Nov 5, 2011, 10:43 AM
Post #26 of 42
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Re: [timber] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Jim Stoyas D-60 gave me one of the best pieces of advice not just about skydiving, but life. He said to only write the good things you did in your log book, why would you want to remember the bad stuff?
Nov 14, 2011, 5:47 PM
Post #28 of 42
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Re: [mjosparky] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Capt. Donald S. Cunningham, B-114. An original sport jumper from the 50's that was a green beret and wounded in Vietnam. His drop zones @ Roseland, NC and Laurinburg-Maxton, NC were some of the safest around. Not a lot of advanced skydiving but safe.
Nov 23, 2011, 12:53 AM
Post #31 of 42
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Re: [jimjumper] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Al Kruger, back in the day when uncontrolled zooming around trying to make contact with others in the sky and not killing them was the go, told a bunch of us to switch our brains on in FF.
Nov 23, 2011, 2:06 PM
Post #32 of 42
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Re: [obelixtim] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Jeff Searles, who had the insight to establish Z-Hills and encourage many many jumpers to take up the sport by providing a facility for them to do so. Jeff was a down to earth square shooter who brought the Hills from a little operation to one of the best known jump DZ's in the Southeast. I started flying for Jeff up in Rainbow airport around '67 and eventually followed him to Florida in '69, some of the best times of my life and some of the finest skydivers I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Only problem I ever had was that none of em would land in the aircraft....they all jumped out........ Another significant man, a military pilot named Jim Haerer who taught the pilots at the Hills how to successfully preform multiple aircraft mass jumps by showing us how to do fly in formation on final runs, not only that, he even taught us how to maintain a cohesive formation in order to maintain position and contact with each other in getting to altitude as a unit instead of scattered all over the area and looking for each other as we madly scrambled to make final together, I learned more from him about formation flying than anyone else I ever came into contact with.
Dec 5, 2011, 5:49 AM
Post #35 of 42
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Re: [lodestar] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Jeff Searles, who had the insight to establish Z-Hills and encourage many many jumpers to take up the sport by providing a facility for them to do so.
Jeff was a down to earth square shooter who brought the Hills from a little operation to one of the best known jump DZ's in the SoutheastWorld.
I started flying for Jeff up in Rainbow airport around '67 and eventually followed him to Florida in '69, some of the best times of my life and some of the finest skydivers I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Only problem I ever had was that none of em would land in the aircraft....they all jumped out........ Another significant man, a military pilot named Jim Haerer who taught the pilots at the Hills how to successfully preform multiple aircraft mass jumps by showing us how to do fly in formation on final runs, not only that, he even taught us how to maintain a cohesive formation in order to maintain position and contact with each other in getting to altitude as a unit instead of scattered all over the area and looking for each other as we madly scrambled to make final together, I learned more from him about formation flying than anyone else I ever came into contact with.
Had to fix that one sentence above. By 73/74, Z-Hills was known around the world. We had skydivers coming there from all over the world; some for weeks at a time just to jump at our famous DZ.
Dec 5, 2011, 6:31 AM
Post #36 of 42
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Re: [RogerRamjet] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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No problem with the change Roger.....wasn't thinking Globally when I made that statement....lol...In my time there we had a few jumpers from other countries and mostly Canadians sprinkled with a few souls trying to escape the northern winters. On a recent visit to the DZ I heard so many different languages being spoken it became apparent the fame had spread far and (World) wide.....
Dec 5, 2011, 7:04 AM
Post #37 of 42
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Re: [lodestar] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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No problem with the change Roger.....wasn't thinking Globally when I made that statement....lol...In my time there we had a few jumpers from other countries and mostly Canadians sprinkled with a few souls trying to escape the northern winters. On a recent visit to the DZ I heard so many different languages being spoken it became apparent the fame had spread far and (World) wide.....
I was young (20) and not Worldly by any definition when I started working for Jeff Searles as the DZ rigger in 73. When the Turkey meet rolled around I had my education "enhanced" a bit by the European visitors. I was walking out to our van to get something when I saw a very pretty German girl strip completely naked to change into another set of clothes right next to her car. I knew right then that I had to visit Europe at some point
Dec 5, 2011, 1:55 PM
Post #38 of 42
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Re: [timber] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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The thought of jumping out of perfectly good airplane scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid.
I watched a movie once, of airborne soldiers jumping into combat. Man, that seemed awful.
Then I read a book by a smokejumper when I was in High School. This jumping stuff was starting to appeal to me.
I was about to be drafted in 1969. I joined a special forces guard unit to escape that. I figured I didn't want to die in a war noone believed in. Maybe it was a cowardly act, but that's what I did. After all I wanted to jump by then, and this would be one way to do it.
Before I left for active duty, I went up in a C-119 to watch my National Guard company jump. Man...that looked like fun, but scary at the same time.
One of the guys in my company was a skydiver. He took me over to a drop zone and I watched some jumpers in free fall. Now that looked down right scary. I figured I'd try that some day.
In phase II of special forces training, we were pulling duty pushing a broom, and that sort of thing. Our sargent in charge, decided we should all ghost out. We ended up at the Green Beret Parachute Club Bar.
Our sargent was a skydiver. He had orders for Nam. He tried to sell me his rig, since I was interested. This bar had some of the coolest pictures, of hard core jumpers, on every wall. Some day I figured I've got to try that.
When I got off active duty....I saw this sign at college...First jump course for $50. One of the guys I trained with was Hod Sanders. One of my instructors was B.J. Worth.
When you get old, people have lot's of regrets for things they never did. I'll never have any regrets for learning to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
(This post was edited by steve1 on Dec 5, 2011, 1:57 PM)
Dec 9, 2011, 10:34 AM
Post #39 of 42
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Re: [377] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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I grew up at Stevens Paraloft........My dad was Dick Enarson, jumpmaster & pilot. He & Perry were best friends........maybe I cooked you breakfast most definately lunch. I'm glad u survived. It was a wonderful place expect for the septic odor!
Dec 9, 2011, 10:52 AM
Post #41 of 42
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Re: [airtwardo] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Hey Airtwardo, finding my way thru the site. See user 377........that's reality & it's not Peco's. The rule was no jumpin if u drank, but if u pulled ur reserve, u owed a case. Believe me, these folks wanted to spend their $ on jumpin first & that brings back another memory......find the pull cord & the poor guy on his first non static line dropped & he owed a case too. I wish I got paid for all those ripcords I found.
Dec 9, 2011, 7:50 PM
Post #42 of 42
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Re: [jrbirdmen] Who has influenced your skydiving career ?
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Hi jrbird,
Back in the late 70's, Gary Hattenschwiller ( sp ?? ) bought a ripcord swager and everyone asked why he would spend so much money on something like that.
He paid for it in one summer making replacement main ripcords.
first-jump-cert 600.jpg
