AFF Instructor experience pre-requisites

[Shivon 0]

Instructors - (of which I am not one) - can you comment on the experience (jump no's, etc) requirements that your country has for AFF instructors, and give your opinion - having been there yourself - as to wether it is set at about the right level. Do you think in hindsight you should have had more experience before starting AFF instructing? Do you think that you could have started earlier in your skydiving career?

And also - do you think that any particular discipline (for example Camera work) helped you to be a better AFF instructor?

Cheers!

Shivon

[Remster 24]

I've just gonr through the course here in Canada, so the requirements are fresh in my mind:
600 jumps (800 recommended)
C license
Instructor A and Coach 2 ratings (at least 1 of them certified)


As far as what discipline helps: from what I saw and was told by the examiners: small, aggressive RW

Remster

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

No idea what is required in Australia, but in the USA you can attend the course with six hours of freefall. There is no jump-number requirement. One only needs to have attended the USPA coach course and have a filled-out AFF proficiency card.

I believe camera flying to be good experience in this case. The ability to get and maintain relativity is of paramount concern when doing AFF.

Chuck
AFFI (among other things)

[Deuce 1]

I still consider myself a camera flier first, and yes, seeing the bizarre stuff that students do first hand is helpful in anticipating what they may do, like drop their heads and track when they do a PRCP.

Excellent belly skills are a MUST. 8 guys started my AFFI course and 4 finished. Two of those were SEALS on the Navy parachute team, one was an employee of the Dropzone, and me. The freefliers were invited back to complete the course later.

I had just come off an RW binge getting ready for the sequential in Florida, and then about 40 minutes of tunnel time with the vonNovaks, Scooter, Wyatt, and Dom a few days before.

Camera helps, to have some experience with dealing with what students are capable of, but the flying reaction has to be instant in order to keep in the game. If you wait a beat to see what is going to happen, you will lose control of the evaluator and they will track away tumbling on their backs laughing and waiving.

[hookitt 0]

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The freefliers were invited back to complete the course later.

hee hee...

Laughing aside... Camera and tight sequential. Camera especially, helped me tremendously.

I was a freeflyer that hadn't been on my belly for about 1500 jumps. I was very used to being able to move my arms all about. After 20 AFF practice jumps I'd relearned how not to reach. With 3000 jumps at the time, I was almost "invited back to complete the course later." ... whew!

Remember this. Show up with the skills. Know you have them. The AFF certification course is a game. Learn to play it before you attend the course. The evaluators are not real students so if you don't pull for them they will not die. Don't go running into them to try and save them.

You will be challenged, humbled, and possibly embarrassed. All of the above is ok. It will come in handy in real life.

Every trick the evaluators pull on you is real. The difference is real students tend to pick 1 maybe 2 oddities and are actually trying to learn where as an evaluator will pick about 10.

A common motto among evaluators is, "If in doubt, Hose em"

That said, Evaluators won't hose you terribly on fallrate. If you blow it by not dressing them or you for success, they will test your max speed, fast or slow, but will give you a chance near the end of the dive. Again... don't go slammin into the evaluator to "save" him/her.

Real AFF is fun and challenging. Prepare for it, and go for it if that is your desire. I love it. I've been grounded for about 3 months and I'm ready to get back to throwing down and teaching some students how to fend for themselves.

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

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Real AFF is fun and challenging.

You can say that again. Sometimes it's a total breeze, but other times you will work for every single penny of that $30. Either way, one must be totally "switched on" on every single real working AFF dive.

Chuck

[Shivon 0]

It seems that the standards in the USA / Canada are higher than that of Australia. In Oz, the rules are:

Hold a 'D certificate' (basically 200 jumps)
Hold a 'star crest' (rating to do big ways)
Hold a 'Packer B' rating (ability to pack mains for others)
Complete a 7 day full time or 12 day part time course (to gain a basic instructor rating).
Have 4 hours free-fall.
And then complete an AFF endorsement course with exam (of which practical is a part).

[Remster 24]

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It seems that the standards in the USA / Canada are higher than that of Australia. In Oz, the rules are:



And then complete an AFF endorsement course with exam (of which practical is a part).

I think this evens things out. Its a flying rating. You need to fly well and prove it.

