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mamajumps

Frickin Tandem Factories....

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So... to get this thread back on the original topic...

Did you call the DZO again to explain what happened with the manifest bitch and see what he had to say?

Oh yeah, out the DZ's name so I can be sure not to waste my time showing up there. :P

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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>I think you'll be hard-pressed to persuade me that a first-time
>tandem jumper conquers that any less than you or I did on our first
>jumps.

If you want to define "conquer" as "let someone do something for you" then I would agree. I cannot equate jumping on your own and landing your parachute on your own to a jump where, if you panic and do absolutely nothing, you will be just fine.

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So... to get this thread back on the original topic...

Did you call the DZO again to explain what happened with the manifest bitch and see what he had to say?

Oh yeah, out the DZ's name so I can be sure not to waste my time showing up there. :P



No I did not, I didnt feel it was worth my time.... I will PM you the DZ name....

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what about the AFF Factories? any burn with these places?

like for example..do the bare minimum in getting students qualified to save their life.. after level 7... SEE YA SOON FOR YOUR A. BYE



A lot of dz's that fall into the "tandem factory" also fall into this category. Once your done spending big money at their DZ, they no longer give a shit if your there or not.

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I'm happy I started last year so I could skip the carnival ride and go right to the difficult stuff.


I started with IAF (3 tandems and 5 AFF jumps), and I did not think of any of them as the "carnival ride" that your typical tandem "student" goes on. I wore an altimiter for my jumps. I "did" the turns in freefall (with assistance of the TI), I had to pull at the right altitude, I had a coach under canopy as I made the turns and set up the pattern (again with help) and I flared on landing (with help).

A well done (by the TI) IAF jump is a VERY good training tool. Having someone behind me talking me through the canopy opening, approach, and landing was much better than the radio I had on my 5 AFF jumps for "teaching" me about canopy piloting.

Tandem, when done right, is a GREAT training method.

Mark Klingelhoefer

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Yes....it is a skydive...for the tandemmaster. For the passenger its pure carnival.


My first skydive was a tandem. I did it at Eloy. I went with my GF's best friend and her husband, when asked by my GF. She knew what my answer would be before even asking.
Anyhow, my TM was late getting me geared up. He said he didn't know they had him scheduled to work and he was a little rushed getting me ready. Even so, he did give me an altimeter, he took the time to answer all of my questions and ask my why I was doing this and if this was my first jump. I told him that I was doing this because it was 'on my list'. I had no thoughts of doing it again.
Even with my reply, he expained the dive flow, how long we would be in freefall, when I should pull th ripcord and what to expect when I did. He expained the basic working of the canopy, how it was controled, and asked if I felt like flying it. He also asked if I wanted to do some spins.
The point I am trying to make here is, even though he was running late, he took the time to get me interested, and invested in the jump.
Due to my having a part in saving my life, pulling the ripcord, and being able to make some turns under canopy, my jump was not a carnival ride, I OWNED IT!
Once down, I could think of nothing but doing it again. I had to wait a few minutes for the video and stills and this gave me a chance to observe some of the fun jumpers, packing, landing gearing up and such. This is when I decided to take up the sport.
I know there are many that would not call me a skydiver, I am not sure I really think of myself as a skydiver. I am just a guy that skydives.
Bottom line here for me is that I would never have gotten involved with the sport had it not been for the chance to do a tandem.
Thanks Jason, that jump changed my life!
"I'm not lost. I don't know where I'm going, but there's no sense in being late."
Mathew Quigley

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My first jump was a tandem at Skydive USA (thanks Chuck!). I never considered it a carnival ride, just something that Trent wanted me to do.

My TM was Ron Walker, a former Golden Knight and a really good guy. Since I had also been in the Army, Ron and I talked a lot after the beer light came on after my second tandem. I could relate to his stories and I like to think he could relate to mine.

Ron sold me on the student program. It was not a high pressure sell by Ron either, just something I wanted to do after talking to him about a lot of other stuff. I liked him and the dz and wanted to hang out there.

Last weekend one of the TM's at Spaceland was telling me that although he likes the 100+ tandem Saturdays they are having because of the money, he is so busy that he doesn't have enough time to talk to the student about the ISP student program in any detail. This is unfortunate since the TM is usually the first contact the tandem has with the sport and the only person on the DZ that spends anytime with the tandem.

