Should minimum recommendations apply to you?

[andm31 0]

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Answer what question? You did not answered mine.

Oh, sorry pressed the wrong reply button :)

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I believe a competent instructor may grant extra rights if he/she feel so.

Absolutely, i'm not in disagreement with you there, just wanted to make a point that at the end of the day we're all humans and as such makes bad calls and mistakes.

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Landing downwind is not necerely a crime.

No absolutely not, in fact I did it yesterday, but that was because yellow cross we use had been shaped into a T and they hadn't noticed that the wind had kicked up and shifted... interesting landing :) but we all walked away from it with a laugh (and some grass stains on our behinds)

I think in the example I gave the guy got grounded because the woman in charge on the ground (not sure what the English title would be for her position) had a serious talk to him about the importance of landing the same way when you have ten jumpers in the air and then he did it again.

Blue skies!

Anders Samuelsson
www.anderssamuelsson.se

[Tonto 1]

Excellent.
A good exercise when the weather is bad one day is take the BSR's, MOP's, SIM, whatever, and together with an instructor, try and figure out why each rule is there, or how else to deal with the event it was designed to prevent. These are "living documents" and should rely heavily on review from participants to see if there are better ways of doing things.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[andm31 0]

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Excellent.
A good exercise when the weather is bad one day is take the BSR's, MOP's, SIM, whatever, and together with an instructor, try and figure out why each rule is there, or how else to deal with the event it was designed to prevent. These are "living documents" and should rely heavily on review from participants to see if there are better ways of doing things.

t

Good advice! I'll certainly do that!

Over her it's called the SBF aka "the bible"

Blue skies!

Anders Samuelsson
www.anderssamuelsson.se

[billvon 2,380]

>Ok, I am not offended, but it begs the question, how many wingsuit
>jumps do I need before I am allowed to have an opinion? 500? 1000?

You can have one wingsuit jump and have an opinion! Nothing wrong with such opinions.

However, if someone with six wingsuit jumps came up to you and said "you should always cut your wings away before you pull, because it's impossible to pull with them attached" I would hope you would consider alternatives before taking his advice. You might also tell him to check his suit fit, wing length and pull technique because you disagree with his claim.

That wouldn't mean you were trying to stifle him, or that you thought "he was not allowed to have an opinion." It would mean you disagreed with him.

>And a tandem is just another skydive." Certainly a tandem is a more
>complicated skydive, with serious responsibility and consequences.

Yes, and many things fall out from that realization. It means you need a lot of experience before you can become a TM. You have to be careful about who jumps with you when you do a tandem, and you have to look at your gear differently.

Which is why the "it's just another skydive" approach can get TM's and students injured or killed.

>But, since you like your cookie cutter quotes, are you also one of those
>who say "every tandem passenger is trying to kill you."

Every tandem student I've jumped with might have tried to kill me, and so I prepared for that possibility. So far only two or three have.

>Because I would call that irresponsible.

I'd call it the opposite. If you do not think tandem students will do things like grab your arms, ball up, grab at loose pieces of webbing and handles etc then you will be unprepared for when it does happen.

>Do I have enough tandems to be allowed an opinion? You're the
>moderator of a DISCUSSION board, you tell me.

As you are participating in said discussion I think you have answered your own question.

[DrewEckhardt 0]

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To answer the question: Yes I think minimums should apply to me and reasonably to all others to, mostly because I jump with them and don't want some idiot crashing into me because he decided that wing suits are cool way before he knew how to handle

As long as an inexperienced wingsuit flyer isn't being reckless and flying by open canopies they pose no risk to you.

Everyone should be able to track in a reasonably straight line after graduating the seven jump AFF program, and any one who can track should be able to fly a small-winged suit. People who've tried wingsuits are well aware of this.

The problems with wingsuits involve situational awareness (your internal clock is wrong, ground rush is different) and having the presence of mind to stay relaxed and deal with the added problems (spins, suit malfunctions, being unable to reach your toggles) and more complex emergency procedures (you have 2 or 3 handles more to pull).

