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Safety during workouts emergency

Technology has greatly helped aviation professionals when it comes to security. Modern equipment has made life easier for riders who venture into the sky to protect us from enemies.
1. What are these items?
This equipment simulates parachute for emergency exits. One such device is highlighted by its quality in graphic detail and faithful performance during simulation, because you can imagine yourself in midair and plummeted.
2. What do they do?
The sensations are basically the same for an emergency situation trying to make almost one real moment of danger.
3. How does it work?
The pilot is inside the device that looks like a real parachute and put a helmet and has a motion sensor. The pilot should be in full uniform as if in a confrontational situation in midair, making it even more faithful simulation.
4. When connected.
The device, when connected, is being monitored by an experienced trainer and a specialist in the system, which will be recorded all data collected during the simulated flight for further research.
5. What more simulator used by these professionals?
One of the most widely used equipment for testing the simulator is created by the company e.sigma. This simulator is called SOKOL and has a wide range of resources capable of solving problems that occur during flight. He has a different system for more complete simulator training for emergencies in the air.
6. The pilot.
The pilot, when the simulator should be fully equipped for safety and to look real. The pilot visualize the environment in a free fall and feel the difficulty of the force of the wind and rain through a "glasses" 3D quality equipped with a motion sensor, with which the pilot may make light or rapid head movements that not lose sight of the focus of the landing. In addition to the visual effects are sound effects that are nearly real simulate the sound of wind, rain and other climatic obstacle or not.
7. Virtual environment ..
The simulation begins with the rider "in" the aircraft, then it jumps, which actually is skipping a step equipment. But there is a simulation of an ejection cabin of an airplane, which in an emergency can make the difference between surviving or dying. The software allows to simulate different environments perfectly fall, terrain and weather, not to mention that before starting the workout safety instructor will program without knowing the pilot, some emergency situations that may occur in normal flight.
8. The equipment.
The simulation system consists of support where the rider is, computer monitoring, sensors that are connected to computers and the pilot, as well as specific software. The system is very interactive and easy to use, anyone can operate it. The simulator is suitable for specific training, therefore, are used to simulate situations of extreme emergency, however, are also used in military selections, ie, it is not a virtual toy, but a life saving device.

By gleison, in General, July 12, 2013

Teaming Up: Part 1 - Getting Started

Image by Gustavo Cabana
Looking back across a season of high profile competitions and seeing professional teams across many different disciplines throw down their best performances can have a powerful effect on the imagination. The pull towards the ziggurat of organised competition can be strong - but what you ultimately witness is the end product of a lot of time and effort, so it important to know exactly what you might be getting into and addressing some front-end considerations will help you get on the good foot.
What really goes into starting a skydiving team? What are the advantages and rewards in the immediate future and then further on down the road? Also, what are the costs and compromises - both obvious and perhaps less so?
There are different ways of making a team happen. Some countries have a national skydiving organisation that plays an active role in the selection and training of talented individuals for the purpose of competition (e.g. France - who recognise parachuting as a national sport), although the more normalised method is whatever body controls the skydiving interests in your country will have an application method for allocating support to functioning teams with a valid performance history - which means at the beginning and for the foreseeable future you are likely on your own.
Other possibilities exist: Private coaching operations such as Satori Academy (www.teamsatori.co.uk) conduct season-long programmes in which a pool of students are seeded into teams of appropriate skill with the intention of building towards competition. Also sometimes already established teams might lose a member (for any number of reasons) and seek a replacement via. application and/or audition. However, by far the most probable beginning is that you and a group of friends that regularly jump together and socialise in the same circles will pass the idea around a bit and have things grow from there. You are practically a team already right? All you need is a cool name and some matching shit and glory awaits. Right?

Image by Simon Brentford

Now What?
The first thing that happens once you commit is you will become filled with motivation. Outwardly nothing has changed - you are the same gaggle of mismatched skydivers you were this morning, yet now you have a purpose! The machinery inside your head will be whirring and whizzing about all the things you might achieve.
The clearest immediate payoff from the decision to compete is this sense of purpose. It is very easy to get lazy when skydiving and fall into patterns of the same comfortable familiar behaviour - always flying your strong ways, always swooping the same direction - never training the wonky side or pushing yourself forward. Having the date of your first competition marked on a calendar by which you have to achieve specific things is a really good method to highlight how much more you could be getting out of your jumps right now - and the extra things you could be learning around the edges from all the different sources of information available out there. Also - the format and structure of competitions themselves are are designed to test your range of ability. The various dive pools for FS or VFS (and MFS!), the compulsory moves for Artistics and the indoor ruleset cover the full range of movement you have been using for your casual flying. Learning and practicing these will strengthen your knowledge and draw attention to weak areas where you need focus and improve.

