kansasskydiver

Ok I'm gonna chime in once again as I think my dz comes closest to "not for profit" as one could get and yet, yes we sitll make money. Here goes my $50,000.00 in college education on the line. Our DZ is not for profit in the sense that we don't gain any revenue. Revenue however can be defined in a number of ways. For example, the cost of each skydive out of our 182 is somewhere around $20 per load on a .6 tack time, yet on a full load of skydivers we pay $64. That doesn't mean we just profitted $44. That extra $44 per load goes towards the aircraft maintance, insurance, upcoming maintanence like overhauls and 100 hours, training new pilots, gear etc. We don't pay our instructors, manifest, secretary, webmaster, coaches, president, etc etc etc for anything. The only person who gets paid is the pilot, and that's minimal and close to nothing. Not for profit means you're covering your costs and putting some away for a rainy day, like if we were to lose our aircraft etc. Everyone is in the business to make money, it's just how you use it. There would be no way we would ever operate at cost, and we all know that. So with that said, I could only IMAGINE what the cost of running a turbin dz would be, and paying staff, gear, riggers, health benefits, vacation, airport fees, hanger space etc etc etc. I too am amazed dz's stay open when we're just barely skimming the edge at $16 to 10k after fuel and insurance increases, yet we still try to offer the cheapest price possible. For example, we opted to NOT raise our jump prices after the current fuel increases and instead decided to try and increase our student thruput to help offset the cost of flying. It's hard to figure all out, but hopefully I can give some insight from the not for proit dz explaining that we are for profit, we just don't pay out our revenue to anyone.

Yeah sorry guys, wasn't saying that we were close to NY or could even help out, just responding to the comments about people saying he should stop trying to be so cheap and that there are actually dz's that you can get it for under 1000. Granted SL is slower than AFF, takes more time and dedication and generally a couple months to complete, just another option people have. It works great for us because we're a college town, it'd never fly in the larger areas, look at the hype the new DZ in KC is causing lol Just giving an example, I'm sorry I didn't mean to cause an issue

I'm running short on some time right now but will post more later. I'm in a very unique position that I was president of a uni club for 3 years and am still actively involved and jump. We've been arond for over 40 years, own our own aircraft, 9 complete rigs, oldest being 2002 and with all brand new Navigators with less than 20 jumps each. All nine of our rigs have MLW, they are Jav containers and we are actually beginning to cyle them out. We've had to ground one of the 9 rigs for excessive wear on the MLW as a type 3, and, just for safety reasons we didn't want to push it. Jav will repalce the harnesses for $350 so not a big deal. Anyway what I've really getting at is the number thing for the club. Over the last 5 years I've been involved in the club I've seen close to 1500 different faces. We have up 200 flyers ever semester and pass out somewhere around 1000 hand outs over a 2 day period (yesterday and today actually), print ads in the newspaper, have a TV ad on the college station, radio advertising etc. Even with all that, we get about 100 studetns a semester who jump. Of those 100 who jump, 20% make a 2nd jump and then only 1% ever finish their student progression. So out of the 500 students a year (that includes tandems) on average we keep maybe 5-7 and a majority of those students actually come from the one summer class we teach every year ironically. Now we're different than you guys as far as university involvement. We receive maybe 1000 a year from the college, most of which we use for advertising and then anything that's left we throw into a travel fund or buy the staff a jump and lunch or something. If the university were to decide to not fund us anymore we would still exist without any problems. You'll have to do a great deal of advertising to get word of mouth out. Out of all the advertising we do, that is the number one form is just simple "guess what i did this weekend". I'm assuming you'll be jumping from a commercial DZ so you'll be paying their rates, orwill they cut you some slack? Will you be training students? Charging club dues? Last but not least, we've begun to cycle out our containers for new ones. They are Jav's with manta 288's, Sharp Chuter Reserves and Cypres with a year or more left on them. They all have the MLW on them and are Type 2 in condition (normal wear). Shoot me a pm if you have any questions about gear or running a uni club

I got my license for about $700 and that was with gear rental. My roommate got his for about $800 and that was with gear rental, all my students I train get their A's for around $800 and yet again, including gear rental. It's not impossible, just depends where you jump. We charge a one time fee of $25 per semester for gear rental. The break down is pretty much like this: FJC: $150 (includes first jump, gear rental and club dues) SL (2): $27 each PRCP (3): $27 each First FF: $5 10sec (2): $22 each 15 sec (2): $22 each 30 second (2-4): $28 each 45 second (5-7): $32 Each USPA membership: $50ish A license check dive: $32 5 solo or coached dives: $16 Our progression done right comes out to just over $800.00. It's possible, just have to know where to go and not want AFF. Our DZ in unique, our jumps are at cost, the student pays their slot, the instructor slot and a packer if needed, that's IT.

