When did all the Fun Police join this sport?

[crwmike 0]

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Well, here goes: I think well-executed hook turns and long swoops look cool. Mr Bills, wagon wheels and raft jumps are a rite of passage for novices. I love it when people do outrageous stunts for my entertainment. Most bounce jokes are funny. Bandit jumps rock - and the more rules you break, the more fun they are. If you break a bone, you accept that people will laugh about it and you will probably wind up on the bloopers tape. Yes, I think taking a mouthful of avgas so you can join the fire-breathing competition is a good idea. So are blindfolded pissed packing comps where you have to jump the rig the next day. And avgas-soaked-dunny-roll-soccer. Hooking up an old roundie to the battery cart on a windy day was an idea with a lot of merit (notwithstanding the consequences).

Now I read a thread where a couple of guys landed a Mr Bill. "Wow, how cool" I think. I would have been cheering them as they landed. But no, it seems I'm wrong, according to half the responses in the thread these guys are idiots, bad for the sport. It doesn't matter that they landed it without incident - think about what might have happened! I read an incident thread, straight from the horse's mouth, where the owner of a mangled leg makes a joke about it. And gets flamed for joking about his own injury. I read people calling for MORE regulation, for banning hook turns, for grounding those who do bandit jumps, for somehow assigning responsibility for a 100-jump wonder on a VX to the person who sold them the canopy. There are people who seem to want to make the sport about as extreme as macrame.

No, I don't want people killing themselves nor am I advocating putting students on 1:5 wingloadings. But I'd hate to see people - grown-ups who are responsible for their own actions - stop trying to get as close to that edge as possible.

Skydivers used to have more fun than people.

Just my .02 for today. YMMV.

It started when skydiving began accepting 'timid' people ...people that never would have entered the sport if they couldn't have been strapped to someone or exit in the firm grip of instructors. Or, increasingly, denied the opportunity to find out if they could.

Not making a call on the viability of various instructional methods, but when skydiving was limited to those who could find within themselves what it took to exit an airplane, all on their own ...well we didn't have very many fun nazis ...but we had a shit load of bandit fun and learned how to pull back the curtain of perceived limitations and see what we were really capable of.

Michael

[gordy 0]

Exactly....
Folk want to hurt themselves thats their business, but it seems to me just a bit selfish that the rest of the sport potentially suffers for it!

Just my 2p

[Eiley 0]

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It started when skydiving began accepting 'timid' people ...people that never would have entered the sport if they couldn't have been strapped to someone or exit in the firm grip of instructors. Or, increasingly, denied the opportunity to find out if they could.

Not making a call on the viability of various instructional methods, but when skydiving was limited to those who could find within themselves what it took to exit an airplane, all on their own ...well we didn't have very many fun nazis ...but we had a shit load of bandit fun and learned how to pull back the curtain of perceived limitations and see what we were really capable of.

Michael

You know, I really think you might have something here. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people I meet that claim there's no way they could ever have done their first jump (or nowdays, jumps) solo, or the number of people who have never jumped without a Cypres and will ground themselves if their Cypres is out of their rig.

It's true these people seem to be a different breed from those who populated my local DZ's in the 80's.

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Headoverheels said...
The Sluggo in this case is very inexperienced. At the American boogie, he was positively drooling watching swoopers come in to land. So, he was shopping for a tiny Velocity, when he had ~100 jumps. He has a severe disconnect between what he wants to do and the reality of how that might be accomplished.

Ah, so you're saying its not the act that is foolish, but the actor.

Who gets to decide who's cool enough to pull off a Mr Bill landing? What's the correct number of jumps? 1000? 1500? One more than you?


Billvon, I thought your post was excellent, well thought-out and well written, but I have a problem with this bit:

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Another thing that I am not OK with is people who take risks they don't even understand. I have absolutely no problem with JP, Rhino, AggieDave etc jumping whatever canopy they want (although I might give them shit about it.) They know the risks and can accept them. But someone who has so few jumps they don't even know it's dangerous? (And yes, these people exist, and there are a lot of them.) They are the ones who, I think, need to learn about those risks before they can take them. If there is a point to canopy regulation, it is to teach these people what can happen to them before someone with 100 jumps goes off and jumps a 2:1 loaded VX. Once they do learn that? Let em jump whatever they want; it's their lives.

