skr

> I would like help converting DZ to ISP. Any help would be nice. Here's how I went about it: http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html#learning The only real changes I made were to emphasize the parachuting skills more heavily up front and push the freefall skills more into the last half, and to add a little room for enjoyment so it wasn't all grim requirements. Skr

For me it is many years of close observation about what I like, what I want, what has meaning. That gives me some idea of what "quality" might mean, and involves a lot of shedding of false shoulds and oughts that I've picked up, or made up and inflicted on myself. At one time technical quality was an aspect, but that faded in the late 70s and other facets, like vibes and sharing and art and human experience and turning people on became dominant. I think that is why I mostly jump with new jumpers now, it is rich in the aspects that I experience as "quality". Skr

How about running for the board of directors, and if you don't make it then get involved in the relevant committees and doing some of the work, and when you become a known quantity start making a difference where the differences get made? Skr

This is like some kind of rite of passage :-) :-) I think the main trick is watching other people pack. Keep trying yourself and remember all the hard spots, then watch how other people cope. I was lucky, the PD flying circus came through about the same time I encountered my first slippery canopy. I watched them pack a bunch of rigs and tried to remember all their moves. Then I practiced about 10 times at home during the week before I tried it out in public. I've seen people use a number of techniques that I wouldn't use, but I've also learned some good moves just hanging out watching people pack. For the really new and slippery ones I use all four legs, six arms, several other appendages, chin, chest, elbows, knees, and some secret Tibetan words to keep it contained in the last stages of stacking it up and getting it in the bag. Canopy material comes with built in sensors that look for unconstrained places, and if it finds more than about a square centimeter it squirts out there like a watermelon seed. That's its mission in life. Just remember that you are smarter than a pile of nylon, and if you keep trying, and stealing other people's tricks, you'll have it mastered in 20 or 30 tries. Skr

>but when I let the window down to simulate >the "door" opening, my heart skips a beat :-) I remember when I had 5 or 10 jumps, driving to the dropzone and glancing down at the speedometer as I was coming to a stop sign. The needle was dropping through 35 toward 30 toward 25 ... Suddenly it was an altimeter! I was in freefall! It was almost time to pull !! My heart raced, my adrenaline surged! That was 1963, over 40 years ago, but I remember the whole scene in vivid detail: A green 57 Ford with an automatic transmission, a "T" intersection with a concrete island with a stop sign, empty field off to the right, trees to the left, vivid blue sky, no clouds, a left turn, the drop zone about one mile away ... We're dealing with powerful stuff here. Jumping out is a big deal. The wind can become a *really* good friend. Maybe someday we'll cross paths and make a jump. Skr

Pretty soon this is going to go away on its own if you keep jumping. I wonder if you're using the wind as a trigger to remind yourself of all the scary possibilities, and all you need to do is learn to see the wind as your friend. Maybe drive down the road with your hand out the window and commune with the feel of the wind. Or do it in freefall. Instead of maneuvers just hang out in free plummet and just really, really feel the wind. Skr

I don't do it based on a particular decision altitude, I do it by continously projecting ahead all the way down. One thing I've learned from many (many) out landings is to think ahead and decide high and land somewhere reasonable. One big advantage of learning on round canopies was that you really *had* to plan ahead. Also I think a lot of people are not well trained on canopy flying (I'll forgo this opportunity for a soapbox rant this time :-) and getting down low and then trying to do some last minute move on today's sophisticated gear is unwise. Projecting ahead takes some practice, but I think it's worth the effort. Skr

I'm not sure about my earlier years. There was an element of envelope pushing, and of going into situations (not just jumping) that you had to do just right. I didn't analyze it then, but in the 70s, when I did get into analyzing, I thought maybe a bigger factor was the focused state of mind. I really liked that, and in fact it led off into meditation and such when I began to wonder why I needed the crutch of making a jump just to get focused. But by the late 70s I'd had enough of fear and pain and people getting killed. Since then I would have really loved it if skydiving were a big, fluffy, safe marshmellow. The incredible feeling of flying around in freefall was always a much bigger factor, even in the early days. But, as people have pointed out, an even bigger factor now is the people, so I guess the actual jumping out would be more fun, but the people would be more like families with squalling kids and barking dogs. So I don't know. Skr

