Abedy

Very interesting thoughts. I second them. Do 180° frontriser turns as well, but only if the airspaces allows for it. If not, I resort to 90° The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

How up do high knee OK, this one's very tough for folks who don't speak German The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

But you read my article, I hope. Well, tearing a single sentence out of its context to poke phun at someone is child's play, isn't it The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

That's why they're so filthy rich: Saving money where ever they can BTW: They gear with a belly strap looks funny. Never seen a student gear with a belly strap here. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

I'm not a cola connoisseur but I'd like to throw in a few thoughts: Pepsi can compete with Coca - if it comes to taste, tested in a blind study. (In fact, it's even a majority of testers who prefer Pepsi in blind studies! See here.) It's called the "Coca Cola Effect" here meaning the brand/label overturns the content. Pepsi can't compete with Coca - if it comes to being better established in the market etc pp. If Coca have to aquire a new market they don't perform as successfully as they do in the US. They spent a fortune on adverts and campaigns in East Germany. They had some success in the first years when everybody wanted to "Taste the West" but lost market uptake gradually when the old GDR brand "Vita Cola" (info in English and its German website) was rediscovered by the East German natives. Meanwhile, it's even stylish with youths who were born after the wall came down. Vita Cola even advertises a slogan like "You CAN'T get us everywhere" with a town sign with "America" crossed out. Even on their website. So, if Coca didn't have contracts with MCD's etc pp and didn't spent that much money on advertising (2 billion bucks a year!) they weren't that "good". So I think Pepsi isn't pathetic. They make a certain type of cola which some people like and others don't like. The commercial is quite funny. Not one that makes you clap your thighs and LOLing, but not too bad. However... if it comes to polar bears on commercials, The Bundy Bear is the coolest I have ever seen! Click here And it's a really nice rum they make in Bundaberg, especially the black one, slurp... The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

The polls supports my personal findings. Most people I work with have children. It's usually the old-fashioned "married, with two kids" thing. Probably, because most of my workmates are my age. The majority of the younger skydivers I know do not have children and don't plan to have any. The bigger part of the older ones (40+) have kids. So it seems that younger people nowadays tend to have kids later and, if they are infected by skydivitis on that path, are more willing to not have any kids. Older skydivers (like me) had their children at the age of 18+ (or 22+ when academics) and started skydiving when their children were grown enough and the marriage proved stable enough to endure skydive-season-weekend-absentitis The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Hmmm... just a slight change and: I will have to disagree with you on this one. Like they told us in the GDR, respect the rank, not the person. Same thing applies here. Just my 2 Eurocents. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Not that this will really help, but dropzones in Germany are generally "far outside normal prudence". In fact, most DZ here allow 12-year-olds to do tandem jumps (with parental [mum AND dad] consent). We usually tell parents to wait until 14* when they should be grown-up enough to not run into barotraumas. *(typical age for religious and non-religious initiation rites/ceremonies and thus, occasion for tandem jump gifts) German Parachute Association recommends jumps form 10+ on [Link in German], many dropzones use German tandem gear. The situation might be a little different on dropzones with Sigmas only, however The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

That is a good analogy. I like this. Sounds funny but... ain't a suitable answer if a tandem student/passenger asks you the abovementioned question The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

N/A

Nice story. Seems a tandem voucher can be a nice hint "to lose some weight" I can imagine a "SKYDIVING IMPROVES YOUR HEALTH*" slogan with the asterisk telling in small letters: If it makes you reduce your circumference BTW: It takes some time to get an eye for euphemised (sugarcoated) weights You're sometimes quite surprised if you have a student stand on the scales The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Quite a lot of passengers and their relatives are sort of aware of the dangers. Not that they really know about terms like side-spin etc, but they know things might go wrong. It's rather things like "Did you fold your canopy correctly?" or "Will you bring my daughter back safely?" or "Have you ever had an accident tandem skydiving?". The questions are legitimate AFAISI and thus we answer them in a non-joking manner. And we usually tell them that this experience requires attention to what we tell them and practise with them before and that, if they don't follow these instructions, they might do harm to themselves or the both of us. We don't show them a video beforehand here and I dunno how the "You might die" sentence - especially expressed by a guy with a ZZ Top beard - would be received by folks here. @JohnMitchell: Nice story, tnx4sharing. I had a jump with mother who came with her baby some weeks ago, but she didn't have to feed it. She liked the ride and was very keen to get back to her family (baby in her hubbies arms) to share the experience and cuddle the baby of course

+1 Especially the "adult explanations" aren't that difficult and worth the effort at least to passengers you feel are open to it and don't only want to have that "ride of a lifetime" The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Tips are rarely given here, but anyway... I like the job because students/passengers are usually very grateful and that makes me feel really good after a week full of work that quite often isn't rewarded at all. I've never had a tandem guest ask me out yet, but in case it is a nice girl, wayyyyy to young for me.... I already feel disappointed for telling her I'm married The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Huhu... and there is no such thing as a "disabled toilet", btw. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