I think this is where a lot of DZs fail. Once the TMs think of it as just a job, a carnival ride, a production line, or or too busy the they may stop selling the fun of skydiving.

Of course it is not only the TM's job to sell the sport. It is up to all of us from the DZO to the newest jumper to greet the tandem's, be friendly, answer their questions, laugh at their videos.

And sometimes it is the simplest thing...like offering the tandems to stay for a beer, a party or dinner at the DZ since they have been there all day and it is now approaching 6 or 7 PM.

Why should we help the DZO earn more money? The tandems give the DZ a quick cash inflow. Sure they may only do one jump, but it is equal to 10 fun jumps and only takes one load. This helps offset the DZ overhead and reduces the amount each of us would pay for a fun jump. Fun jumps cover the direct jump costs (fuel, aircraft slot, pilot), but don't actually contribute much to the other operating expenses of the dz.

Blue skies,

Jim

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Why has this post turned to support and or bash the tandems? I started this post to rant about the behavior of DZO's that treat fun jumpers like shit. My first jump too was also a tandem. I never even knew that skydiving was something that I could do... Im glad I made my first tandem. I didnt start this post to bitch about the act, but rather the poor business practices of some DZO's. Again, it is the DZO's right to do whatever they want at their DZ, but they dont have to treat fun jumpers like shit and lie to them in the process...

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So... to get this thread back on the original topic...

Did you call the DZO again to explain what happened with the manifest bitch and see what he had to say?

Oh yeah, out the DZ's name so I can be sure not to waste my time showing up there. :P



No I did not, I didnt feel it was worth my time.... I will PM you the DZ name....


IMHO, that should have been your first move and posting a rant on the internet your last.
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things." CP

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"why do you feel that you have the right to tell others how to do their business ? Their business is NOT to provide fun jumpers with altitude, but to make money. No matter how much we agree or disagree "

I would then ask if they enjoy the benefits of Group Insurance and everything that USPA has to offer along with PIA. If they do, then they should be FORCED to accept fun jumpers as well. If they want to just be a business, then I would say let them get their own insurance and not let them enjoy any of the other ammentities that we as fun jumpers support with our money. Seperate them from sport skydiving just like we do with the military. One does not include the other.
Green Light
"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."
"Your statement answered your question."

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I'm hearing a lot of "Tandem factories are no good", and they take away real skydivers...

I would be interested in what people think of the fact that the world has changed in the last 20 years, equipment is expensive now, jumps are expensive now, The internet is stopping people go outside as much, or maybe it's giving people the chance to find a DZ and so on, so many things are different to many years ago.

I remember my dad looking at my car and asking where the carb was and so on, pooh-poohing the fact that it's hard to mod your own car yourself like you could in the past, I'm sure his dad pooh poohed the car my dad had, not made by a craftsman and so on.

Times move on and things change. For all those who think we should jump rounds to weed out the less macho types, I would like those people to go back to crossply tires on their cars and get a huge gas guzzling monster 429ci mustang and see how it compares to their newer car.

In any case, I agree with the initial post that if you are told one thing then you travel 100miles to get told a different story, then I would be annoyed too.

As regards tandem factories, I'm going to go down to my local computer shop and tell them they suck because they don't do lifts for fun jumpers... or is it none of my business what they choose to do in their business.. hmmm

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>>As regards tandem factories, I'm going to go down to my local computer shop and tell them they suck because they don't do lifts for fun jumpers... or is it none of my business what they choose to do in their business.. hmmm
Maybe that's the main difference between then and now, and you and me. Your relationship with the sport of skydiving is on the same level as your relationship with your local computer shop . . .

Did we spawn a generation of "customers" rather than jumpers? And worse did we allow a generation of profit only DZs that cater to those customers with nothing in, nothing out, tandems . . . ?

NickD :)

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I would then ask if they enjoy the benefits of Group Insurance and everything that USPA has to offer along with PIA. If they do, then they should be FORCED to accept fun jumpers as well. If they want to just be a business, then I would say let them get their own insurance and not let them enjoy any of the other ammentities that we as fun jumpers support with our money. Seperate them from sport skydiving just like we do with the military. One does not include the other.



This is one of the reasons I am no longer a USPA Member.

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Okay, Butters, I'll probably be sorry for this, but I'll take the bait . . .

I was specifically talking about "Tandem Mills" and not tandem in general. But I'm not afraid to go there too.

