davelepka

You are sadly mistaken if you think this exchange will have one ounce of impact on my life beyond this post. Wake yourself up and disconnect from the matrix. There are real people out there participating in actual activites. Look into it.

I don't recall the details, but I'm assuming it has something to do with posting things that effected their real lives in a negative way. The easy solution is not to post anything you wouldn't want on the front page of the NY Times. That aside, there's enough of your profile filled out that we can be fairly certain you're a real person with actual skydiving experience. People who fill out nothing might as well be teenage boys or lonley middle-aged housewives with nothing better to do than play 'internet skydiver'.

The same that your opinion of anyone on DZ.com or a DZ has anything to do with anything. You seem like a fag, fuck you.

My experience that is that people who don't fill out their profiles are trying to hide something. Everyone knows who I am, and where I jump. They know how long I've been jumping and how many jumps I've made during that time. They know the equipment I jump and the wau I load it. I'm a real person, and not looking to hide behind anything. You're a fag, fuck you.

The first time or two I washed rigs I actaully used the washing machine for the whole thing, but later I got spooked about the idea of my rig being inside a machine with moving parts, so now I just do the whole thing by hand. It's only once a year, during the winter layoff, so I have time. They do usually do dry quicker then the time I gave, but I wanted to avoid anyone trying to wash a rig and then hand it to a rigger the next day expecting a repack. There's a lot of nooks and crannies on a rig that might still be a little damp, so just to be sure, I figured 36 to 48 hours was a 'sure' estimate that everything would be 100% dry. For anyone who doesn't already do it, a yearly wash will do wonders for a rig. If you jump in a seasonal area, the winter layoff is a prime time to get it done. Jumpers in year round areas just need to bite the bullet and be without a rig for a couple extra days once a year, especially since they probably use their rigs more anyway. Most rigger are willing to do the wash for a fee, which is nice because then you know it's handled properly if you don't want to do it yourself. It really is a snap. Stick to rigger approved soap, cold water, a soft brush and your own two hands, and there's not too much that can go wrong.

Remove anything that isn't bolted down. Fill a clean bathtub with cold water and cup (ish) of mild soap like Wollite. Insert rig and submerge it and swoosh it around. Hit any really bad areas with a soft brush. I've had good results (as-in not damaging the rig) with natural fiber brushes like horse-hair, or similar. Drain the water after an hour, and refill with clean water. Swoosh around and let sit. Drain that water and either refill with water and more soap if needed, or refill with more clean water. In either case, follow with several more refill/drain cycles with clean water. To dry, I use a couple of heavy duty plastic hangers over the shower curtain bar. You may have to cinch up the chest strap to keep the shoulders from sliding off the hanger. I drape a big towel over the edge of the tub because half of the water will fall in the tub and half out. Once hanging, you can squeeze some of the water out of the rig, starting from the top down. It will actaully retain quite a bit of water, so the squeezing really does help to dry it out. If you really want to dry it, follow up the first squeezing with one where you use a towel. It will grab any moisture that won't run off the rig and would try to soak back in after being squeezed. It should be dry within 36 to 48 hours.

I don't think AFF is to blame for that type of attitude towards pull altitudes. Most AFF programs I know of (or ISP, or whatever) steadily lower the pull altitude to 3500' or so by the time the jumper is done with their A license card. The problem lies in the fact that skydiving has become more accessible to more people over the years. It's not the physical challenge it used to be to become a skydiver. No round canopies, no belly-mounts, sometimes never cramped into a Cessna for 35 min, no packing in the sun, just paid packers, air conditioned hang-out areas, and roomy, quick rides to altitude all day long. So what you end up with is a segment of jumpers who never would have made the cut in years past, but since everything has gone all touchy-feely, and everyone can (supposedly) be trained, you have some different types of people who make it through the ranks. The caveat to that is that your friend is right. If she is not confident in her ability to react swiftly and without fail at pull time, and whatever follows, then intiating the pull higher will buy her more time to deal with whatever comes. Just because you (and me) and others see no problem with the alloted time a lower pull altitude offers you to get a good canopy over your head, doesn't mean that others share that opinion, and the simple fact is that pulling higher does result in more time to deal with it. So while I share your frustration that skydiving has allowed it's ranks to be joined by those who maybe shouldn't be there, I won't fault those people when the make a sound decision like being realistic about their abilities, and not being pressured into pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone. It's true that I'm of the opinion that those people are making a mistake by jumping in the first place, but that doesn't make following one mistake with another a good idea.

