I'm an Oldie - Why I'm Disappointed

[NickDG 23]

When I made my first jump in 1975 the sport, while not exactly in its formative years, still had more ahead of it than behind. And even though it was the year Booth gave us three rings and hand deploy, there was a clear line between what gear novices jumped and what the experienced folks jumped. It's an understatement to say we rushed our novices into more modern gear as we made them jump rounds until they had 100 jumps. Not only did this serve as a probationary period, it quickly weeded out the people who didn’t want to be skydivers bad enough. In those days you could almost automatically trust a stranger with a couple hundred jumps because you knew the rough road they traveled to get there. Nowadays the road to a couple hundred jumps can only be termed as "easy street."

Also in those days the sport had more of a club mentality. I'm saddened to see so many jumpers today agree that they dislike tandem jumping but feel it's necessary to keep us in turbine aircraft, fast climbs, and endless turn-arounds. These are folks who can't comprehend how much fun you can have with 20 to 30 hardcore weekend jumpers, a few students, and a Cessna. These are the jumpers who need DZ amenities. The pools, bars, showers, restaurants, and RV hookups. We cooled off with a hose, drank in the parking lot, showered on Friday, hardly ate, and slept in bags on the wooden packing tables.

The funny thing is the people are still very much the same. Students today successfully making that first jump act just as giddy as those in 1975. The smiles after each milestone are exactly the same, and you still hear them saying, "Skydiving opened my door and changed my life." So what happened?

The sport deserted us, that's what happened. While we were out on the line being Instructors, being fun jumpers, or just enjoying to social aspects of the sport it all got sold down the river. It got sold out by money grubbing DZOs and a joke of an Association that purported to stand up for individual jumpers. We had, so far, withstood every onslaught that was purported to ruin the sport. The military atmosphere of the sport in the 60s survived the invasion of dope smoking hippies in the 70s. The dope smoking hippies then survived the Yuppie incursion of the 80s. And then the Yuppies survived the people who wore funny hats and called themselves free flyers like everyone before them was tied to a string or something. And I'm sure the free flyers will survive what ever comes next.

I saw Instructors of the 70s, once treated as god like, relegated to bum status in leaky trailers in the 90s. I saw organizers hoisted on shoulders and showered in praise while Instructors toiled in the trenches with an increasingly "me first" student population. I watched gear sellers, once the friendly soft spoken guy in a van full of gear in the parking lot, grow into multi-million dollar operations where the mantra is shovel as much nylon out the door as possible. I actually remember the first time I bought a parachute indoors.

But it was money, that dirty stinking love for a buck, that killed the spirit of skydiving. We’ve over packaged it to the point a first time jumper hardly gets a fleeting glimpse of what drew all of us to the sport in the first place.

So why are we letting that happen and what can we do to take the sport back?

Okay, I hear you. The logistics of skydiving are surly more complicated now, it's more expensive to operate aircraft and people expect to be pampered instead of making a hard journey to respected local jumper status. But that's B.S. People are looking for the same thing they've always been looking for. An escape from their mundane reality, a group that they can belong to, and a set of goals they can achieve. But right now a first jump tandem experience has all the excitement of a night out at the Olive Garden.

Skydiving has always been expensive. It took all the money you had in the 70s and it can take all the money you have in the 00s. And don't kid yourself. The DZO that smiles in your face lays awake nights hoping he can figure out a way to keep the cash cow flowing without putting up with jumpers in any way, shape, or form.

So let's do this. Every jumper in the sport for five years knows at least a hundred other up-jumpers. And those hundred jumpers should purchase their altitude the same way they buy carpet, factory direct. Who needs middlemen profit taking DZOs? Go to any general aviation airport and note the amount of aircraft lying fallow. Lease one and form a non-profit club. With the way airlines are dumping pilots high timers are a dime a dozen and desperate for flying work. With the economy tanking renting Farmer McNasty's field isn't as hard as it once was. The whole current situation is ripe for a resurgence of skydiving clubs. In a club you don't hire a plumber, or a grader, or an electrician, and then pass that cost onto your customers. The plumbers, graders, and electricians are jumpers in the club who volunteer their time. Manifest is the girl too young to jump, food and drink is laid out potluck style and the Instructors are guys, like me, who don't need to make money by the head.

It's pretty simple, the DZOs and the USPA divide us. But by pulling together there isn't anything we can't accomplish. We did it before and we can do it again . . .

NickD

• Quote

[SStewart 13]

Those small clubs still exist, I jump at one.

They just need a voice.

Onward and Upward!