Enough experience skydiving are needed to get there, and you don't know what you're missing until it's a problem. Enough jumps makes it more likely, but even experienced people sometimes have problems - with thousands of skydives, Skratch had a spinning problem, caused his Spectre to malfunctions when he dumped out of it, and ended up under a reserve with line twists.

[andm31 0]

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To answer the question: Yes I think minimums should apply to me and reasonably to all others to, mostly because I jump with them and don't want some idiot crashing into me because he decided that wing suits are cool way before he knew how to handle

Oh maybe I should clarify that this was the only example I thought of when writing, danger can be introduced in all parts of skydiving I guess

Blue skies!

Anders Samuelsson
www.anderssamuelsson.se

[LloydDobbler 2]

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>I don't feel it's accurate that adhering to minimums keep people alive,
>or not adhering to minimums cause people to die.

Well, adhering to minimums would have prevented the Utah fatality. In many specific cases adhering to minimums prevents incidents (or would have, had they been followed.)

Hey, Bill -

Just wanted to bring up a quick point - while I agree with your conclusion, I don't agree with how you got there. We still don't know exactly what happened in the Utah fatality. And we quite possibly never will. It could have been experience-related...or it could have been something, say, health-related that could have just as easily happened to someone with thousands of jumps.

So saying "adhering to the minimums would have prevented the Utah fatality," you're right, it would have - but by the same logic, if skydiving was illegal, it would have prevented the Utah fatality as well. Looking at that comparison, I think we can all agree that we shouldn't justify the rules/recommendations based on the fact that they would have prevented the Utah fatality (justify them for other reasons, sure - it's pretty easy to get to the same conclusion - but I think your logic in arriving at the conclusion in this way is flawed).

In my personal opinion, lack of experience likely had something to do with the incident in question, because experience is the best indicator of how someone's going to handle it when things go to sh*t. But in this case, keep in mind that correlation does not necessarily indicate causation.

Signatures are the new black.

[billvon 2,380]

>We still don't know exactly what happened in the Utah fatality. And
>we quite possibly never will.

True. But if he had followed those recommendations and not made that jump, the odds are overwhelming that he would be alive today.

>if skydiving was illegal, it would have prevented the Utah fatality as well.

That's also true. So the trick is coming up with a balance between overregulation and zero regulation, something that helps prevent newer jumpers from being injured/killed while still allowing jumpers with enough experience to do what they want to.

Who decides what enough experience is? In this case, the manufacturer of the suit and the chief instructors that put the training programs together came up with the limits originally. They were adopted by the S+T committee of USPA after discussion by the people there - and they represent a pretty skilled bunch of people from all walks of skydiving.

Are they always going to be right? Nope. But we have a better shot at them getting it right than most anyone else.

[LloydDobbler 2]

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>We still don't know exactly what happened in the Utah fatality. And
>we quite possibly never will.

True. But if he had followed those recommendations and not made that jump, the odds are overwhelming that he would be alive today.

We're in agreement there.

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>if skydiving was illegal, it would have prevented the Utah fatality as well.

That's also true. So the trick is coming up with a balance between overregulation and zero regulation, something that helps prevent newer jumpers from being injured/killed while still allowing jumpers with enough experience to do what they want to.

Who decides what enough experience is? In this case, the manufacturer of the suit and the chief instructors that put the training programs together came up with the limits originally. They were adopted by the S+T committee of USPA after discussion by the people there - and they represent a pretty skilled bunch of people from all walks of skydiving.

Are they always going to be right? Nope. But we have a better shot at them getting it right than most anyone else.

And we're also in agreement here.

However, the problem you're still not addressing is that what killed Race Price could have been something that his experience wouldn't make a difference in (if he had a medical issue that rendered him incapable of pulling, for instance. Such a thing could have happened to someone with 7000 jumps just as easily as someone with 120).