They still have a Vector II rental rig at Skydive Deland? You're sure it was a V II, and not a V III? Some of the older or dorkier V III's would be hard to tell apart from a V II if the riser covers were magnetic. I mean it would be easy for some people to tell them apart, but if you're not well versed in RWS (UPT) rigs, you might mistake one for the other. Who was the rigger that told you this, or what name were you given to get this work done? As far as I know, there is no official connection between Skydive Deland and UPT. It is the closest DZ to the factory, and they may use it for test jumps, and the UPT staff may jump there (on and off the clock), but outside of that, they are seperate businesses, and one cannot speak for the other.

The advice so far has been generally good. However, if you are a smaller person, you will need a tight fitting suit for RW jumps, and you'll need one 'right away'. What I mean by that is very soon off student status, if you intend to jump with anyone who is not also smaller (or just skinny), you're going to have to arch uncomfortably hard to stay down with them, or they will not be able to stay up with you. Unlike your AFF instructor, not everyone has a selection of suits for different fall rates or the skills to use them. Depending on your size, you may even need to wear weight. This is worn in a belt type device, and consists or little pouches filled with lead shot, generally 1 lb each. The pouches fit into pockets on the belt, and you add or subtract pouches depending on how fast you want to go. Wearing the weight and the right suit can have you falling much faster without having to arch harder. In terms of the suit and the possible weight, enlist the help of the instructors you jump with to help guide you. They can make reccomendations for the type of suit, the fabric, and what options to consider as well as when to actaully start jumping it. Use them to help you get started with the weights if needed. You want to start off with too little, and work your way up to what works for you. Keep in mind that the weight will make your canopy fly (and land) faster, and you'll need to adjust to that, and running out a landing with more weight on your legs than just you and the rig.

I don't think anyone is suggesting endless raising of anything. The old argument that, 'If 3000ft is safer, why not make it 4000ft or 5000ft' doesn't apply here because there's more to involved than just the pull altitude itself. As many have mentioned, the canopies take longer to open, and due to that, there's no way to have your container open at 2k and be ready to make a decision at 1800ft. Even in the days when mains opened quicker, at 2k pull and 1800ft decision wasn't entirely realistic. Like most things in skydiving, the min pull altitudes were probably loudly objected to in the beginning, and so the C and D license altitude fo 2k was probably a comprimise to keep the more experienced jumpers happy. This was in the days where the canopies did open faster, and fly and spin slower, and even then 2k was the bottom of bottom lines. Fast forward to where the canopies open slower, and fly and spin faster, the comprimise of 2k becomes completely rediculous if you still want to call 1800ft a decision altitude, which by the way, is probably a good place to start. If you figure on 1800ft as the desicion altitude, and you do that with the idea of getting under a reserve by at least 1000ft, you can reverse engineer your deployment sequence by adding the distance you need for deployment, plus a buffer to allow you to identify and react to a problem. Then, consider that some mals like broken lines, stuck brakes, or tears it the canopy, can produce normal-ish openeings, and not reveal themselves until after you unstow (or attempt) your brakes, you can see that you need even more time to factor in a controlability check by 1800ft. The 2k min pack opening altitude was a comprirmise to make some grumpy old men happy back it the day when canopies opened fast, flew slow, and most DZs flew Cessnas that couldn't reach the high side of 10k. Look at where we are now, with slow opening canopies, the fly, spin, and mal at high speeds, while jumping out of turbines that make 20+ trips per day to 13k or 14k, the idea that people are still clinging to 2k as a reasonable pack opening altitude is absurd. I don't know there should be a BSR change just for the sake of avoiding the huge project that changing a BSR always turns into. I do know that Bill Booth is right on the money, that things have changed, and when it comes to altitude and working time under canopy, they have not changed for the better if you intend to take it right down to the letter of the law (BSR).

