skr

> person in the red jumpsuit Looks like Vic Deveau to me. And if it is Las Vegas it would have been the "Professional Meet" in 1964. I think it was called "professional" because there was several thousand dollars prize money. I also seem to remember Daryl Henry breaking his neck doing one of those suicidal, downwind accuracy landings with a Crossbow piggyback. He came in and kind of laid out flat on his back reaching for the disk and wasn't used to having that reserve back there instead of up front where it belongs. I also saw Loy Brydon lead one of those no contact diamond formations down over the crowd to the point that I could read their name tags before they did that crossover break and track. It seems that Lyle or somebody had mentioned opening altitudes the day before and Loy wanted to make the point that military teams are not under civilian jurisdiction. I'm not saying they were low or anything, but the high man was 27 seconds in the saddle. Low man was was 20. It's funny, I met Loy many years later at a Pioneers thing and was stunned that he was just a little guy. I guess it was the power of his personality, because I remembered this really rough, gruff Sergeant about 7 1/2 feet tall stalking around, talking to his men, taking crap from no one, and clearly being someone you did not want to mess with. I was just a college kid with less than 200 jumps, and here were all these people I had been reading about, Lyle Cameron, Loy Brydon, Daryl Henry, others, and I was hovering around the edges of conversations, trying to eavesdrop, and bouncing up and down with excitement. Vic was in a reckless, fuckit state of mind because his girl friend had just been killed, in a car accident I think, I don't quite remember. He came over to Los Angeles from there, and we went down to Oceanside in the middle of the week and made some jumps. I will have to blame Vic for never finishing my PhD. He had a real knack for showing up and derailing my school efforts by filling my mind with jumps and jump stories and beer and stuff. Skr Edited to add that the guy in white on the left looks really familiar but I can't pull up his name, and the guy on the right in white looks kind of like Roy Johnson.

I looked at my profile and the "Recent Threads Started" were threads started by other people. The "See All" link just to the right of that seemed to be my stuff, as did the "My Posts" link over in the far left column. Skr

Oh, well this sucks. Dano lived up to his name, Braafhart, Good Heart, Brave Heart. I've watched him teach. He really gave of himself and his energy to his students, and you could see what a huge difference it made to them.

> I'M SCARED AS ALL HELL! So was I. One thing that helps is to make a lot of jumps close together. The first jump of the day feels a certain way, but then you are into a certain mode and the second jump of the day feels a different way. The mental gear shift from mere mortal to skydiver is not as big. You start to have faith that your chute is going to open, and you get acclimated to the experience of freefall and canopy, and the fear of the unknown starts to subside. If you can make two jumps on Saturday, and two more on Sunday you will pass through these early scaries in no time. That's expensive, but if you're hooked you're going to be broke for the rest of your life anyway so you might as well plunge in :-) :-) Skr

I think who you are learning from and who you start hanging out with are much bigger factors than SL vs AFF. Either way you will want to put some real effort into learning canopy skills in your first 100 jumps. Freefall is fun and inspiring, but canopy skill is how you get to keep doing it. Skr

> Hmmmm, I wonder if I can get Administration to reimburse me > for the jumping costs..... :-) :-) Just in case anybody was wondering whether grannyinthesky is a **Real Skydiver**(TM). > I am looking for ideas for activities or projects based on skydiving > that we can use for both areas. How about calculating how far people drift in freefall for various layers of upper winds. Pilots can get the upper wind reports at 3,000 ft intervals, so you can calculate how far people would drift in each interval and add them up. Also for your own education as a jumper John Kallend, who posts on here, wrote a program that graphs freefall trajectories for various uppers and various fall rates. His model is more accurate than the simple 3,000 ft interval approximation above, and it's worth trying some combinations and mulling what that tells you when you're standing in the door about to jump out, like, for one thing, how do you know how far up wind to go before you go? Skr

:-) :-) There is another danger besides just living or dying due to currency. I started jumping between my junior and senior years. By the time my master's orals rolled around I stayed up very late the night before drinking beer and telling jump stories. I made it through the PhD qualifying exams in real and complex variables, but I was really having a hard time bridging the gap between what I was seeing on the weekends and what I was seeing about life in a math department. I sat through a year of algebra and topology, never took the exams, dropped out, got a job and jumped like crazy. Then I let go of the job and moved into my van and lived at the dropzone. I guess it all turned out OK, but it was certainly a fork in the road. Skr