Image by Jim Harris

Things To Consider:
It is easy to get excited about all of the great things you are going to achieve. Your new teammates might all be present and correct for the boozy bar talk of world domination, but how much is everyone really committed to the idea? When it comes down to the early starts on cold mornings is everybody going to actually be there? Also, the way you interact is going to change. The kind of mistakes that make for fun stories over a weekend of jumping might well create tension and arguments when there is more on the line. Competing can bring many rewards and be a lot of fun but it is also hard work. By introducing a formal element into your skydiving you risk making it into just that - work. Examine why it is that you skydive and have the others do the same. What do you realistically hope to achieve from teaming up? What are the trade-offs exactly? You could see it as being more serious across the board in return for deeper rewards, or a motivating way to throw money at your passion and improve much faster than before.
Team skydiving is worth the effort for many reasons, so if you are in a position to do so then don’t let any possible negative elements dissuade you - but examining potential hiccups and conflicts of interest early on can help everything to run smoothly from the beginning.

By joelstrickland, in General, October 31, 2016

Peripheral Vision

Measuring “Spotlight Effect” Interference On a Peripheral Vision Matching Task.
ChrisD
Abstract
In historical peripheral studies, peripheral stimuli are presented and measures are taken on known central task behaviors and the effect on the main task is measured. In this experiment a dual task peripheral stimulus is presented and a central task is presented using Eriksen & Eriksen’s (1974) “Attentional Spotlight” paradigm. What makes this study interesting is that the central field is completely flooded with stimulus thus making parallel processing aka Treisman’s “features and objects” paradigm compared with very fast and multiple serial searches, independent of the search/ experimental paradigm used. Thus regardless of the serial or parallel search debate, effects of a central stimulus presented in a varying attentional spotlight area can be measured reliably regardless of the attention demands of a task. Early results suggest stimuli presented within the attention spotlight have a pronounced and unavoidable linear negative effect on varying levels of peripheral task performance. Discussions on subject age and behavior/ occupation requiring a high degree of attentive awareness/ vigilance such as driving or piloting are discussed also.
Introduction
Current perceptual/ cognitive research may be limited by methodological hindrances. Computer screens by their very nature limit current visual field measurements, which generally cover 1 degree to 20 degrees of the visual field depending upon the subjects distance from the computer screen. Further complicating visual research paradigms is the fact that perception is mainly a binocular phenomenon. This complicates visual search paradigms considering pre-attentive features that may or not, “pop-out” (Treisman, 1986), primarily a parallel search process, as compared with more attention driven, serial search paradigms. Further complicating this is the switch from a wide processing area to a relatively small and restricted area for intense serial processing during periods of intense concentration or high stress (Murata 2004). Understanding these two paradigms has great implications for any subject that depends upon these visual perceptual systems for their particular task, such as pilots or motor vehicle operators. Many researchers have suggested two distinct visual attentional systems. One wide area resource gathering system that quickly switches to a serial search with a very narrow, less than 2 degrees of visual field angle, field of view which is also called the “spotlight effect.” (Spotlight effect known about since the 1950s, generally attributed to Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974, and Posner, various.) This switching effect which Rufin VanRullen (2004) points out is highly dependent on attentional load or how many tasks an individual is involved in. He refers to dual task activities as the: “…two distinct attentional resources paradigm.”
However with small computer screens this visual spotlight effect, parallel, serial search processing paradigm suffers as subjects can readily switch search areas or due to the narrow visual field, they can readily conduct a quick search of relevant features with their attentional spotlights. As an example Crundall, et al., (1998, 2002) research supports this as when experienced drivers visual information acquisition is different than compared with inexperienced drivers that use different and limited visual field areas as an example (Ruff 2004, et al.). This highlights the parallel/ serial confound by studies using limited visual areas as the subjects can utilize fast serial searches due the restricted viewing area and or utilize parallel searches due the same reason. Other research paradigms present realistic driving simulators and or real driving studies and label the driving task as the primary or spotlight effect and vary and measure the effects of various peripheral stimuli and the effects of these peripheral stimuli upon the central (spotlight) task performance (Ruff 2004). Frequently the perceptual tasks whether dual or single, complicated or simple place extraneous demands upon the simulation (Recarte et al. 2003, Ivanoff et al. 2003). Additional studies have subjects attend to varying visual tasks to measure the area of this attentional visual field narrowing by varying central task loads (Horrey et al. 2004). This amounts to a perspective switching in a sense as too exactly which is the spotlighted effect or the peripheral task becoming the spotlighted area. Perspective switching between central tasks being affected by varying peripheral loads or intrusions, compared with peripheral tasks becoming the central task. In other words the subject can move the spotlight; the subject determines which is the spotlighted area merely by directing attention to the stimulus, whether in the central area or the peripheral area!
