Who has influenced your skydiving career ?

[jackwallace 3]

Jim Stoyas D-60 gave me one of the best pieces of advice not just about skydiving, but life. He said to only write the good things you did in your log book, why would you want to remember the bad stuff?

U only make 2 jumps: the first one for some weird reason and the last one that you lived through. The rest are just filler.
scr 316

[mjosparky 3]

Just about everyone I have met in 35 years in the sport. So good, some bad.

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[rdufokker 6]

Capt. Donald S. Cunningham, B-114. An original sport jumper from the 50's that was a green beret and wounded in Vietnam. His drop zones @ Roseland, NC and Laurinburg-Maxton, NC were some of the safest around. Not a lot of advanced skydiving but safe.

BS

Irony: "the History and Trivia section hijacked by the D.B. Cooper thread"

[Mbranch202 1]

Larry Gossler, Jim hooper, and Tony Patterson

Mike Branch
NSCSA #7

[jimjumper 25]

Dick Spates, Joey D'Afflisio, Charley Cantalupe, Bob Young, Wayne "Smitty" Smith and Joe Leach. '80's Lakewood crowd!

[obelixtim 106]

Al Kruger, back in the day when uncontrolled zooming around trying to make contact with others in the sky and not killing them was the go, told a bunch of us to switch our brains on in FF.

Voila!!!....

My computer beat me at chess, It was no match for me at kickboxing....

[lodestar 0]

Jeff Searles, who had the insight to establish Z-Hills and encourage many many jumpers to take up the sport by providing a facility for them to do so.
Jeff was a down to earth square shooter who brought the Hills from a little operation to one of the best known jump DZ's in the Southeast.
I started flying for Jeff up in Rainbow airport around '67 and eventually followed him to Florida in '69, some of the best times of my life and some of the finest skydivers I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Only problem I ever had was that none of em would land in the aircraft....they all jumped out........
Another significant man, a military pilot named Jim Haerer who taught the pilots at the Hills how to successfully preform multiple aircraft mass jumps by showing us how to do fly in formation on final runs, not only that, he even taught us how to maintain a cohesive formation in order to maintain position and contact with each other in getting to altitude as a unit instead of scattered all over the area and looking for each other as we madly scrambled to make final together, I learned more from him about formation flying than anyone else I ever came into contact with.

[patmoore 14]

Tough call.
I'd have to say Bob Branch, Paul Poppenhager, Roy Johnson, and Bill Ottley.

A special shout out goes to Lew Sanborn who trained and jumpmastered me on my first jump 49 years ago today. (See attachment)

DZGone.com
B-4600, C-3615, D-1814, Gold Wings #326, Diamond Wings #152.

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!

[rwieder 0]

Quote

Who has influenced your skydiving career?

Derek V. SDSL
Chris M. SDSL
Steve B. DZO SDSL
Shane R. SDSL
Scotty C. SDSL

-Richard-
"You're Holding The Rope And I'm Taking The Fall"

[RogerRamjet 0]

Quote

Jeff Searles, who had the insight to establish Z-Hills and encourage many many jumpers to take up the sport by providing a facility for them to do so.

Jeff was a down to earth square shooter who brought the Hills from a little operation to one of the best known jump DZ's in the Southeast World.

I started flying for Jeff up in Rainbow airport around '67 and eventually followed him to Florida in '69, some of the best times of my life and some of the finest skydivers I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Only problem I ever had was that none of em would land in the aircraft....they all jumped out........
Another significant man, a military pilot named Jim Haerer who taught the pilots at the Hills how to successfully preform multiple aircraft mass jumps by showing us how to do fly in formation on final runs, not only that, he even taught us how to maintain a cohesive formation in order to maintain position and contact with each other in getting to altitude as a unit instead of scattered all over the area and looking for each other as we madly scrambled to make final together, I learned more from him about formation flying than anyone else I ever came into contact with.

Had to fix that one sentence above. By 73/74, Z-Hills was known around the world. We had skydivers coming there from all over the world; some for weeks at a time just to jump at our famous DZ.

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

[lodestar 0]

No problem with the change Roger.....wasn't thinking Globally when I made that statement....lol...In my time there we had a few jumpers from other countries and mostly Canadians sprinkled with a few souls trying to escape the northern winters.
On a recent visit to the DZ I heard so many different languages being spoken it became apparent the fame had spread far and (World) wide.....

[RogerRamjet 0]

Quote

No problem with the change Roger.....wasn't thinking Globally when I made that statement....lol...In my time there we had a few jumpers from other countries and mostly Canadians sprinkled with a few souls trying to escape the northern winters.
On a recent visit to the DZ I heard so many different languages being spoken it became apparent the fame had spread far and (World) wide.....

I was young (20) and not Worldly by any definition when I started working for Jeff Searles as the DZ rigger in 73. When the Turkey meet rolled around I had my education "enhanced" a bit by the European visitors. I was walking out to our van to get something when I saw a very pretty German girl strip completely naked to change into another set of clothes right next to her car. I knew right then that I had to visit Europe at some point

-----------------------
Roger "Ramjet" Clark
FB# 271, SCR 3245, SCS 1519

[steve1 5]

The thought of jumping out of perfectly good airplane scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid.

