Fly to Survive, Femur is Not a Verb DVD, poster

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Fly to Survive and Femur is Not a Verb DVD and poster

I saw at the local DZ this weekend that the "Fly to Survive" DVD and "Femur is Not a Verb" poster set is now being sent to drop zones.

(This is a project sponsored by a number of organizations to help improve canopy safety.)

Have any of you seen it yet?

[davelepka 4]

I haven't seen either one. I applaud the DVD, but wonder of the poster is a bit short sighted?

Evryone knows you want to survive a canopy ride, and that snapping a femur is a bad thing. The poster is advertising a complicated concept, that requires additional action from the consumer.

"Buy Pepsi" is a good poster.

Maybe a better use fo the money used to produce the poster would have been to brun and distribute more DVD's. Or how about hosting the DVD on the web for all to access at their leisure?

If you just want to advertise the DVD, and to watch it. I'm sure that Parachutist could spare some space for advertising, or even dress it up like an article or movie review.

In the end, it is progress, and thats a good thing.

[tombuch 0]

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I haven't seen either one. I applaud the DVD, but wonder of the poster is a bit short sighted?

Evryone knows you want to survive a canopy ride, and that snapping a femur is a bad thing. The poster is advertising a complicated concept, that requires additional action from the consumer.

I think the two elements are designed to work together. The DVD explains the "complicated" message with a "catch phrase" title. The DVD plays at Safety Day when jumpers are paying attention, and the poster hangs at the DZ to reinforce the message every day. The DVD is of course also available for replay through the season, or as part of a regular student program to be used late in the progression. It sounds like a good combination to me.

The idea of making the DVD available on the USPA web site is a good one, and hopefully after the Safety Day premier USPA will do that, or, I suspect, somebody will rip it and post the file anyway.
.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[bob.dino 0]

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The idea of making the DVD available on the USPA web site is a good one, and hopefully after the Safety Day premier USPA will do that, or, I suspect, somebody will rip it and post the file anyway.

That'd be nice for those of us outside the USA.

[L.O. 0]

Hey Gary, From Todd and Erika. Hope your year has gone well, kids are great, DZ life is good. See ya in July. What's up with July? I have to change my life because of that. Not that it's a problem.

HPDBs, I hate those guys.
AFB, charter member.

[AndyMan 7]

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Have any of you seen it yet?

I haven't.

I've only seen the Parachutist ad, and the phrase "Femur is not a verb" really annoys me. The fact is that femur is a verb. Denying it does not make it so. Wishful thinking does not help.

_Am

__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

[FrogNog 1]

I concur that the wording "femur is not a verb" is inaccurate.

If they wish to say "femur should not be a verb", then they should say precisely that.


But I've sort of given up on complaining about marketing peoples' grammar. They say what they like, for whatever their reasons may be, and two things they don't seem to care strongly about are technical accuracy and engaging extremely literate readers.

The message I'd like to share is "Femur is a bad verb."

-=-=-=-=-
Pull.

[Squeak 17]

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I concur that the wording "femur is not a verb" is inaccurate.

If they wish to say "femur should not be a verb", then they should say precisely that.


But I've sort of given up on complaining about marketing peoples' grammar. They say what they like, for whatever their reasons may be, and two things they don't seem to care strongly about are technical accuracy and engaging even moderately literate readers.

The message I'd like to share is "Femur is a bad verb."

Fixed it for ya

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[bob.dino 0]

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...the phrase "Femur is not a verb" really annoys me. The fact is that femur is a verb. ... Wishful thinking does not help.

I think it's rather clever. "Femur is not a verb" is a hell of a lot more succinct, catchy, and memorable than "Please don't fly your canopy into the ground and break your femur."

[goose491 0]

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I concur that the wording "femur is not a verb" is inaccurate.

I see where your head is at... but just to clarify, femur is a noun.

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But I've sort of given up on complaining about marketing peoples' grammar.

Hopefully. Because femur is not a verb but for our bastardisation of the English language (that means the truncation and misuse of words as well as the creation of slang btw)

Break is a verb. As in: "to break one's femur"... but femur is the object in that sentence. "To femur", means absolutely nothing but to this particular generation of skydivers.

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They say what they like, for whatever their reasons may be, and two things they don't seem to care strongly about are technical accuracy and engaging extremely literate readers.

They say what should be said (that we shouldn't be breaking ourselves as often as we do). Their reasons are clear (so many people breaking their bones, that we innaccurately refer to the bone itself as a verb, attach the dark-humour to it, and shrug it off as normal)

It's ironic that you point out that "marketing people" don't care for technical accuracy when what you say is technically innaccurate. Look up the word. I promise you it isn't a verb. And extremely literate readers would agree... Is that what you are?

My Karma ran over my Dogma!!!

[quade 3]

Mmmm, I -might- have seen that DVD once or twice . . .

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[ltdiver 3]

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Mmmm, I -might- have seen that DVD once or twice . . .

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[skybytch 259]

I just finished watching the DVD. There is nothing in this video that wasn't in the "Femur is not a verb" article in the June 2005 Parachutist.

Lots of footage of swoopers doing their thing, which is cool to watch but offers little in the way of possible learning for the majority of us. Very little footage of average jumpers doing good landings, quite a few clips of people performing less than ideal landings without any explanation of which landings are good or bad and why. The footage used doesn't match up with what the narrator or "pros" are saying.

I'm very disappointed.

[peek 20]

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I just finished watching the DVD. There is nothing in this video that wasn't in the "Femur is not a verb" article in the June 2005 Parachutist.