A corollary to this idea is the general dearth of research on central field of view influence on peripheral tasks. Whereas there is much research and a generally accepted view that certain peripheral stimulus can attract attention even in high attentional demanding environments, this experiment tries to study the effect of a central stimulus while performing a dual peripheral vision task, independent of the constraints imposed upon the subject by narrowed visual fields popular in computer research and imposed by the dominance of task experienced in real or driving studies. I.e. in real driving or acquisition type studies the subject by the very nature of the task is pre-occupied with that same task! In this experiment the peripheral area is flooded with stimulus and the effects of a central intrusive distractor flood the area of this spotlight regardless of any search paradigm or eye position. Thus the effects of this spotlight can be discerned from a peripheral task when the subject (hypothetically) is unable to use the central spotlight to complete the peripheral task. Additionally discussed are general effects of the narrowing attentional spotlight whether it is a perceptual phenomenon or a cognitive phenomenon and the effects of stress upon subjects of varying ages (Roge 2004, Recarte et al. 2003,) and of particular concern is the phenomenon of perceptual blindness/ inattentional blindness experienced by some subjects during the course of this experiment (Simons, Chabris 1999, Lavie 2005).
Method
Seven participants ranging in age from 24 to 72 “volunteered” to be subjects for this experiment, although not all subjects finished a full set of trials. Occupations ranged from retired, full time professionally employed, disabled, to college students. The setup and apparatus included commercially available emergency warning “strobe” lights, a hand stopwatch and various manual switching devices and a power supply. The lights came from the factory with 12 pre-programmed flash patterns, depending upon pattern selected, the flash patterns ranged from a simple one second flash to a barely discernable 4 flash in 500 millisecond alternating with a persistence delay of 250 milliseconds with an intervening blank period of 150 milliseconds. The lights were, according to the manufacturer capable of being synchronized to a very high degree of reliability less than 50 milliseconds of variance and the flash duration less than 1 millisecond of residual after glow. Two amber lights capable of 3000/ meter candela (daylight) were positioned at the periphery of a centrally seated subject at about 180 degrees to 160 degrees of visual angle. The lights were roughly 5 feet apart. The lights were synchronized to flash in various patterns. The patterns were categorized into three distinct degrees of difficulty: easy, med., and hard, based upon subjective subject reports, and initial practice runs based upon increasing reaction times for a correct response. Responses were limited to “same” for conditions when the right and left peripheral lights flashed the exact same pattern. And “different” for when the flashes were not the same pattern. A central distractor white light was positioned roughly in front of the subject about 30 inches away, this light was capable of 16,000 candela’s (roughly the amount of light on a clear day in a blinding reflecting snowfield.) All lights were adjusted to roughly the subject’s eye level in height from the floor. Gender and age information was the only personal information taken although most subjects volunteered any relevant medical and occupational information. All subjects were asked if they had any prior epileptic or seizure medical conditions, as lights of this intensity and duration have induced seizures in test subjects sensitive to these disorders. Basically a triangular pattern was formed with the subject in the center. The procedure consisted of setting the peripheral side amber lights to flash either the same or different, only response times for correct trials were collected as it became problematic to collect incorrect identifications, either the response time persisted into minutes or a correct discrimination was impossible. See Recarte 2003 p. 124 for a more complete discussion of this rational. 10 combinations of flash patterns were selected, categorized and presented to subjects in a random fashion. Two sets of these patterns were a repeated designs measure to enhance internal and construct validity. After an initial 500 or no millisecond delay a white distractor flash was concurrently presented in all trials, the only thing that varied as far as the white distractor was the initial onset of 0 millisecond delay to 500 millisecond delay. This created two conditions: a peripheral matching task, and a peripheral matching task with a central distractor, the white distractor delay could not be accurately measured and was not included to make more than two conditions. Initially the distractor was presented immediately after the matching task, but it became evident that a rapid identification was taking place so the distractor presentation and matching tasks were randomized to eliminate this “learning effect.” A more robust and or accurate timing system to measure reaction times was desired by this experimenter to see if any interaction effects could be discerned as this setup only allowed for reaction times to be roughly taken for the two conditions of correct responses. Some subjects reported “they thought” they had an initial decision but the central field distractor delay “might” have influenced this. More accurate reaction time measures could have teased this out.
Sample Data Collection Form: Flash Pattern RT RT + Distractor Single Flash + Single Flash ------------- ---------------- Single Flash + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Signal Alert + Signal Alert ------------- ---------------- Double Flash + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Double Flash + Signal Alert ------------- ---------------- Signal Alert + Signal Alert ------------- ---------------- Signal Alert + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Single Flash + Com Alert ------------- ---------------- Double Flash + Double Flash ------------- ---------------- Comet Flash + Com Alert ------------- ----------------
Gender Age --------- -----------
Data: Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 EasyFlashDistractor - EasyFlash 1.43773 2.55078 .54383 .30678 2.56868 2.644 21 .015 Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 MedFlashDistractor - MEDFlash .62842 1.38316 .31732 -.03824 1.29508 1.980 18 .063 Paired Samples Test Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Pair 1 HardFlashDistractor - HardFlash 1.76200 1.26944 .56771 .18579 3.33821 3.104 4 .036
Results and Discussion:
