what is easier to master?

[JumpsOffCliffs 0]

i mostly ask out of curiosity of experienced jumpers opinions, because i see basics easy to get in both. but really good free flyers and trackers and such against the swoopers and CReW people.

i have only done basic freefall and basic canopy control, but find all of it awesome(im tall and skinny, so im interested in tracking)


oh and i also understand that its all relative to each person, but still like hearing peoples opinions

[pontiacgtp00 0]

I vote freefall because you can spend a shitload of time in the tunnel, but that doesn't necessarily make it easier. Then you could always do 10k hop and pops to get some canopy time....but that won't help too much with accuracy landing. Both take about equal time.

[Sangi 0]

Defo freefall, I see people with less than 100 jumps doing good sitflying and shit, yet you never see them swoop

"Dream as you'll live forever, live as you'll die today." James Dean

[NiteQwill 0]

Falling out of a plane/balloon/helo/whatever is always the first and easiest to master. If you don't master that, the sport isn't for you!

"Fail, fail again. Fail better."
-Samuel Beckett

[Andy9o8 0]

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Falling out of a plane/balloon/helo/whatever is always the first and easiest to master. If you don't master that, the sport isn't for you!

The ultimate goal of every skydive is to land safely. If you don't master that, the sport isn't for you.

[GLIDEANGLE 1]

Generally I find that quality feedback and coaching is more readily available for freefall than for canopy flight. As a result, I think FF skills progress more quickly for most folks.

To a large degree canopy flight skill development is up to the individual. Since FF skills affect the success of group dives, new jumpers are more likely to get feedback from the folks that they jump with about their FF performance.

FF is more likey to be videoed than landing... thus more opportunites for feedback about FF than landing.

The choices we make have consequences, for us & for others!

[pilotdave 0]

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Generally I find that quality feedback and coaching is more readily available for freefall than for canopy flight.

A lot of that is dropzone dependent. I see the opposite. I have no idea how a lot of the jumpers at my DZ do in freefall, but I know how they are under canopy. When someone messes up in freefall, usually only a few people (if that) see it. When they mess up under canopy, they are bound to hear about it from at least 5 different people. And that's just on their walk back from the landing area. And if they make the same mistake again, they'll get a nickname.
Dave

[kkeenan 13]

Mastery is relative. The great thing about almost all skydiving disciplines is that you can always get better at what you do. I'll guarantee that anyone you find that you look up to, as being an expert in a particular field, has someone else that they look up to as being better. Usually, the folks who will tell you that they have "mastered" something are the least likely to have actually done so. The real masters of most disciplines will tell you that they are always trying to get better.

Kevin K.

_____________________________________
Dude, you are so awesome...
Can I be on your ash jump ?

[JohnRich 4]

Canopy control.

Simply because of the amount of time available to devote to it.

Normal freefall gives you only 70 seconds or less to practice.
A normal skydive where you open at 2,500 feet gives you several minutes to practice canopy control.

That alone gives canopy control a 2-to-1 advantage. At a minimum.

And if you do higher openings, the ratio is even more favorable to canopy control.
However, nothing you can do will get you more freefall time (in normal circumstances).

[brettski74 0]

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Defo freefall, I see people with less than 100 jumps doing good sitflying and shit, yet you never see them swoop [Tongue]

That doesn't make it easier to master. Most people with 100 jumps haven't ever tried any kind of high performance landing. I'm not suggesting that they should, but just because most skydivers typically concentrate more on freefall skills first doesn't make it the easier thing to learn.

As for the original question, I think this is a lot like asking which is safer, driving or skydiving? There is not really a good or relevant comparison between the two, so it's not really a valid question in the first place. Define "easy" and "master". When you do, you'll probably find a much bigger debate on whether your definitions are accurate representations of what is "easy" and what is "mastery" and whether they're reasonable parallels between any two disciplines.

[billvon 2,426]

>Normal freefall gives you only 70 seconds or less to practice.

Right - but that entire time you aren't practicing so much as actually doing what you planned to do. If you screw up a backin you can try again. If you plan the dive for backin practice, you could try it 10 times in that 70 seconds.

Canopy control is a bit different. You can practice under canopy, but you have only a few seconds to pull off a good landing. That's why so many people have trouble learning to land well - they have so little time to really try it (maybe ten seconds out of an entire day.)

Anyone can, within a few minutes, learn how to pull toggles down to turn the parachute. Most people can, within a few dozen jumps, learn to fly a pattern. But the most important part of canopy flight - the landing - is a lot harder to learn than any of that.

[pirana 0]

I think for most people, basics in both are not difficult if the time and effort is put in. But mastering, don't think either are "easy" and can't clearly conclude one is easier than the other.

On the other hand, for both, it is very easy to fuck up. (In other words, takes very little effort).

EDIT TO ADD: If I ever master either, I'll chime in further.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

Yeah, a couple second window and one chance to get it right each dive.

Brought my brother out to the DZ last week and he commented on (and was amused) at many of the student and newbie landings. Not many were stood up, quite a few PLF's (smart kids) and a couple planted themselves pretty fucking roughly into the turf.

I told him to remember these folks have 20, 30, or some small number more jumps; and that means they have only had exactly that many chances at the one move you get at the end of each dive to stand it up. Same with exits.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[brettski74 0]

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Normal freefall gives you only 70 seconds or less to practice.
A normal skydive where you open at 2,500 feet gives you several minutes to practice canopy control.