[shropshire 0]

Great post

The sport certainly "feels" different to me, the 2nd time around (some good but most not so good)

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Andrewwhyte 1]

Just a couple of points:

Quote

But right now a first jump tandem experience has all the excitement of a night out at the Olive Garden.

Tell that to the girl whose face lit up like a Christmas tree last evening when the weather finally cleared and we took off. The girl who was so chatty on the ground but got oh, so quiet as we tightened up and the realization that the time was now, that she really was going to do this. The girl who fell over twice running over to high five her cousin after we landed. She was not at the Olive Garden; she was skydiving.

Quote

With the way airlines are dumping pilots high timers are a dime a dozen and desperate for flying work.

Not sure that's true. There is a lot of retiring going on in the industry. I am still seeing people moving up in the industry.

Quote

With the economy tanking renting Farmer McNasty's field isn't as hard as it once was.

It is probably harder than it has ever been. We are in the midst of a worldwide food crisis. The price of wheat, barley, corn, you name it, is through the roof. Grain land that was worth $100.00/acre twenty years ago is fetching thousands today. I heard of a farm going for $10,000/acre recently.
I have seen a few DZs start up with a motif similar to what you are suggesting. The one in northern Washington is sort of like that. I haven't heard if they opened this year. I know it was questionable last year. We had one like that here in Alberta a few years ago. It ended up changing it's style to a student oriented one like the rest of us. The truth is when you look at who wants and will pay for those amenities, it is us.

[pilotdave 0]

You make me glad that I'm skydiving now and not in 1975! You must have fond memories, but it sounds awful. I jump at a club DZ... no greedy DZO, no full time staff, nobody driven by profit. It's got its advantages, but I sure am glad that there are big commercial dropzones to travel to. Even with a group of jumpers, some students, and a couple cessnas, a dropzone won't last a couple months without tandems... at least not in this part of the world. Ok, that's not true... we survive the winter every year without tandems. But even $25 jumps barely break even these days... to cover the aircraft. Doesn't pay the other bills. And there are a lot of bills...

So when are you going to open your own dropzone and run it the way you want?

Dave

[Chubba 0]

I jump at a small dropzone.

Cessna 182, lucky to get 10 jumpers on a saturday (we couldn't even fill a plane yesterday, 4 jumpers). No tandems. Single hangar out of 100+ hangars at a busy airport, we don't even have running water

That being said, I can't wait to venture out to the turbine DZ here... mmmmm double caravans

[tombuch 0]

Interesting point(s).

When I made my first jump in 1979 there were 53 fatalities. Let me repeat that. Fifty-frekin-three fatalities. Last year there were just 18.

We’ve come a long way. The equipment is far better, and the new fangled electronic AAD’s probably save more than 53 lives every single year. Plus the level of instruction is way better than what I remember from my six hour static line first jump course. And, I’ll wager that our airplanes are much safer than what we had for lift support in the 70’s. Plus, these days the entertainment on the ride to altitude rarely includes sharing a fat line of cocaine, or a garbage bag filled with laughing gas. So things are safer, and I guess more sterile. And a lot more legal. That’s not a bad thing.

Sadly, though,, the spirit that brought us together seems to have been lost from many DZ’s, and especially from many of the large turbine DZ’s. I don’t think jumpers curl up for the night in a pile of old student parachutes anymore, and I doubt the neighboring farmers corn field is used for collective alternative agriculture like back in the day. There probably aren’t a whole lot of big DZ jumpers playing the human chain-game with electric fences, or going on late night cow tipping expeditions at two o’clock in the morning. Oh I know all that stuff still happens, but not to the degree that it once did, and by and large the cliques that now engage in that kind of behavior are not the norm. The evening barbeque isn’t usually hosted by the guy with the old truck who just went out and picked up some burgers and dogs, but is instead a creation of the for-profit snack bar that pays a fee to the big DZ operator. Too often we have become customers and clients, and not friends.

It doesn’t have to be that way, and we don’t need to break apart into clusters of a dozen or two renegades to have fun.

I’ve stopped jumping at the mega-Otter DZ that runs as a tandem factory, and now jump at a small Cessna DZ owned by real people, and run by real people. For the most part jumps are manifested first, then folks figure out what to do based on the experience on the load. That means no sky-gods strutting their ego’s and keeping the beginners at arms length, and everybody actually talks to everybody else. When students show up folks help out and do what it takes to get them in the air with a genuine hope that they will stick around and become our playmates, rather than a wish that they would leave a credit card impression and go away. Folks go out to the local store to buy their own lunch and pick stuff up for the rest of the crew, and sometimes actually host a bbq in the evening.

It’s still like it was, but a bit safer now. You just need to know what you are missing, and then go find it.

