peek

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/07/03/dnt.chicago.sears.tower.deck.wls Think this will generate any new ideas?!

I have known of some dropzones that do that once a skydiver has a certain number of jumps or perhaps a license, to encourage them to purchase their own equipment when they should have it already. Hopefully no one does this for students with a small number of jumps.

Seems kind of bizarre to me. What did they say when you told them it would improve the safety of the jump if they participated?

Tara, thank you very much for your explanation and for your pointing out the difficulty interpreting the BSR's related to tandem students. I agree that the organization of the entire BSR section could stand improvement. I have considered requesting a review, but I have no hopes of it happening. Unfortunately, every time something changes in student instruction, it affects more sections of USPA documentation that the changers are willing to research, so eventually the documentation becomes muddled. For those instructors that you see not giving altimeters to their students, well, please just try to convince them otherwise. If enough people do, they might consider a more conservative interpretation of the BSR's. So why did you stop doing tandem instruction? I recall reading some posts by you that seemed to indicate that you enjoy doing them?

For many years they were not, and your question is well put. However they now are: http://www.uspa.org/FindaDZ/GroupMemberListbyState/Tennessee/tabid/398/Default.aspx#827

No. But what is worse is that there are large groups of skydivers and DZO's who treat first jump tandem students only as money. It should not be a surprise that these groups of people do not give their tandem students altimeters. They don't even give respect them as students, so why would they give them any additional safety equipment?

You are showing us a very good example of how skydivers want to interpret a document to the benefit of a certain viewpoint. By all means do not believe me! I'm just some knucklehead on dropzone.com. Ask your USPA Regional Director for an interpretation. Ask the tandem manufacturer about their requirements. Tara, do all of your tandem students wear altimeters?

What about the BSR's? Does his mean you violate a BSR whenever you do a first tandem jump with a student?

At the dropzones where you jump? in the US? What about the BSR's?

I ask that anyone suggesting that USPA "do something" about this issue take a step back and consider the following before getting into a lot of detail about the implementation of any program or rating. 1. Should USPA create or require "instructor" ratings for things being taught to licensed skydivers? This very basic question that needs to be answered first. If this is done it will create a precedent. Where will it stop? In other words, for every new "advanced" activity will USPA be expected to implement something? Does it have the resources to do that? Does it have the expertise to do that? 2. Understand the difference between BSR's and Recommendations, and decide which if either might be changed or added to. 3. At this point I think wingsuit recommendations are most similar to other "advanced" activities that licensed skydivers might do, like night jumps, water jumps, high altitude jumps. "Recommendations" seem to be working OK. (Few injuries/deaths.) An additional topic to think about: It seems like wingsuit flying is something that novice skydivers are in a very big hurry to try, to the extent of not following even the most basic recommendations. (You can include camera flying too.) So I ask the skydiving community, "Are we failing these novice skydivers by not making available to them some type of activities in which they can have fun for a few hundred jumps and gain experience that will increase their margin of safety once they start participating in the more "advanced" activities?"

Why do I give my tandem students altimeters? Same reason I give my S/L and AFF students altimeters.

Aha, thanks for the info. All we need now is a name!

Jason, I don't see anything about it on any of the agendas for the meeting, so please send it to the Chair of Competition, Bill Wenger, and to all BOD members. I think fullboard@uspa.org is working again.

OK, we need a legal explanation really bad here. Any of our attorney friends like to take this on? Someone specifically "suing to shut down a drop zone" seems unlikely. Could that even be done? Or would it take a government agency to shut down a business? (Suing to get a monetary judgment or a settlement which would cause the business to fail seems more likely.) Perhaps the OP can give us the names and dropzone and someone can look up the legal documents.

Thanks for the clarification.

To let everyone know, I contacted USPA HQ and they do not keep a list. Their recollection is that if a company offers group health insurance to employees, that it cannot discriminate against specific (sports) activities. I think the answer is that everyone needs to check their policy to be sure. I checked my individual Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield and it has no exclusions for sports activities, and for most other activities except riots, * nuclear war, etc. * I think I'll stop here before this thread gets moved to SC.

As a large and heavy person, I would not have expected that. What is your body size, shape, and weight?

Could you explain those? I'm not sure what you are trying to tell us.

Because I believe most of us fall faster while tracking than in (belly to earth) formation skydiving. I certainly do. (See Andre's description of his fall rate in the other thread.) But this belief seems to be changing. (I have read comments from some people that they believe that they fall slower in a track.) And, the reality may be changing too, depending on the type of skydiving one is doing.

A woman told me about a drop zone she visited where she was not allowed to do a jumpsuit-less jump wearing a swim suit top. (I forgot to ask, but I think the bottom part was shorts, not swimsuit bottom.) The reason given was that the dropzone was a "family oriented" dropzone and that kind of thing was not appropriate. (It seems that wearing a shirt over the swimsuit top until she was in the plane, and putting a shirt back on after landing would be OK, apparently meaning that a swimsuit top in the hangar/packing area/spectator area was the issue.) (Of course there is the entirely separate issue of a potential slip of a swimsuit top captured on video, but assuming this type of thing was not shown in public, it would seem to not add to the basic issue.) Anyone else have any experience with similar drop zone policies? (Keeping in mind that a drop zone of course has the right operate their business any way they wish.) P.S. My personal thought is that a raft jump simply begs for a woman wearing a swimsuit in the raft.

I've been reading a lot about that. I hear there are a lot of folks interested in seeing that. If it is suitable for public viewing, sure, go ahead and post it!

So I saw the attached pictures. I can understand someone taking a picture of you on the way out of the hospital, but who took that picture of you being wheeled out of the helicopter on the way in? You are probably going to be the most thoroughly documented injured skydiver we have ever seen.

Sorry, I jumped the gun. You didn't really. Perhaps I was being overly suspicious, since we have seen people that have created user names very close to ones used by fairly well known posters. Carry on! (But filling out your profile is still a good idea.) (I also thought Jan was the only person that would use that phrase.)

Yes, the Individual Membership Application. No "ground test" needed. Where did you hear about that?

OT: "makeithappen40", huh? Perhaps since you have chosen a user name that is very choose to Jan Meyer's user name, that you might be kind enough to fill in more of your profile.