davelepka

The problem is two-fold, but also the same, and it's that none of it is 'real'. Tunnel time isn't really skydiving. It's a simulation of one slice of a skydive, and it leaves out most of the more difficult and more 'critical' parts of the jump. AFF eval jumps aren't really doing AFF either. If the 'student' get's away from you, you know that they're not going to die, that 'student' is an AFF evaluator who is ten times the skydiver you are. The actual pressure of the jump is gone, save for the pressure you have to feed your ego with a good performance. So you have a guy who spent a bunch of time in a tunnel, and then did OK during the cerification course, what happens when the shit hits the fan? Even for a candidate with all of their time spent in the sky, the evaluators are making their 'best guess' that they will be able to handle the 'real deal'. When you subtract even more reality from the prep, what are you left with? Freefall skills are the least important of the skills a student learns, with the expection of arching and pulling. If a student can get and remain stable, and pull while stable, technically that's all the freefall skills needed to make a safe skydive. Everything esle involved is not related to the freefall portion of the jump, and much more critical to their safety (and the safety of others). We've all seen the tunnel videos where 4 or 5 instructors get in there and do some crazy rotations, looping around each other in a mind-bending routine. It's impressive to watch, but when have you seen that transposed to the sky? You haven't, and the reason is (as stated by tunnel rats) things are different in the sky. With no walls or nets for reference, things get 'bigger'. What about the exits, how do you translate that to side-ways subterminal air? What happens at break off, does everyone fly to the door, like in the tunnel? I'm not denying that tunnel flying is tough, and a skill in itself that takes hard work to develop, but that's the point is that it is a skill in itself. So is skydiving, and if you want to teach skydiving, learn how to skydive.

Yeah, did you catch the name of the DZ at the beginning of the video? That's the same DZO flew 1000's of loads, with 20+ jumpers per load, on timed-out control cables and airframe inspections on his Otter. You really think this will get his attention when only one person was at risk?

To the DZO - where's the y-strap mod? To the TI - how many times does she have to say no? To the camera guy - you put this on Youtube?

The problem (or benefit) of an eliptical canopy is that they are NOT stable along the roll axis. That's part of their charm, is that they are willing to roll off to one side or the other with little effort from the pilot. Consider a 'square' canopy, if you pull the left toggle down, you turn left. Return the toggle to the full lfight position, and the turn stops. Do the same on an eliptical canopy, and the turn will continue until you counter it with some right toggle (or right harness, or right-whatever). What this leads to is 'over-turning', where you want to go, let's say 180, and you end up at 270 before you know what happened. It's especailly problematic down low, where you might give it a little too much toggle and find yourself heading toward the ground at a high rate of speed, and facing the wrong direction. Even if you can get through the pattern OK, a slightly uneven flare will have the canopy carving off to one side or the other. If the rig fits, and the reserve is of an appropriate size (something with a lower WL than 1.2), make an offer on the rig minus the canopy, and put something more 'user friendly' in there. As much as I hate to give this advice - if they won't split the rig up, buy it as-is, and put the Fusion in the closet for a couple hundred jumps, and find something more appropriate to jump in the meantime (the reason I hate to suggest that is most jumpers will end up jumping the eliptical canopy sooner than later 'just because' it's there).

I get the same thing 'uk/ireland only' and they show non-stop commercials. Not even those cool, sexy, european commercials with the big tits, just regular commercials.

Of course I would ask why you think this is good advice, considering your age, experience, and physical limitations, but I'm sure it's a waste of my time.

Amen!

What makes you think that a DZ than can't retain a 'regular' AFF staff is going to be able to retain a 'tunnel AFF' staff? Making the rating easier to get isn't going to change the situation for those DZs. Additionally, what makes you think that a jumper without the dedication to make spend the time at the DZ, in the sport, making the jumps, is going to be a loyal employee? If a DZ cannot retain staff, that's a problem with the DZ, not the instructional rating system. Every DZ has locals that are not looking for a 'leg up' to a bigger and better DZ. Take me for example, I have family and a business here in Cleveland, and no plans to move. If the only DZ was a small Cessna DZ, that's where I would jump. If they wanted me to work there, then it would be up to them to make it worth my time. By that I mean not over-staffing, advertising enough to keep the students coming, and good pay. Mis-management of a DZ staff and instructional ratings are two seperate things.

A good number of skydiving instructors do not earn their primary living from jumping. While they do make money at the DZ, they do the work because they want to. I can tell you from experience, it takes real desire to work 12-14 hours per day at the DZ Sat and Sun, and then get up Mon morning for your 'day job'. Also, the majority of instructors didn't start jumping as an avenue toward employment, they started jumping because they wanted to, and then later moved toward instruction. The point is that it's not much of a 'job'. The pay is low, and not steady. It's takes an unusually long time and large amount of money to qualify as an instructor, and then once you do, you're all set with your low, unsteady pay. See how much you make when it rains two weekends in a row, or you break a finger or twist an ankle. Despite it all, there are instructors working everyday and new ones in the making as we speak. It's not about the money.

