flyingangel

As someone who is soon to be a lawyer and have worked in the Insurance law industry for the past 5 years, I'd caution you to take the policy to a lawyer to read the fine print. Your insurance adjuster has said that if you are not currently skydiving. I take that and I'm sure the insurance company will take that to mean never skydived before. If the insurance company did want to deny your claim, they have adequate means to do so as technically you did not fully disclose your situation to them when signing the policy. You are not thinking about taking up skydiving recreationally, you already have. Even if you've only done 4 jumps, that's still 4 jumps. Be careful, insurance companies can be sneaky, but remember lawyers can be sneakier! Good Luck!

Without generalizing to all drop zones in Canada, the drop zone that is in the process of moving used to have restricted air space. Once it was decided to move locations, the restricted air space was also moved to the new location. Since the drop zone's moving date has been postponed, the owner decided it was better to keep the restriction on the new location than returning it to the current location. Any air traffic is given a notification that there is a drop zone at our location, and most air traffic are respectful of that. Even 2 weekends ago, an air ambulance radioed requesting our permission to pass through with a critical patient. Right now we're going to have to share our air space and be a lot more cautious about what is around us! Blue Skies!

I have a '97 Green Neon (nicknamed the Hot Rod), with no air conditioning ($1000 to fix), no hub caps on the left, no back up lights (I don't really go backwards that often), she burns a litre of oil a week (56 litres of oil a year is cheaper than what it would cost to fix) and the back left door is a different colour green than the rest of the car (serves me right for getting a "friend" to re-paint it after an unfortunate accident between my car and well my car) But hey, my little hot rod gets me to the dorpzone every weekend so I can jump my rig!

I have not been to Swoop yet, but Niagara and Burnaby are both great drop zones in the west end of Toronto. I think Burnaby still has the Otter and Niagara, the King Air. I have many friends out at Burnaby so I'm a little prejudiced.

Hey Ruskin I don't usually respond to posts, but I can tell you I've been in your position and can understand the fear. On the day I got my solo certification, I went up for my celebration jump (no radio, 1st time totally on my own), I had a 2 out malfunction at a 1000 ft. Luckily everything was fine, but it freaked the living hell out of me. I did a few more jumps (my mom always said get back on the horse), but couldn't cure the fear. All I could think about from the moment I got on the plane to the ground was the canopy ride and the landing. I stopped jumping for about 11 months and had lots of time to pound that fear into my head. I almost gave up jumping and a very smart skydiving friend of mine told me I just had to learn how to compartmentalize. His advice was 1.to accept that the fear only goes away with currency, and sometimes never. If you can accept that, you can deal with it. 2. In your mind create compartments for each stage of the jump (exit, arch, pull, canopy, landing). This way you can concentrate on each step you have to do at the time, until it gets natural. And his last piece of advice (which sounds funny but very true) 3. If you get unstable, Arch like a mother-f***** Chipping and spinning is a pretty normal thing for students to encounter and it's a good thing because then when you get back into your strong arch, you can see how to stop doing both. Keep trying, I still have the fear but it's getting easier to deal with now. And like everyone has said, it's amazing what happens when you try to relax! Don't give up, the fun is just beginning!

Hey Jeff, Knowing you and your rig quite well, I can't imagine why this is happening now. I wish you would have said something this weekend and we could have figured something out for you. The only thing I can suggest is to go out on your next jump and spend the dive focussing on your body position while checking for your hackey. If it happens again, it might be worthwhile to have video, to see your body position and what's going on with your rig. Please don't get discouraged. Next time they let me out of manifest, I'll go up for some fun with you!