The results show a very pronounced distractor effect on the peripheral matching task, the reaction time increase of 1.44 seconds for the easy condition, .63 seconds for the medium condition, and almost 2 seconds for the hard condition. Cited in Horrey (2004), Horrey & Wickens (2002) found reaction time losses of up to 2.9 seconds in a study where they manipulated two peripherally located tasks, in fact they found that one peripheral task and one central task was about as half demanding as the two peripheral task. Recarte (2003,) also found similar reaction times and adds: “The abrupt onset of a stimulus may produce a stimulus-driven attentional capture…This capture may or may not occur or may lead to processing impairment” (p.120). This matching task experiment when in the distractor mode is in agreement with this “exogenous” shift (Ivanoff et al. 2003). In other words some of these real world peripheral events are not under the subject’s control. Endogenous shifts are defined as having some “volitional control,” where exogenous shifts are an automatic process (Ivanoff 2003). This experiment tries to produce distractions of the exogenous shifts in attention. Which means the spotlight effect is or takes place wherever the subject places his/ her attention. This also places great weight that topics such as cognitive workload and visual field funneling are cognitive processes more than a perceptual phenomenon. Joe Lin Chiuhsiang phrases this as: “…higher the cognitive task the worse the performance… (2006). In other words any stimulus that takes away from the task at hand has the ability to reduce the performance of the primary task at hand.
Two subjects in this experiment whose data was not included in the mean totals may have experienced this perceptual blindness, as evidenced by the repeated measures results. In the first trial the subjects including the 71 year old male performed reasonably well, being able to discriminate matching patterns in the easy and med. Categories. Then by random assignment a hard perceptual task was presented. After the hard task which basically “locked-up” the subject, poor across the board performance was noted and the subject was unable to finish all of the trials. This same subject reported that “they were highly concerned about their performance” and “by trying harder” (greatly increased cognitive load) they were unable to “see the flashes, anymore.” In an effort to show the subject in fact the peripheral flashes were different or same the visual angle was moved successively decreasing to about 5 degrees of central visual angle. At this point in time the subject was able to discern correct responses only if they were over 1 full second, whereas a few minutes before hand they were doing reasonable well with 250 millisecond discriminations. This is exactly similar to what Chun & Wolfe (2000) mean when they say: “What you see is determined by what you attend to…,” this is also the danger hidden in Simons and Chabris work. On an Aquatics blog the following quote sums up many researchers’ findings and opinions on this subject:
Real-life case studies of this blindness include drivers running over bicyclists, train engineers plowing into cars, submarine pilots surfacing under ships and airline pilots landing on other planes. In each case, the object or obstruction should have been easily noticed but was not. That’s because even though the observers were “looking” right at the missed events, their attention was focused on other visual stimuli, or they were otherwise cognitively engaged (e.g., talking on a cell phone). Strikingly, those involved in these crashes usually have no idea there was an object there, and cannot explain their failure to have seen it. http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2004/nov/0411_rm.html
One observation worthy of mention is in the medium task difficulty category mean time is less than the hard or easy category. This is the point where the experimenter noticed different strategies being applied to the matching task. As the difficulty level increased as compared with the easy condition the subjects could no longer count the flashes or turn their head fast enough, it was at this point the matching experiment truly became a peripheral task and also a stumbling block for many of the older subjects and some younger ones as well. Many studies: Olsson et al. 2000, Crundall 2002, and others also refer, sometimes indirectly, to various search/scan paradigms, that differing levels of experience and training on subjects has on performance. A complete discussion of this is beyond the scope of this paper but the author is well versed on the subject. Suffice to say older drivers and many others have physical as well as cognitive strategies that narrow the useful field of vision whether perceptual or cognitive required to operate complex fast moving machinery where mistakes have dire consequences. This experiment supports much of published studies similar in nature and should be kept in mind every time you place a cell phone call, reading a road map, eating anything, dropping anything, looking at road signs, following too closely, or just about any activity other than…while operating this equipment.
References
Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Australian Government. Limitations of the See and Avoid Principle. 1991/ 2004 reprint. Chun M., & Wolfe J. (2000). Visual Attention. Blackwell Handbook of Perception, Chapt. 9. CogLab reader, Various. Crundall D., & Underwood G. (1998). Effects of experience and processing demands on visual information acquisition in drivers. Ergonomics, V. 41. N. 4. 448-458. Crundall D., & Underwood G., and P. Chapman (2002). Attending to the Peripheral World While Driving. Applied cognitive psychology, 16, 459-475. Department of Transportation, Electronic Billboards and Highway Safety 2003. Goolkasian P. (1994). Compatibility and Location effects in target and distractor processing. American journal of Psychology, Vol. 107. No. 3. Pp. 375-399 Horrey W., & Wickens C. D. (2004). Focal and Ambient Visual Contributions and Driver Visual Scanning in Lane Keeping and Hazard Detection. Proceedings of the human actors and ergonomics society, 48th Annual Meeting- 2004 Ivanoff J., & Klein R. (2003). Orienting of attention without awareness is affected by measurement-induced attentional control settings. Journal of Vision, 3. 32-40. Lavie N. (2005). The role of perceptual load in visual awareness. Brain Research, Elsevier Science Direct, Umass Boston Healy Library, 1080. 91-100. Olsson S., & Burns P. C., (2000). Measuring Driver Visual Distraction with a Peripheral Detection Task. Volvo Technological Development Corporation, Sweden. Recarte M., & Nunes L. (2003). Mental Workload While Driving: Effects on Visual Search, Discrimination, and Decision Making. Journal of Experimental psychology: Applied2003, Vol 9, No. 2, 119-137. Roge J., & Pebayle T., et al. (2005). Useful visual field reduction as a function of age and risk of accident in simulated car driving. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, May. V. 46. N. 5. Simons D., & Chabris C. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28. Pp. 1059-1074. VanRullen R., & Reddy L., & C. Koch (2004) Visual search and dual task reveal two distinct attentional resources. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16:1. Pp. 4-14. http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2004/nov/0411_rm.html http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-13/driver-distraction/Topics033080034.htm various other sources…