I'm very disappointed.

Well, I was informed at the BOD meeting that this video was never intened to be an instructional video, but was to emphasize the points on the poster.

[davelepka 4]

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Well, I was informed at the BOD meeting that this video was never intened to be an instructional video, but was to emphasize the points on the poster.

OK, I see now.

They missed the point by an even bigger margin that I had prevously thought.

Why go to the time, trouble and cost of producing and distributing the video, and not make it instructional?

The biggest hurdle is acually making the video. Once you're already doing that, why not make it useful?

I would have been more than happy to do a couple of hop n pops to demonstrate whatever they needed for a certain shot. I'm sure many jumpers would have been happy to do the same.

No offence to anyone involved, but what the fuck people? You're spending USPA money to make a video to support a poster who's message is deads simple, "Don't break your leg!"????????

The closest you could come to offering a plan of action toward said goal was, "Seek professional coaching", with the footnote being, "From some one else, because the United States Parachute Association isn't in THAT business (if you would like a shiney gold pin, we do have a nice selection of those however).

I only wish I was making this shit up.

[skybytch 259]

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No offence to anyone involved, but what the fuck people? You're spending USPA money to make a video to support a poster who's message is deads simple, "Don't break your leg!"????????

That was my first comment after watching it - they spent our dues (ie our money) on this?? I'm really, really hoping that it was 100% paid for by the sponsors...

[karenmeal 0]

I would like to know how many people on the poster have femured in.

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

[jheadley 0]

Well Jim Slaton did a few weeks ago, that's one.

[thepollster 0]

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Well Jim Slaton did a few weeks ago, that's one.

2 problems with that statement. 1:he wasn't skydiving , and 2: it wasn't a landing problem, it was a canopy collision.

[apoil 0]

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Well Jim Slaton did a few weeks ago, that's one.

2 problems with that statement. 1:he wasn't skydiving , and 2: it wasn't a landing problem, it was a canopy collision.

Question was "how many on the poster have femured in", and Slaton just broke his femur.

Your three points are all nullities.

1: He was under a parachute. The focus of the campaign is safety under parachute, and even if it's targetted at skydiving, it applies to BASE, and Ground Launching as well, to some degree.

2. Just what is a "landing" problem? If you hit the ground and break something, how is that not a "landing". A ground launch is in many ways an extended landing sequence. All the risks present during a traditional skydiving landing are present for the entire ground launch run.

3. Avoiding canopy collisions is part of parachute safety. While it may not have been specifically addressed in the "femur is not a verb" campaign, it's still under the same umbrella.

If your point is that slaton was pushing the envelope, so as to be somewhat outside of the target audience of the campaign, that too has only a small amount of validity.

Fact: Ground Launching has a greater exposure to danger.
Fact: Slaton, who is on the "femur is not a verb" poster, just broke his femur.
Fact: This is ironic.
Fact: The strength of the message, and the validity of what Slaton teaches are undiminished.

[jheadley 0]

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Well Jim Slaton did a few weeks ago, that's one.

2 problems with that statement. 1:he wasn't skydiving , and 2: it wasn't a landing problem, it was a canopy collision.

I had a feeling someone would say that.

While he didn't jump out of a plane, he did get hurt under a skydiving parachute. The Femur Is Not A Verb campaign is specifically about safety under a parachute. It's not really about safety in making group freefall skydives or aircraft safety or anything like that- just about safety under canopy, so I think his injury is relevant.

[thepollster 0]

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he did get hurt under a skydiving parachute.

Wrong again. If you want to argue that point, first take a GLX, pack it in a rig, take it terminal, and live, then I'll give you that. Fact is, this was a paragliding accident.

[billvon 2,400]

>If you want to argue that point, first take a GLX, pack it in a rig, take
> it terminal, and live, then I'll give you that. Fact is, this was a
> paragliding accident.

Stick a slider on it and I'd do it. I might have to cut it away but I'd almost certainly live. But that's missing the point.

Ground launching is a crossover sport between skydiving and paragliding. A lot of skydivers are doing it. A lot more will in the future. Claiming it's not involved with skydiving is like claiming that skydiver vs aircraft incidents on the ground are not skydiving related because the skydive is over. That may be literally correct, but I think ignoring them is the wrong approach.

[davelepka 4]

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If you want to argue that point, first take a GLX, pack it in a rig, take it terminal, and live, then I'll give you that. Fact is, this was a paragliding accident.

I don't think so. However you get it airborne, or open, once open and flying it's handling and flight characteristics are the same as a skydiving canopy.

According then to your logic, if I were to deploy a paraglider from freefall, and it opened fine, and then I had an accident on landing, you would call it a skydiving accident, even though the skydiving portion of the jump went well? It would be paragliding accident, as the skills needed to safely complete that protion of the jump would be exclusive to paragliding.

Much like once Jim was airborne, the paragliding portion of his activity was over. The rest of the flight was using skills developed during, and limited to skydiving.

If you took a paraglider pilot, and gave him a GLX, he might be able to launch it, but beyond that, he's in new territory, as he's not flying a paraglider, and paragliding principals don't apply.

[davelepka 4]

I love the fucking irony that this thread and one called "Stratagies for landing out" are right next to each other.

The guy who started the thread has 25 jumps, and alot of questions about landing off, and how to handle it. It's clear that he was not giving a full set of information with regards to canopy control.

I'm glad the USPA is here to offer him a poster.

Thanks USPA, for everything.