Have you ever refused to jump with a student?

[NoShitThereIWas 0]

I was wondering if you have and if so what the reason was. Thanks for the replies.

Roy Bacon: "Elvises, light your fires."

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

[slotperfect 7]

Yes. I am a very large lad, and I will not jump an AFF student that is so small and light I know I will go low on them, nor will I jumps a very large tandem passenger that will dangerously overload a tandem canopy.

Arrive Safely

John

[packerkevin 0]

Yes, I have. We had a tandem student who was being coerced to jump by her husband, and was already complaining of her back hurting.

Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional

[AggieDave 6]

Yes, but they were typically just big boys that would well overload the tandem system (since I too could be called a big boy).

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[tombuch 0]

Sure. Sometimes it's a size issue, sometimes a personality issue, sometimes it's related to a specific problem the student is having. I'm pretty confident that I can 'manage' just about any student, but some will learn better from another instructor, or relate better to another instructor. In those cases I've often said that I can make the jump, but that the client will have a better learning experience with another instructor and I'll generally specify which instructor. I don't refuse, exactly, but I don't leap into a bad situation if it can be better with somebody else.

I also teach snowboarding in the winter, and the same is true there. I'm not great with little kids, but when it come to frightened 40 year old ladies, I'm the man.

Always think about student learning first, and know when you are not the best person for the job.
.

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

[SkymonkeyONE 4]

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Yes. I am a very large lad, and I will not jump an AFF student that is so small and light I know I will go low on them, nor will I jumps a very large tandem passenger that will dangerously overload a tandem canopy.

Likewise, I have passed on a few very-large AFF students when other, larger Instructors were around. It's a trade-off in that regard. I will generally always get the tiny AFF students on release dives and I don't mind hauling big passengers on tandems.

Chuck

[Hooknswoop 19]

A couple of times, once I was told to take the student or I was fired, the second I did refuse and was fired. Fortunately I had already gotten a new job and didn't need to jump to make money anymore.

Derek

[flypunk 0]

Yes, very large and out of shape tandems. I dont have a problem with weight as long as youre fit.

A tandem student that I showed up with a couple of beers on him.

An most recently a lvl 8 coach jump at the end of a busy sunday, I was just worn out and completely exhausted. Couldve pulled it off, but I rather have someone who would devote 100% attention and effort with him.

...

[slotperfect 7]

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once I was told to take the student or I was fired

At Raeford, all Instructors are given the right of refusal. It is the policy of the owners. This increases the level of safety by not forcing Instructors to puch their personal limits until they have the training and experience to expand them.

Arrive Safely

John

[skydiverton 0]

Yes, refused to take a 120KG tandempassenger.
The DZ's in holland generally have 90-95kg as limit.
Personnaly I have a limit of about 100-105kg for the passenger
(I'm 70kg, so no canopy overload)
I also restricted myself to max length 1,95/2,00m
(I will not qualify for the "tall person of the month" award with my 1,78m length)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Using your droque to gain stability is a bad habit,
Especially when you are jumping a sport rig

[LawnDart21 0]

Twice:

1) A 265 lb tandem. He was 6'6" and in good shape. I had him stand on the scale (without a student harness), which he hit at 265. I then put on a tandem harness and got on the scale at 250lbs. We would have been 515 out the door.....I apologized to him, explaining we were over the max limit on the gear and that despite wanting to take him on a skydive, I coudnt do it. I actually had him wait while I called another instructor who wasnt as heavy as I was, explained the situation, he came down, was comfortably under the gear limit and took the guy on a great skydive. Alls well that ends well.

2) 3 years ago a licensed jumper from the 70s with 1200 logged jumps showed up after a 20 year lay off and wanted to get recurrent. I was asked to do the non method specific ground training as a refresher before an AFF instructor took him up to do a recurrency dive. After spending 15 minutes talking with him, I began to suspect that he had been to one too many Rolling Stones concerts in his lay off.....lol. Motor functions lacking, attention span of a brick, and his overall disposition could most appropriatly be described as "glazed over". Yellow eyes, a little jittery and just overall not in any shape, form or condition to make a skydive. I had him show me his arch on our student arch table, and it resembled, well, a diving board, zero flexibility. I made the decision at that time that I couldn't in good faith continue working with him and after consulting our S&TA and DZO, we decided it was in everyones best interest if he didnt attempt a recurrency jump. I politely conveyed the message, and offered to take him on a tandem if he wanted jump, to which he declined, thanked me and left.

A month later I am reading Skydiving Magazine's "Letters" only to see a recap of our experience in the pages of the maggie, stating that I refused him a recurrency jump because his "table arch" was poor.............essentially blaming me for being biased against "old schoolers". I wanted to reply in the maggie to it, but decided to just let it go.

I came to find out shortly there after, that at another DZ, he had also recently almost killed himself and an AFF instructor by panic bear hugging him on an AFF level 1 jump and was subsequently politely dismissed from their AFF program.

I made the right call and got trashed in the maggie over it. Oh well, life thankfully goes on..........lol

--
My other ride is a RESERVE.

[SCR10480 0]

Yes, I have refused to jump with some students.

I took my S. O. for her first Tandem, but when she decided to continue I handed her off to a colleague for further training. Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like her training would be better accomplished this way.

