skr

> Completed 24 hours of freefall today. :-) I think a whole day of freefall is a pretty astounding fact too. When we get to the end and the gatekeeper says "How did you spend your days?" we can say "I spent one of them in freefall.". And the gatekeeper will say "Cool, come on in!". Skr

>I was just curious if your canopy flies differently at sea level It's slower and softer and you flare a couple feet higher the first couple jumps. You'll like it. The air down at sea level is so thick that you don't actually need a rig, but it's polite to wear one ... it helps you fit into the local scene better. Skr

>Garth Taggart SCR 38 Holy shit! Tag is here! Dropzone.com is like a very large party where I keep running into people I haven't seen in a very long time. Ancient jump stories flooding into memory ... Including that time when ... but no, I probably shouldn't mention that one in public. Wha's happenin' duuuude! ?? :-) :-) Skr ( SCR-16)

>"Minds are like parachutes--they only function when open." I also like Bryan Burke's observation: "Minds are like parachutes--sometimes they just don't work." Maybe he was the manager at Eloy for too long :-) :-) Skr

New observations from Voyager 1 indicate the spacecraft is approaching a formerly unexplored region at the very edge of our solar system. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031120.html

I've had glasses since the 9th grade. Glasses are a pain in the butt. The only thing worse than glasses is no glasses. Two or three years ago I got some perscription goggles from the sportx place (URL in one of the posts above). They work well for me. Skr

>Since I can't jump with others (except coaches), >what belly skills should I Even more important than the freefall stuff is learning how to be a parachute jumper. Learn - how to pack and maintain your gear - how to watch the weather and jumprun and spot - how to fly your canopy - toggle technique, traffic management, large scale thinking ahead. That's stuff you need on every jump regardless of whatever you do in freefall and it takes some determined focus to learn it. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/safety/detail_page.cgi?ID=42 has some stuff about that and http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/ has some other stuff down at the bottom of the page. Also, people don't need to be actual rated coaches. If the local S&TA thinks some experienced jumper is a good influence on students he can write a waiver for that person to jump with post AFF people. In the long run I think it's better for people to get the coach rating so that lot's of people go through the process and can give feedback to USPA on how to improve the program. People seem to take that coach rating as something handed down from on high and cast in stone, but it's actually just a bunch of jumpers trying to come up with something better than taking people to the end of AFF and dropping them in the black void to fend for themselves. Skr

>I believe there were also 3 photographers Hi Tim .. strange to be meeting like this after all this time :-) I remember it as two photographers: Bob Buquor and Doyle Fields. I wasn't there that day, but I remember seeing the movies at the Rumbleseat a short time later. Skr

>I have used all the systems and still prefer the RIPCORD, > that can be pulled with either hand! Me too. It seems kind of silly to have one handle buried back there out of sight that you can only reach with one hand. I'm too lazy to switch back though. --- While I'm here I'd like to thank you for all the pioneering I used to read about when I was jumping in Southern California back in the 60's. Skr

> Ok - I'm probably opening myself up to a firing range with this, > BUT I see NO PROBLEM with pulling higher than planned. > As long as the jumper flys away from exiting groups there > should be no risk of collisions with the groups behind them.... > that is if the group behind them has given enough seperation. I almost agree with this except for: - If you're jumping with a group of people you should - stick to the plan and not decide in mid stream to pull higher - If more than one plane is flying you need to get down out - of the kill zone before the next plane comes along. Skr

>Do any of you get this way? >Question whether or not you should be doing this? Oh, it comes and goes. Sometimes I delve into it, other times I use some bit of sports psychology, and other times I just accept it as a normal part of skydiving and keep on truckin'. It's a valid question, maybe not whether I "should be", but whether I "want to", or whether it's worth it. Skr

> You say one of your chops was intentional. >Is it worth it to try it? If they ever got around to electing me Emperor of the Reality I would get a couple gear manufacturers to make some intentional cutaway rigs of various sizes, and each drop zone would have a few, and I'd make it customary at around 100 jumps or so for people to do a couple. It takes the mystery out of it, and is one less new thing to cope with if you ever need to do it for real. >Frankly, sometimes I'm tempted. Remember that reserves are just parachutes, and sometimes they don't work, so it's probably better to use a well designed cutaway rig with three chutes. Skr

I was just skimming through forums in a hopeless quest to catch up and ran across this: > Now that you mention it the times that I went right to track > from a box position, i went seriously headdown for a second. I think this is normal - you go head down relative to the ground, but not relative to the relative wind. Imagine you have been tracking for a while, so you are in a steady state, body shaped just right, hitting the relative wind at a certain angle. From a standing start the relative wind is coming straight up, so if you hit your best track, meaning body shape and angle of relative wind, you look head down relative to the ground. As you start moving forwards the relative wind starts coming from more out in front of you and you level out, relative to the ground, but your angle with the relative wind is the same throughout. Skr

