peek

Thanks, acknowledged and noted with parentheses around the "a". It seems like so many people misspell it that the misspelling is accepted.

lupe = Mexican girl, Loupe = Seeing small crap Good catch. I added it to my collection: http://www.skydivestlouisarea.com/misused.htm

It is a receiver, but is called a pager. I don't want to repeat anything that I am not sure about, so I had better just include this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Minitor And of course asking a dealer would be the best bet.

And here I thought all you ever posted was stern advice to skydivers. (I have always thought it was good advice by the way.) Good job Dave! You have totally cracked me up.

Bill, do you have any info on how tight some of these people had their leg straps, and perhaps what rig they were jumping? I have noticed a huge difference among skydivers as to how tight they like their rig. I personally like my leg straps very tight, and I have very little shift in the position of my handles from freefall to under canopy, at least with rigs custom made for me. On the other hand, when I use a Sigma tandem rig, make the main lift web adjustment short, and make the leg straps tight, the handles are considerably higher under canopy. It seems to be the nature of the rig.

FYI: We created a new simple article in response to people asking us about typical G-forces. It deliberately does not have a lot of detail because most people would not understand it anyway. Just a few basic numbers from some of the research we have done. http://www.pcprg.com/g-forces.htm

I remember that time very well. It was after "pro" packing was developed and after many canopies were being made with zero-porosity fabric that was very slippery when new. People needed a way to keep the canopy under control until it was in the bag. Unfortunately, for a while people were allowing the movement of the tail to move the steering lines around closer to the front of the canopy, causing lineovers. Now most people know that, and include a warning to a person learning to pro-pack. An interesting note: I used to "stack" pack new slippery canopies for a few people and I never needed to do much with the tail of the canopy after "mummying" or "cocooning". Since it was on the floor and I was kneeling on it, it was not as difficult to keep under control.

I think most instructors/DZs would rather see you practicing things that you have done on AFF jumps, to try to perfect them, or to try other things related to getting your license. For example, tracking long and straight, doing precise turns, etc. Some of the things you want to do will depend on how "freefly-friendly" your student rig is, and you will need to ask someone about that, so be prepared for them to tell you "no" to some things.

I could have sworn that I first saw this commercial over 2 years ago, and commented on it here, but who knows. I was channel surfing and came upon a commercial where Dad and the kids are doing numerous "dangerous" things, and Dad keeps telling the kids, "Don't tell Mom". The last scene is a tandem skydive landing in the distance, and then it shows a closeup of the instructor, (Mom) taking her helmet off and releasing her long head of hair, and telling her (fairly young) son, (who is in a jumpsuit too and implied to be the passenger), "Don't tell Dad." Not a bad commercial, but no wonder people think kids can skydive. Anyone remember when this first came out or who did the filming or skydiving, and where?

Briefly: ... ... ... Thank you for the examples. It is a shame that you have seen that many.

I would love to hear some of the examples you have seen. Can you describe any?

Douglas, thank you for the very honest and straightforward observation. I agree completely. Now, to all of those reading, what can we do or encourage our DZOs to do to prevent this, or to help the sport become more profitable and therefore, safer, due to the increased profit margin allowing for better gear, maintenance, aircraft, etc.?

On the to-do list, back-burner for now.

I could have done that. But if the NWS changes the options on the METAR page, all the links would need to change. It was a compromize. That would be a lot of links on one page too. 50 pulldown menus is enough already. The idea is for you to bookmark your favorites and not need to go back to the program. That is what I did on my personal weather page, but then I wanted more, and figured other people would too.

Yes, METAR information is available historically too. I just chose to provide the most current translated report so people could quickly see what the weather is like at the DZ or other place right now. By the way, anyone that is interested can go here and have at a lot of data: http://www.aviationweather.gov/adds/

I thought about that and might change it later. I live in the St. Louis area, so I am always going between Illinois and Missouri, so it is actually fewer clicks to leave multiple states on the screen. 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Thanks for the comments.

I wrote an online program to access translated METARs via pull-down menus, which should make it easier to find the airport/reporting station of interest. It is "Translated US METARs for Drop Zones" (It provides a somewhat easier method of accessing the METARs because the National Weather Service page requires that you know the identifier for the airport/reporting station. It also defaults to a translated report.) It can be found at http://www.pcprg.com/programs.htm Note that some reporting stations may not always have data available (for various reasons). Also note that the reason I wrote it with an intermediate link is that so the request is made from your server, not ours. For the other program I wrote a while back, "US Winds Aloft Forecast for Drop Zones" the request needs to go through our server, and although I tell people not to try to automate it because Winds Aloft data changes only every 6 hours, people still use it more often than needed. It is just incredible now days how much weather information is available online. It will be worth your time to look around the National Weather Service web site and resources. It is pretty hard to not know what the weather is doing any more, (at least the current weather).

No, no, no... That website is for one of "those" operations. No large aircraft based in the St. Louis area. pms07's advice is good.

Assuming we are talking about the US, well, the FAA does not care how likely a crash is, or how difficult it is to brief your student on seatbelt usage and get them secured into it. Every person needs to be restrained with their own restraint (seatbelt or belts), and everyone needs to be briefed on its usage. Pilots are assuming (perhaps erroneously!) that instructors are doing this with their students. It's such a common sense rule that I don't know why anyone has a problem with it. It can save lives if there is a crash.

"a bit hokey" is being kind. Do you all think I should claim one of the DZs listed that closed last year or the one that closed 3 years ago? (Of course, no sign of any of the DZs that started up in the last few years.)

That is a good question. It depends on how the DZ came to provide the "rental gear". If they bought it new, it would seem like the container was sized rather small for the size main. But if they put it together from a used rig, maybe the sizes were already determined, and it is up to the DZ and the jumper to make a judgement on who should be jumping it. Most "student gear" is sized for a fairly low wing loading, so it depends on whether you make a distinction between "student gear" and "rental gear". Some DZs make no distinction between student gear and rental gear, having a number of various sizes, and other DZs have all their "student rigs" the same large size, and then have some smaller "rental rigs" for when the students get more experienced. Bottom line is that DZs/instructors/students need to make sure that students are jumping reasonably sized canopies, both main and reserve.

Actually I have done that a bunch. It was the jumping at the Arch part that was new.

Damn! The USPA BOD meeting is that weekend. Well, you can guess which event I would rather be at. Perhaps I will see some of the people the next weekend since Summerfest will still be going on.

Vanessa, thank you very much for that posting and link to your blog. I particularly liked the section "This could never happen to me"

Many thanks to Jim Twardowski and the Liberty Parachute Team for asking me to do exhibition jumps with them at the St. Louis Arch this last week. Fellow teammates included Bart Stonestreet, Joe Abeln, and Noah Watts. Photo attached, by Michael Dudek (user name "micro"). Michael can be seen taking this shot in Twardo's video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvgKYoxu0mI&feature=youtu.be. If I had known he was going to get such a good picture, I would have turned more and geeked the camera. The Arch can be seen at the bottom. Pop quiz question: What is the official name of the St. Louis "Arch"? Answer: The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, then he sent the Lewis and Clark expedition out to see what was there. They started out in St. Louis, MO. Their first stop was slightly up the Missouri River in St. Charles, MO, where I live. OK, enough for the history lesson. Get back to work.