Best Way to Prepare For AFFI?

[djmarvin 2]

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I agree with Gary on the AFF-I stand in. It could be better than nothing, but I have seen more than one experienced AFF-I break in as an evaluator and not give the candidates realistic work. Some are just too hard from the beginning. (work up from good to bad like Gary mentioned) and some are just way too absurd. There are plenty of experienced evaluators out there. Not only can they help you with your air skills, but they also tend to more intimately understand the scoring process for air and ground skills.

One of an I/E's responsibilities is to ensure that all evals are fair. If he can't do that he shouldn't be an I/E. Advice to candidates: get outside video on every eval jump at a course, even the practices. If a jump or a grade seems unfair in any way, have the I/E review it. Good Evaluators and I/Es will put fairness ahead of ego and correct an unfair grade.

I agree, and in every case I have seen this, the break in evaluator was not able to do "live" evals and were limited in what practice jumps they could (were allowed) do.

DJ Marvin
AFF I/E, Coach/E, USPA/UPT Tandem I/E
http://www.theratingscenter.com

[dninness 4]

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To all the posters with suggestions above....

I am struck by the fact that none of you recommend doing lots of coaching with post-AFF, pre-license students as preparation for AFFI.
(Of course, I may have just missed seeing it above)

Hmmm, yeah, perhaps in my reply I was speaking more directly to "course preps." I am a coach, and I spent the last third of last season and all the coach jumps I did this season before the course treating them like "AFF" training.

The problem was: I didn't really have a good clue how to treat them like "AFF" jumps, or perhaps more precisely: what kind of skills would have been more beneficial to use/sharpen on those jumps to help me in the AFF course.

Which is another reason to either seek out a recent AFF-I grad, or an I/E or evaluator, to get a couple "this is is the flying that's required" jumps in, so you can then spend your "prep" time doing prep that's more highly relevant to the flying skills. I didn't have that, and thought I was "preparing" when in reality I could have turned the "AFF-I prep" knob up a couple-four notches.

BTW, while I may be a recent AFF-I grad and definitely not an I/E or evaluator, its pretty solid in my head what the I/E or evaluator is looking for and what they're likely to do to you. Now, does that mean I should stand on my head right out the door all the way to pull time and then admonish the guy who asked me to play student "You, sir, suck."? No, that's not realistic.

A few weeks back, I went up and played "coach target" for my girlfriend's brother who is considering becoming a coach. We briefed the jump, went and did it, and the whole way I did some fairly benign stuff: potato-chipping, a "faster than slow but not crazy out of control" continuous turn, a hot "swoop & dock" dock, etc. Same thing with a guy saying "What flying skills do I need as an AFF-I?" First, I'd send him to the evaluator we have here at the DZ, since he'll get a *more accurate* picture from him, but failing in that, I'd give him a fairly stable student who may have some body position things to fix, like say hands too far out, legs not symmetric, etc.

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Wouldn't doing coach jumps help with the memory task and provide some practice chasing new jumpers? I presume that chasing AFF students is more extreme than chasing coaching students, but I also figure that it would provide a good alternative to doing only 4-way (where "chasing" is less of an issue).

If someone had said to me "Do all your coach jumps between now and the AFF course with only your legs as flying surfaces.." it would have given me a better set of skill targets than just "I'm going to treat these coach jumps like they're AFF prep jumps" and going out there with no clue what skills I needed to hone.

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[snip]
So... Am I off base here???

No, not off base at all.

Someone asked me during the course "Is it as tough as they say it is?" and I had to draw a parallel to explain it:

When you're married and about to have a kid, everybody who finds out says "Ohhhh! I'll change your life.." (use a Betty White voice there if it helps you). And you nod and say "Oh yeah, I know.." But you _don't_ know. Why? Cuz you really don't have a frame of reference. So then the baby comes along and *poof* it changes your life, and it does so in ways that you just really were not able to understand "before" the baby. And you go "ooooh, *thats* what they were talking about.. " (this is why I refrain from saying that trite bullshit and just tell my friends "People will go around telling you 'Oh, its gonna change your life.' Well, no shit. Problem is, you don't have any idea at this moment what kind of life changing that is, so it really doesn't mean much. So I'll just tell you things are going to be different and congratulations.'.."

Same thing with AFF: For the most part, a coach or non-instructional rating holder may say "oh, yeah, gonna require lots of flying, uh huh, got it." But they don't, because what it requires/entails may be way, way, way outside of their frame of reference. (sort of a "You don't know what you don't know" kind of thing) So you either have to show them, or they have to wait for the pre-course/course to have lightning hit them on the head and they go "oooooh, I see!!"

Anyway, YMMV, and some folks have a very natural an innate skill that suits AFF well, so they may have ZERO trouble with the flying. That wasn't precisely me.

Sorry to ramble on there. :)

NIN
D-19617, AFF-I '19

[SkymonkeyONE 3]

Spin stops, roll-over drills, exit drills, vertical/lateral proximity drills. The tunnel is a tremendous tool to work on that stuff as well. Agressiveness and being totally mentally "turned on" are definite requisites for passing the course.

AFF jumps, all categories, require your total attention.

Chuck Blue
D-12501, AFF/SL/TM-I, PRO, S&TA