So using his death to justify the USPA/manufacturer's recommendations is flawed (at best).

Again, I agree with everything you're saying here. Just not the conclusion you make from it. If A+B=C, A+B does not necessarily equal G.

Following the manufacturers recommendations would have saved Race Price, because he would not have made that jump. That much is true. But that doesn't necessarily mean that experience level had anything to do with his death, and therefore, bringing his incident up to justify the USPA/manufacturer's recommendations about experience level doesn't make any sense. Since (for now) we don't know what really caused the incident at hand, all we're relying on is guesswork...and that's not enough to make the leap to the conclusions you're making. For all we know, what actually happened to Race could have happened to an AFF-I/E with thousands of jumps. If it had been that AFF-I/E who went in, we'd be having a completely different conversation. It might not be likely...but based on the information we have on the incident, there's enough to arrive at a reasonable doubt that experience had anything to do with it. (If someone had seen him in a flat spin, for instance, it would be another matter altogether. But no one did, and there's no evidence as of yet to suggest it.)

Please don't misunderstand me - I believe the recommendations are there for good reason, and should be followed. And had they been in Utah, Race would still be with us. I just don't necessarily believe that the incident in Utah accurately illustrates why we have the experience recommendations, because we don't know that experience was part of the cause.

Signatures are the new black.

[faulknerwn 36]

Does anyone who knows the guy involved really think he had a heart attack or stroke or medical problem? No offense to his friends, but we're not talking about a 70 year old guy here with a weak heart. I keep hearing excuses about how it might have been a medical issue when the odds against that are astronomically high..

It just seems to me to be a way to try and think their friend didn't make a large mistake by pushing too many limits far too fast...

The average 20 year old male skydiver is unlikely to die from any medical problems other than the bravado of youth. It just takes the experienced folks to have the courage to say no sometimes to save their lives.

[skypuppy 1]

And the fact that whoever was running the boogie didn't interfere, seems to have led to the FAA questioning and disallowing oxygen systems in use in skydiving aircraft all over the continent.

Seems to me to be a good reason for dzo's and organizers to adhere to minimums even if they believe the guy is just going to go 'down the road' to the next dz and do it there. I wouldn't want him bouncing on my turf!

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[billvon 2,380]

>However, the problem you're still not addressing is that what killed
>Race Price could have been something that his experience wouldn't make
>a difference in (if he had a medical issue that rendered him incapable of
>pulling.)

Yes. And such explanations can be used to explain away 90% of the accidents that happen if desired. Susan would have pulled, but maybe she had an aneurysm at the moment she put her hand on the handle. Perhaps Danny Page had a seizure that caused him to convulse and pull down a riser. Perhaps Harry Rosenblatt had a heart attack that caused him to crash the plane after having an engine-out over a sod farm.

In many cases, we will simply never know. In such cases we have to make an educated guess, and chances are that a screwup is indeed a screwup and not a previously undetected and unsuspected medical problem.

> But that doesn't necessarily mean that experience level had anything
>to do with his death, and therefore, bringing his incident up to justify the
>USPA/manufacturer's recommendations about experience level doesn't
>make any sense.

Again, you can apply that to anyone. Susan Spray might have had a sudden fatal aneurysm at the instant she put her hand on that pilot chute handle; we will never know. But odds are that she didn't, and thus we remind people that turning on their AAD's at the dropzone (rather than at home) might save their life. Can we prove that turning on her AAD at the DZ would have saved her? No. She might have been dead the instant her hand touched that PC. But we go with the best information we have.

> I just don't necessarily believe that the incident in Utah accurately
>illustrates why we have the experience recommendations, because we
>don't know that experience was part of the cause.

We don't know for sure and we may never know for sure. But experience helps you deal with problems at pull time, helps you stay more aware of altitude, gives you a better internal clock when you are dealing with a problem, gives you more experience operating your equipment, gives you more chances to practice dealing with a wing in the way during deployment, gives you more opportunity to observe the effects of a poorly-fitting wingsuit, gives you a chance to go too low on a few wingsuit jumps and move the altitude up, and just plain gives you more opportunities to pull in a wingsuit. Since his death is strong evidence that he screwed up dealing with one (or more) of the above issues, additional experience would have helped. (IMO of course.)

