Divalent

Yeah, I meant "recertification", although probably should have said "recurrency". Thought it relevant to the discussion above about how long a coach and/or instructor should stick with someone not pulling on time. In this case, it is very likely that had the coach pulled on time, the jumper would have done so shortly thereafter, avoiding the dual two-out. (Clearly giving the pull sign wasn't doing it)

Here's another dual two-out with a coach/instructor on a recert dive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3VisRC3X9U& Apparently the jumpers altimeter stuck, and coach/instructor keeps giving the jumper the finger. Both deployed mains, but not high enough to avoided the AAD fire.

Just asking to clarify (since your sarcasm switch makes it unclear): would this be okay for an owner to do (i.e., sliping something over the strap, rather than attaching it some way)?

For me, door fear evaporated once I had confidence in my ability to reestablish stability if I ever got unstable. (I think that is the whole point of doing flips and barrel rolls). Which meant that I could try things that pushed (and often exceeded, LOL!) the limits of stable free fall (like aggressive tracking postures, odd body shapes to fall faster or slower or move sideways or turn rapidly, etc.) without the fear I'd be unable to regain control in short order. I may be misinterpreting (and/or overanalyzing) the words you wrote, but it sounds like you still don't have that confidence (and hence your reluctance to try challenging things once you are stable). If that's the case, maybe some jumps where FF is just a series of flips and rolls interspersed with moments of stability would help build that confidence.

From the USPA SIM: 2. Both parachutes deployed: a. Biplane (1) Do not cut away. (2) Steer the front canopy gently using toggles or leave the brakes stowed and steer by pulling on the rear risers. (3) Leave the brakes stowed on the back canopy. (4) Make a parachute landing fall on landing. b. Side-by-side (two alternatives) --- side-by-side alternative one: If the two canopies are not tangled, cut away and fly the reserve to a safe landing. --- side-by-side alternative two (1) Steer the dominant (larger) canopy gently using toggles or leave the brakes stowed and steer by pulling on the rear risers. (2) Leave the brakes stowed on the other canopy. (3) Make a parachute landing fall on landing. c. Downplane: Cut away the main canopy.

Ah, didn't notice that you are another Farm animal. In that case, you might want to down size a bit on the beer allotment, and upsize on the CocaCola allotment (giving the latter directly to Andy). (I've found that it keeps him happy; although surprisingly he'll give you good advice regardless.)

And beer for first cutaway. And beer for losing a handle. PS, congrats on making it through in one piece. Sounds like an adventure (which I am satisfied merely experiencing vicariously through you.

IMO, (as a recent student), I like it a lot. It is good to have a comprehensive presentation (with illustrations, video, simulations, etc.) of the material that one can use to review and relearn. I can't speak for others, but for me the course was a lot of material covered in a relatively short period of time, and much forgotten right after "learned". A one stop review place available online would have been very helpful. Had it been available prior to my course, I would have gone through it as much as I could before taking my real course, and would have used it as a resource for review. Hopefully the opinion of the instructors here is that the information and techniques are universal enough not to conflict (at least substantially conflict) with how the material is taught in most of the DZ ground schools.

I love how they "pixelate" the nutz in the video report, presumably so a viewer won't be able to recognize who's nutz they are.

Could someone please describe what "a pin lock to the bridle" is, and how one might get one?

Someone else posted a similar request a while back: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4145748;search_string=presentation;#4145748 Some good suggestions in there.

45 min vs 3 hour drive. One way? Even if that is round trip, that's a big difference in your investment of time and money just on travel. IMO, even if there was a big "loyalty and etiquette" factor, this is probably is stretching the limits of it's application. It might be a different story if you really love the first place and intend to make it your home DZ despite the distance. Although even then I think the convenience factor of this special training session might still make it a reasonable thing to do.

How about letting the student handle it themselves (as they were trained to do)? What if you (experienced jumper) were the "student" in this situation (say, because it was an AFF-I training jump and you were the dummy), and prior to the jump they told you that if you had a bag lock, the plan was to just pull your reserve handle and let you deal with the outcome? You almost certainly would say (probably with some alarm), "please don't, I'll handle it myself, thank you". But of course, this was not an experienced jumper, it was an AFF level 1. It seems to me the calculus for doing it to a student (of unknown ability and mental wherewithal) is that, on average, the risk of something bad happening by letting them do it themselves is greater than the added risk of bypassing the cutaway step. I have no experience to do this calculation (on either side of the equation), but would be interested in what those of you with experience think of the ability of students on their first jump. (E.g., what percent do you fear might freeze up, or worse.) BTW, I have quite an appreciation for what AFF-Is have to deal with: there are a gajillion ways for a jump to go bad (but when they do, they regularly show up on YouTube, LOL!), and there is no way to anticipate even a small fraction of these unusual ones. The instructor chose one reasonable course to deal with an emergency, and unlike us, did not have the luxury of hours to replay it over and over (in slow motion and freeze framing) before having to act.

