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cpoxon

Don Kellner - 40,000 jumps

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Sorry, but I don't believe any of the "big" numbers. Most of these jumpers are not logging jumps and at Perris and Spaceland I have seen the "totals" jump by several thousand a year from big time jumpers who no longer jump all that much.

Blue skies,

Jim

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Sorry, but I don't believe any of the "big" numbers. Most of these jumpers are not logging jumps and at Perris and Spaceland I have seen the "totals" jump by several thousand a year from big time jumpers who no longer jump all that much.



Maybe you didnt see the drug trafficking jumps at midnight... Does nobody watch Cutaway anymore ;)

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Sorry, but I don't believe any of the "big" numbers. Most of these jumpers are not logging jumps



I think Don does log his jumps. Also, he has been at it for 40-some years, he owns a DZ, and freely admits that many, many of them are hop n pops.

Let's face it, if you own your own plane and have a pilot handy, you could do an easy 2 or 3 hop n pops every day. If you have 3 rigs, it would take less then an hour. If you did that five days a week, that's 15 jumps/week or 780 jumps/year in addition to the 'regular jumping you did on the weekends.

It does seem like a lot, but Don and Bill Dause are two of the guys I don't doubt their jump numbers. If you jump and own a DZ for 30 or 40 years, it's entirely possible.

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and if you have a ProTrack or the like, you ARE logging jump numbers in a way nobody can see

for that matter, you can get jump numbers from a decent receipt from manifest at many DZs

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

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It does seem like a lot, but Don and Bill Dause are two of the guys I don't doubt their jump numbers. If you jump and own a DZ for 30 or 40 years, it's entirely possible.



I did my first tandems in 1989 with Don Kellner on my back when the dz was called Northeast PA Ripcords and Don still took students up regularly

He does log each and every jump. If he says its 40,000 you can believe it.
they have to be verified in order to qualify for the world record which has been firmly his for more than 20 years, and yes most of the jumps he does now are hop and pops. He gets on damn near every load and jumps out around 3k,
although I dont see that that makes any difference. A skydive is a skydive.

I dont jump there much anymore because Cross Keys is a lot closer and they have Otters, but I do get back every year or two and its always a good time
__

My mighty steed

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+1....even if they were all 3k hops,,,so what ? its still 40k jumps, landings,openings etc. He never claimed to be last in and back in no grips on the 400 way,,,,he's been having fun in his back yard for 40 years,,,hell who doesn't want that !!! B|

smile, be nice, enjoy life
FB # - 1083

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Don logs hs jumps. Dunno if anyone signs em' or not.
I was there for his 37000 jump, and it was fun to hear him refer to every jump as "a new world record.":D


I get to do that every time I jump nekked. ;)
Peace,
-Dawson.
http://www.SansSuit.com
The Society for the Advancement of Naked Skydiving

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I visited the dropzone a few times, over prior years, and on every visit I made Don was on the plane to at least get a hop & pop (space permitting).

Many of the “old timers” stopped jumping intermittently or had some fallow years. Don just never let off and it adds up over time. When I was there, he always seemed as keen (for one more jump) as some kid with 97 jumps working to get his first 100.

Congrats to him.
"Pain is the best instructor, but no one wants to attend his classes"

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Wow, out of those 40,000 jumps I wonder how many cut aways he has had?



From his wife, when he made jump number 35,000:

"After a 14 hour day of looking through over 35,000 lines in the logbooks, here are the results for the number of Don Kellner's malfunctions, although I may have missed one since my eyes are starting to go crossed with this job. Hopefully this post will be coherent.

A grand total of 19 malfunctions in over 35,000 jumps.

When I list malfunction numbers, I am only referring to those canopy problem situations that warranted Don going to his reserve parachute.

His first malfunction was on his 1937th jump, which was his first square parachute jump. He had done 1936 round parachute jumps and gone through 11 years in the sport prior to that without a malfunction. In the following 15 months he experienced a total of eight malfunctions as he test jumped the new square parachutes that were being developed.

In 1980, he experienced a double malfunction with one of the first square reserves available. In 1990, he experienced a malfunction when jumping one of the first high performance parachute designs.

I would like to think that the work that he and other pioneers in the sport did, allow the rest of us to enjoy the low rate of malfunctions that we see today."

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