While I've been a Tandem Master myself I see tandems mostly from the point of view of an AFF/SL Instructor. And I've also been around longer than tandems so I can see the sport on both sides of their invention. I think we were better off before. Sure, tandem has brought big money into the sport, but at what price?

One peeve of mine is hearing someone say, in talking about their first tandem jump, "Gee, I could never have done that on my own." But my entire generation did their first jumps on their own, and I taught a whole generation to make that first jump on their own. So it's a shame we present first jumps that way because it's simply not true.

Also a first jump student going AFF or static line actually gets a chance to immerse themselves in the sport for a full day, or sometimes more, compared to a tandem student who spends two hours, makes the jump, and leaves for their yoga class. An AFF or S/L student gets to connect with their Instructor, who if he's worth a damn, will leave them thinking, "Man, I want to be like this guy." I'm not saying that for my own vanity or gratification, it was the way I felt about my FJC Instructor. It's why I stayed in the sport, and it's why I became an Instructor myself.

Most students land, tandem included, saying, "Boy, I'll have to do that again!" Yet, at least the AFF or S/L student has some small inkling there's more to this sport than meets the eye. Again with a good Instructor whose subtle enough they can see a road from where they are now to becoming full fledged skydivers. Tandem students, after the initial euphoria wears off, feel like, "Skydiving, yup, been there, done that."

Now I've actually seen some "Tandem Mills" (and by that I mean a DZ that excludes up-jumpers, that weren't exactly horrible). But none of them have been in the USA. I've seen them where if you really want to continue, instead of milking you for a few more tandems, they'll say here's what you do. "Go to this other drop zone and sign up for this program." And you get maps, directions, prices, and an overview of what's ahead.

Who really doesn't think that nurturing our future experienced jumpers is job number one? What's going to kill this sport faster than anything else is not airport access, high fuel and jump prices, or an inept governing association. It'll be the dwindling number of experienced jumpers at the DZ. You can toss out numbers and statistics all you want, but I know, because I see it, there were more people at the DZ 20 years ago than there is today, a lot more.

Now I know tandem has begat more student starts, if we call someone without a thorough course of instruction, a start, but there are less student stays. And a student who goes on to become licensed is the goal we should be striving for. Okay, a bunch of you are going to say, "Gee. Nick, I started with Tandem and I'm an experienced skydiver now." But that's not a fair assessment. If everyone who had ever made a tandem jump, and never jumped again, posted to this site, you'd feel like you were looking over the wall at the Alamo.

I recall when tandem first appeared and I was the Chief Instructor at Lake Elsinore. Our DZO bought one and we all gathered around giving it a first look. It appeared innocuous enough, kind of cool really, but what we weren't capable of seeing is here, in disguise, was the very Devil Himself. I was actually pretty happy about it. Here, I naively thought, was finally a way the blind, the infirm, and the very old, could actually make an easy and safer parachute jump. That's all I thought tandem would be. But I was wrong and so were Bill Booth and Ted Strong who invented and let loose the beast. Their idea for tandem sort of made sense. It was a way to teach skydiving to everyone because skydiving, at the time, was almost the only aviation endeavor that didn't provide some type of true dual instruction. But in my mind it always seemed like strapping on a person to teach you how to swim.

Well, what I thought tandem would be, and what Bill and Ted thought tandem would be like didn't happen, at least not initially. Now again some of this will seem wrong to you if you came to skydiving after tandem gained a foot hold. It would just seem more natural and acceptable to you. But it didn’t to me. I didn't want anything to do with them at first. As a rigger I found them interesting of course, if not a bit complicated, and as an Instructor I was curious what their effect would be. But at first I couldn't shake the idea they were simply too complicated.

But then the real effect of tandem started to appear. After a few weeks of offering tandem jumps at Elsinore a funny thing started to happen. We were drawing the usual number of students every day but the AFF and Static Line classes started to get markedly smaller. It was human nature and I should have seen it coming. A prospective student walks up and asks to make a jump. They'd get the spiel about the three ways they can do it, which in their minds, basically boils down to either alone or strapped to an experienced jumper. And alone started to lose out.