The question is, does skydiving help you develop and hone that ability (to a degree where it is helpful outside the sport)? Or is it a self selection thing, where people who take up and do well in skydiving do so because they had those general skills to begin with?

Just to be clear, the scam is not that they steal your gear, it's that they steal your money. They send you a certified check for way more than the sales price, and you wire back the excess money once the check "clears" your bank. (3 weeks later your bank informs you the check was a forgery, and takes back the full check amount.) They never get your gear, because then there would be a shipping trail that potentially would allow you to find them. Wherever it is that they *say* they live, they live in another country far far away (some place where your local law enforcement will have no ability to help you, even if they were able to locate it).

Kind of similar to the response by humans in the same situation.

Yes it absolutely is a scam. Here's a direct link to the thread in the scams forum that gives the best summary of how the scam works. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3463257#3463257 You can play along with him if you want to cause him trouble, but keep shopping your gear to others. (and whatever you do, don't try to cash any check he sends you.)

And I predict that, yet again, the rest of us will not absorb the lesson, these incidents will continue to occur, and USPA will do nothing. It's only a matter of time before the FAA steps in (and we won't be happy with their solution).

How about the option of letting the student deal with it (as opposed to just pulling the reserve)? Are AFF students so clueless that it would be unlikely they would do the right thing, so that it would be better to do a clearly suboptimum thing for them? - If he does as he was trained to do, he cuts away and pulls reserve, a much better course of action. - If he just fires the reserve, the situation is no worse than what was done for him. - If he does nothing, either the bag clears by itself much later (better), his AAD fires low (same outcome, but less altitude to clear the 2-out), or his AAD fails and he lands a bag lock (worse). I'm not suggesting this option (I am no instructor) but would at least be interested in instructors giving it some thought.

On final I took a wrap on each toggle to give me a bit more flare for a landing. Initially pulled to shoulder level, and my right side felt funny, like there was a line snag. No time to do any analysis (let alone rigging). About a second later, ~4 ft off the ground, I tried to finished the flare and immediately hooked left, because I wasn't able pull my right hand down beyond my shoulder (but of course, my left hand had normal mobility). Surprisingly, I didn't land too hard. Turns out I had caught the line that collapses my slider in my right hand when I took the wrap. I don't plan on doing that again.

Or you can scan it and then email it to membership@uspa.org Save ya a stamp, and they get it immediately (got my official license card in about a week and a half).

I think Bertt (#2) made an important suggestion that you might want to add to the top of your list. Which is to do as we were trained, and count slowly to 5 (or 7, if your canopy tends to be very snivelly) so that you can keep track of the passage of time. Once you know the typical behavior of your canopy, anything unusually longer (e.g., you reached "9" or "10") will be your clue that you need to check your altitude and then consider other options. That might be trying risers and brake action to get 'er down, but if you pulled unusually low to begin with, it might mean you've hit your decision point and will have to chop right away.

I recently discovered psycho packing. Faster, neater, and my bag stuffing time dropped from 15 minutes (with it mostly a randomly wadded mess jammed inside) to 2 minutes (neatly rolled and very little sweating). Nicer openings, too.

Yeah, a careful routine with built in double checks is very important. Nonetheless, sometimes your routine gets interrupted and/or rushed, or you are distracted while packing. If it's just a mental step, it is still possible to forget. Thus, it's nice to have a step where an error physically prevents you from doing what you want to do. It's not physically possible to fold the PC using the Germain method if you didn't cock the PC, so if you didn't, you can't fail to notice that you didn't. (Plus, there is the "peace of mind" aspect: you won't later worry that you might have failed to cock it because you can't remember whether or not you double checked it.)

Wow, I didn't realized that until you said it. That is a most excellent point (and IIRC, he doesn't mention this in his video). That probably makes it the strongest rationale for using his method. Thanks for pointing this out.