Be careful how you break the news, but she's as wrong as wrong could be. The canopy has no idea how long a stall has been held, it simply responds to whatever input the jumper provides. If the jumper provides the correct input, the canopy will recover the same from a 1 second stall as it will from a 1 minute stall.

http://www.hattonboxing.com/tv/tv-player/amateur-boxing-tv/abae-school-championships-2012/harris-akbar-v-ryan-garner-52kgs

Stay away from canopies that don't snivel. Once you get your own gear, and put a couple dozen jumps on the same canopy in the same rig, you can make a snivelly canopy open faster if you want. I won't bore you with the details of how, but there are ways to cut a snivel short during the opening itself. The point is that once it's out of the bag and sniveling, you can then make the choice to let it open itself, or speed it up and get open a couple hundred feet higher. On the flip side, there's nothing you can do about a canopy that opens too fast. Sure, you can make physical changes to the canopy to slow the openings, but then they'll always be slow and it will no loger be a fast-opening canopy. Any canopy can open painfully hard. One that is designed to open fast is more likely to slam you than one that is designed to open slow. Take the less-painful route, and look for something that opens slow. With 10 jumps it might seem disconcerting, but it's really a much better way to live. At the end of a long day, or a long weekend, a dozen (or more) hard openings are going to add up, and you'll feel it in the morning. Buy a canopy that opens slow, put 20 jumps on it, then PM me and I'll tell you what you can do to speed up the opening (after the canopy is already sniveling). It's nothing you need to know now, and you stand a good chance screwing something up if you tried on a random student rig at this stage of the game. I'm willing to bet that after 20 jumps, you won't even care and will just let the thing snivel.

With the above in mind, I can understand why you are hesitant to jump with others in a group. If there's a plan that involves you, and you can't get there, you come away feeling like you 'ruined' the jump. It's probably not the case, but you might feel that way. The good news is that you know what the problems are, so you can fix them. DSE seems ready to jump with you, so do a couple jumps and work on some forward movement and falling straight down. If the entire jump is dedicated to doing away with your backsliding problem (and you have it on video, I think DSE has a camera) it won't take more than a jump or two for you to 'get' falling straight down. Once you have that figured out, then look at your fall rate issues. Keep in mind that backsliding around the sky with your legs up isn't going to help your fall rate. You might find the fall rate easier to manage once you're falling straight down, so you might not really have a fall rate problem at all. If you do have a fall rate problem, again, just a couple of dedicated jumps with an experiecned jumper should gave you plenty of working time to iron them out. Learning anything 'on the fly' during group jumps is tough. You don't get any extended practice time when you can focus on the skill, there are too many other things going on. if you feel like you have some areas that are lacking, clean them up with some two-ways, and then get in on some group jumps (and by that I mean 3 or 4 ways, start off small). Here's the kicker, you still might screw up and not get to your slot. You might go low, or float, or backslide. There's a difference between jumping with a coach who is there is help you, and some other jumpers who might not even be able to help themselves. The thing to keep in mind is that it's OK to not be perfect. You have a couple of areas that you feel weak in, and that makes shy away from jumping with others. Set your mind at ease by addressing those areas. If you put in the effort and perform well with a coach, you should be confident that any errors you make moving forward are par for the course, and anyone who would hold those against you is the one making the error. Don't take freefall too serisouly. It's a game, it's just some fun time that jumpers have together before getting down to the serious business of saving their lives. A good jump is one where breakoff happens on-time, everyone tracks and achieves good seperation, everyone has a good opening (or a good reserve opening if need be) and everyone has a safe landing. Don't get too worked up about freefall. A 'bad' freefall will be forgotten soon after the jump is over, but something like bad tracking, or a bad landing can will last much longer. Don't sweat the small stuff, and freefall is small stuff.

Just to be fair, this was for his 14th birthday. Aside from that, he's had a phone for 2 years, his first phone was his 12th birthday present. I wasn't sure what a 12 year old needed with a phone, but his mom seemed to think it was a good idea and most of his friends already had a phone anyway. Now I'm not the type to go along with everything his friends have or do, but at the same time I don't want him to feel 'less than' because he doesn't. The phone itself is more than just an object or accesory, it's an avenue for communication and staying 'in the loop', and that's important to a teenager. Anyway, he managed to hang onto his frist phone for two years with no problems or damage, and the truth is the iPhone was only $100 anyway, so it's not like I spent a fortune (of course paying for the service is going add up, but that's another story). He's a good kid who stays out of trouble, and does incredibly well in school, and in my book that get's you the 'finer things' in life.