It's a good question. I think I come down, just barely, on the side of bigger. What tips the scale for me is that skydiving is a pretty cool thing to share with people, and I think that if more people were skydiving fewer people would be out there pulling all the crap that's causing so much trouble. It's overall a good influence on the world. Otherwise, the good parts, the clout of numbers, the advancement of gear, the availability of dropzones, are pretty well balanced by the bad parts, the Disneyland-ification of skydiving. I have never tried to either make it more visible or hide it myself. Skr

Wow, you've either gotten taller or that's not a very big canopy ... looks like you could almost reach up and untangle a malfunction by hand ... probably needed a really small font to get all those letters on there :-) :-) Hey B^2, thanks for all the nice organizing this Christmas. Skr

>Everybody is talking about PLF. "Learn PLF". >But nobody is explaining HOW. >Is it a secret? :-) :-) Apparently it's becoming so in the jump world. The general idea, feet and knees together, breakables pulled in, round off the corners, twist into the roll and make it happen the way you want, has been around for thousands of years, in other activities. But the easiest "HOW" is to get a military jumper or an old timer to show you, and then use a matress or the pea gravel or something soft to practice on, and practice. Skr

>I have now made it my mission to learn the PLF and >practice, practice, practice so it becomes second nature. That's the spirit! :-) And if *you* do it maybe a few of your peers will too. Lot's of people will follow if only someone will lead. >I am not happy with the fact that my school is only >concerned with teaching FF skills and they don't even >mention the landing or canopy skills. Eeeee .. The Disneyland-ification of skydiving .. Well, it's too big a soapbox to fit in one of these little reply windows, but .. Some systematic effort to learn canopy skills is a really good idea too, both aspects, the toggle techniques that make your canopy do things, and the large scale strategic thinking skills about what to do between opening and entering the pattern, managing traffic and so on. There's been tons of stuff written here by Billvon and others. I put a thing over at http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/c_wings_level.html There are canopy schools springing up. >But it is my >responsibility to keep myself from getting injured again >so I will learn it myself. (With help from my friends.) Yes, a few experienced friends is a good path. Also keep some perspective. Learning to fly today's canopies is a long journey. It takes a season or two just to make your way through the foundation stuff. Skr

Today was when we were planning to leave for Christmas at Eloy. As I was loading the car this morning I flashed back to Christmas 1964, breakfast, in a town called Weedpatch. We were planning to jump at Arvin (California) that day but the valley fog had set in and you could only see a few feet, so we drove around and found a cowboy bar in Weedpatch that served breakfast. I don't think I've been home for Christmas since I started jumping. I may be in a rut. It was dark and cold and snowing at 5:30 this morning and I (we) were reluctantly starting to acknowledge that maybe driving through Denver rush hour, down through Colorado and over Raton pass in the middle of major snow storm was maybe not wise. Especially since the storm was moving south and we would be in it most of the next day too. So after two or three hours of indecisive dithering we decided to wait until Friday. That's progress. I may be in a rut, but I think I'm making progress. I guess we could always stay a couple days longer on the end. We try to allow a couple days slack on the end in case there is a big storm when we're coming back. Progress, but only as much as necessary :-) :-) Skr

>can you safely plf a down wind landing with significant forward motion? Yes. I think lots of people are butt sliding now because they weren't taught how to PLF. I've PLFed my way out of all kinds of scary situations and stupid mistakes, including once off of a motorcycle. It takes some practice to get comfortable with the technique. If you get a military jumper or an old timer to show you how, and then practice a few minutes a day until you have accumulated several hours worth of practice, you'll have it when you need it. And if you keep jumping you'll probably need it sooner or later. Skr

>how much wind speed (drift) is too much? I think the problem with strong uppers is that people think they are just like light to medium uppers, only more so, spot a little further up wind, leave a little more time between groups. I don't think that's true. Down at the bottom of http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html is an article called "Dealing with Uppers" http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/sg_skr_dealing_1_uppers.html Here's the second paragraph: "In low to medium uppers it's about leaving separation, and in medium to strong uppers it's about accepting that we are in a new environment and changing the way we jump." At Lost Prairie this year I was talking to Bryan Burke about this and he told me that at Eloy they don't fly jumpruns at less than 60 knots groundspeed. When the uppers get too strong they start flying various forms of cross wind jumpruns. Skr