I watched a movie once, of airborne soldiers jumping into combat. Man, that seemed awful.

Then I read a book by a smokejumper when I was in High School. This jumping stuff was starting to appeal to me.

I was about to be drafted in 1969. I joined a special forces guard unit to escape that. I figured I didn't want to die in a war noone believed in. Maybe it was a cowardly act, but that's what I did. After all I wanted to jump by then, and this would be one way to do it.

Before I left for active duty, I went up in a C-119 to watch my National Guard company jump. Man...that looked like fun, but scary at the same time.

One of the guys in my company was a skydiver. He took me over to a drop zone and I watched some jumpers in free fall. Now that looked down right scary. I figured I'd try that some day.

In phase II of special forces training, we were pulling duty pushing a broom, and that sort of thing. Our sargent in charge, decided we should all ghost out. We ended up at the Green Beret Parachute Club Bar.

Our sargent was a skydiver. He had orders for Nam. He tried to sell me his rig, since I was interested. This bar had some of the coolest pictures, of hard core jumpers, on every wall. Some day I figured I've got to try that.

When I got off active duty....I saw this sign at college...First jump course for $50. One of the guys I trained with was Hod Sanders. One of my instructors was B.J. Worth.

When you get old, people have lot's of regrets for things they never did. I'll never have any regrets for learning to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

[jrbirdmen 0]

I grew up at Stevens Paraloft........My dad was Dick Enarson, jumpmaster & pilot. He & Perry were best friends........maybe I cooked you breakfast most definately lunch. I'm glad u survived. It was a wonderful place expect for the septic odor!

[jrbirdmen 0]

P.S. My dad owned the paraloft in Oakland :)

[jrbirdmen 0]

Hey Airtwardo, finding my way thru the site. See user 377........that's reality & it's not Peco's. The rule was no jumpin if u drank, but if u pulled ur reserve, u owed a case. Believe me, these folks wanted to spend their $ on jumpin first & that brings back another memory......find the pull cord & the poor guy on his first non static line dropped & he owed a case too. I wish I got paid for all those ripcords I found.

[JerryBaumchen 1,083]

Hi jrbird,

Back in the late 70's, Gary Hattenschwiller ( sp ?? ) bought a ripcord swager and everyone asked why he would spend so much money on something like that.

He paid for it in one summer making replacement main ripcords.



JerryBaumchen

[korfus 0]

Jimmy Horak passed on while on a jump this past year. Not sure what has become of Jerry White or his business partner Barry, last seen them around 1996 / 97?

[SCS292 1]

Steve Hazen got me started. He and I were 21 year old kids and worked in the Chevron Exploration Data Processing Center in Houston, 1971. He worked in the darkroom developing geophysical maps and I worked as a computer operator making the maps he developed. Normally the darkroom operators didn't interact with the computer operators much but he was breaking in a new pair of Frenchies at the office so naturally I wanted to know about his new "hiking boots". One thing lead to another and before I knew it he had introduced me to Pete Bandy and I bought Pete's rig while he was in a full leg cast from a canopy collision. What was I thinking? Steve penciled a couple of jumps into a new logbook and trained me so I could get onto a load without paying the training fee at the DZ. Steve wasn't instructor licensed but he put me out on all my training jumps. He continued to mentor me until we were jumping at a similar level. John Mincher and Steve were good friends so I spent some time with John and did lots of listening. Steve was in Valley Mills for the weekend and I went with John to Dickinson to make some jumps. They got an 8-man attempt together with all the experienced jumpers who were there but they were one short. John said "how about Rick, he was in a 6-man last week". I made the load and came in 8th on my 44th jump. Thanks John. The next weekend we trekked to Valley Mills and wow, Phil Mayfield came up and congratulated me on my SCR/SCS. I was on top of the world. Then he said, "but you will have to get some more jumps behind you before you can get on a big load." I was deflated but I understood. Later after I had a few jumps behind me and was jumping with everyone who wasn't a member of the Texas 10 Man Team, we made a screaming 14 man out of the DC-3 after the 10 Man Team had completed a practice jump ahead of us, Phil gathered everyone at the DZ together and told all us meatball jumpers how impressed the 10 Man Team was to see a 14 man with none of the 10 Man Team in it. After that I was allowed on the big attempts. I worshiped those guys and only recently found out they had gotten their SCSs less than 2 years before me. They did have way more jumps and were really good together.

[rwieder 0]

Mods-If you feel compelled to edit my post, I'd appreciate a little communication before you do it unless I'm breaking one or more of the rules. I don't appreciate you guys/gals doing this at all. I'm fairly warmed up right now over this activity. PLEASE don't pull this stunt anymore if you wouldn't mind. Thanking you in advance for your time as always.

Best-
Richard