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

[Croc 0]

I don't know how it was in the old days, but I know how it was at the tandem and AFF factory where I learned. Now I jump and instruct static line at a nearby Cessna DZ. The day it closes its doors will be the day I sell my gear. Tandem I can see. AFF sucks.

"Here's a good specimen of my own wisdom. Something is so, except when it isn't so."

Charles Fort, commenting on the many contradictions of astronomy

[ladyhawke 0]

GREAT POST! I've been thinking about this very thing for many, many months!

I've only been in the sport 3 years and I've got news for ya - that was then - this is now.

Where I live, fun jumpers won't support a club unless it has a twin otter! Good luck with that!

Jumpers today are just jumping out of planes. It's more about how many points did I turn or how rad was my sit fly then truly BEING a skydiver.

You're lucky at least you got to experience the days when BEING a SKYDIVER was a BELIEF in how you chose to live your life and express it.

I'm not only disappointed, I'm disgusted and totally disillusioned.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are far more than our abilities." - A. Dumbledore

[mdrejhon 8]

NickDG,

Thanks for that interesting historical insight on skydiving culture. Even though I am still only around the triple hundred mark and it may have been Easy Street compared to skydivers of the eras past I have been to almost a dozen different dropzones now, from grass strip farmhouse dropzones all the way to a megaresort dropzone just recently. I think I like all of them for different reasons, although I can see that some of them put tandems a little too serously.

Cessna dropzones aren't terrible when there's two or three, I was able to get 9 jumps in one day at a Cessna dropzone -- including a very trusty 50-year old C182 that just got retired only recently. (That airfarme must have gotten a lot of TLC to keep flying that long!) It may have been slow, but the sights of the 1000-Islands was always beautiful and I still got 11000 feet, with the occasional 12500 foot jump on a good day...

With me trying to be more into big way jumping, this gives me more exposure to more of the megaresort dropzones that has a lot more facilities. I was however, one of the only 3 tents at Skydive Perris during the last Big Way Camp -- I don't really need to stay in a motel, and will settle for a bunkhouse, or tent if bunkhouse is full. The fact that showers are onsite is enough for me, and the restaurant (next to bombshelter) is a big bonus.

I have seen a glimpse of a wide variety of dropzones (for someone of my level anyway) and see the vast differences. But it hasn't dissapointed me yet.

I would admit, I've had a hankering to see a permanent Caravan at my former-3-cessna home dropzone -- after one C182 got retired (down to 2 cessnas) and one plane broke down (down to 1 cessna), 5 hour wait time for manifest can be quite a drag at the same dropzone I was able to get 9 jumps in one day during a previous year. Probably my biggest dissapointment in skydiving so far, moreso than being cut from Canada Record (But still getting a 30-way success in 2006).

I'll just settle for an extra Cessna at my home DZ to bring them back to their former 3-cessna fleet. That way, one breaks down and there's still 2. Just look them up and offer em one.

[airdvr 197]

Beautiful man...just beautiful.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[tbrown 26]

I started out at a two Cessna DZ in 1974 and did a lot of my early jumps at another single Cessna DZ on a farmer's back forty. And I have a lot of fond memories of both. But I really fell in love with the DC-3's too and nowadays I don't mind the turbos one little bit.

Our whole life in America has changed a lot since the seventies. If you really think back, those weren't the greatest years. We'd just been humiliated in Vietnam, had our first oil crisis (with gas leaping to 60 cents a gallon), a serious recession with high unemployment, and then we elected some loser from Georgia who spent the next four years apologizing to us for his failures to lead the country. Thank God for skydiving is all I can say about the seventies (well, there was a lot of sex too, we WERE young then).

But skydiving, as different as it is from the mainstream, is still inescapably part & parcel of the world we live in. Do you know any kids from Darfur who go skydiving ? I'm not saying that to put you on a guilt trip, but do any of us realize just how incredibly LUCKY we are to amuse ourselves with leaping into the sky from an airplane ? If we're not as groovy as we used to be thirty years ago - and we were - neither is the rest of modern society.

And in the meantime, we have SUCH a faster learning curve. We have kids with just fifty jumps who do a competent job docking on and tracking away from 30 Ways. And our biggest concern now is no longer if the damn thing opens, but how to handle the thing when it DOES open. I'll call that progress and LIKE it. As for USPA, well......they sucked back then and still suck now. Anybody up for a CONFEDERATE States Parachute Association ? Let me know, I'm listening.....

I sympathize with what you're saying, but there's no return to the romanticized past either.

