Wind Tunnel before AFF

[barrymaple007 0]

People wishing to learn skydiving, should learn to fly their bodies in a Wind Tunnel before AFF.
I think this should be mandatory for all students.
Why learn to fly your body at 120mph falling towards the ground?
I now ask all my students to allow me to instruct them in a Wind Tunnel for 20 minute before they complete their AFF with me.

Barry Maple
AFF course, 1 week in the sun
www.learnskydiving.co.uk

[wmw999 2,122]

What do you do about improving canopy skills as well at hte same rate? Also, at least hwere I live, the closest tunnel is 1000 miles away; not an inconsequential distance.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[strife 0]

the closest wind tunnel to us in Oz I think is in singapore

would love one locally not sure i would have done it first would love it to compliment training.

[riggerrob 558]

Agreed!

Body Flight Vancouver opened a wind tunnel a couple of years ago.
Last summer, a local DZ insisted that all prospective freefall students train for a few minutes in the wind tunnel. Last summer they graduated large numbers of freefall students, far more than for any season over the previous decade.

Rob Warner
Progressive Freefall Instructor

[skinnay 0]

Quote

People wishing to learn skydiving, should learn to fly their bodies in a Wind Tunnel before AFF.
I think this should be mandatory for all students.
Why learn to fly your body at 120mph falling towards the ground?
I now ask all my students to allow me to instruct them in a Wind Tunnel for 20 minute before they complete their AFF with me.

If you're going to post for the sake of spamming your sig, you might want to at least try and make it a little more constructive..

[excaza 1]

I'm sure it wouldn't hurt if there's something easily available. If it's going to be used as an instruction tool, it should absolutely use a tunnel rig.

Logistically, it seems like a difficult thing to implement, with both tunnel cost ($360 for 20m at the NH tunnel) and locations to have to consider.

Anecdotally:
I learned far more in my horrible level 2 freefall this morning than I did in the hour of tunnel time I had earlier this spring (fortunately, I didn't have to pay for the latter). Being able to fly stable didn't help me at all when I got so preoccupied with not being able to find my handle that I completely lost my COA (same rig as when I did lvl 1, when I found it just fine).

I'm the only one in my group of students with any tunnel time, and the rest of them are doing just fine, so while it can be a great learning tool (and really fun), tunnel time isn't necessarily a golden bullet. My instructors seem perfectly capable of geting us stable and through our dives without it.

[dorbie 0]

It's efficient and cost effective for most students but why mandatory?

Some schools do this, but others don't have wind tunnels within hundreds of miles. Making this mandatory is a pretty thoughtless and unnecessary suggestion.

And some students do just fine without it too.

[jers119 0]

I personally feel that it's up to the instructors to evaluate the student and make that call once they feel it may be needed. But I really don't know what most students are like when they do AFF other than my own experience as being a student who has jumped two times. And I my instructors are very pleased with my two jumps so far. If they want me to do tunnel time before a level or whenever, I'll do it because I want to earn my A license that bad. I plan on doing tunnel time wheatear I do my AFF and I'm in my student solo time. I think it will only help more. But if I was required to do a lot of tunnel time before I even got to do my level 1 in AFF, I don't think I would have even started AFF because the cost would have been too much for me personally.

[Shredex 0]

If we can get Mark Zuckerburg to buy all the DZ's a windtunnel, then heck yes!

Unfortunately, they aren't easy to come by :[

[jrjny 0]

probably a better investment than shares in FB

[excaza 1]

Would we have to wear hoodies instead of suits?

[davjohns 1]

I happened to be vacationing near a tunnel just before AFF. Did it. It helped.

I've thought about a tunnel co-located with a DZ, but it seems rare. You need a remote location for a DZ and a high-traffic area for a tunnel. Hard to put together.

I know it just wouldnt be right to kill all the stupid people that we meet..

But do you think it would be appropriate to just remove all of the warning labels and let nature take its course.

[rss_v 0]

I reckon I'd have been fine if I got my AFF done quickly, but I took a few months off, fluffed a level and then lost my confidence, which the tunnel restored. Once back in the air I found that actually I was not really any better than I was before, but it gave me the confidence to carry on. Time in the air seems to be worth 10-20x time in the tunnel, at least at my early stage. The flying aspect is relatively easy, but there's so much else going on (real or imagined) in the sky that makes it much, much harder or more complicated.

Personally if a friend wanted to do an AFF I'd suggest that a tandem would (presumably) help a lot if they wanted to do something to prepare for it. Otherwise, just do it, and if they need tunnel time then that will become apparent later. But most don't.

[riggerrob 558]

I have said this several times before - on several different threads - no single teaching method is best ... it is just best at a particular level. The best schools combine three or more methods at different stages in the learning process.

The ideal training program starts with a tandem or three - to get students over that huge psychological hurdle.

Some ground-launching would be nice - to teach the basics of canopy control.

Then two to six static-line (or IAD) jumps - to get over the door sill and learn the basics of landing patterns.

Then a few minutes in a wind tunnel - to learn the basics of freefall.

Then a half-dozen jumps with AFF Instructors - to bring all the skills together.

Finally, a dozen or so coached dives - to burn survival skills into longer term memory and refine skills to A license level.

[hillson 0]

I found tunnel time much more helpful during AFF (post-C2) than I did the 15 minutes I spent before my first jump. The return on the time/money was much greater. Granted I'm a sample size of 1 but it seems to track with the experiences of those that were roughly the same place as me in their progression that followed a similar tunnel/AFF path. I'm lucky to live an hour from the Orlando tunnel so YMMV if you don't have easy access to a chamber.

Just my two ducats...