Fit in where? How about sharing the size of the Javelin you're looking at?

The idea is not to make AADs user adjustable, just to shift everything up in relation to the increase in AAD firing altitude. If AADs were easily user-adjustable, you would have each jumper using a different setting, and thus having a different set of requirements for their jump. What happens when two people with very different requirements end up on the same jump? What happens when a jumper switches from one type of jump to one not compatible with their AAD settings? What happens when people borrow rigs from each other? The only way it would work is of the AAD was designed to be programmed before every jump. It would literally have to turn off in order to prevent it being jumped with the setting from the previous jump, when those settings might not be compatible with the upcoming jump. Part of the reason the Cypres was such a success is that you turned it on once, and that was it for the day. Previous AADs needed to be calibrated before each jump, which was a pain in the ass. If the AADs were designed to fire 400 or 500ft higher across the board, there would be a better chance of it actualyl working a deploying your reserve in time. According to Bill Booth, it would afford you the luxury of a reserve PC hesitation, and still probably save your ass. As for the USPA thing, unless you make it a rule, nobody will ever stick to it. If the AADs change without a rule, you'll just see more two-outs from main canopy deployments that snivel down into AAD firing territory. If you make it a rule, most DZOs will enforce it, just to keep things 'by the book'. It's never good for a DZO when a jumper goes in, and if it turns out there were BSR violations involved in the incident, that's even worse. It doesn't look good to the USPA, and if a lawsuit ensues, it doesn't look good to the jury. So you're left with either the full package, that being make the rule change and the equipment change, or nothing at all (except for more education, I guess, but nobody ever listens to that). The idea of making AADs more complicated and more invovled to use just seems like a bad idea. The more steps there are in the process, the more chances there are for something to be set wrong, or not set, or for the jumper to think the settings are something other than what they are.

None of those activites can match the 360 degree range of motion you can experiecne on a skydive. In the case of taking grips on another jumper, if you don't drop them when you should, you're swining around 150 to 200 lbs of 'dead weight' in ways you could never replicate outside of freefall. That freedom is part of the beauty of skydiving, but also one of the pitfalls if you don't drop grips when things go to shit. If you had a 150 lb load pulling you over backwards on the ground, you would let go right away. In freefall, people hold on, and while it might not be the full weight of the jumpers pulling you backwards, it's enough to pop the shoulder out.

Your initial post made reference to a clear and pull from 12k, and then riding it down to 5k. That's quite a bit more than 1 or 2 attempts to clear a mal. On that same subject, the average jumper, on the average canopy, can experience enough g-loading to cause a loss of consciousness. The high G loads created by a spinning high performance canopy can put you out over a short duration, but so can the moderate G-loads of a more average canopy when experienced over a longer duration, like riding a spinner from 12k to 5k. Keeping in mind that most jumpers, regardless of experience or canopy type are not trained to recognize or coutner the effects of a G induced loss of consciousness, making a suggestion that exposes jumpers to a G load for any duration of time is asking for trouble.

That is the technique, and if it would work or not due to the legstraps is anyone's guess. My suggestion was just that if it would work, I would imagine that during the initial onset of the spin, the jumpers legs would be tense holding them square in the harness, and fighting the spin. During this time, you would be less likely to back out. Fast forward a few thousand feet later, and the spin persists, if your legs tire out, or the jumper simply relaxes, the effect of the tension in the legs would be lost, along with the blood flow to the brain. The loss of consciousness could be very rapid without usual warning signs (not that all jumpers are familiar with them anyway).