At least WE have the memories.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[zoobrothertom 5]

Yep

____________________________________
I'm back in the USA!!

[skyjumpenfool 2]

I've been in this sport since the 70's...
I enjoy every jump today as much as my first. I still consider it a privlige to jump from an airplane, as opposed to a constitutional right. Yes, it's a different sport today, but I still love and enjoy it. And, yes, I've had to alter my mindset a bit. But it's a small amount to pay for doing what I love! Each DZ is different, each jump is different. Enjoy it while you can.

Birdshit & Fools Productions

"Son, only two things fall from the sky."

[pinkfairy 0]

Your plan could work, but non profit clubs will not necessarily work in the long term.

Here in Norway, all DZs are owned by clubs, but less and less of work needed to run the DZ is done by the club members for free. Packers, instructors and manifesters are brought in from abroad, and paid, club members do clean the DZ building, but they get free jumps for it (With the jump prices that we have today, that's gotta be the best paid cleaning personnel in Norway), and if you want to jump with an organizer or instructor, you have to pay. It might start off well, but soon club members want to get something back for what they give. The DZs today are also filled with people who want to "Improve my freefly skills, so sorry, I can't jump with you!", or "No, I spent all my money jumping with the organizer, so I can't afford a fun jump!" They don't have time to pack student canopies for free or do the manifesting. At some clubs, I'm sure that having a commercially run DZ would result in cheaper jumps, because a DZO would want to keep things structured and organised.

I know the "everyone runs the DZ together"-model works in some clubs, and the jumps are really cheap as a result, but not in all clubs. It needs effort from all, a good leader and people who work well together.

Just my thoughts and real life experiences.

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?

[johan420 0]

the club u are talking about is the biggest dz in norway, so u can`t compare this dz with the other small dz`s in norway where they use cesnas and they actually doing funjumps and people pack studentcanopies for free..

[aresye 0]

Great post Nick!

I feel lucky to have been introduced to skydiving by my friend, who's always been around the small DZ atmosphere. He's what I would define as a real skydiver. His life revolves around the sport, and right now he's too far away from any decent DZ.

I feel a lot of people seem to want to impress others, either by getting good at freeflying, or by pulling off a swoop in front of bystanders. It isn't about impressing others, it's about having fun.

I don't use a bunk house, or get a hotel room. I bring a sleeping bag, and either sleep in my car in the parking lot, or on the packing pads.

Skydiving: You either learn from other's mistakes, or they'll learn from yours.

[kallend 1,621]

It's a free country. Go ahead with your plan and report back to us how it works out.

...

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

[VectorBoy 0]

I started in the mid eighties but in Europe and it was a club mentality for sure. First jump was $7 static line. We didn't have AFF or tandem. We knew of them, seen pictures. No body on the DZ had upgraded to the 3 ring yet but everybody wanted to.

I took a decade and change off. Love the new gear, well my vector is twenty years old but its new compared to the stuff we had to rent in our club.

The culture has totally changed and I don't regret all of the changes but I draw the line when someone insists that we are all still a big family........... NO its pure business now. The bigger the DZ the more this is true. I know when I'm just a number. And to the guy minding the books numbers come and go.

[beowulf 1]

Change. Some things get better, some get worse. What is better or worse, is different depending on who you talk to. Change is inevitable just as there will always be people like you who resist change and long for the "good old days". Things aren't really any worse today then they were when you started, they are just different. Maybe worse in some ways and better in others. It all evens out. Try looking more at the positive changes rather then the negative.

Ok now that sounds way to positive for me. So to change it up.

Why don't you just quit whining and bitching about how things ain't like they used to be.

[pinkfairy 0]

My point excactly, it works in some clubs, not in others.

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?

[johan420 0]

i just buzzed thru your post...i see what u mean now

[feuergnom 22]

sounds all pretty familiar - even with just 7 years in this game. dz's putting tandem business over everything, driving away funjumpers, competion guys with arrogant attitudes towards newcomers (luckily not seen very often but still...) the list is pretty long
----> and then the guys trying to escape that very game, staring their own club just to get sucked into the same business-models because they have to get some dough just to pay depts for the cessna jumpship, add people only willing to jump from 13 grand+ and you are right back we most of us are now ...

The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle

dudeist skydiver # 666

[popsjumper 2]

WoW! Your post sounds like one of those...

lay-down-and-take-it-in-the-ass-accepting-anything-that-comes-along type posts.

Surely you didn't mean to come across like that.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[beowulf 1]

That wasn't how I wanted it to come across.

Basically things will never be like they were in the "good old days". So whining and bitching about how they aren't is not going to do any good. Trying to turn the clock back isn't going to do any good either. If NickDG really wants to change things for the better then maybe he should run for USPA Regional Director or open his own dropzone instead of bitching online.

Don't try to make things like they were in the past, instead try to make things better then they are today.