By ChrisD, in General, May 31, 2013

Beginners knowledge on skysurfing

The competitor with the lowest total time at the end of the 5 rounds of competition is the winner. The performance is recorded using a very high powered camera on the ground, the competitor leaving the aircraft at 2200 mts and after a few seconds to build up speed commence their sequence. The world record time is currently 5.18 sec (Male) and 6.10 sec (Female). In skysurfing, a jumper attaches a board, similar to a snowboard or wakeboard but made specifically for skydiving, to his feet and performs aerial acrobatics in freefall, including flips and spins. Lew Sanborn and Jacques Istel started the first commercial drop zone and training center in 1959. While skysurfing is visually appealing and has been included in events like ESPN’s X Games, few jumpers still pursue this challenging discipline.
When leaving an aircraft, for a few seconds a skydiver continues to travel forward as well as down, due to the momentum created by the aircraft's speed (known as "forward throw"). The perception of a change from horizontal to vertical flight is known as the "relative wind", or informally as "being on the hill". Each event has a “working time” within which to repeat the sequence as many times as possible. During the tandem jump the instructor is responsible for emergency procedures in the unlikely event that they will be needed, therefore freeing the student to concentrate on learning to skydive. Skydivers reach terminal velocity (around 120 mph (190 km/h) for belly to Earth orientations, 150–200 mph (240–320 km/h) for head down orientations) and are no longer accelerating towards the ground. In freefall, skydivers generally do not experience a "falling" sensation because the resistance of the air to their body at speeds above about 50 mph (80 km/h) provides some feeling of weight and direction. Other training methods include static line, IAD (Instructor Assisted Deployment), and AFF (Accelerated Free fall) also known as Progressive Free-Fall (PFF) in Canada.
A demanding freefall exercise of specified turns and loops executed very precisely at speed, and under tight control. At normal exit speeds for aircraft (approx 90 mph (140 km/h)) there is little feeling of falling just after exit, but jumping from a balloon or helicopter can create this sensation. The panel of judges judge from the recording media.
The first three concern teams of either 8 or 4 plus their camera flyer performing a series of pre-determined patterns (formations) in a repetitive sequence whilst flying in a face to earth configuration. Style and Accuracy remained the primary discipline throughout the 1960s, and Relative Work continued to develop with the first 6 and 8 man formations being completed.
Many people make their first jump with an experienced and trained instructor – this type of skydive may be in the form of a tandem skydive. All of their work is recorded by the camera-flyer, and the panel of judges sit in front of a screen and make their individual decisions. Each competitor is timed from the start of the “series” to the end and time points are added for penalties such as a turn completed off heading or a loop deviating from the axis. At this point the sensation is as of a forceful wind.
The 1960s saw the beginnings of the first non-military drop zones, and non-military training methods. They developed a civilian training method with the belief that any intelligent person could be taught the basics of a parachute jump and jump the same day. They are judged on the number of correctly completed figures they make, and the team with the highest number at the end of 10 rounds of competition will be declared the winner.

By donaldchankaon, in General, September 2, 2013

Teaming Up: Part 2 - Sponsorship

Image by Joel Strickland
Compared to many other sports that operate a similar system of patronage between manufacturers and athletes, skydiving is relatively small. Even if you sell yourself brilliantly right from the start, the big goal of free stuff is not something that happens straight away. You are going to have to work for it.
Wait! Work for free things? I have been duped!
Skydiving gear ranges from not cheap to downright extravagant and team training is a substantial investment - therefore any help you can receive along the way is very valuable. Manufacturers know this and also understand the powerful desire for any new skydiving team to be able to declare loudly in their most off-hand yet portentous manner that they are indeed sponsored.
Approaching Potential Sponsors
Medals help. Getting on a podium of any kind is tangible evidence that companies like to see, but shiny discs are not the be-all and end-all. Manufacturers are most interested in selling their products and if people head their way via your influence it counts for much. You might not be bringing home the gold just yet and your Instagram (or whatever) may not be filed with super-cool cutting-edge skydiving - but if you are respected on the dropzone as a purveyor of solid advice through which a steady steam of equipment choices are settled upon it registers directly. An important thing to remember when drafting those letters about taking over the world is that whomever you are trying to impress is likely to have heard it all before. What is interesting and unique about your team?