A W-2 is for an employee, and if a business has employees, they have certain responsibilites to those employees. Workmans comp, social security, and various types of workers 'rights' come into play and would represent an outlay of time and money on the part of the DZ to handle all of that. On the other hand, a 1099 is for an independant contractor, who works for themselves and offers their services for hire. All of the above mentioned administrative tasks are handled by the contractor themselves, with the DZ only required to pay them and report that pay to the IRS. What the contractor does with that pay is between them and the IRS. Given that many DZs are seasonal, and that many working skydivers are part-time or sometimes 'nomadic' following the jumpable weather, it makes way more sense for DZs to pay instructors as independent contractors as opposed to employees, and truth be told, I think the jumpers prefer it that way as it gives them a little more 'wiggle room' for being 'creative' with how they pay their taxes.

The trouble with the 'job market' is that most of the 'good' jobs out there are looking for experienced instructors. Busy, full time DZs don't want to hire a guy who got his rating last week, they want to know that their employees can do the job, and handle the workload of doing 8-10 jumps per day, several days per week. What most guys do is get their rating and then work at their home DZ for awhile. Either part time, or as a 'second string' full timer, just to get some experience under their belt. For some, it ends there and that's what they do with their rating. If you're a jumper looking to jump weekends, you can do 3 or 4 instructional jumps each day along with 3 or 4 fun jumps, and you'll make 12-15 jumps per weekend and spend no money (you might even 'make' a couple bucks). For others, they take their rating and experience and hit the road looking for a full time slot. You can check the classifieds, or just call every DZ you can think of, but it's not all that different than getting a non-jumping job. Get a certification, gain some entry-level experience, and then look for a 'good' job.

At the end of the day, yes, it has to be an accepted part of life. At the beginning of the day, that's another story. Students are trained in the correct way to conduct a skydive, and a good instructor won't gear up any student who doesn't appear to 'get it'. Not just pass the test, or be able to recite some BS, but actually 'get' the point of the instruction. With that in mind, you can see that nobody wants a student to get hurt, or is willing to just 'see what happens'. A good faith effort is made to teach them the right things to do, but with little to no previous experience, it's tough to say the what the right things are (for that individual) and if they'll actually make use of the training. I've heard of a guy who busted his leg very early on in his jumpng carreer. How did that happen? Wasn't he taught how to flare and PLF? Why didn't he do what he was told? In an odd twist of fate, this time around you're much better equipped to answer your question than just about anyone esle. Why do students and newbies do the dumb things they do? What is it that makes them leave all of their training behind, and just proceed in some other fashion?

No way man, not even close. If you can't fly a landing pattern correctly with your current wing, you're on the wrong wing. If you can't handle a simple flat turn with your current wing, you're on the wrong wing. If you can't manage to keep yourself from flying into a 'box' where your choices are either collide with an obstacle or huck a 180 to get out of there, you're on the wrong wing. Your entire example is based on the premise that a jumper from a '90 only' DZ is going to be short changed in the skills department, but the fact is that by the time a jumper is skilled and experienced enough to be proficient with 90s, and is being held back by the DZ restriction, their basic canopy control skills would be such that they wouldn't make the rookie mistakes you're putting forth as examples, or if they did, they would be able to fly themselves out of it with no problems. There's a big difference between a 90 degree turn to a swoop, and a 270 degree turn to a swoop. There's also a difference between a 90 degree turn to a swoop, and a 180 flat turn to get out of trouble, and the difference is that the 90 to a swoop takes more skill and experience to pull off, where the flat turn should be no bog deal for any jumper with 50 to 100 jumps. You're looking for a reason that limiting the turns is a bad thing, but the fact is that it will create a safer landing pattern and LZ for all involved. I'm not saying I agree with it, or support it, but ask yourself this - when was the last time you heard of a serious wreck at a go-kart track, and compare that to the last time you heard od such a wreck at a full size road-race course? The go-karts are slower, and therefore easier to control and less of a hazzard to each other. Watch a Nascar race, and you're bound to see a wreck of two of significant magnitude, and that takes out any number of otherwise un-involved vehicles. You can't deny that going slower and doing less manuvering makes for a safer driving (or canopy flying) environment.

How can anyone safely downsize? It's simple, spend adaquate time on each canopy size and type that you can develop, practice and demonstrate a full range of canopy control skills in a full range of conditions. If you only have access to a '90 only' DZ, then you simply have 90 degree turns as your 'top skill'. Want to downsize? Great, put in the time to build up to, and then demonstrate a solid, reliable, 90 degree turn on your current canopy, then get a smaller canopy and start over at the beginning. What's the point in learning or concerning yourself with a bigger turn if you only have access to DZs that only allow 90s? Even if you travel to a DZ with no turn limitation, as a jumper from a '90 only' DZ, it's your responsibility to recognize that and limit your activites to those within your abilities.