By the way, do the other countries have to complete a certain number of AFF/PFF jumps after the course to get cerfified? We get a temporary rating when we pass the course and then need to do 50 PFF jumps during 12 months to get the full rating.

Remster

[markbaur 0]

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Camera and tight sequential.

Tight sequential I agree, although even then you have to retrain from looking at your teammate's relative position to looking at your student's body position. At least you start out comfortable flying close enough to lifeguard.

Camera I disagree. It's better than freefly freefall or tandem droguefall, but under stress we tend to revert to what's comfortable. A typical camera flier's comfort position is a few feet away from (and often slightly below) his or her subject -- out of position for lifeguarding, and in less than optimal position for freefall instruction.

Mark

[Deuce 1]

Camera flying also makes a person vertically lazy because of the wings. Most of the camera fliers I know at some point needed to get the wings off for a while to re-learn fall rate adjustment with body position rather than wing extension.

The advantage to watching (filming) AFF is learning by seeing, not the flying bit.

[NoShitThereIWas 0]

I went to my course with just over 6 hours and about 375 jumps. I was very current, had done a bit of coaching and trained hard for the course with some very experienced AFF instructors.

I was younger than most experience wise and the course was very challenging to me. I learned a heck of a lot and I continue to learn more about this discipline every day. You will learn everything you need to know for the course in the course and depending on how it is run, I recommend the pre-course. Any exposure you can get is valuable.

The best preparation is to practice with evaluators or highly experienced instructors, be ready, willing and able to fly your slot, don't panic, be on your toes, and be able to anticipate what can come next.

AFF is a very aggressive discipline. Something that helped me understand mentally how I needed to fly and be aggressive was when my evaluators explained how the student is in "our" airspace; they describe the "box". The student is just borrowing our airspace to learn and it is ultimately up to you to be in control of any given situation.

You will be evaluated on your ability to teach on the ground during ground preps for Level 3 (Cat C) and Level 4 (Cat D) and you will also be evaluated on your in air skills. The major in air skills relate to controlling the exit, flying your slot, not over controlling the student, your ability to recall the skydive, your ability to correct what is wrong, ability to stop a turn, flip over a student who is on their back and deploy their parachute for them at the correct altitude. Somewhere there are tapes floating around with the USPA Level 3 & 4 Instructional videos. Those may help.

Good luck, its a blast!

Roy Bacon: "Elvises, light your fires."

Sting: "Be yourself no matter what they say."

[kpcarroll 0]

There's a lot of really good advice out here!

I went for my AFF-I after spending hundreds of jumps shooting video, and besides that mostly 10-12 ways. While I agree that camera flying can very easily equal lazy flying (shooting tandems!), if you shoot enough AFF students it can really help you to identify correct vs. incorrect body positions. Because shooting video was almost second nature, I found myself anticipating the signals that the instructors would give the students. Also, I had memorized the dive flows, so remembering what was supposed to happen at certain altitudes was never an issue. Those sorts of things can be a big advantage in the stressful environment of the course.

And I can't agree more that the course is just a big game. Don't let the evaluators get to you, fly like you know how and most importantly PLAY BY THE COURSE DIRECTOR'S RULES! Each course director is different and you should know their expectations at the start of the course.

Funny AFF Eval story: First eval dive, we were in our Cessna 206 (we usually fly a King Air) and b/c my partner and I are so amped, at 8K we have our "student", Glenn Bangs, up and on his knees and gear checks done. Our DZO was flying, and faked a stall in the Cessna (unbeknowst to me and my partner). Now we're just about 9K and the DZO is screaming GET OUT, GET OUT! My partner was reserve side, so he goes to climb out, and must have thought we were in the King Air b/c he starts to back out!! Luckily, he caught himself on the door frame, but unluckily he put his elbow through the window, but managed to climb, spiderman-like, back onto the strut. So now we have glass flying everywhere inside the plane, and my student looking at me for instructions. The DZO is just shaking his head, so I tell my student to climb out. Believe it or not, my partner and I fixed the exit, released, gave all the right signals and "pulled" for our student. When we landed we were sure we had failed, but Glenn was pleased with us and we passed. The beer that night tasted mighty good!!