Image by Matthias Walde

Getting A Deal
The first thing you are likely to be offered is a small discount on a limited number of items. Granting something like 30% off to a team means that a sponsor is not going to lose anything if they simply never hear from or about you ever again. It might not add up to big savings but the crucial part is that your new support has recognised and acknowledged your potential - they like the cut of your jib and might just believe in all those big promises you made. From here it is down to you to make good on the trust they have shown. The larger, seasoned skydiving manufacturers will likely have a tiered system in place to manage their stable of athletes and teams whereas smaller companies may not. The exact nature of progression through to a better deal and then better-er deal is based on building a strong relationship that works both ways.
An vital consideration once you start receiving offers is which brands and companies do you truly believe in? Sponsorship is not free - it is a symbiotic relationship between athletes and the companies for which they fly the flag. Entering into an arrangement with someone simply because you received an offer is perhaps not the wisest course of action. Would this be your first choice if you were paying full price for it? It is much more satisfying and easier to do a good job of representation if you truly believe in something and value it higher than its competitors.

Image by Joel Strickland

Giving Back
There are quite a few ways that you can do for your sponsors. Try to cover all the bases.
Wear the T-Shirt and Be Nice: Few things have as positive an effect as a direct conversation in which you can be passionate about your support. Equally important: Don’t be a dick.
Everyone Sees Everything: Even if they pretend they do not. Social media activity has become an important part of how manufacturers market themselves, so learn the hashtags and whatnot and use them.
Writing: If you are handy with language there are many outlets for quality work. Producing informative and entertaining articles will earn you some scope to promote yourself. You can be both subtle and not-subtle.
Events: Organising or attending events as a team can provide many opportunities. Again: Few things are as good as actually being there and talking to people.
Always Thank Your Sponsors: Try to individualise it bit as well. It is well known that a Cypres unit will save your unconscious ass or that Larsen and Brusgaard have the best customer service on earth. What else have you got?
Sponsorship is an important part of the skydiving world. Acting as a member of a professional team is long on spending and short on financial reward - so any help you can attract might keep things going. Strong relationships between sponsors and athletes also helps to raise the profile of skydiving around the world - pushing skills forward via events and competitions that ultimately attract more people to the sport.
Joel would like to thank:
Both Sandra and Vlady at Vertical Suits for their endless patience with an overly fussy freefly team and their obsession with every tiny little detail.
Miska at the Hurricane Factory for her unerring accuracy and ability to decipher ramshackle emails about tunnel sessions (in her second language).
Everyone who has a part in designing and constructing Icarus Canopies - providing me with the confidence to pack in the landing area under a standard that ranges from poor to awful directly relating to the indeterminate amount of time it takes the tandems to get on the bus.

By admin, in General, November 10, 2016

Teaming Up: Part 3 - Getting Stuff Done

Flynamik Freestyle by Gustavo Cabana
Skydivers are a diverse bunch, drawn to the sky from across the length and breadth of human endeavour - and we each bring with us into any group dynamic a particular set of strengths and weaknesses. Across the different available disciplines teams are very different beasts, from the fairly compact pair of people that make up a Freestyle team to the unruly herds of 8-Way. There is no right or wrong way to get things done and one cannot accurately specify exactly what will or will not work for any particular team setup. I cannot tell you the best way to run a team - I can only share with you some things we have learned over the six years since deciding to start competing.
Different Jobs
At its serious end skydiving can be extremely complex. Each discipline has its own particular bonanza of inter-member technicality and bamboozling nomenclature to learn when you get involved (looking at you, belly types). While the kind of detail that information requires is beyond the space I have to write about here, one thing stands true - if you are in a new team and exploring a discipline then quality coaching from an experienced and reliable source will see you right and while this represents a definite cash investment it can amount to the equivalent of many, many skydives.

Azure Freefly by Matthias Walde
Outside of the part where actually plan and execute jumps, there is much that requires attention and many questions that need to be answered as you move through the calendar. For example:
Whose job is it to remind everyone to check the dates of their reserve (before you have already travelled to another country and are standing in front of an unimpressed looking dropzone employee?
Who is responsible for wrangling the team nincompoop and making sure they bring the absolutely vital things they need for skydiving - like a parachute?
Who wants the title of ‘Team Captain’ enough to accept that as soon as something goes wrong the others will just stare at them with bovine vapidity until they go and fix it?

