What skills did you work on after getting the A-license?

[chrismgtis 0]

Damn. You know after all this talk about safety - last weekend I went into my jumps with what I thought was a good flight plan. I made two jumps using about the same flight plan, just modified for better accuracy (pulls at 9k).

In the end what happened was I ended up turning half breaks into the wind at about 200ft to prevent from landing on the runway. On the last two jumps I ended up pretty much landing without any kind of PLF and hit my knee so hard on both jumps that by the second bad landing I could barely walk and my knee swole up.

The only thing wrong with any of that is I was paying too much to my horizontal speed and didn't think about bringing my legs together and getting ready to PLF and my flight plan was off.

Lesson learned though. It only proves the point to myself even more that you need to slow down and take a step back sometimes.

Rodriguez Brother #1614, Muff Brother #4033
Jumped: Twin Otter, Cessna 182, CASA, Helicopter, Caravan

[Bill_K 0]

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I'm in no hurry for the four ways and things like that. It can wait, cause I'm still having fun just jumping by myself and getting to know my canopy.

Right off of AFF I was lucky enough and stubborn enough to be jumping with others. If you take the hop-n-pop's out of the mix I can count on one hand the number of solo jumps that I've made since I got off my AFF status. Now I go looking for others to jump with, even trying to learn new things like sit flying, I have a couple of people that I will seek out and wait out a load to jump with.

What I am saying is that I learn more and faster by jumping with others! If you can find others that are better than you to jump with (pretty easy for me) it's that much better. I can't tell you how many larger ways that I've been on where I'm the only one under 500 or even 1000 jumps that I've been on. After every single one I find the organizer and/or other senior jumpers on the load and ask what I can do to improve, or talk about the jump in general.

I will also ask somebody that I know on some of those groups (before we take off) to watch me and give me coaching on this or that so that I can learn. I do this on just about every jump that I make if I can. Sometimes the groups are to small or people to busy, but most of the time I'm able to get some feedback, and in some cases even provide it.

Hey Pop's jumper, remember that picture? That was this time last year...!!
Great thread by the way!!!!

BK

[Bill_K 0]

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Do any drop zones have any kind of accuracy contests for different ranges of experience like say up to 100 jumps, 101-300 jumps, 301-500 jumps, 501 to 1000 jumps, etc (just for example). That would be cool for fun. Might promote accuracy skills.

Something else neat would be coaching for basic CRW skills. If you can fly around another parachute then you should be able to navigate in traffic a lot better and avoid a collision (hopefully :P)

We have the Army team Sliver Wings at our DZ and those guys are always shooting for a big X out there. That said, I pick a target on every jump. I learned that in Scott's course. It's my goal to be standing with in 10 feet or less of that mark every time. Sometimes due to traffic, winds, etc. I end up a long ways from it, but I still pick it and go for it.