$2.15 Little Apple KS

Thank you, Know of anyone?

YOU PULL! NO YOU PUll!!!

So I just read that whole thing What's come of it? Anyone know?

I'm not skyride, never have been, never will be. All the other dz's in KS and surrounding areas except couch freaks in IA link to the proper sites... #&$(, may they burn in hell.

I don't know if this has been posted or not, but I cam across some disturbing information, at least for myself, and a couple other fellow dz's. I was running through our logs and stats for site visits and a couple came from skydiving.com, however some time ago. I went to the link that was for MO instead of KS and am rather pissed. They are listing my DZ on their website, however when you click on the link, it links to a "skyride" partner site... I find that HIGHLY illegal that they're using my dropzone's name and location but linking to another site and selling certificates based off of this information. I would storngly encourage you to visit the link below and subsitute out for your state and see what link they're showing for your DZ. I thought we had gotten rid of skyride, but still there are links apon new links and we're currently sitting 6th in google just below a couple skyride fake dz's. http://skydiving.com/test/skydivinglocations/skydive_kansas.shtml replace kansas with your state and see for yourself!

To elaborate a bit more on that. We're shutting down to support the new dz because like what was said earlier, we're all customers and we spend our hard earned cash and want to play with extra alitude. We can't support a large DZ where we are, we're a student (as in college students) run organization and we all work for free at the dz. We're excited about the new DZ and being able to head out on a Friday and make some jumps, or even on a weekend it's raining in Wamego but maybe not in KC. We know we're going to lose business to the new DZ, not as much as the KC DZ's, but we'll lose some of our regular jumpers and not so regular jumpers who come out once in a while. In the end though I think it offers much MORE to the community than we all think. It's been drilled on before, but with the new DZ in town it can create more demand for skydiving than there was before. People will go to other DZ's for one reason or another, preference, location, pretty pictures on the website, whatever. It can potentially increase the number of new skydivers to the area. For example if someone goes jumping at the new DZ whom our DZ could have never marketed to and they tell a friend who tells a friend who goes to school at KSU and they look into it here, then we've just gained a new customer we couldn't have picked up before. Granted we're in a different area of the state and won't suffer from as much of the competition, but the theory still holds true to the other DZ's that may or may not be effected by the change. Someone from Southern IA could hear from a friend about the jump and head to MRVS or to Butler, same for Skydive KS outside of Topeka. If you think about it, there are still mom and pop stores open everywhere even with big bad capitalist Walmart around the block. What it does is IMPROVES service and quality of product, it's economics 101, instead of using everyone's engergy to fight the machine, it should be used to capitalize on the idea of potentially a wider reach of customers across the area. $50,000.00 later, I just applied something I learned in college Buy me a beer, my head hurts lol Chris Armstrong KSUPC Secretary

Yeah there will be enough of us going that we don't see the justification of keeping our dz open that Saturday, we'd rather give the pilot the day off, instructors a break to have some fun and pull off our hybrid we can't do outta a 182 haha See ya there

I'll be there too, now we can pull off that massive hybrid I've been wanting to do Full support Chris Armstrong KSUPC Secretary

http://www.stupidvideos.com

I wouldn't kick her outta bed

I'm sorry for being ignorant on the subject, however I am not a rigger and have no knowledge of how long a course generally takes. I am a full time student and work as well, so taking a week off of school isn't an option towards the end of the semester. It's not a question of me wanting to put the time into it or not, I just simply didn't know how long the courses run. So, Excuse the f* outta me, I'm just trying to help our club out with a bind right now.

kinda iffy so NSFW just to be sure http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3425999330231409912&q=blowjob

Hmmm that's a bad week for me to miss class... Any 3-5 day classes?

Where do I find info? I went to the message boards and there is just a post about the mirages

I'm looking to get my riggers ticket. Looked on USPA and the events here on DZ.com but didn't see any courses listed. Anyone know of a list of dates or somewhere I could go for a course? I'm in KS, so somewhere near if at all possible, KS, OK, MO, NE, TX, CO, IA, IL etc Thanks

A friend of mine lost her brand new pro track, either fell out of her helmet somewhere or, well who knows. She contacted them explaining what happened and they gave her a discount on a new one. Then they sent the bill and shipping was more than they had quoted her, she wrote back, they sent her free shirts and batteries to compensate for the difference. I stand by L&B 100%. They've always supported our DZ with boogies and fundraisers. They are the best of the best, others on the other hand "Your gift is in the mail" and yet again this year, nothing ever showed...

That's a line from Van Wilder

My 2 baby sisters and the loving open relationship I have with the oldest of the 2, she's 12 and I'm like her father.

true true

Yeah what he said, and a good paying job too. Must have own rig