davelepka

Isn't that the idea of training a student? You teach them the things they need to know to be a licensed jumper, and when you're done, they become a licensed jumper? No?

Can you rent a car? You can probably find a rate where it will be under $100 for the 3 days, and this way you can come and go as you please. You won't miss one minute of jumping waiting for a ride, or leaving early because your ride is going home before you need to.

I think that's your answer right there, mostly because I don't think your insurance company will like the idea either. Maybe start by giving them a call and seeing if they will even quote you for a 16 year old who doesn't live with you driving a car that's not based at your home. They might just tell you 'no', and then there's nothing you can do about it. It's a no brainer that if your name is on the title, you need to hold the insurance policy to make sure that A) it's kept valid at all times, and B) that the limits of the coverage match your liability. So if you can't get insurance, you can't title the car. If they say 'yes' and give you a reasonable quote, your guess is as good as mine. I don't know if this is an option, but can you ask your ex why she wants it structured this way? I don't think that adding your daughter and another car to the policy would change the rates for the other cars. If anything, it might lower them based on some sort of 'volume discount'. Each car will have specific drivers listed, and your daugher should only be listed on the one car. If they only list her on that car, and don't even include the other drivers in the household, the remainder of the policy should remain unchanged.

As a student, you need to jump every 30 days or you might be required to repeat your last jump. For example, if you pass level 4 and are cleared to level 5, but don't return to the DZ for 45 days, you will have to step back and repeat level 4. As a licensed jumper (A license) you have 60 days to jump before you go 'uncurrent'. All that means is a recurrency jump, which is some refresher ground training and then a two-way with an instructor. In terms of the winter layoff, simply see the above currency requirements, and go from there. Many jumpers end up making a trip south at some point during the winter, just to get some jumps in. Currency requirements still apply, but it just sucks to go 5 or 6 months without jumping. As far as equipment is concerned, you will not need to supply any equipment at any time. During your student training, all of your equipment will be provided for you and included in the cost of the jump. Once you get a license, you can still rent gear, but it's costly and the rigs you want won't always be available (they might be on the back of a student). First and foremost, get your license. Once you get there (or close) you can start looking into putting together a used rig to keep you up in the air.

Oh yeah, you're right on that one. Look around for people how match your 'body type', they'll jump with you. Your skills (or lack of) are not that important, most people are willing to help you learn, but if you find the other big guys, they'll be happy just to get on a jump where they don't have to worry about slowing down or going low.

Get a Flitesuit, they're in your price range and they can build you a suit that will slow you down. Call them and tell them your height/weight, and they can help you choose fabrics and cuts that will help. As far as a rig goes, you have a couple choices. You could look for a used rig, but you're right, it's going to be tough. One thought is to look for a rig that will hold the canopies you need, and look into a harness resize. Find a used container that will take a 230 main/reserve, and get the serial number from the seller. Then contact the manufacturer with the serial number and your measurements, and get a quote on a harness resize/ replacement. They can run anywhere from $250 to over $500, but it's worth a shot. Even at $500, if you can buy a used container for $1000, plus the harness work, you have a custom fit container with a new harness for $1500, which is still $500 to $1000 less than buying new. Your other choice is to buy a new container and fill it with used canopies. Most of the time I discourage the purchase of a new container for a first rig, and this is because most of the time the jumper will want a smaller canopy (and smaller rig) well before the 'new' has worn off the rig. The result is losing money selling a 'lightly' used container. In your case, however, new might not be a bad idea. With your goal of wingsuiting, and the lack of used rigs that will fit you, you might be able to get more 'milage' out of your first container. In case you're not aware, high performance or highly loaded canopies are not reccomended for wingsuit use, so if you had a 230 or 220 main, that would be a good size for jumping with a wingsuit, and would fit right into a rig you could safely jump today.

In comparison to running a couple 182s, the Otter would be significantly more expensive. Keep in mind that DZs run Otters for 3 reasons - lift capacity, high altitude capability, and speed. None of those are required for running hop n pops. I would imagine you could save an easy 25% to 30% off the price of jumps by running 182s.