There a ton of reasons not to fight it. The longer you expose you and your rig to the unusual forces a mal can create, the greater the chance that something else will go wrong. Even a moderate spin which seems managable can quickly become anything but, even if the spin itself doesn't change. Tension in your legs/core will help keep blood in your brain, and keep you awake. Over time, your legs will tire, and the ongoing effects of the spin can build up to quickly put you out with little to no warning. What about your cutaway cable being sucked through the grommet? It's happened before, and if you load it long enough, it may happen again. Waiting to cutaway might just be waiting to not be able to cutaway. I've seen guys ride a mal to spot their cutaway, and they thought it was cool. What's cooler than that is noting your position immediately after your cutaway, and using the upper wind forcast to triangulate where your stuff is, and driving straight to it 3 miles from the DZ.

What's your point? That sounds about right for a good number of students, but it's not as bad as it seems. You're lucky you had enough to move through the 2 instructor jumps, and now you only have to pay one instructor. AS long as you can make one jump within 30 days, you won't have to do-over your last jump, and you'll keep moving through the progression. It might make your training take a little longer, but it will give you time to sell your possesions, sign up for a stack of credit cards, and get ready for buying gear and spending $200/week on jumps for the next year or two (at least).

We all know that aircraft are the single biggest cost in skydiving. Let's say you get weathered out for a weekend, you don't have to pay staff, you don't have to pay for fuel, but the aircraft payment (if applicable) is still due. Seeing as tandems have become the cornerstone of any DZs income, this type of policy is a way to maintain cash flow even when the weather doesn't cooperate. Another thought is the refund process. The bulk of tandems are paid for with credit/debit cards, so there are probably some fees associated with those transactions, which become a loss for the DZ. Neither of those reasons is for the benefit of the customer, but not all business policies are for the benefit of the customer. There are two parties involved in every transaction, and in some cases one comes out on top, and in some cases the other. How about the times where a DZO will send a load that gets called back due to winds or clouds? Who pays for the fuel, aircraft time, and the pilot? It's not the customer. Again, it all comes down to the free-market idea. 'As long as both parties are fully informed', every deal is a fair deal. So if DZOs have either found the need for a no-refund policy, or simply found they can get away with a no-refund policy, their responsibility becomes making sure that the customer is fully informed, and the documnet I suggested above does just that. It explains the policy, offers an incentive to pay up-front, and the option to not.

You've seen it every time? You've personally watched every transaction with every customer at the window? I know that this is not the case, and even if they put it plain english 'most' times, it still leaves the door open for it not to be explained, and for the customer to be under a mistaken impression. Keep in mind that even if the office explains that to 99.9% of the customers, the .1% who don't get the explanation are still out 100% of their money (provided they don't get to jump, and are from out of town with no plans to return). I think an extra page stapled to the back of the waiver would be a good idea. Have it say something to the effect "Paying for your jump will reserve your place in line for the next available airplane and instructor. In the case of weather delays we do not offer refunds, only rainchecks. If we are not jumping due to weather, or there is a possibility of bad weather, you have the choice to withhold payment until we can resume jumping, but you will be placed in line behind customers who have already paid, even if you arrived before them." Of course, that's just a rough outline, and not a bulletproof legal contract. Either way, if you keep it brief enough that you can print it in fairly large type with a heading of 'Important Payment Information', and a place to sign that they read it at the bottom, it should do the trick to make sure that every customer is informed before making payment.

It's hard to tell from the pics, but is there a loop or sheath on the back of the risers, behind the toggle? If so, you just fold the excess in half, and slip it into the 'keeper' on the back of the riser. If there is no keeper, you can have one sewn on for a few bucks. If there is no keeper, you can get a small stow band and attach it to the guide ring and use that to stow your excess. You might even cut the band lengthwise to make it 'skinnier' so it's easier to stow and takes up less space. There is a chance that your steering line will rub up against the band during canopy flight, but all this will do is rip the band off the ring, so have a few extras on hand.

