the 'It did was it was supposed to' argument.

Right. That comment was in regards to a guy who thought he was a 'pro' jumper, and the alti check that I mocked was on a hop n pop. He looked at his alti 3 or 4 times in the course of a 5 second delay. It's 5 seconds, check your alti in the plane, exit, count to 5. I did not, and will not get down on someone for being altitude aware on a skydive long enough to lose altitude awareness. But a 5 second delay? Get a grip. Thanks for the update. FYI, I put 3000+ jumps on a pile of Stilettos (aka the 'Spinetto') before I moved to a Velo (not that a Velo is any more docile). Much like the above jumper I mocked, if you cannot control your canopy (to include pumping the slider down) then you are jumping the wrong canopy. Show me one qualifed jumper on an eliptical or HP canopy who thinks that pumping the slider down on a long snivel is a bad idea. Remeber, I said 'qualifed'. And your whole premise for why you will not be low is based on things going to plan, and if you notice, all of my examples involve things going off-plan, as they have a tendency to do. Your choice of equipment, or more specifically, how you use it, has created a possibility to paint yourself into a corner, altitude-wise. A large number of skydivers have gone in under partially inflated reserves, where all they needed was just another 100 or 200 ft to allow for a full (or even survivable) reserve inflation. God help you if you spend that 100 or 200 extra feet hanging 'dead' in your harness while your canopy needlessly snivels away. I'm not going to address your medical concerns because I am not a doctor. I don't think my previous comment stryaed much out of medical laymens territory. If you have such a grevious neck injury that you need to make these accomodations to deal with it, it doesn't take 6 years at Johns Hopkins to know that you shouldn't be carrying extra weight on your head, and then deploying parachutes. Ever consider what would happen if you had a terminal reserve deployment? How long do you think that will snivel? And therein lies the problem, all you learned after snivelign through 1600ft with a good canopy over your head was not to use a packer. Point = missed. I declined your PM invitation because even if you don't seem to want to learn anything, I thought this was a prime opportunity for the community to see how NOT to approach certain issues, and my follow up post was the 'why'. I would say that at least half of my posts aren't even directed at the person I'm replying to, but at the community in general. If I see a chance to make an example of someone, or a situation, that can get good info out there and into the heads of some new jumpers, I'll take it. Do what you want with your life, but don't post your 'plans' for all to see without spelling out that it's not the best idea, and that you're willing to accept the additional risk due to extenuating circumstances. People will read that and ingest it as a 'good idea', and who knows where or when they'll bring it back to the surface and use it in their own decision making process. See? In that way, it's not just you and your life. They're called horizons, broaden yours.

I'm sorry, but that is just flat out dumb. If you want a canopy that takes 1000ft to open, fine, but once it's out and has confirmed that it's not going to spank you there's no reason to sit there for the rest of the snivel like a side of beef. Reach up and grab the rear risers, slowly pull down on them, and the slider will come down quicker. To sit there through 1600ft and take no action is absurd. You're on the 'long' end of what people consider acceptable for canopy opening, which is OK if you're alone but you're not. When you're jumping with others, you may find yourself lower than you expected. If you fly camera, tandems and students both have deployment problems that suck them down, and you still need to allow for adequate seperation after they open. If you're just filming fun jumpers, one good funnel right before break off can put you right in the middle of a huge cluster-fuck full of people, where your best opetion becomes tracking for the hills, and taking it deep. In either of the above scenarios, you're buring altitude with rediculously long snivels, and all you're doing is putting off a control check or even seeing if it's just your long snivel, or an actual tension knot. If you have a neck injury, the real solution would be to stop jumping a camera immediately. Still jump a soft opening canopy, but putting extra weight on your head in light of your previous injury seems like a very bad idea. If you insist, and also want to jump an over-slidered canopy to compensate, learn to bring your slider down with your rear risers, and take an active role in your deployments. Burning up that kind of altitude could come back to bite you sooner or later.

Perfect. Start saving your pennies now for a rig, and by the time you get a license and are buying your own rig, you'll be able to afford something 'nice'. I'm kidding (sort of), but really any container built in the last 10 years is going to be freefly friendly. The container is your only concern when it comes to freeflying, the canopies or AAD have nothing to do with it (unless you buy an AAD besides a Cypres, then a misfire while you're doing 160mph on your head might be a problem. Buy a Cypres). If you're buying new, it will be good for freeflying. If you're buying used, you'll need the help of a rigger to inspect anything you want to buy, so make sure you mention to them that freeflying is important to you, and they'll steer you clear of anything that might be problematic. OK really, start saving money now. If you can pay for your training up-front, you'll probably get a discount and you'll be able to jump (and finish) as quickly as the weather will allow. Beyond that, you have to buy all of your gear -rig, jumpsuit, helmet, altimeter, audible, goggles, etc, and then you'll need money to jump it all. One thing I know for sure, you can never show up to the DZ with too much jump money. I've shown up with too little, as-in not enough jump all day, and it sucks. I end up packing or doing things in the parking lot to make some quick cash for another couple jump tickets.