Hi Susie, I remember you being at Oceanside, and all the jumps hanging outside the Fairchild. I also remember you in other settings, maybe Taft or the Rumbleseat or ... I'm struck by how strong this skydiving connection is, that people from 40 years ago would show up here and say hi like no time has passed and we're picking up where we left off in mid sentence. Skratch (Garrison)

>rough date that the reserve parachute was introduced into our sport. I started in 1962 and the idea of wearing a reserve was widespread by then, maybe even universal in the United States. I don't know about other countries. But the guys who taught me the most, Jack Pryor who put me out on my first jump and Bob Sinclair who I ran into a couple years later, both started with just a seat pack. I know a number of people who jumped in the 50s with no reserve, but I've also seen pictures of of jumpers in the 20s and 30s who did have them. Skr

> What is a safe exit interval between jumpers exiting an AC Besides Billvon's rule of thumb there is another approach based on knowing the ground speed after the green light is on and how much separation you want. Here's something I posted to a local mailing list: |----------||-----------|-----------| | ground || | | | speed || 1000 ft | 1500 ft | | knots || | | |==========||===========|===========| | 90 knots || 6-7 sec | 10 sec | |----------||-----------|-----------| | 70 knots || 8-9 sec | 12-13 sec| |----------||-----------|-----------| | 50 knots || 11-12 sec| 17-18 sec| |----------||-----------|-----------| Some people like the table in this form: |----------||-----------|-----------| | ground || | | | speed || 1500 ft | 1000 ft | | knots || | | |==========||===========|===========| | 90 knots || 10 sec | 6-7 sec | |----------||-----------|-----------| | 70 knots || 12-13 sec| 8-9 sec | |----------||-----------|-----------| | 50 knots || 17-18 sec| 11-12 sec| |----------||-----------|-----------| I talked to Bryan Burke at Lost Prairie. He said that Eloy no longer flies jumpruns at less than 60 knots. If the uppers are too strong they start flying various forms of cross wind jumpruns. ---- Also, there is no easy way to make downwind jumpruns work with both fast and slow fallers on the same pass. If you keep the usual exit order, slow fallers then fast fallers, the slow fallers drift into the fast faller airspace in freefall. If you put the fast fallers out first they get down 40 or 50 seconds before the slow fallers, and spend most of that flying their canopies up jumprun, which leaves them right in the kill zone when the slow fallers arrive. Skr Edit to add that the "pre" tag seems to have stopped working so you have to imagine that the tables are lined up the way I meant them to be. Edit a second time: I went to file a bug report and when I came back here to get the url of this thread it came up looking right so you can color me confused. Civilization started with showers, it may be ending with computers :-) :-)

> What is a safe exit interval between jumpers That's a complex question. I think Billvon's answer is the best sound bite answer I've heard so far, and in the heat of the action it's hard to remember more than a sound bite. I've collected some people's writing on this question at http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html Look at the one called "Dealing with Uppers" for a start. Skr

:-) :-) Hey, Steve, view this as spiritual pushups. People in the front of the plane, including sometimes the pilot, yelling at you to go on the green light has been going on at this dropzone since it opened. It's the universe testing your spiritual condition, can you maintain that calm and friendly demeanor in the face of such unwarranted, inappropriate, and even unsafe bullshit? From the physics of it all there is maybe a two mile interval in which people can get out and make it back to the dropzone. Maybe it's a bit more now with people pulling higher. At Eloy you can get out short and long because there is nothing out there to hit and they will come and get you. But at dropzone A, where the jumprun is always the same direction, you can't get out short because there is town and shopping malls and a field filled with very expensive race horses short of the runway. I've been yelled at many times for looking out the door and exercising some judgement, on both ends of the jumprun. I'd go out to dropzone B more often but I can't deal with the packs of dogs they let run loose out there. Plus it's a long way out there and dropzone A is only 12 miles away. A lot of experienced jumpers have just faded away, others, like Mary, jump out of state. Skr

>Why does it bother people if someone doesn't make >"FUN" jumps? Why does it even matter to anyone else? I've often wondered why people have such strong opinions about what kind of jumps someone else is making, so I can't answer you. But I've also wondered why people act like there are only two kinds of jumps, fun and something else, serious maybe. I think the reason people jump is to feel feelings, so if you get a thesaurus and list a bunch of different feelings, and then design dives to experience those various feelings, you have all kinds of possibilities. Why limit yourself to fun? How about excitement, inspiration, mellowness, gratification at helping a new person, accomplishment, sharing of vibes, competence, awe, terror, exploration, and so on? The possibilities are endless. Who keeps coming up with these emotionally impoverished, two category frameworks anyway? Is that a USPA thing? Should we write our Regional Directors and expand their minds? :-) :-) Sorry for the rant but this artificial limiting of possibilities has been bugging me for a while now, decades actually. Skr