> everyone wanted to go to Casa Grande In 1975 I was living in Los Angeles and driving every weekend to Casa Grande because I thought that was the best, most inspiring skydiving in the world. It was the jumps, the people, the vibes. It was also a 1,000 mile round trip, so the week got really shortened, like down to about Wednesday, because you had to start getting ready on Thursday so you could drive over on Friday, and after the first weekend I gave up trying to leave early on Sunday, so I would pull in to LA at about 6:00 on Monday morning, and it would take till Tuesday to start recovering, and then you had to do your whole week on Wednesday because tomorrow is Thursday and it's time to start getting ready for the weekend. It was wonderful! Skr

> Once on a load I found out that they'd moved the > landing area without telling me. Really? I thought they only moved the dropzone around in exit separation discussions :-) :-) But yes, when I go to a new DZ I look at aerial maps, and stand around and watch a few loads, and look at stuff, and try to tune in to the new environment. Then I go up and do a solo so I can tune in on the way up and look around on the way down. Demos were exciting, but these days I'm much more into lower stress recreation. Skr

> wdy_bnckr Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. I remember Plattsburg too, it was my 8th and final tree landing. > what was truth and what was embelishment I don't know either, but after being around him a number of times I tended to believe the stories because even in their stretched versions they sounded like the kind of thing he might do.

> how often everyone does a PLF Not too often. I don't jump in difficult conditions anymore, at least not on purpose, so I can mostly stand up. But I'm really good at it, and over the years I've made it through a lot of mistakes and foolishness with a good PLF. I would find an ex Airborne person that you feel comfortable with, and learn the proper form, and then practice on a mattress or the peas or something soft about 9,000 times so you have it at your finger tips when you need it. With today's gear you could probably get by with just front PLFs. Skr

> Not much ... all it takes is all your money and the rest of your life. Hey Zing! That was going to be my line! But it really seems to make sense when you're doing it :-) :-) Skr

Hey, Howard, thanks for telling me about Vic. It seems so long ago. I don't know how he got my name, maybe through PCA, but he showed up one day in 1963 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Actually it was the day before my master's orals. So I stayed up most of the night drinking beer and listening to jump stories - Hey, are you a math major or a skydiver? Was there ever any question :-) :-) Until then it was just me and another guy, Dennis Quinn, jumping around Raleigh. I had just over 100 jumps but Vic had about 350, and a D license, *and* he was the first person I had met from The-Outside-World. Well, actually I had also met a guy named Squeak Charette when I went down to Ft Bragg to get somebody official to sign off my C license. About 3 seconds after my orals the next day we drove off to some little airport and made some jumps. I don't remember how we talked somebody into taking us up and letting us jump out, but we went there for the next 2 or 3 days, and then he left. Next year, 1964, we ran into each other again at the Professional Meet in Las Vegas and he came over to Los Angeles for a few days after that. I was still theoretically in graduate school, but you know ... So we went down to Oceanside in the middle of the week. It was just the two of us since Oceanside was a weekend dropzone, but Jack Zahnizer, the owner agreed to fly the 180 for us. Unfortunately there were clouds at 2,000 ft, so there was only time for one quick hookup and then separate and pull on each jump. But to add flavor to the day we rigged Vic's rig up with a static line on one jump, with the other end hooked to one of my D-rings, and then climbed out on the strut together and jumped off. And then he left and drove straight through, nonstop from Los Angeles to Connecticut. We ran into each other several other times over the years. I learned a lot from him. > "Ah, yes, I fired him five times." :-) :-) Yes, I think Vic was a good influence on a lot of people. Skr

> a lot of dedication and sacrifice! What do you think? Yes, 1,000 jumps still seems like it has some kind of meaning to me, too. Norm Heaton handed me mine on a jump out of a Howard at Elsinore in 1967. I hadn't planned on getting them, and didn't know it was coming, and couldn't figure out why he was flying around in front of me trying to hand me something instead of following the dive plan :-) :-) Skr (#104)

> Perhaps BJ Worth can enlighten us Yeah, somebody should ask BJ to write a paragraph or three on the jump story of it all and then post it here. I thought that as an artistic representation it really captured the spirit and flavor of certain dropzones I used to go to. The actual details were ridiculous and hilarious but the vibe was perfect. I feel nostalgia every time I see it. Skr