__________________________________________________

[riggerrob 603]

I have refused to jump with a few flabby tandem students.
I refused to jump with a tandem student who sprained her ankle only the week before.
I generally try to hand off small PFF student to small PFF instructors.
I refused to jump with Thomas - after he bloodied another instructor's nose - until the boss bought me the most expensive full-face helmet. My Christmas bonus that year was a Bonehead HAVOC!
Hah!
Hah!

[FreeflyGoat 0]

A couple of times for overweight tandems. I would guess that the state I work in the AVERAGE weight of my tandem passengers is around 200+. I'm no light weight myself.
Just last weekend I was asked to talk with a guy who wanted to make a jump but was concerned about a shoulder injury. Turns out he had a total shoulder replacment just 8 months prior. After a few minutes of talking to him I found his range of motion to be extremely poor and he addmited to not doing physical therapy because he ran out of visits on his health insurance. Now I just recovered last year from a shoulder AC ligament seperation and I didnt jump for nearly 8 months myself and that is after doing physical therapy the whole time. I gave him my opinion and he ended up making the decision himself not to jump.

_________________________
goat
derka jerka bukkake jihad

[Andrewwhyte 1]

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I refused to jump with Thomas - after he bloodied another instructor's nose - until the boss bought me the most expensive full-face helmet. My Christmas bonus that year was a Bonehead HAVOC!
Hah!
Hah!

I actually refused to jump with Thomas about a year before he bloodied Phillip's nose.

[livenletfly 0]

[quoteI came to find out shortly there after, that at another DZ, he had also recently almost killed himself and an AFF instructor by panic bear hugging him on an AFF level 1 jump and was subsequently politely dismissed from their AFF program.
\
holy shit!!! i always wondered if a student has ever done that. that is some scary shit to have happen to any aff instructor. life guards are trained to deal with a panicing victim in the water. they can and will kill you both if not restrained. i heard somewhere that lifeguards are taught to try and knock the victim out if this happens. does anyone know if thats true? also has anyone ever had this happen personaly to them on an aff jump?

>

[DanglesOZQld 0]

Not thus far as with larger persons we usually have the dzso make the decision re the conditions on the day and then the tm can take them if they want to.

We get paid a small amount extra for those passengers doing tandem jumps over 100kgs in weight and there are always other tm's on the same load who will most likely take them if you don't feel up to it. By saying no we are also NOT losing the jump as all staff are on the load most times regardless.

With regard to AFF I am more than prepared to give people a go and have only come across one student who we (CI and self) advised not to continue jumping. That was after they had been up with the CI, myself and another jm.

BSBD! -Mark.

"A Scar is just a Tattoo with a story!!!"

[Joellercoaster 6]

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i heard somewhere that lifeguards are taught to try and knock the victim out if this happens. does anyone know if thats true? also has anyone ever had this happen personaly to them on an aff jump?

Yes, no (hopefully), and yes:

clicky.

Not that I had any lack of respect for AFF/Is before that, but... holy shit. You guys are a whole other level of professional if you do this every day.

(Mental note to self: Do 1000 jumps. Quit job, become instructor. Take massive pay cut, trade for job satisfaction in spades.)

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[PhreeZone 15]

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heard somewhere that lifeguards are taught to try and knock the victim out if this happens. does anyone know if thats true?

From an ex-lifeguard that is something that you are trained not to do. Reach, Throw, Row, Go... Thats the order of rescue. You need the person awake to help you on the first 3. The last one is a situation where you try to put someone in a position to not harm you or themselves but still able to drag their sorry ass out of the water. You never would try to knock someout out to drag them in.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[bmcd308 0]

I have refused to do a "coach jump" with a stranger to our dropzone due to some confusion regarding his recent jumping history.

I think he wound up going through a FJC followed by a shortened AFF jumping progression.

----------------------------------
www.jumpelvis.com

[TomAiello 26]

Quote

Quote

heard somewhere that lifeguards are taught to try and knock the victim out if this happens. does anyone know if thats true?

From an ex-lifeguard that is something that you are trained not to do. Reach, Throw, Row, Go... Thats the order of rescue. You need the person awake to help you on the first 3. The last one is a situation where you try to put someone in a position to not harm you or themselves but still able to drag their sorry ass out of the water. You never would try to knock someout out to drag them in.

I spent about 10 years, through various schoolings, lifeguarding, teaching swim lessons, teaching lifeguarding, managing pools, etc, etc, etc.

When an active victim grabs a lifeguard the most effective technique a lifeguard can use is to swim downward, hard. No drowning victim, no matter how panicked, is going to stay with you as you dive 10 feet underwater.

I doubt this particular technique has any relevance or potential crossover to AFF.

-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[bob.dino 1]

That can be hard if they have a grip around your neck and you're both vertical. Obviously you've screwed up if that's the case, but it could still happen. My personal drill for that one, if I couldn't break the hands apart, was to force their chin up and away to give me the clearance to go down.

Thankfully I never had to go into the water after someone. My eyesight wasn't up to scratch for beach work, and pool work is 98% prevention.

[jsaxton 0]

I've refused coach jumps with very light students.

Sometimes fall rate still suprises me though

[masher 1]

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I've refused coach jumps with very light students.

Sometimes fall rate still suprises me though

There is an instructor at York who did some coach jumps with a newly licenced jumper. She was light, so he wore a camera suit!

--
Arching is overrated - Marlies

[jsaxton 0]

I don't think I'd want to do that, a camera suit would make me fly very different than normal RW so I feel I wouldn't be able to provide a good example for the student. Better to let a floatier coach take that one.