This reminds me of a certain cigar smoking jump pilot who used to bring various turbines to a local DZ for boogies. One Sunday night on the last load, when the plane was going home after we got out, I told him I would get out last and do my best to shut the door from the camera step, and he told me not to bother. He revealed that after we got out, he would (in this order) light his cigar, trim the airplane, and then walk to the back of the plane and close the door himself. No rig, no pilot at the controls, smoking a cigar next to the open door in flight, it must have been quite a sight to see (of course nobody was there to see it).

But that's all, right? Let's flesh this out a little. His profile says Sabre 150 at 1.17. Let's say he put on a couple pounds since then, and is now at 1.2 as described. That gives him an exit weight of 180 lbs. Let's compare that to the Crossfire2 line, and we see that the closest thing to that WL is the Crossfire2 119 at 1.5+. So when we look at real numbers, real sizes, and the the scope of the downsize, can see that it's a bad idea three different ways. For starters, he's going from a square to a fully eliptical canopy. The rule of thumb is to make one change at a time. A square to a semi-eliptical (Sabre1 to Sabre2)? Not as bad. Semi-eliptical to a fully eliptical (Sabre2 to Crossfire2)? Also not as bad. Next, he's skipping two sizes. Again, the rule of thumb is one size per downwise, yet this guy is sailing right past the 135/129 size, and moving straight into a 120/119 size. Finally, and this is more my personal opinion, but I think the range of the downsize makes it even worse. To move up .3 lbs per sq ft in one downsize wouldn't be as bad if it was from, say, 1.6 to 1.9. Starting with 1.6, you're already on a 'generously loaded' canopy, and you have an idea of what it's like to fly a 'small' wing. The transition to a 1.9WL wouldn't be as dramatic. When you're starting at 1.2, and let's face it, there are jumpers flying at 1.2 just off student status, into a canopy at 1.5 (which many consider the 'threshold' to HP WL) is just dumb. What happened to 1.3, or 1.4? Where did those go? There are a dozen different ways this guy could be making a better choice, but really, he's making every mistake there is, and all at once. You really think getting some shit online is going to be his only problem?

Well said. Agree100%

Probably the ground.

I'll just make a few quick points to help you understand how this all works - 1. You don't need/want any gear until after you have a license. All of your jump up to that point will be under the supervision of an instructor or coach, and the DZ will provide gear for you to jump. There are certain requirements for unlicensed jumpers, and the DZ provides gear that meets all of those needs. This gear, for the most part, is not what you will want beyond getting a license, so buying your own student rig is a monumental waste of money. 2. Used gear is the way to go in the beginning. All equipment is inspected by an FAA rated parachute rigger every 6 months, so if the equipment is 'in date', meaning less than 6 months since it's last inspection, it's going to be just as safe as a new rig. Additionally, when you buy used equipment, you have a rigger inspect it before the sale is 'final' to make sure you're getting what you paid for. You literally save thousands of dollars buying used, and this is a good thing because when you buy your first rig you'll know very little about what you really want/need from a rig. Your overall experience will be limited at that time, and you'll learn a lot more in your next 50 to 100 jumps. 3. When you get close to earning you licesne (25 jumps) start asking your instructors about what sort of gear would be good for your first rig. Ask around the DZ is anyone has anything for sale, check the classified section of this website, and call every gear store you can find advertsided in Parachutist magazine. Your size is not going to be too much of a problem, there are 'big boy' rigs out there for sale all the time. 4. For now, just focus on your next jump. Get it scheduled and then get it done. Then move on to thinking about the jump after that. The student progression is a learning course, and it's designed to take a guy off the street and make them a skydiver, so you'll learn everything you need to know there, without any additional research required. You can poke around the net, and read whatever you want, but in the end consider everything you read as 'hypothetical', and everything you learn, in-person, at the DZ where you will be jumping as 'fact'. One last note - tandem harnesses are notoriously uncomfortable, based on the way you sit in them under canopy. Even more so for a bigger guy. A solo sport rig is MUCH more comfortable, and a properly fitted used rig will be the same as a new one. Manufacturers have a list of sizes, and when you order a rig they pick the closest size to your measurements. So if it's a brand new 'XL' harness, or a used 'XL' harness, it's all the same.