Just wondering what that would be?

Just watch the weather, and try to schedule full days at the DZ so you can make multiple jumps per day. Perris has a great bunkhouse you can crash in for something like $10/night, and an on-site restaurant where you can eat, so maybe even consider staying for a weekend (or a 3-day weekend). The drive isn't that far when you consider that Perris and Elsinore are two of the best and busiest DZs in the world. The facilites, aircraft, and staff are well worth the drive out there. There are tons of people who drive much further for much less.

It's not hooey, it's all about the degree of the mistake that was made. Your mistake was smaller in respect to what the canopy was capable of, and your friends mistake was larger in that same respect. If you has made a mistake of the same magnitude that she did, you would have also died on that day. I never suggested that those type of canopies were better for swooping, just that they would reach a lower overall speed. What I did suggest is that if you made a large error on any canopy you're going to have a problem. I swooped a Sabre 1 for years with no problem. I was loading a 135 at 1.3 or 1.4, and doing nothing but a quick 180 'wingover' with a riser. That was the style at the time, and the canopy I had the skill to jump, and I made it out just fine. I went on to downsize to another 'square' Sabre 1 107, and swooped that one for years without any problem. The flaw in your thinking, or at least the way you're presenting it, is that it gives people the idea that they should be jumping long diving canopies at higher WL if they want to swoop. That might be your point, and in a way I can agree, but what you're not saying is that people shouldn't be swooping until they have enough jumps and training to be able to handle those canopies in all conditions and the judgement to know what not to swoop. What your argument leads to is jumpers pushing the downsizing and rushing to HP canopies because they want to swoop, and those are 'safer', and in those cases that's not the case. The canopies dive longer, fly faster, and require greater care and judgement to fly safely, and if you don't have that, they're not 'safe' for any purpose. The answer is the pilot, not the parachute. Take Mario Andretti as an example. Put him on a race track in a street car, with street tires and street suspension/brakes, and tell me that it's more 'dangerous' than a race car. We both know that Mario will have no problem hustling the car around the track at 10/10ths, and everyone will come back to the pits in one piece. It's not about the equipment, it's about the driver (pilot). If the pilot is qualified, you can swoop anything safely, from a Sabre 1, to a Navigator, to a tandem.

That's not a solid argument at all. It's not about the exact numbers of the errors, it's about the percentages. Do lightly loaded, lower performance canopies require a lower turn in order to swoop? Yes they do. They also lose less altitude in a turn and can recover from a dive quicker. Of coruse, on the other hand, highly loaded canopies have a greater range of 'acceptable' turn altitudes based on the length of their dive, but if you turn them too low, you're going to hit the ground and it's not going to be 'just like' the bigger canopy, it's going to be harder and more violent. If you turn any canopy too low for it to recover, you're going have a problem. Everyone who is intentionally inducing speed for a landing is going to be pushing their dive to teminate very close to the ground in order to get a 'swoop'. With that in mind, each canopy has it pros and cons in terms of 'safety', but you have to give the nod to the lighter loaded, lower performance canopy for the simple reason that it will attain a lower overall top speed, which euqals a lower impact speed in the event of an error. Just because some, more accomplished, pilots can make use of the greater range in a dive offered by a long diving canopy, it doesn't make those canopies or that style of landing 'safer'. Those canopies, like all others, have an altitude that's 'too low' and if you bust it, you're going to get hurt and probably pretty badly based on the speeds involved. Beyond that, the turn limitation is also a move to prevent collisions. It takes two canopies and some degree of turn to have a collision, so the lesser degree of turn anyone is making, the less chance you have for a collision. It's far easier to check a 90 degree slice of sky just off to your left than it is to check the full 360 degrees all around you.

Very slight problems in body position will cause a turn, sometimes so slight it's hard to see on video. For example, stand up with your feet together, and notice how little you need to lean one way or the other before you fall down. Being stable in freefall isn't a matter of being locked into a body position, it's a matter of fidning your 'balance', and keeping it. Take another look at the video. Is your head on a swivel keeping an eye on your heading? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're supposed to be holding a heading and if you're turning, your head should be off to one side or the other as you try to keep an eye on your heading. I'm willing to bet your head is front and center, watching the world go by. The neat thing about your neck is that it attaches your head to your body, and 9 times out of 10, your body will follow your head. If you want to hold a heading, look at your heading and even if your body wants to drift one way or the other, just the act of turning your head to maintain eye contact with the your heading will often times correct the turn.

Crazy shit happens in the course of a deployment. Things happen VERY quickly with VERY high forces, and this is another reason to keep it simple. Take the main-pin-through-the-bridle malfunctions we've seen. Who ever would have thought that the blunt, rounded end of a pin could stab through two layers of bridle?