> Also, John Sherman holds a degree in engineering. >They just lacked 'looks'. I remember when my viewpoint changed. I was visiting John in 1976 when he lived up in Detroit. We were standing there in his basement looking at his white Racer (actually SST) propped up in the middle of the floor looking like a magazine ad. I said: "But John! It *looks* funny!". He said: "No. It's beautiful. It's functional. Form follows function, and that's beautiful.". My brain kind of went "Flip!", and suddenly it was beautiful, and the Vector approach looked funny. That's why I think a lot of gear arguments are fluff and froth. DJan has had a Mirage for 3 or 4 years, and I've packed it at least 100 times, and I've looked closely at every square inch of it. It's a great rig; they put a lot of thought into it and did it right. I've even idly speculated a couple times about getting one (don't tell John I said that! :-) :-) Except ... You know ... All those Vector spinoffs have the chest strap on backwards, and after all these years I'd probably put it on upside down with the leg straps hanging over my ears or something. Skr

>I bet you still miss your front mount reserve too huh? Heh :-) At first I really did. I had about 1,200 jumps on a regular rig with the reserve on the front, where it belongs, so it was kind of spooky jumping with no reserve. But you could track so well in a piggyback! Actually I had already traded my feeling of safety for tracking ability by getting a pop top front reserve before Racers were invented. The trade off was that with a pop top you had to cut away before you used your reserve, which seemed like a really dubious idea, but it was flat and you could track much better with it. Actually even before that I had taken a seat pack and added another seat pack container on the back in pursuit of better tracking. The idea was a clean front plus the added area of the seat pack between my legs would act like a primitive wing suit. But in 1968 I bought an official, factory made, piggy back and all that experimenting faded into history. I still have 3 or 4 brain cells left that are a little freaked out by jumping without a reserve, so my current Racer has a belly band. I freed the horizontal back strap from the container, so the harness fits me instead of the container, and added a belly band. The belly band not only holds it all in place and puts the weight on my hips like a back pack, but the feel of it on my stomach re-assures those 3 or 4 brain cells that the world is as it should be and all is well. I don't tell people about that part though :-) :-) Skr

Besides differing forward throw and freefall drift there is another reason not to put the fast fallers out first. They get to opening altitude 40 or 50 seconds before the slow fallers do and spend a lot of that flying up jump run to get back to the target. With people commonly pulling between 3,000 and 4,000 ft that leaves some of them right in the kill zone when the slow fallers start arriving and opening. ---- On another topic, I had emailed Bryan Burke to see what he thought about this "Dealing with Uppers" article http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/sg_skr_dealing_1_uppers.html I ran into him at Lost Prairie and he said he may experiment with putting ground speed vs seconds tables in the planes. They already post the current ground speed at the trailor loading area. He also said they no longer fly jumpruns at less than 60 knots ground speed. If the uppers get stronger than that they start flying various forms of cross wind jump runs. He's a very thoughtful guy and interesting to talk to. Skr

>some of the reasons YOU wouldn't buy a racer? This is practically a religious war :-) :-) I bought my first Racer in 1976; my current one is 10 or 12 years old. Modern Vectors and many of the Vector spinoffs, Javelin, Mirage, etc, are fine rigs. They won the popularity war, but then so did Microsoft, so you can't use popularity as an indicator of superior design or quality. It does mean that a lot of riggers aren't as familiar with Racers and so find them harder to pack. That's the only down side I've found. But you only need one good rigger at a time and only 3 times a year. I think all the rest is just fluff and froth, like guys standing around arguing Ford vs Chevy. Non Racer jumpers (the unwashed masses who just don't get it) make comments about how Racers look funny, little realizing that through a Racer's eyes all those Vector spinoffs look like ungainly fireplugs with a harness attached. Fluff and froth, part of the ongoing show at the drop zone. Since you will be the one jumping it, you should do what seems rightest to you. I may still be jumping a Racer because I'm in a 30 year rut, but when people ask I tell them I just haven't seen anything better come along. Skr