NFTO 4-Way Ladies by Mel Allan
For us, as a freefly trio, we settled loosely into the following roles:
Captain: The team captain’s job is to handle all of our active communication and formal arrangements. This involves booking flights, filing entry forms, negotiating with dropzones, communicating with sponsors and generally acting as the voice by which team business is presented.
Camera: By definition a camera flyer’s job has extra work involved. It is their task to ensure the setup they are using is present and correct, to make sure the batteries are always charged and to download and file all of the training jumps. The extra duties a camera flyer has all boil down to: When the jumps happen - don’t miss.
Nerd: Although not a formalised position - one person usually sticks out as being the geek of the bunch. For us the nerd’s job is to handle all of the promotion and exposure. This means building and maintaining the website, tending to the FB page and all other assorted social media thingies, editing photos to share with sponsors, producing video edits and writing magazine articles.
These roles we occupy were not allocated on purpose - we settled into the tasks based on experience, personal motivations and our individual strengths and weaknesses.
Separate Business
As you progress as a team you will begin to court the attention of those keen to learn from your evolving skills. Coaching others or running events might become a viable way to promote yourselves and offset the cost of your investment. The business minded amongst you might have great ideas about how to operate but for us simplicity rules the day. Again, this is not the rules - what works for us after some experimentation.

Golden Knights 8-Way by Matthias Walde
While we all act under a shared team name, our individual coaching interests are conducted separately. The practical application of this is you reap what you sow. The best example I can present is that an annual event run under our team name is the work of a single member. All of the planning and preparation is their work alone and while the coaching and load organising are shared equally the remaining two members are present as employees. The team functions as a whole, but the potentially murky business of business is an individual enterprise and thus free of complications.

By joelstrickland, in General, November 17, 2016

Learning About Weather: Part Two - The Big Picture

Busy skies - Bad Sassendorf, Germany.
From the solar flares and zooming photons of a gargantuan ball of always exploding fire really far away, through to the moon swinging about in the sky or even the rotation of the earth itself - the weather which makes or breaks our plans on this little blue and green planet is affected by things on the grandest scale.
Meteorological science is both amazingly exacting and still kind of imprecise all at the same time. While hard to nail down the total details, weather forecasting can tell you pretty much what to expect and more-or-less when. There are things you can judge in the distance that might affect you directly when you ask questions like: If there is a hurricane in the other side of the ocean might it be windy at the weekend? Or, if these opposing weather fronts are going to clash above me how is it going to affect the conditions? The most important rule is the further away you look the more general you have to be. Knowing how things work and seeing them in advance might mean making the call between a great day of jumping while the naysayers stay at home, seeing a shitty day coming a mile off and going to the movies instead, or accidentally skydiving in the rain and having to dry your shit out afterwards.

Clouds
It is fun to learn about clouds. The names might seem baffling at first but with just a small amount of practice you will be able to identify the most common types and what they herald for your skydiving day. Once you can name the usual suspects there are a great many others that signify environmental anomalies and special circumstances which can further your awareness. A cloud spotter’s guide in the glove compartment of you car or handily placed next to a window is a good way to encourage what can become a rewarding and entertaining habit.
Here are the formations that you generally get to deal with:
Little Puffy White Ones: Latin Words: Cumulus (Low), Altocumulus (Medium), Cirrocumulus (High).
Cumulus clouds are the fluffy cotton wool variety that appear in children’s fridge door paintings. The presence of any cloud indicates precipitation but small friendly white examples mean all the things skydivers like - mostly sunny and not windy and not raining. This is the type of cloud they hold in reserve for the choicest skydiving locations around the world, where everyone jumps in their swimwear and frolics in the sea at the end of the day.
Grey Fogginess: Latin Words: Stratus (Low), Altostratus (Medium), Cirrostratus (High).
Stratus cloud is likely what is happening when the whole sky is full of grey and people are shaking their fists angrily at it. Thin layers can be seen through but any kind of density can render the sky obscuring and opaque. Stratus skies can represent the kind of conditions where you could be offered jumps from whatever the cloud base is, or possibly from above if the ground is still visible. A good Altostratus day is the kind that gives you the feeling you first experienced as a child peering out of on an aeroplane window and wishing you could get out and bounce around on a big white spongy trampoline.
Big High Massive Ones: Latin Words: Cumulonimbus
Huge cloud structures can make for spectacular skydiving experiences as you zoom down through colossal valleys in the sky. Just watch as the wingsuit types get all giddy with excitement on days like these - then promptly land miles off the dropzone because they couldn’t resist chasing some perfect aerial canyon. However, much care is needed. While these towering storm clouds might be spread out and allow for jumps in the gaps it can be all too easy to wind up inside one if things go against you. At best you get wet and uncomfortable, at worst your visibility is zero and things are dangerous. Jumping with lots of cloud around requires good judgement and extra emphasis on safety - keep the groups small and bin the tracking.

Storm cell building in the distance - Lake Balaton, Hungary.

Combinations
In a very general way when you start smooshing your Latin words together things are getting busier up there and more likely to lead to no skydiving.
Nimbostratus formations are what can be known as fine British skydiving weather. Large ominous grey monsters fill all the observable sky as you gear up while it is still actually raining outside, but don’t worry - there is a hole coming. For extra entertainment bring an American along and watch then gawp slack-jawed and unbelieving at you while you get ready.
Stratocumulus clouds are the big wavy sheets that can be low, medium, high, or all at the same time. Thin layers like this are caused by generally stable conditions before things get saucy. Thin layers at different heights can look like shit from the ground but be fine once you are in the plane, realising that much of it remains above you and does not hinder your visibility of the ground.