Here's a link. Note how the jumpers all look terrified, but it after the jump just standing around near the 'Dear Leader'. http://shlackbeep.com/blog/skydiving-in-north-korea-kim-jong-un-whuffo

Lot's of stuff. Keep in mind that all the flipping and back flying adds up to a ton of fall rate changes. If you do that with 3 people, you might not be able to keep an eye on both of the other jumpers at all times. Loss of eye contact combined with flipping and fall rate changes can add up to some wicked mid-air collisions. Two-ways are a snap. Look at the other person, and don't run into them. Adding one more person makes it exponentially harder to keep track of 'everyone' else on the jump. Just something to think about when you get another jumper looking to get in on your 2-way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX6dNokdggw&feature=fvwrel

Don't buy a new container, and save yourself a boatlaod of cash. You won't get the untilization of a new contianer as a frist rig to make it worthwhile, you'll end up eating a huge chunk of the huge price tag, one way or another. If you jump like a mad-man, you'll be looking to downsize in short order, and will take the hit selling a young rig with a couple 100 jumps on it. If you don't jump like mad-man, you'll hang onto it until it's an old rig with a couple 100 jumps on it, and take the hit then. Either way, your price per jump is going to be through the roof. Look for the least expensive used rig you can find. Your money will be much, much, much better spent on jumps than on gear. With that in mind, the question of how to pay for it becomes twice as easy to answer. Paypal is your friend in terms of buying used gear with a credit card, and another option is Chutingstar gear store. They offer escrow service where the seller can ship the gear to them, they will recieve and inspect it, and then you can pay them (with said credit card). They will pay the seller and ship you the gear. It keeps you from getting scammed, gets all of your used gear inspected, and allows the use of a credit card for a used gear purchase. I know they do the escrow service for just the cost of the inspection, you may have to pay a couple % extra to cover the credit card fees, call them for all the details. Fancy gear and a pile of debt gets you nowhere. Airworthy gear and a ton of jumps is what you want to shoot for.

It's a French made high performance eliptical, and par with the Stiletto line of canopies. It's not a great choice if you have less than 500 jumps, or intend to do any sort of competiton-style swooping.

I wasn't joking with my post, well, not joking for your sake, just for everyone else. You know, the old, 'Laughing at you, not with you' routine. Either way. your 'line of thinking' is more likely to see you killed or injured long before you have any business pulling in a wingsuit 300ft above a talus. The line of thinking you should be embracing is that the goals you're trying to reach take 1000's of skydives and as many BASE jumps, and literally years of your life to achieve. By the time you reach those goals, it will be your own wisdom and experience that will keep your from meeting that talus at high speeds, not these early, and juvenile attempts to circumvent what others have proven is the only way to get there, time, experience, and hard work. What you need to realize is that the scope of your goals is so large that you really cannot afford to overlook the here-and-now, and skip ahead to the end-game. There's a lot to be done between now and then, and if you lose focus on the current situation, you'll find yourself never making in anywhere near the end. Want to jump a wingsuit? Good for you, consider your skills and experience today, and find a good suit that fits those perameters. Want to track away from a skydive? Good, use techniques that best suit the skydive you're on, and worry about seperation from a wall when jumping a wall of that size is in your near future. Your approach is not uncommon, it's been tried over and over again. Many, many young jumpers have alaigned themselves with much more senior jumpers, and attempted to mimick their actions and choices, and almost all of them come to the painful reality that it's simply not possible without 'putting in your time'. They also shared your inflated opinion of your skills and intellect, and again, came to find out that gravity, and the solid objects that it pulls us toward have no knowledge or concern for your thoughts about yourself. Keep joking around about it, keep thinking you're special, and keep trying to cut corners, and you may find out the hard way that you're not, and you can't.

You're the one who doesn't get it. Didn't you read his post, where he says - We already went through this with him in a thread about tracking, where he insisted that he was better off diving after a skydive to gain speed, and then going to flat track, as opposed to just flat tracking away from the jump. He went on to explain that a BASE jumper had told him that diving and then flat tracking was the best way to get away from a wall, so that's the way he does it on skydives, to practice for when he needs to get away from a wall. Again, he claims he bought the fastest suit he coudl so he could get as far away from a wall as possible. Paying no attention to the fact that there's a learning curve, and that he's nowhere near jumping off of any wall big enough to wingsuit, and that even if he was, the first wall he should be wingsuiting off of should be an easy one that doesn't 'require' you to get far away before pull time. No sir, he's focused on the end, end, end goal of a wingsuit flight off a wall where you either fly the line fast and far, or become a stain halfway down route, and doing everything today as if that was the first thing he's going to tomorrow morning. See? Now do you change your tune? He might even be jumping too small of a suit? What about moving the PC to a leg pouch, maybe then he could keep the big wings and still be able to reach his PC?