If millions of people wingsuited every year we could generate great statistically-valid graphs that show that from the 50-200 jump range, 1 in 725 wingsuit jumps ends in a fatality, whereas in the 500-5000 jump range, 1 in 57440 jumps ends in a fatality. We will never have that sort of database to pull from, so we have to use our good judgment and learn from the limited data we _do_ have.

So ask yourself what we can learn from this. If it's "nothing, it could happen to anyone and we don't know it had anything to do with experience" then we are more likely to see more of these. If it's "there's probably a good reason for those experience limits" then we may indeed be able to reduce deaths.

[LloydDobbler 2]

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Does anyone who knows the guy involved really think he had a heart attack or stroke or medical problem? No offense to his friends, but we're not talking about a 70 year old guy here with a weak heart. I keep hearing excuses about how it might have been a medical issue when the odds against that are astronomically high..

It just seems to me to be a way to try and think their friend didn't make a large mistake by pushing too many limits far too fast...

Hey, Wendy -

Thanks for the response. For the record, I never met Race Price. Yes, I was on the DZ when it happened - but I have no motive or personal reason to say it was anything other than lack of experience that lead to his death.

However, though I work professionally as a writer, my background is in science. And as anyone who's been through Bio, Chem, or Physics 1 knows, you can't draw conclusions based on incomplete, unobserved data. You can speculate, extrapolate, sure - but taking something as a foregone conclusion because it's *probably* that way (and using that as a justification for rules that affect everybody) just seems like a recipe for disaster.

As I've pointed out a few times in my previous posts, I fully support the recommendations, and think they're quite justified. But until we know otherwise, Race's death is not part of that justification. I definitely think he made a mistake by pushing the limits - but that isn't necessarily what caused him to die. Anything we say about what actually happened is a matter of opinion. And until we can back up something with facts, it will remain that way...and thus is unsuitable to be used as evidence. I'm sure there are plenty of observed incidents which would support the recommended numbers much better than chasing the

It would be similar to saying that Amelia Earhart disappeared attempting to circumnavigate the globe because she was a woman (which would be in keeping with prevailing public opinion at the time), and thus no women should be allowed to fly without meeting the minimum recommendations. Nevermind that the recommendations were there for other reasons, and were the same for both men and women - the simple fact is, Ms. Earheart being a woman *might* not have had anything to do with whatever went wrong somewhere over the Pacific. (please note (to yu and all women) - apologies if this seems designed to be incendiary - that's not my intention. It was just the first thing that came to mind, since I drive past her statue when I leave my apartment every day & was thinking about her story today.)

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The average 20 year old male skydiver is unlikely to die from any medical problems other than the bravado of youth.

In the past 5 years, I've known two people (both in great shape, non-smokers) under the age of 25 who've been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Even more improbable, one of them beat it - he's been in remission for a year now. I was also there 2 years ago when a 29-y.o. co-worker of mine who was a marathon runner had a heart attack. Shit happens. "Improbable" means just that - "improbable"...but not definite. Without someone at least getting a visual on this person as whatever happened happened, then the events of that day remain firmly in the grey area. Attempting to use his death as incontrovertible evidence for the recommended minimums cause is a really slippery slope.

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It just takes the experienced folks to have the courage to say no sometimes to save their lives.

I'm all for the minimums - and truth be told, I suppose I'm playing the devil's advocate a bit here (otherwise I'd have let it go long ago). I'm just not for basing universal recommendations on opinions. Data is a much better way to go. And when there's not enough observed data...I just think it's best to move on to an instance that does have enough data to support ones claims.

Signatures are the new black.

[DSE 3]

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Attempting to use his death as incontrovertible evidence for the recommended minimums cause is a really slippery slope.