Jumping from cloud base - Slavnica, Slovakia.

A nice layer to play above - Dunkeswell, UK.

Go Further
There are many types of of cloud. As a skydiver you will spend a lot of time looking up at the sky - so it is a solid investment to learn more about how it works. There are clouds that demonstrate it being windy enough to push rain up into the sky or down out of it before it normally would, there are those that form up into rolls and lumps and streets, those that create incandescent colour from above or below, and those that don’t do anything but will impress the hell out of people when you can name them.

By joelstrickland, in General, December 8, 2016

AFF Training - Level 5

By admin, in General, October 26, 2005

Learning About Weather: Part One - Choosing To Know More

Clouds can provide spectacular scenery - but what should you know about them

Introduction:
There is a lot to learn across your career as a skydiver. Expanding one’s brain is a process the starts right from the blocks and, if you are doing it right, never stops. Along the way there are things that you have to know in order to progress through to new levels and ratings, yet there is also things you can know that will make you a better skydiver in terms of your safety and awareness, and also contribute to your smooth and efficient progression.
Parachuting from aircraft has diversified into many different disciplines - some may draw you irresistibly towards them but others you might never touch with a long stick. Regardless of how you embrace the zoom, one thing is constant and true - the weather rules over us all. Some of these disciplines have stricter parameters for operation than others - an accuracy competition has to stand down in all but the gentlest wind while hot shit canopy pilots are unhampered buy much more, whereas low cloud might keep all matters of freefall in stasis while the swoopy types can still get their kicks from within sight of the ground.
We can all benefit from taking a little time to understand more about how the weather works. You don’t need to become an expert - but the further on your brain gets from it being either ‘too windy’ or ‘not too windy’ the better. At the very least, investing in a bit of knowledge will make you more interesting to talk to when everyone is standing around looking up at the sky and bitching about the conditions. It might also save your life.

Visibility is important

Student Status:
When you are brand new to skydiving the dividing line between too windy and yahoo giddy up is positioned way over on the too windy side. The restrictions are pretty heavy to allow for safety while you are getting the hang of it so some patience is required - so this is the perfect time to embrace the learning process and seek the benefits of going above and beyond with your ambitions. Everything is new and there is a lot of it, so hoover up all that is offered. An important lesson to understand early on is that much of what is taught in skydiving in delivered with more than a smattering of opinion - and there is no shortage of those who are absolutely sure that their way is the best way and what that other guy said is horseshit. Developing a mindset of enquiry from the start will help you to filter the important information and use it properly. It is too windy for you to jump. Why is it too windy? Why is it too windy for you? It is raining. Why is it raining?
Down The Road:
As soon as you are out of that student getup and in your own gear then you are fair game for being quizzed in the plane by anyone else who has not bothered to find out the vital information for themselves and needs help at the last minute. It really doesn’t take a lot of effort to learn the particulars about the situation you are about to skydive into, and knowing a few simple things can make you look much more like a bad motherfucker and much less like a clueless mug. Can you identify which way is North? Do you know what the wind is doing right now both at altitude and on the ground? Continued learning is one of skydivings great gifts - everywhere you look there is always extra distance to go.

Absolute clarity over Lake Balaton, Hungary

Crossover Skills:
If anything, skydiving is on the more forgiving side of all the sports that involve a canopy over your head. The geographical spaces we use for jumping out of planes are all different but with lots a base similarities - a runway, a few hangars where the aeroplanes sleep, a power line or two to avoid, a bar where the important drinking happens. All of skydivings sisters and cousins are much more intimately involved with the weather. If you find yourself drawn to Paragliding or BASE jumping then you will be spending a lot more time in places where the issues you can (and will) face become magnified by the terrain. The world has no shortage of those who believe that because they can perform a big bad swoop along the manicured grass then they possess the skills to fly a speed wing through a six foot gap in an alpine forest. Even a cursory glance at the incident reports will demonstrate how many accidents could have been avoided if just a little more knowledge had been applied. Skyjumps happen in a controlled environment - the perfect time to learn.
Would You Like To Know More?
This, and the following articles are not designed to be anything approaching comprehensive information - they are assembled to point you in the right direction by covering the main topics in a general, encouraging and hopefully entertaining way.
The weather on our planet is effected by things on both the grandest scale and the most intimate - from national television channels depositing region-wide possibilities to conditions able to affect you and you alone.
Part two has a look and weather in its biggest forms, such as fronts, cloud formations and upper winds.
Part three focuses on more localised concerns like turbulence and thermals.
Part four finishes up by pointing you toward some of the popular resources you might use to grow your brain.

By joelstrickland, in General, November 29, 2016

AFF Training - Level 7

By admin, in General, October 24, 2005

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