You can't tell me that someone who's done 100 jumps, which generally means they've been in the sport for a good year, doesn't understand the risks in radical downsizing/hooking/deliberately going low etc. They do understand - they just believe that they are willing to accept the possibility of death or permanent injury in exchange for the Cool factor (whether that be real or perceived). Some people do fuck up and hurt themselves badly and decide they were wrong, but that's different from not understanding the risks in the first place.

Let's face it - by that time a 'high-risk' person has been told over and over that they are in danger of screwing up badly. When they tell you "I understand the risks and I don't care", you have to believe them, even if you think they are stupid. It's pure vanity to insist that someone doesn't understand something as well as you do just because they choose to manage the risk differently.

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Deuce said...
My bitch is when folks pull stunts without warning us.

Yeah, mine too. Because I might be in the hangar and miss it. I hate it when that happens.



Randy and Piriya: Miss you guys too! I'm so jealous of my cohorts who are at Chicagoland at the moment. Sounds like WFFC was a bit down this year, so I didn't miss too much... hopefully next year, when I have a lot more annual leave up my sleeve!

nothing to see here

[billvon 2,446]

>You can't tell me that someone who's done 100 jumps, which
> generally means they've been in the sport for a good year . . .

That's one of the problems with the sport nowadays. There are people here in SoCal with 100 jumps who have been in the sport for five weeks. And a little over a month isn't enough time to get a good feel for relative risks of jumping near a thunderstorm, or landing downwind of a hangar, or jumping with a drunk freeflyer.

>Let's face it - by that time a 'high-risk' person has been told over
> and over that they are in danger of screwing up badly.

Depends on the person. If it's a Navy guy, he's been told he's going to die over and over for years. Why should he take a skydiver seriously? It's never been true before. I've seen that quite a bit down here.

>When they tell you "I understand the risks and I don't care", you
> have to believe them, even if you think they are stupid.

And what if they tell you "Luigi jumps a 3:1 canopy, I'm being conservative on my 2:1" ? Or "I've landed this new canopy five times without hurting myself; I've got it covered" ? These people do exist. They are still greatly in the minority, fortunately - but they do exist.

>It's pure vanity to insist that someone doesn't understand
> something as well as you do just because they choose to manage
> the risk differently.

Perhaps true, but as an S+TA it was often my job to manage risk differently than other people. And it's not always that they even want to push the limits - I've been on a few loads where I've called the load on account of winds, darkness etc and had more than one person say "I'm glad you called it off - I was getting really worried."

"Well, why didn't YOU decide not to jump before we got on jump run, then?"

"I didn't want to be the only one." Sometimes newer jumpers make decisions based on things other than even their own best judgement. As experienced jumpers, I think we have a responsibility to use our judgement at times like that, where peer pressure or not wanting to look like a dweeb might cause a newer jumper to make a bad decision, one they might regret later.

Now, once they have 500 jumps, have been in the sport at least a year, have seen someone go in, have been really scared under canopy etc - they're on their own, although I might make suggestions. But newer jumpers are, in some ways, like children - there are risks they simply don't completely fathom yet, and I think we have a responsibility to help them get through that phase safely. Sometimes they refuse our help, and often you can't do anything about that. And those people are usually the ones that call us canopy nazis or whatever. But I think you have to make the effort.

[akarunway 1]

or jumping with a drunk freeflyer.
. Damn do they really exist. Where can I find one to jump w/?. Fuck the police. Let's go have fun

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[wildWilly 0]

"or jumping with a drunk freeflyer"

I've seen a lot more drunk belly fliers than free fliers.

growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional.

[Deuce 1]

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Deuce said...
My bitch is when folks pull stunts without warning us.

Yeah, mine too. Because I might be in the hangar and miss it. I hate it when that happens. Wink

Well, that too.

Mostly I just want to not be near something especially risky. I've seen the video clip now and John standing up holding the lines looks pretty interesting. As he climbs down McB's back he grabs the rear risers before dropping off. Some neato potential for carnage there.

They should have learned from the Apollo astronaughts though, and had something good to say when they pulled it off.

"We saved a pack job!" is just pretty lame.

[pajarito 0]

Who's got the link to that video. I missed it.

NEVER MIND!!!
Found it in Gen Skydive Discussions.
That hanging from the rear risers thing at the end while he was about to jump off looks ugly.

[Deuce 1]

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I've seen a lot more drunk belly fliers than free fliers.

Agreed. Usually the freefliers are smoking grass.