Not one post has suggested as much.
It *can* be said that had minimum recommendations been adhered to, the death would absolutely not occurred. That much is indisputable.

[LloydDobbler 2]

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And such explanations can be used to explain away 90% of the accidents that happen if desired. Susan would have pulled, but maybe she had an aneurysm at the moment she put her hand on the handle. Perhaps Danny Page had a seizure that caused him to convulse and pull down a riser. Perhaps Harry Rosenblatt had a heart attack that caused him to crash the plane after having an engine-out over a sod farm.

In many cases, we will simply never know. In such cases we have to make an educated guess, and chances are that a screwup is indeed a screwup and not a previously undetected and unsuspected medical problem.

I agree with you there - to some extent, we'll never know in any incident "what really happened." But in many cases, something is at least observed. The Danny Page/Bob Holler incident, for instance - if no one had seen it, what would we have thought happened? Would you have still wound up at the USPA Board meeting in July, presenting the BSR proposal, if no one had seen it?

With an incident like that, it's much easier to draw conclusions as to "what really happened" based on observation of the event. Something else could have been a factor, sure. But eyes are much less likely to lie. Since no one saw what actually went down in Moab, saying it was experience-related seems more like a hypothesis than a conclusion. It may even be a good hypothesis...but to make it a conclusion, I think we'd need more data.

(This bit about someone observing the incident also applies to Susan Spray, who - as you know - someone witnessed putting her hand on the PC. Also, keep in mind, I've been in the sport only since the post-Cypres era...so most incidents I've heard of usually at least involve something out (which usually means someone sees it)).

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We don't know for sure and we may never know for sure. But experience helps you deal with problems at pull time, helps you stay more aware of altitude, gives you a better internal clock when you are dealing with a problem, gives you more experience operating your equipment, gives you more chances to practice dealing with a wing in the way during deployment, gives you more opportunity to observe the effects of a poorly-fitting wingsuit, gives you a chance to go too low on a few wingsuit jumps and move the altitude up, and just plain gives you more opportunities to pull in a wingsuit. Since his death is strong evidence that he screwed up dealing with one (or more) of the above issues, additional experience would have helped. (IMO of course.)

I'm beginning to see that we're running in circles here, mostly because we're arguing the same thing, just our opinions are slightly skewed as to how much we can conclude about what happened from the information at hand. It's pretty much semantics at this point (not that it hasn't been for most of it - it's just that you keep on insisting on telling me how much experience helps a skydiver deal with problems, and I keep refusing to argue with you about it because I agree with you, dangit. You're preaching to the choir, and I'm trying to steer us back into an ultimately pointless discussion of semantics.) We might as well be chasing our tails.

Regardless, it's late, and the semantical tango isn't a very enjoyable (or productive) dance, so I'll step away from this one now and let the discussion continue.

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So ask yourself what we can learn from this. If it's "nothing, it could happen to anyone and we don't know it had anything to do with experience" then we are more likely to see more of these. If it's "there's probably a good reason for those experience limits" then we may indeed be able to reduce deaths.

I personally don't think there's much we can learn from this one, knowing what little we know now - hopefully that will change, if any more info becomes available. But I also think that "there's probably a good reason for those experience limits." I don't think the two are mutually-exclusive.

There are plenty of observed incidents/near-incidents which already do a much better job of supporting the minimum recommendations. All you have to do is search for "flat spin" on skydivingmovies.com, and there's lots of food for thought.

Signatures are the new black.

[livendive 8]

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Is ignoring minimum recommendations for yourself or for someone else because you/they are "exceptional" a form of complacency?

Generally speaking, I think the "exceptional" people should meet the minimum recommendations and everyone else should exceed them. I'm not a big fan of taking additional risks on the basis of being unqualified or barely qualified. That's not to say I haven't done so, but getting away with them with my life and health intact was more luck than skill, and I'd rather not rely on luck.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[el_chester 4]

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I'm not a big fan of taking additional risks on the basis of being unqualified or barely qualified. That's not to say I haven't done so, but getting away with them with my life and health intact was more luck than skill, and I'd rather not rely on luck.