Also I saw right away there were less first jump students around the bonfire at night. Where once, after already spending the entire day in class, and jumping around sunset, it was normal they'd gravitate to it. They'd eat with us, drink with us, and listen to the stories. At the time, and looking back on it now because it just seemed normal, I didn't realize, and I'm sure students didn't either, that they were deviously being indoctrinated into the sport. People naturally want to belong to a group. And skydiving offered that in spades not to mention for a lot of the younger aimless types, it was better than joining the Army or something. So again in hindsight, what we were really selling wasn't altitude, it wasn't a skill set, and it wasn't even action and adventure. It was a way off the block, a way to separate you from whatever and whoever came before; it was the Foreign Legion of the sport's world. And a lot of us signed up. But I'm afraid less and less do after tandem.

I was traveling once on a BASE road trip and we passed a DZ and stopped. It was a tandem mill and the first I'd ever really seen. As we drove up it was mid-day and you could see people leaving in their cars. Before tandem people arrived in the morning and left at night. As soon as I walked into the hangar I heard, "Hey, Nick!" And here was the DZO, a former student of mine who I hadn't seen in years. So he's shaking my hand and introducing me around to his staff as the guy who taught him to skydive. So naturally like we all do when visiting a new DZ, I wanted to make a jump, but I didn't have a skydiving rig with me. So I asked him to let me borrow his. He said, "Sorry, man, we don't allow experienced jumpers here, and if I make an exception for you, I get grief from everyone else who asks, you can understand."

Well, I didn't understand and I told him so. "What are you really doing here? This isn’t why I taught you to skydive." I let him know how disappointed I was in him and we left. Later that night we were camped out under a bridge we'd been jumping that afternoon, and I mentioned to no one in particular, "Man, if what I saw today ever happens to B.A.S.E. jumping I'm going to blow my brains out!"

And luckily for me, so far it hasn't . . .

NickD :)



Fucking awesome man, I could not possibly have said it better.;)

I remember when tandems first showed up at the DZ and I said "You gotta be kidding, Who are you going to get to do that? "

I thought it was going to be a novelty, a safe mister bill but nothing more. Boy was I wrong. I think tandems are killing our sport but now that the genie is out of the bottle what can we do?

A good friend of mine recently made a quoteable quote and I think it should be on the wall in big bold letters.....

"This is not a drop zone, It is an amusement park!"


more later,
Onward and Upward!

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I believe in the case the DZ was just so booked up with tandems that they could'nt have spared room in the 182 for a fun jumper load and still been able to fly the students that were waiting there before sunset. If you are down to 2-3 hours worth of daylight and still have a few groups of tandems you need every minute you can get to run those loads.

Hell, static line DZ's are like this all the time. Experienced jumpers sit around and wait for the openings between student loads to jump or they fill in the open seat and do a hop and pop since that is their only chance to jump for the day. I've sat around a SL DZ most of a day and only got to make 2 jumps since there were enough SL and tandem students and other jumpers around that I couldn't get on anymore loads then that. Should that DZ be bitched at for not having enough load abilitiy for me to do the 5-6 jumps I wanted to do?
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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Last weekend one of the TM's at Spaceland was telling me that although he likes the 100+ tandem Saturdays they are having because of the money, he is so busy that he doesn't have enough time to talk to the student about the ISP student program in any detail. This is unfortunate since the TM is usually the first contact the tandem has with the sport and the only person on the DZ that spends anytime with the tandem.



This was also an issue during the AFF program for me. The AFF-Is were also doing tandems, and quite often would be doing a back to back (and sometimes to back) after my jump, so it was sometimes an hour before they could debrief me on the jump. This also delayed manifesting for the next jump, and then the winds would show up and ground me.

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Hi NickD,

were you taking one comment out of context which I was using to make a point that tandem factories are businesses and thus their policies are up to them, not me ? That therefore makes me a customer and not skydiver huh, well maybe only the English get irony and sarcasm... and picking on things out of context is bad form I think. Maybe you missed the point – the point is that it is not up to me to tell any DZ how they can be run, I just have to live with what they choose, the same as you do.

Perhaps I should tell you how you should make money if I don’t like how you make a living. Do you think you would you do as I asked or do as you wanted ?

As a thought, do you really believe you weren't a customer of someone in years gone by, or did some nice guy give you free gear, food, beer and jump tickets ? Maybe you were at a club which was likely cool and enjoyable but then maybe Strong or Booth or whomever just made the rigs that you used just did it for fun, not to live off from running a business… you ever think to tell them they shouldn’t run their business their way because maybe their prices are darned expensive at 1-2k or so for a container ?