It looks like a picture of a TV screen. It might have been a frame grab off a video, that someone took a pic of the screen.

As mentioned, when still a student, you have 30 days to make your next jump or you can expect to be bumped back a level. If you complete level 3, and are passed to level 4, but don't return for 40 days, you'll have to re-do (and pass) level 3 again. Once licensed, your license is good for the rest of your life, but if you go more than 60 days since your last jump, you won't be 'current' anymore. You'll need to make a recurrencly jump, which is really just a two-way with an instructor. Depending on how long since your last jump, it may include some ground instruction, but it's really just the one supervised jump. Beyond that, you can jump as little as you want, but keep in mind that your skills will suffer. You can earn an A license, and jump once every 59 days and be safe, but you need to jump like you haven't jumped in 59 days. That means conservative choices in equipment or the weather you will jump in, and only doing solos or two-ways. If you jumped more often, and were more current, you could jump in more varied conditions or with more pepole, but if you remember you skill level and currency, and proceed with that in mind, you'll be fine.

You see that as a bad thing? Given the nature of the device, I would much rather have an AAD that would rather NOT fire, than one that is trigger-happy. I spend lots of time in aricraft with the door open, climbnig around outside aircraft in flight, and jumping in groups with other jumpers in close proximity, while I spend very little time above 78mph under 750 ft. If my AAD has any doubt that I'm actually down and dirty and need help, I would rather have to stand-down than fire and possibly make trouble of a situation that was fine in the first place.

No man-made device is perfect, so there will always be problems. In this case, what you have to look at are the rates, and the Cypres has the lowest rate of problems. Is that due to longevity in the market? Experience based on that longevity and the number of units in the field? Could be, and it could be that Vigil might have a similar rate in time due to the same factors, but the fact remains that at this time, the Cypres gets the nod.

Can we get someone to lock this thread, beacsue it's done - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=dM1oXwBbZEw

That's the claim.... http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/world-most-expensive-billboard-costs-1-3-billion-135150820.html

Who said anything about mediocre? What I said was that some of the skills you listed have no bearing on a first flight. Here's an example - there's a local roadrace course near me, and they hold driving schools several times per year. Not a single one of the instructors has won the Indy 500, does that mean that I, as a newbie racer, have nothign to learn from them because they are not the best driver on the planet? How about we make the same comparison within skydiving? How many AFFIs have gold medals in RW, or freefly, or really any discipline? I would guess not that many, does that mean that they're not qualified to teach the FJC, or do any of the AFF/coach jumps required for an A license? I'm not suggesting that you find a mediocre pilot, I'm suggesting that you find one who is qualifed to teach a first filight course, and that being qualifed for that is a different thing than being qualifed for proximity flight, testing new suits, or XRW, etc. The counter argument seems to be that the current system is fine, and that it's gong to be put to waste if a new system is implemented. Like mentioned earlier, a current wingsuit instructor is the one who brought this before the USPA, and is the one pushing to get this through. Who's to say that it won't be a carbon copy of the manufacturer's programs? Who's to say that a current manufacturer's rating won't qualify you for an automatic USPA rating? While you sit there and point fingers at the mistakes everyone else is making, did you ever consider that you might be making a mistake insisting that the USPA, who has been in the business of training skydivers (and instructors) for much, much, longer than you have been instructing wingsuiters (and longer than you have been jumping, and probably longer than you have been alive) would have nothing to add in the way of refining or improving on the current methodology. The whole point of this thread was to ask for the input of the currently rated instructors, you don't think that's a good sign, and maybe worth waiting to see what they come up with?