What you said. I had until now too steep a progression, and only with retrospect am I able to see that clearly. The interesting thing is that in my case I would have heeded a "slow down" advice had anyone given it to me... but I was encouraged to go fast, and didn't know better to slow down. So... in a csae like the one discussed in this thread I also blame the environment for not stepping up and protecting inexperienced jumpers from themselves. I beleive it's our duty towards them and towards the sport. That's why I have no problem with being the unpopular guy always erring on the side of safety.

--
Be careful giving advice. Wise men don't need it, and fools won't heed it.

[popsjumper 2]

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...So... in a csae like the one discussed in this thread I also blame the environment for not stepping up and protecting inexperienced jumpers from themselves. I beleive it's our duty towards them and towards the sport. That's why I have no problem with being the unpopular guy always erring on the side of safety.

Make that at least two of us. It seems I have a reputation to uphold:

I'm the "Grumpy Old Man". They know they're in for a discussion when I approach them and say, "Would you do us a favor?"

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

[kallend 1,620]

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I'm not a big fan of taking additional risks on the basis of being unqualified or barely qualified. That's not to say I haven't done so, but getting away with them with my life and health intact was more luck than skill, and I'd rather not rely on luck.

What you said. I had until now too steep a progression, and only with retrospect am I able to see that clearly. The interesting thing is that in my case I would have heeded a "slow down" advice had anyone given it to me... but I was encouraged to go fast, and didn't know better to slow down. So... in a csae like the one discussed in this thread I also blame the environment for not stepping up and protecting inexperienced jumpers from themselves. I beleive it's our duty towards them and towards the sport. That's why I have no problem with being the unpopular guy always erring on the side of safety.

Another "do as I say, not as I did" attitude.

ALL skydiving is risky. Some skydives are riskier than others, but none are safe.

I see little difference between saying "You can't do this, you don't have enough jumps so it's too risky for you", and "No one can skydive, skydiving's too risky for anyone".

...

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

[popsjumper 2]

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...Another "do as I say, not as I did" attitude...

That attitude has it's benefits for others.

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

[beowulf 1]

It's called trying to pass on what you have learned to others so that they don't have to learn the hard way. Just because you were lucky doesn't mean they will be also.

[stratostar 5]

Or in hindsight you live long enough to think back and know you did some really stupid shit and got away with it a time or two and now days you wouldn't do the same stupid shit as back then or advise young jumpers to do the same stupid shit we did back then.

These days the only bar I ever see, has lettuce & tomatos.

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[ChangoLanzao 0]

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Is ignoring minimum recommendations for yourself or for someone else because you/they are "exceptional" a form of complacency?

Ignoring them is stupid.

Considering them, and using them to calculate the risks you are willing to take is responsilbe.

Blindly adhering to them without making an effort to include them in your risk analysis, is complaisance.

Forcing others to accept your own personal risk assessment is selfish.

[DSE 3]

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Forcing others to accept your own personal risk assessment is selfish.

Not if you're a DZM, DZO, or S&TA who have observed the skill level of an individual and found them wonting when they're trying to wingsuit, downsize, fly a camera helmet, VRW, raft dive, etc.
Their screwup falls on your head.
True, it's selfish to not want someone else' damage or death on your hands. Sometimes people need to be saved from themselves.

[ChangoLanzao 0]

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Forcing others to accept your own personal risk assessment is selfish.

Not if you're a DZM, DZO, or S&TA who have observed the skill level of an individual and found them wonting when they're trying to wingsuit, downsize, fly a camera helmet, VRW, raft dive, etc.
Their screwup falls on your head.
True, it's selfish to not want someone else' damage or death on your hands. Sometimes people need to be saved from themselves.

True ... that's a good point. We all have to be selfish once in a while. Nothing wrong with that.