There you have it. Summed up nicely, and right in line with what the OP was asking. Given the actual benefits of loosening the chest strap are partially jumper percpetion, and partially better suited to swoopers or jumpers who use harness input, it leaves a small portion of the benefits that will apply to the average non-swooper with no interest in lossening their chest strap, so why do it? Let's look at a PC. A PC may actually work if it's uncocked, but the penalty if it doesn't work is fairly severe, so in essence, you have to cock a PC. If you want a helmet to protect your head, ti might stay on if you don't fasten the chin strap, but the penalty(ies) for it flying off in freefall (lost helemt or loss of protection) are severe enough that you have to fasten your chin strap. Your chest strap is another story. You do not have to lossen it to get your canopy to open or fly properly, so if you're not the type to be inclined to do so, then don't. To who don't read completely or cannot comprehend, I openly admitted that there are gains to be had from lossening your chest strap. I lossen mine to the stop on every jump and feel odd if I borrow a rig with a shorter chest strap. The point I was making that if you take a jumper, like the OP, who is happy with their canopy and it's performance, and happy with their chest strap tight under canopy, then there is no reason to add to their workload or risk level on a skydive.

This was poor business practice, plain and simple. The large sums of money that people are out were mis-appropriated by Gary, and used for something besides paying for the gear that was ordered. That's not 'bad luck', or circumstances beyond his control, it was a willful mis-use of funds that were not his, and that he could not replenish. I don't care if the guy was facing jail time or starvation, the money wasn't his. It was in his possesion for one expressed purpose, and that was to pay for the gear the customers ordered. Beyond all that, we're not talking about a couple hundred bucks the guy blew at a strip club. There is more than one complaint of a full rig ordered, to the tune of $8000 each, with no part of the order filled. Just based on what we know from this thread, it's well over $10k that is un-accoutned for, and that doesn't happen overnight or by accident.

I don't recall the exact details, but it was something like that. I do remember that he was filming a Mt Dew commercial where he played a James Bond type character, and all of the rigging was hidden beneath a tuxedo.

Maintaining pressurization is the key to handling turbulence. Think about an airplane wing, it maintains it's shape through turbulence, so the flight performance falls to the pilot to guide the wing properly. Canopies are different in that that are not rigid. You might suggest that a faltter canopy flies better in turbulence, but that's very hard to prove. Different canopies, different WLs, different sized harness/risers, different states of line trim and brake line adjustment, all of these things will contribute to how the canopy flies. Add to that the differences in airflow from one area to another, you might not be looking at what you're looking at. Just because the swoopers and higher-time jumpers have solid canopies near the beer line, and the lower time guys are getting bounced around out in the weeds, doesn't mean the position of the chest strap is to blame. Again, this issue is two-fold. There's what people think is going on, and what is really happening. In the end, no canopy under any conditions must have the chast strap loose for proper operation. It is simply jumper choice, with no harm done either way (no harm except the reports of jumpers have trouble finding their handles when cutting away after loosening the chest strap, I guess that's a problem).

All other things being equal, send the big boys out before the smaller students. They'll fall faster, and their canopies will fly faster, and both of those will get them down faster then the lightweights. If you put a big boy out second, he's more likely to catch up to the lightweight during the canopy ride. The radio is a tool, not a requirement. Use it as needed. Continue to push students to cut the leash, but when they make a mistake or get close to another canopy, chime in a correct their actions. As a radio opertaor, keep an eye on the students actions during their free-time. If the last student out is getting happy on the spirals, and a previous student is flying in 1/2 brakes, you're losing seperation, and you need to instruct them to do things differently. Otherwise, stress the pattern and looking where they're going. Not where they're going as-in their target area, but where they're going as-in where the canopy is flying. You make two turns in the pattern, none of them are high speed or under pressure, so it's not hard to look down and to the left and back and to the left, then commence the turn. It's also not hard to remind them that everyone will be making 90 degree left turns, so if you're overtaking or approaching a canopy from their left, they are likey to turn across your path and cut you off. The better idea is to approach or overtake from their right, so all turns are away from you.