There were a great many nude resorts at the East German part of the Baltic Sea. As soon as our wessie brethren took over, they insisted on "decency" and stuff... and introduced "dog beaches". Well, dog turds traded for boobs, isn't that great. Most women here didn't have problems to sunbathe or even go swimming topless in most public swimming pools but nowadays young people tend to be more and more "American". Boys in loooooong swimmers ("decency!!!!") and girls no longer topless. Could you Yanks please stop exportingh you values and leave it to good canopies and nice movies? The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Some years ago a fellow lost both(!) shoes in freefall. (Don't ask me why and how, don't even wanna know it.) I wasn't on the DZ at that weekend and but already got to know about the incident from the newspaper on Monday: The lunatic thought the shoes might have fallen onto the roof of a big shopping mall nearby and climed on the roof late at night. Was spotted by someone who called the police. Story ended on first page of the local news. When I came to work I got asked whether I was the person... The local anti-skydive action group took advantage of the incident and wrote two letters to the editor expressing their fear and concerns about being hit by objects falling down on innocent citizens. That is why I always check my tandem students' shoes for tight fit, double-knotted shoe laces tucked in. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Nice to read! Unfortunately, the video is blocked here due to slimy suits on behalf of "GEMA" (I know... but leaving the country just for this reason is a little too much ) The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

In the early 90s, when the kids were still at home and the salaries were lower we saved a few bucks by doing the hair at home. Didn't dare to cut, but did colour etc. Was nice, ended ...ermm... you know. BTW: In GDR times hair jobs were so incredibly cheap you would have to have another reason but save money to do your girl's hair at home Still 'member all my West Berlin relatives always going to the hairdresser's when they paid us a visit. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

What an idea for the members of a club with a C206! Spend a few days in the mountains in the winter break and have fun doing 10ways The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

@Riggerpaul: Yeah, you put what I thought pretty much in a nutshell. :-) Apart from that, I also can go with Dave's thoughts: It's highly important that the AAD keeps track of the pressure at ground level to have a "zero level". If its reading is slightly different from what a calibrated barometer would tell you, that shouldn't be that much a problem since in those altitudes above sea level it's just sort of a parallel shift along the barometric curve that is almost linear in these regions. When we were at Airtec we were shown several examples of how they measured the air pressure with the first gadgets. One was really nice to look at: About a dozen A4 papers (with a millimeter grid on it) that showed the measured air pressure against the time after leaving the plane. Some 1991 stuff, when Amiga, Atari Falcon etc were still considered high end computers :-) As for the thoughts about flatflying vs. backflying etc. I asked Helmut Cloth about the problems. He showed me some readings plotted on millimeter grid paper when test jumpers did somersaults etc. Woohoo... that look like the Alps or a bizarre fever curve ;-) Question: How to deal with this problem. I 'membered problems like that when I did my studies in Astronomy (reading out brightness of stars close to the background "noise" of grains and stuff on photographic plates) and asked whether he did FFT and low-pass filtering etc. "Sort of" he answered, but that's not 'nuff, much more sophisticated algorithms needed and you gotta implement them in ASM ;-) The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

I just wanted to point out that even if you check for ONE point of the characteristic curve you do not really know if other parts of it are still "in shape". The idea of checking it OK so far but again, I think that it doesn't really uplift safety to a much higher level. P.S.: I do not own a VIGIL and I personally do not harbour any negative thoughts about it. If someone jumps with it, it's OK. I just do not like it if someone's (NOT YOURS!) aim is only degrading the CYPRES. (Especially if coming from a country where some FJC'ers are still equipped with "hightech" such as KAP3 as an AAD...) The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

Hatred? ROTFL!!! You're pathetic. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

I referred to the article that started the thread. Most people here jump Next rigs (from Paratec, a German company) which are Vector-style. Thus, the abovementioned hints are worth a thought. And since most people here understand English fairly well, we do not have that many problems if a manual is provided in English. I dare say it's not that easy if vice versa? The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks

First: Cultural awareness. "Alles in Ordnung" means something different in German. It's just "Everything OK" or "She'll be alright" (in Oz). It's not a concept, even if you wish so. Second: "The" Germans? (BTW: German and Germanic are not synonyms) It's a stereotype that Germans (or Germanics, if you like to) are all ass-tight folks who need everything to be regulated and in time etc. Just like the stereotype we all walk around in leather trousers and razor-brush hats, dancing silly Bavarian dances and chasing non-Arayan people whenever possible. Third: There are quite a number of German people with Jewish, Polish etc ancestry who take offence when related to "Nazi" just because they are German citizens. Others come from families who fought the Nazis in the 3rd Reich and are also upset if labelled "Nazi" just because they are German citizens. Please just read and think about it. Thank you. The sky is not the limit. The ground is. The Society of Skydiving Ducks