Feb 13, 2003, 8:18 AM
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"gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Recently I put together this document for my home dropzone regarding "getting down the tube" for people starting to fly headdown. I had to take the neat pictures out and zip it to keep the file size low enough to post here.
It's just a rough draft so far so there's no references, though a lot just came from my own experience, and a lot of it seems plain obvious to me.
It's only supposed to be a basic guide to inspire people to get headdown quicker by practising on the ground, so I realize it only covers some basic safety ideas for headdown.
It's assumed that the candidate can already fly a stable sit and has the awareness to start thinking about flying headdown.
I'd love your constructive criticism, so I'm hangin it all out here.
Lemme know what you think.
Thx! Glen.
(edited to fix a spelling mistake) : )
(This post was edited by blazingcannon on Feb 13, 2003, 8:26 AM)
Feb 13, 2003, 8:55 AM
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Re: [blazingcannon] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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I have talked with a lot of instructors about this, but I feel that you have done one of the best jobs explaining in detail that I have seen to date. Great Job!
Feb 13, 2003, 9:40 PM
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Re: [blazingcannon] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Hey well done, I sort of started doing headdown in my student days, had no Idea what I was doing or Getting into.Could never get into a proper neutral sit (below Knee Amputee),but worked on a sort of Armchair Nuetral, Works, But have never had the problem of corking unless watching other's ,and way off to there side, to see what they were up to. Your Paper explains it well
Feb 17, 2003, 12:39 AM
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Re: [listo] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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aforementioned alcoholic beverage is on its way...
skymama (D 26699)
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Feb 17, 2003, 5:38 AM
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Re: [blazingcannon] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Ok, so I went skydiving over the weekend and had your article in the back of my mind as I jumped. I decided to do a solo drill dive before I went out with one of my friends. On my solo, I worked on transitions over and over going from a sit to HD, holding it for a few seconds and back to a sit. Your pointers about body position really helped, especially the part about tucking your chin in a little. But, the part about flipping my hands over in the other direction really screwed me up, I just couldn't get used to that. Maybe I've just been practicing it the other way too long.
On my jump that I did with my friend, we exited HD, flipped to sits, and then I tried my transition to HD. It worked great and I stayed stable no problem. My biggest problem before was that I was backsliding. I thought I had over corrected it too much and was moving forward because my friend started coming at me in his HD, so I flipped back to a sit. He laughed at me after the jump when I told him why I transitioned back. He said I was stable, not moving and especially NOT backsliding, so he had decided to come over to ME! Woohoo! So, thanks for writing that, I really think you helped me!
Feb 17, 2003, 8:32 AM
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Re: [skymama] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Hey Andrea that's awesome! You should see the smile on my face! Glad I could help.
edited to add: Ya...the hands down thing screwed me up at first too- I felt out of control cause i didn't have the wind "in my hands", I guess. So maybe that idea may not work for everyone at the start...
What I found was really useful about the hands-down in the end was that when transitioning from sit to HD, my hands stayed in the same configuration...which made my flying more smooth, I guess.
Anyway, cheers and free beers! G.
(This post was edited by blazingcannon on Feb 17, 2003, 8:43 AM)
skymama (D 26699)
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Feb 17, 2003, 11:02 AM
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Re: [blazingcannon] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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I'll definitely try the hands down thing again, it just threw me off a little. But, I think I'll concentrate on one thing at a time, and not backsliding has been a biggie for me. I may be on the right track now though.
Feb 19, 2003, 12:48 PM
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Re: [blazingcannon] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Hey Glen,
Great Article, I'll be sure to practice before the summer season starts. Hopefully you will be able to give me some in the air pointers by that time....
Feb 20, 2003, 1:38 PM
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Re: [blazingcannon] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Ya...the hands down thing screwed me up at first too- I felt out of control cause i didn't have the wind "in my hands", I guess. So maybe that idea may not work for everyone at the start...
This actually helped me a lot in the beginning. After a couple coach jumps my coach told me to try it with my hands down, because when I had my hands up, my arms weren't relaxed. I was straining to keep my hands facing "upwards" (towards the ground), and it was screwing up my upper body posture.
having my hands down helped a lot in relaxing my upper body. After like 10 jumps I felt sufficiently relaxed with everything else that I was able to just switch my hands facing down again and everything was just fine and I was stable.
So now I can fly both ways.
Great article, by the way. I have a question: I can fly HD pretty well with my legs wide apart, but having them front and back (daffy) I'm finding a lot harder. Any tips on this transition? I would like to be able to fly both ways with my legs. I'm sort of getting the idea that my leg muscles might not be strong enough... Perhaps I need to do some exercises to strenghten just those leg muscles.
Feb 20, 2003, 7:11 PM
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Re: [Costyn] "gettin down the tube" fer beginners
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Great to hear you're improving!
I learned to fly a daffy kind of by fluke. the first step was me looking quite silly, flying around with one leg bent at the knee 90degrees backward, kind of teetering sideways and always somehow flying forward... haha and then I kept coming forward and was going to hit my jump buddy, so I stuck my other leg forward to block his body from hitting mine (haha) and there I was, very wobbly, and very daffy.
Use a mirror, stick yer legs out front and back and make sure you're moving just your legs, not torquing yer hips so you end up turning. otherwise, do a search in here for "daffy"..I"m sure you'll find lots of tips.
stability030213nopics.zip
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