That alone gives canopy control a 2-to-1 advantage. At a minimum.

And if you do higher openings, the ratio is even more favorable to canopy control.
However, nothing you can do will get you more freefall time (in normal circumstances).

But these are apples/oranges or skydiving/driving comparisons.

For every reason you can come up with why one is easier of harder than the other, I can come up with an opposing reason. For example, you stated that you have more time under canopy than in freefall. Great, but freefall maneauvres can be done much faster than canopy maneauvres, so while I may have 3 or 4 minutes to play under canopy and only one minute of freefall, I can do many freefall maneauvres more times in 60 seconds than I can do canopy maneauvres in 4 minutes. Practising a maneauvre 15 times on a jump is probably going to help me progress faster than practising a maneauvre 5 times on a jump. So then you mention that freefall happens a lot faster, so therefore it requires faster reaction times and precise inputs to achieve good results. I can say that canopy maneauvres have much larger closing distances and therefore require greater spatial awareness and precise inputs to achieve good results...

wrt hop and pops vs freefall skydives, if you're choosing to concentrate on canopy skills and are therefore doing predominantly hop and pops, again that doesn't make it easier. It just makes it the skills you've chosen to concentrate on. By the same token, I can choose to concentrate on freefall, get out at full altitude, deploy as low as I feel safe doing and then fly straight back to the DZ using my canopy as nothing more than a brake to avoid an otherwise fatal impact at the end.

[rehmwa 2]

As soon as you define "master" I'll chime in.

as for basic survival skills? we are seeing more people killing themselves under good canopies than when in clean freefall (or causing bad canopies due to bad body flight)......

...
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

[JumpsOffCliffs 0]

when i say master i just mean to be extremly experienced and talented at, i know the term is relative and all.

and i know all of this is relative to each person, so i guess if you dont understand my original question in my opinion this is a synonym "which dicipline progresses faster.

or if u had 50 minutes of free fall vx 50 minutes of canopy control, what do you think you would be better at

[JohnRich 4]

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>Normal freefall gives you only 70 seconds or less to practice.

Right - but that entire time you aren't practicing so much as actually doing what you planned to do. If you screw up a backin you can try again. If you plan the dive for backin practice, you could try it 10 times in that 70 seconds.

Canopy control is a bit different. You can practice under canopy, but you have only a few seconds to pull off a good landing.

I interpret "canopy control" to involve much more than just the last few seconds of landing the parachute.

Just as "freefall" involves much more than just aircraft exits, which also happen only once per jump for a few seconds.

Interesting discussion, and good points being made.

[Tolgak 0]

The focus in freefall is split between controlling yourself in the air, maneuvering around other people, and altitude/heading awareness.

The focus under canopy time splits between altitude, wind, landing point, awareness of other people under canopy, awareness of aircraft, canopy control, and landing. As you fly under canopy, focus changes from one set of threats to another. The ways you approach each of those threats under canopy change as you approach the ground.

Unless you're doing high hop'n'pops, you aren't going to learn nearly as much from a minute under canopy as you would a minute in freefall.

Dropzones are terrible places for inspiration. What does one think when one looks up for a sign only to see a bunch of people falling?

[brettski74 0]

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when i say master i just mean to be extremly experienced and talented at, i know the term is relative and all.

Experienced denotes time spent engaged in or working on a subject. Talent typically denotes a natural ability to learn a particular skill. Either way, you haven't really defined anything. What you're asking is vague and highly subjective, so people are not all answering the same question and the results of your poll will be largely meaningless as a result.

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and i know all of this is relative to each person, so i guess if you dont understand my original question in my opinion this is a synonym "which dicipline progresses faster.

Again, how do you compare progress in things that have entirely different goals. If I asked you, "Which is faster, running or walking?", the question is clear. Both running and walking are ways of moving from place to place and running is generally a faster way to move from point A to point B along the same path. There's a clear and easy comparison here. Freefall skills and canopy skills do not have any common, objectively measurable result, so how do you compare them? I understand your question. I suspect it is you that does not.

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or if u had 50 minutes of free fall vx 50 minutes of canopy control, what do you think you would be better at

Define "better".

[kallend 1,644]

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when i say master i just mean to be extremly experienced and talented at, i know the term is relative and all.

Judging by what I've seen, flat tracking after breakoff is the most difficult skill to master.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[mjosparky 3]

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Defo freefall, I see people with less than 100 jumps doing good sitflying and shit, yet you never see them swoop

You may not have seen them do it but they do. Check the fatality reports.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[JohanW 0]

I voted canopy control.

That may simply mean I have lower standards for mastery of canopy control than I do for freefall skills.

I don't see how experience and talent affect the ease of mastering something BTW.

Johan.
I am. I think.

[Andy9o8 0]

So to summarize the thread: Canopy control is most important, except that freefall is most important. Glad we cleared that up.
Now, then - on to teaching students how to drive. What skill is more important to master - Steering, or braking? And which is easiest to master - parallel parking or merging onto a busy interstate?

Hello? It's all important. You teach it all, you learn it all.

[mjosparky 3]

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And which is easiest to master - parallel parking or merging onto a busy interstate?

Merging is just parallel parking at 65 mph.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[JohnMitchell 14]

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Judging by what I've seen, flat tracking after breakoff is the most difficult skill to master.

Listening to people tell you your track isn't that good and heeding their advice is the most difficult skill to master.

Agree with you on that one. Amazing how many people over 1000 jumps don't track well at all. But it all makes it easier for me to get away.