My own profession, writing computer software also has changed beyond recognition in 20 years - writing computer games that took 3.5k, yep just 3500 bytes with a team of maybe 2 people, was commonplace when I started, now you need huge teams of impersonal team members who need gigabytes of memory and huge dollops of computing power just to make things work. I'll be honest, I prefer the old days, but I realise they are gone so I move with the times, not complaining about the way things are compared to yesteryear. I have some fun tales to regale my friends with but I don't sit at my desk complaining that some other time was better and that some new programmer is just a customer because he/she didn’t do it the way I did years ago.

At the moment I jump from a porter, which takes 13 mins to 13500. I'm quite pleased not to have to sit around all day waiting for a Cessna which I can get into which gets me to 10k in 40 minutes like my brother does - he hates that. Maybe this fast plane is the tandem's fault, in which case, thank you tandems.
You might prefer the atmosphere of years gone by, but I like to actually jump too, and in the UK, when it's raining the atmosphere just ain't that good, the barbeque gets rained on and so on.

Interestingly, in the UK, static line students make more money for DZO's than tandems and AFF (so say the DZO's I have spoken to - 1 instructor to pay per load of paying students is all that’s needed - do the math), so if they were just interested in money, fun jumpers, Tandems and AFF's would be banned. Weird way to look at it huh.

And I'm not sure you spawned anything (unless you are a DZO), I think the world just moved on - embrace it and be happy

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Does a tandem rider not require USPA membership - not even temporary ? Interesting - I would have expected them to need it, I believe you need BPA membership in the UK to do a tandem in the UK

If it is the case that Tandems do require some form of membership, then given the better accident record of tandems (i.e. less accidents) I would fully expect the tandems to be helping keep our Insurance premiums down, so if they do require membership then thanks again for saving me money mr .tandem rider.

If they don't need membership then they won't be getting any benefit from USPA and our membership, thus they are non existent as far as our insurance is concerned, thus they are neutral re: USPA costs

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>I started with IAF (3 tandems and 5 AFF jumps), and I did not think of any of them as the "carnival ride" that your typical tandem "student" goes on. I wore an altimiter for my jumps. I "did" the turns in freefall (with assistance of the TI), I had to pull at the right altitude, I had a coach under canopy as I made the turns and set up the pattern (again with help) and I flared on landing (with help).


BUT.....In the back of your mind, you knew if you didnt pull.....
SOMEONE ELSE WOULD!

Big difference in my book

g

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Does a tandem rider not require USPA membership - not even temporary ? Interesting - I would have expected them to need it, I believe you need BPA membership in the UK to do a tandem in the UK

If it is the case that Tandems do require some form of membership, then given the better accident record of tandems (i.e. less accidents) I would fully expect the tandems to be helping keep our Insurance premiums down, so if they do require membership then thanks again for saving me money mr .tandem rider.

If they don't need membership then they won't be getting any benefit from USPA and our membership, thus they are non existent as far as our insurance is concerned, thus they are neutral re: USPA costs


The USPA membership is not required for tandem students, but these Tandem Mills use the lobbying power of the USPA, insurance for their staff, and other benefits that the USPA (and all of the fun jumper money that keeps the USPA alive) to support them, but they are free to ban all fun jumpers (who are indirectly helping them stay in business through the USPA).

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The USPA membership is not required for tandem students, but these Tandem Mills use the lobbying power of the USPA, insurance for their staff, and other benefits that the USPA (and all of the fun jumper money that keeps the USPA alive) to support them, but they are free to ban all fun jumpers (who are indirectly helping them stay in business through the USPA).



Ah, ok, thanks for clearing that up. That's not really on then and I'm with you on that one.

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This was also an issue during the AFF program for me. The AFF-Is were also doing tandems, and quite often would be doing a back to back (and sometimes to back) after my jump, so it was sometimes an hour before they could debrief me on the jump. This also delayed manifesting for the next jump, and then the winds would show up and ground me.



Yeah totally!
Last year when I was a student I spent entire weekends at the DZ, arriving at 9am, waiting until 5 or 6pm to do a single jump, then the evening wind arrived.. I did my FJC in March and didn't get solo until July. :/ I didn't blame the tandems though.. it seemed a simple matter of not enough instructors with the right ratings to go around.
Looking for newbie rig, all components...

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