My point about the recent experience at my DZ is just an example. What other areas may have a shortage of instructors? How many potential students are there out there who would be willing to jump a wingsuit if a formal class was more available to them? I could ditto that idea to canopy control classes. Most of the time, when a canopy control class is offered at a DZ, it tends to fill up. However, let's say that class was never offered at that DZ, how many of those students would have independently sought out, and traveled to another canopy control class elsewhere? Maybe some, but I would guess not that many. Take me for example, I'm a weekend only jumper at this point, and business and family make it so that staying close to home is way easier for me than traveling. There's a Skyvan that shows up at another local DZs once a summer, I always get out there for a couple days of tailgate jumps. I would never travel anywhere (even 2.5 hrs to a another DZ that hosts the Skyvan) to jump a tailgate, but when one is within an hour from me, I'm all over it. Get the point? Expand the instructor base, and make wingsuiting more available (and appealing) to more people. It's a win/win. As far as the USPA is concerned, what's the problem? The whole idea of a wingsuit instructor rating was brought forward by an existing wingsuit instructor, and this thread is a case in point that the USPA is looking for input as to how to do this right. There's no reason that the USPA rating can't be just as good as the current factory ratings, with the expection being that they'll be more available to more people, which is an exception for the better. With different manufacturers, and none of them being in the rating 'business', there's going to be a limit to how many instructors there will be, and just how 'standardized' the training is going to be. Take a hint from the tandem manufacturers, and let the governing bodies handle ratings and such, and let the manufacturers simply manufacture.

Of coruse not. How many TIs out there have test jumped new tandem gear, or jumped with a military rescue dog on their harness, or a 200 lb rucksack full of explosives? Does that mean their not good TIs, or not good at the job they do, taking whuffos out for a skydive? None of the things you mentioned have any bearing on the ability of a person to teach a class and supervise a first flight. To the contrary. the ability to do any of those things you mentioned doesn't immediately qualify the person to be any good at teaching anything. If a wingsuit pilot is good enough to maintain proximity while chasing a student (with proximity being a safe distance that provides a good video), and the ability to guarantee that they can be clear at pull time, then their piloting skills are good enough for the job at hand. The rest is groudn based teaching, and their ability to effectively comminicate with the students. I consider myself to be a good camera flyer, and would be willing to hop on any competition jump at nationals for RW or freefly, and know that I could bring back judge-able footage. I can't turn points as fast as Arispeed or Aresenal, but I don't have to. Those guys are much better at that job than I am, but that's not the job I'm claiming I can do. You don't have to be able to set the world on fire to conduct a first flight course, you just have to be able to conduct the course. Nothing more, nothing less.

Plenty based on what standard? The jumpers who took the course at my DZ were jumpers who I never heard mention wingsuiting until the course became available. Not a single one of them would have ever bought a suit, or traveled anywhere to take a class. So how many trained, qualifed instructors is enough? How many prospective students are out there who would make a first flight if the opportunity came to them, or was available at any time at their home DZ? I know of at least one interested jumper who had to take a pass on the course at my DZ due to previous (non-jumping) plans the weekend of the course. I doubt this jumper is going to travel somewhere to get the first flight in, but if we had a full time instructor at the DZ, I'm sure he would have already made a flight. Even if there was one nearby who could come up a couple times per season for a weekend, again, that would open the door to wingsuiting for far more people. Like it or not, this could be a big step toward advancing wingsuiting. Increased exposure, and the 'legitimacy' of the USPA backing the instructors and first flight courses will only serve to increase the number of jumpers who are going to give it shot. I learned to wingsuit on one of the first Birdman suits to come into the US, and my 'training' involved watching a very brief video tape. Due to this, the DZO (who owned the suit) had a very short list of who was allowed to jump the suit. Make the training formal, standardized, and widely available, and everyone involved will benefit. More first flights will be made, they'll be safer, and more likely to hook the jumpers into buying suits and becoming 'wingsuiters'.

I wasn't suggesting that jumpers not learn to spot, I was suggesting that making a WDI toss a part of any modern skydiving training is a waste of time and energy. Should we also require jumpers to learn how to pleat their gores? I'm a huge supporter of situational awareness among jumpers, and that includes the spot, weather, exit orders, aircraft loading etc, all things that do get lost in the mix at bigger DZs where those things are 'done for you'. Much like canopy control, those are things that jumpers should really take more of an interest in, as those are areas that are directly related to their safety and well-being. Sadly, many jumpers are content to take the minimum level of training required in those areas, and won't persue any further study on their own.