"Free Fly Friendly"!!!!

[billvon 2,881]

Bad Remi. Now go to your room and write "I will not get the freeflyers invited to embarrassing parties" 100 times.

[billvon 2,881]

First off, I deleted a bunch of namecalling posts. Please stop that everyone.

Secondly, I think this could, overall, decrease the 'friendliness' of the sport. Right now, as it stands, it's easy to identify the freeflyers, the RW people, the tandem masters etc. but you can't always tell what, exactly, they are doing. Is that guy with the booties a fun jumper, or an organizer, or part of a team doing 14 training jumps a day? Is that guy with the freefly suit and sidemount video camera a hardcore sequential jumper or is he just here for fun?

Right now there are no patches to tell you. (Well, there are other ways, but we'll ignore those for now.) So what do you do instead? You talk to them. Let's take an example at my home DZ, Perris:

Guy shows up and goes up to Christy Frikken, one of the jumpers on Fury. She is almost assuredly going to be busy that day either training someone or coaching someone or helping Dan with someone.

Now, she doesn't have any patches or anything saying "RW friendly" or "I bite" or anything. But she's a friendly sort, so she talks to the guy for a few minutes and directs him to Mark Brown, one of the RW organizers. Mark is having lunch so he directs him to Darryld, who puts together a 5-way and goes up to make a jump.

In a few minutes that new jumper has met three new people, one of which is one of the best 4-way jumpers on the planet. If Darryld had had an "RWF" patch that new guy could have just gone straight to him and missed out on talking to all those other people.

Communication is critical in this sport, and you shouldn't feel bad about asking questions. A patch that you like, and you feel good about, is a great idea. But if the idea is that it will let you talk to fewer people before finding your 'ideal' jump - it may have the opposite effect than you intend.

[Remster 30]

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Bad Remi. Now go to your room and write "I will not get the freeflyers invited to embarrassing parties" 100 times.

Hey! They're the ones who talk about the dark side all the time!

Remster

[emmiwy 0]

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It gets boring because you LET it get boring. You get stuck in a rut and won't try new things. An example is if you do a few thousand jumps doing RW and competing and becoming very good, you nearly start at the beginning when you try FFing. Some people simply won't do that.

Others get burnt out because they get ratings and ONLY do working jumps. If the only jumps you do is 15 tandems a day each weekend, you'll start to hate skydiving.

I believe that. A friend of mine finished his AFF in two days and once getting into solo jumps said he was already bored. He had never gone to tunnel, and wasn't really interested in trying anything new. I don't think he could even look forward to coach jumps which involve the docking and movement, where you get to see how good your body position really is relative to another flier. I definitely look forward to my coach jumps for that reason.

I still get a bit of the anxiety when the door opens and I realize I have to jump out, watching people fall is still crazy but gets me going every time. And each time I learn something new in tunnel I get excited by how much there is to learn. Its hard to balance wanting to do tunnel and wanting to jump, except when it's raining then the choice is very clear. :)

[roostnureye 2]

here is some background on the idea and image.
i am from florida and was interested in skydiving clubs, ive seen the east coast free flyers and their logos, but have never met any of them in florida, so i decided mabye we should start a florida free flyers club, hence the fff. then after talking to my friends they all liked the idea of a friendlier free fly enviornment and thought many people could benefit from this idea, so we dropped the florida and changed it to friendly. the 3f logo looks similar to the symbol for a hurricane, and wind direction/power indicators. this is why i chose the design. i might have worded the opening post wrongly, mabye i should haver said "freefly icebreaker" or something of that nature. i strongly believe that you should converse with others at new dropzones, this idea was not to stop people from being friendly and conversive with others. im sorry most people took it that way. i was just looking for an easy way to meet and jump with new people and share some comrodary??? i know this happens every day at dropzones without any "gay" patches. guess i just wanted to start something locally and make some new friends while giving back to the sport.

blue skys
FFF#1

Flock University FWC / ZFlock
B.A.S.E. 1580
Aussie BASE 121

[AggieDave 6]

Then simply call it Florida Free Fly and go with what you wanted to do. That would be cooler then what you presented here.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[timmyfitz 0]

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here is some background on the idea and image.
i am from florida and was interested in skydiving clubs, ive seen the east coast free flyers and their logos, but have never met any of them in florida, so i decided mabye we should start a florida free flyers club, hence the fff. then after talking to my friends they all liked the idea of a friendlier free fly enviornment and thought many people could benefit from this idea, so we dropped the florida and changed it to friendly. the 3f logo looks similar to the symbol for a hurricane, and wind direction/power indicators. this is why i chose the design. i might have worded the opening post wrongly, mabye i should haver said "freefly icebreaker" or something of that nature. i strongly believe that you should converse with others at new dropzones, this idea was not to stop people from being friendly and conversive with others. im sorry most people took it that way. i was just looking for an easy way to meet and jump with new people and share some comrodary??? i know this happens every day at dropzones without any "gay" patches. guess i just wanted to start something locally and make some new friends while giving back to the sport.

blue skys
FFF#1

As already mentioned, you could do that by talking to people when you show up at a new dropzone?