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ skr

> Maybe if we trained a ski jumper and have him > try a wingsuit while jumping off a ramp we might > see how he would fly and land with the skis... > It would be some sort of R&D.. Some sort indeed :-) But it's a good idea, after all, watching ski jumpers is where Loy Brydon got the idea for tracking in the first place back in the late 50's. And I have no doubt that someone will land a wingsuit, and once one person does it others will do it, and before you know it it will be a whole new branch of skydiving. And you won't even have to pack! Revolutionary! :-) :-) http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/turf_surf.html Skr

You can make a list of specifics but I think the tone is set by the DZO and influenced by the most experienced jumpers. If the DZO hits on women students that trickles down and attracts instructors who do likewise. If the DZO doesn't tolerate it, that trickles down too. skr

Just catching up on old threads after being away for a while. >If your coach falls straight down, you can track away and see how far you get. That also helps to see the breakup as a maneuver in its own right instead of a frantic after thought at the end of the jump. Long ago I watched the army demo team wearing smoke and leaving 45 degree trails in the sky so these days people are doing at least that well with just bodies and no special jumpsuits. I put a description of tracking up at http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/rwg_skr_pvpr_track.html skr

>I'm still jumping in Hawaii. Hi Tim, It's surprising to me how many of us are still jumping, or maybe coming back to jumping. A couple months ago Kim Emmons (now Knor), D-221, came back after a 37 year layoff. Skratch

Here's something else to reinforce the good choice you made: http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/c_wings_level.html Skr

>If jump run starts at one end of the runway, The rule of thumb that I use is that these days a lot of people are in the saddle at 2,500 ft, and from 2,500 ft you can go about a mile on a no wind day. That means you have about a two mile interval for stringing out the groups. The more wind there is the more that two mile interval shifts up wind. Also when I have several solos that I'm helping with their exit spacing I use more like 1,000 ft and hope that the big sky theory will neutralize their natural tendancy to slide toward each other in freefall and then open facing each other both with line twists. Skr

Well, I did read to the end of the thread, but I'm responding to Bill's post out of years of habit on this subject :-) :-) [ Insert standard soapbox here: [ OPEC changed the oil prices in 1973. [ Multiple groups per pass started shortly after that. [ It's now 30 years later and we're *still* ... I do see signs of progress though. Not only are lots of people concerned about the lack of training on this issue, but more people are talking in terms of horizontal separation instead of elapsed time. Cool. >However, one method of ensuring good exit separation is to >look at the _ground_ and simply exit when you've covered >1000 feet or so. Yes, I agree with that, except that the 1,000 ft was a round canopy intuition and after the discussions went on for a while I finally realized how much distance squares travel in only a few seconds and changed to 1,500 ft for small groups. >To do this you have to be a good spotter I used to think in terms of spotting too because I've done a lot of it, but I now think that this term scares people off. People at turbine drop zones don't get to spot, so asking them to use that skill for exit separation doesn't work. I tell them about looking at the horizon and then straight down too, but reassure them that seeing the picture change by 1,500 ft before exiting is what counts, and you can soon learn to do that even if you're not looking quite straight down. Just looking down in a consistent way and seeing the picture change by 1,500 ft is enough. John and others have correctly pointed out that the ground is irrelevant, it's the layer of wind at opening altitude that matters. But you can't see that layer of wind, you can only see the ground. We have ground winds opposite or different than the uppers most of the time in Colorado. Also, in playing with John's model I saw that it takes a while after entering the new layer of wind for your horizontal drift to match the new layer, so if the wind shear is at 5 or 6,000 ft you only have to stretch your exit separation by a little bit. USPA's role in this training is almost non existant because USPA moslty reacts to grass roots ground swells instead of leading. So if you guys want any action out of USPA you will need to write to the safety and training committee and also ask your regional director to ask them to put it on the agenda for the next board meeting. Skr

> Does anyone know what portions of the A license > proficiency card can be signed off on by a coach, > and what requires an instructor? I just looked at the latest versions on uspa.org. The two page card says everything must be signed by an instructor. The four page card has a couple places that a coach can sign. I think the official uspa view is that coaches can teach the freefall part of G and H and instructors have to teach everything else. This doesn't make much sense to me. A coach can teach most of the first jump course, but can't show someone how to replace a closing loop? The other way this doesn't make sense is that all the canopy control and packing and other stuff is a *lot* of ground instruction. Are there any dropzones out there doing it this way? Or are people still falling off the end of the AFF phase and lucky to get any help from anybody, even a lowly coach? Skr

> What is amazing is some of the people with 2 digit numbers are still jumping. Hey! Watch it there, kid :-) :-) Skratch SCR-16

61 - 20 skr

I think "PD fan" would be a more accurate phrase. I've seen them go way out of their way to fix problems. Someone around here once had a canopy with about 400 jumps that began to develop a turn or something, I don't quite remember, but they sent it back for inspection, thinking maybe it needed new lines. I don't know what the problem was, but after a couple weeks PD sent them a brand new canopy. Pretty refreshing. Skr