It's actually pretty far from a track. Truth is, dropping your knees like that does quite a bit to counter the negative effects you can get from dumping in a track. For one, if you were head low in your track in any way (which is where the 'whip' would come from) dropping your knees will rotate you upwards and coutner that. Additionally, dropping your knees will also kill off a ton of forward speed and helps to control your deployment speed. What you were doing was good practice for wingsuiting for two reasons - one being that it gives you experience pulling with both of your hands back at your sides. The other is that there is some degree of the canopy opening behind you, so you get used to the canopy sitting you up a little 'further' and opening somewhat behind you. Both very good things, but a different exercise than pulling in a track.

In most cases, yes it is. Despite what some of the higher time jumpers would have you believe it's not a good idea. The problem with pulling in a track is that it adds another variable to your pull time. We know from vast experience that stability and body position are key to good openings and clean deployments, and anything you can do to increase the odds of that happening is a good idea. So when you add a track to your pull sequence, you run the risk of hard openings and excessive swing-out at line strech which can lead to flip throughs and entanglements. Also, if you're not managing your speed properly, the quicker/harder opening will make body position that much more important. A slightly dipped shoulder that would have been a non-issued with a normal airspeed opening, will be amplified with a higher airspeed opening, and can lead to trouble. As previsouly mentioned, you can simply combine your wave-off with the flare from the track, and pull in a more 'conventional' manner. Learning to flare out of the track is key to getting the maximum time in your track, as it brings you back to 'straight and level' quicker than just returning to the 'stable arch'. The thing to keep in mind is the relative wind. When you're tacking, it's not coming straight up from the ground, it's coming at you from more of a 45 degree angle in front of you. So in order to slow down the quickest, you need to sit up and point your belly button in the direction of the relative wind. It's similar to being on the hill just after exit, you're stable and facing the realtive wind, but you're not horizontal to the ground. Practice this at altitude, because seconds before pull time is not when you should be experimenting with anything. Track perpendicualr to jump run for 5 or 8 seconds, then sit up feel yourself slow down and you'll naturally rock back into a face-to-earth orientation. Then do a 180 degree turn, and repeat the process. Once you develop the feel for the manuver, you'll be able to go from tracking to not-tracking in the least amount of time/altitude. If you then work on how quickly you can start the track, you'll be able to get the most out of your tracking time without taking any undue risk at pull time. That said, you can eventually learn to manage your track such that you can tightly control your airspeed during the track and while pulling in a track. This is something that should be reserved for several hundred jumps down the road, when you freefall time (and number of deployments) have built up significantly.

This is a trick that others have used in the past without any problems. If you're not going crazy with the humidifier, you should be fine. If it's still comfortable for you to work, it's OK. Some have even argued that this is the better way to go if you live/jump where it does get humid. If you pack a fully 'dry' reserve, and have to set the closing loop accordingly, what happens when the rig is taken outside and the canopy packs down when it gets 'wet'? Some have suggested that the loop could loosen up in the end.

Measure from nipple to nipple, and multiply by three. Or just follow the order form and make a note that you want a long chest strap, I think most manufacturers are familiar with the concept.

Really? With a heavy hauler like a CASA I'm surprised they couldn't fit the students in there somewhere. Did you pay the fee and then not jump from the CASA?

That's ironic, because my answer (more or less) is that debating the issue at this point is a waste of space. There was a time when we could sit around and argue back and forth for months (or years) about what is or is not needed in terms of wingsuit training or regulation because there was no external pressure to act. So my point was that your interest in the nature of the tail strikes and their frequency, that being if it was a trend or a spike, is no longer relevant to the current situation. Waiting for additional statistics to come in and prove the nature of the curve (spike or trend) is not an an option because by the time that happens, wingsuiting will be an exemption on the insurance policies, and not welcome at most DZ in the US. Think about the cost of one tailstrike. Now take that cost and consider what the insurance companies would have to do to everyones rates to cover the cost of a dozen of those per year (according to their currently available stats). Now take that number, and consider how many wingsuit slots a DZ would have to fly to cover the rate hike if they wanted to include wingsuiting on their policy. They would have to fly 100s of wingsuit slots per year, and run the increases risk of aircraft damage (and down time) that comes with it, or just forget about wingsuits, higher insurance rates, and tailstrike risks all together. What do you think DZs will choose? 'Everybody panic'? I'm not sure that's the correct action, but I am sure that by the time the insurance company takes note of a problem, and goes to the trouble to send a 'warning shot' to all the DZOs they insure, they we're on a pretty short leash and that the time to debate the issues is over, and the time for action has come. What is that action? Can't say for sure, but waiting around for more statistics to become avaiable is not it.