Go to manifest, tell them you're new to the DZ and you will have someone to jump with fairly quick.

[laughn_gas 0]

I like your idea of the patch. I also would go with the your original fff logo. "billvon" did make very good points about who you could be missing out on, if one would only talk to a cerain group. I say wear the patch......don't wear the patch.....Whatever.... you don't know unless you try.

See ya in a minute. Peace out!

[roostnureye 2]

ya i agree with some of billvons points, it was never meant to seclude myself or anyone else. the purpose was to get more people freeflying with eachother, so i am going to pursue this as florida free flyers some time in the future. im really not worried if it takes off or not. it was just an idea, and i got allot of feed back from the idea. guess it still needs some thinking through, thanks everyone for your input.
blue skys

Flock University FWC / ZFlock
B.A.S.E. 1580
Aussie BASE 121

[beowulf 1]

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I had a feeling you were going to say all this. I've only heard in passing that freefly is one of the most difficult disciplines to learn, and in part is why I want to learn it. However, what you say is a bit daunting, if not discouraging. Especially with how much tunnel time costs, I don't know if I can afford to keep up my interest in FF if it takes as long as you say...

Freeflying is a tough discpline to learn. In my opinion, that is what make it more appealing to me. The added challenge makes it that much more exciting when I managed to hold a sit or take a dock. If you see each jump as a challenge to become better and increase your skills then freeflying will continue to be fresh and new. Keep pushing yourself and next thing you know you will find yourself flying head down docked on a formation thinking wow this is cool!

[billvon 2,881]

>the purpose was to get more people freeflying with eachother . . .

Just a thought here.

It's easy to tell freeflyers from RW people and wingsuiters and tandem masters, so presumably you don't need a patch to tell you that. It sounds like the purpose of the patch might be more to tell people "I'm someone who will jump with you." If so, why not widen it out? Call it a "newbie friendly" patch or something, something to advertise that you're willing to jump with lower-experienced people.

[emmiwy 0]

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Freeflying is a tough discpline to learn. In my opinion, that is what make it more appealing to me. The added challenge makes it that much more exciting when I managed to hold a sit or take a dock. If you see each jump as a challenge to become better and increase your skills then freeflying will continue to be fresh and new. Keep pushing yourself and next thing you know you will find yourself flying head down docked on a formation thinking wow this is cool!

That's exactly why I wanted to start it too [in addition to me going to tunnel through the AFF and progressing beyond what is needed to learn to pass my levels]! FF looks very liberating; I'm always in awe when I see freefliers with such incredible control of their muscles/body to be able to dance in the air. I don't see how it can't be a "friendly" discipline, all skydivers are friendly in general :)

However I may have to regress a bit, as I have my sights set on [in the very far future] becoming an instructor/coach. Most instructors have recommended if I know I want to be an instructor I should master belly flying first...I suppose freefly in the tunnel is very different from freefly during a dive also?

[pinkfairy 0]

I think the freeflyers are easy to recognize by their suits.

Or what about looking for a DZ that has freefly organizing? Paying for coached jumps?

Relax, you can die if you mess up, but it will probably not be by bullet.

I'm a BIG, TOUGH BIGWAY FORMATION SKYDIVER! What are you?

[roostnureye 2]

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>the purpose was to get more people freeflying with eachother . . .

Just a thought here.

It's easy to tell freeflyers from RW people and wingsuiters and tandem masters, so presumably you don't need a patch to tell you that. It sounds like the purpose of the patch might be more to tell people "I'm someone who will jump with you." If so, why not widen it out? Call it a "newbie friendly" patch or something, something to advertise that you're willing to jump with lower-experienced people.

hey billvon great idea, but we might as well call it "cork friendly" i know i wouldnt wear one! or we could even go as far as "death friendly" mabye its not the best idea, but hey i tried

Flock University FWC / ZFlock
B.A.S.E. 1580
Aussie BASE 121

[JohnRich 4]

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Attachments: fff.jpg (84.6 KB)

It looks too much like it's only one leg short of a swastika.

Come up with a secret handshake instead.