I think who you are hanging out with and learning from is way more important than whether you are doing SL or AFF. Everybody needs pretty much the same stuff in their early jumps - the first 100 or so - and by the "same stuff" I mean flying your canopy, both the mechanics and the development of judgement, plus weather and spotting and gear and packing and all the stuff you need to make an intelligent parachute jump. Whatever freefall stuff fits in there for entertainment and inspiration is good, but all freefall fits within the framework of a parachute jump, and that's where most of the focus should be in the early jumps. Skr

Just passing through town before I log off .. Hmmm .. '68 Nationals .. I was at the '68 Nationals .. JMB1.jpg .. Hey, that guy in white looks just like Sunny Yates .. Other pictures .. Rusty brain cells creaking into action .. Back to JMB1.jpg .. It *is* Sunny! Wow! Emotions .. Memories .. Hmmm .. broken leg .. I didn't remember that .. White Jungle Jim hat .. I used to have a .. Holy shit! That's me! Hardly recognize myself without a beard .. Oh yeah .. Right .. 1968 .. Demo jump into the Tijuana race track with Bob Sinclair and Bobby Johnson .. I cut off my hair and beard so I could cross the border with a van full of parachutes and smoke grenades and stuff .. Pelon loaned me his PC so I could have Mexican colors .. Jesus, Howard .. You oughta warn me before you do stuff like that :-) :-) Skr

Thanks Bill, and D'OB and all the others. I think that DZO enforced separation is the only thing that's going to work. Education and not being a hazard to others was supposed to already have been happening, and it wasn't working. The DZOs are the only people who can make stuff like this happen (or not happen). So thanks. Skr

> Can any of the old Texas crowd help with the names Wow, that's quite a picture! I had forgotten about that. The guy to the right of Al Krueger looks like Ron Cox. All the other faces are familiar, but no names are coming to mind. I had forgotten about Matt Farmer's long hair phase. I always considered Matt to be one of the great thinkers in skydiving. While a lot of people were concerned with performance, Matt thought more about performance of what? And why? That was the question that attracted me too, and we talked a lot about it. He influenced me way more than he probably realized. I remember Ron Cox because of the strength of our interaction. I happened to be in Texas one day in 1995 when this guy walked up and said "I want to remind you that you cost us the 72 Nationals!". This was 23 years later, mind you, and he was still carrying all this heat. I must have been too because I knew before he was two words into that sentence who he was and what he was talking about :-) :-) The short version, for anybody who didn't happen to be there that day, is that we were doing 10-way speed stars and some clouds had started to form. This was back in the day of wooden parachutes and video hadn't been invented yet, so teams were being judged through telemeters, which are giant, German binoculars mounted on a tripod. In hindsight I should have called it until we had enough clear sky, but the clouds were just forming and on one team I sent the DC3 around several times trying to find a jumprun that would keep the team in sight from exit all the way down. They made the jump, came down, and filed a protest - hypoxia. I was stunned. Whatever happened to the mystique that we relative workers could stay up all night, drink everybody under the table, and still outjump them the next day? But there it was - a protest. There was one rule that said once a jump has been made, it is final. That was to cover some cases that had happened in previous meets. But when I wrote those rules, I knew that no set of rules, even hundreds of pages of rules, could cover every possibility, so I had written a meta-rule which said that nothing in the rules would get in the way of fairness to the teams. They had made the jump, to not count it was unfair to the other teams, but after some intense agonizing it seemed even more unfair that through no fault of their own, they had done multiple speed star line-ups and then go-arounds at 12,500. So after some intense agonizing between a bad choice and a worse choice I granted the rejump, and of course they did better, and all the standings changed. A little while later I was surrounded by 40 odd enraged skydivers giving me their opinion on that decision, and Ron was right in front of me, striding back and forth and telling me with great force how wrong that decision was. I can still see him and it's been 35 years .. I hope he's not still mad at me. I thought at the time that he was right, but I thought that the other viewpoint was even more right, and actually, aside from being afraid that I was about to die right then and there, I was most disturbed by what competition had turned relative work into. I had the same feeling more recently when I first saw the words "compulsory maneuvers" being used in the same sentence as the word "freeflying". Humanity doesn't seem to learn much from the past. Aside from standing on their heads, they're doing word for word and move for move exactly what the relative workers did in the previous cycle. So, I'm not really from Texas, but my father was, which is close enough for History & Trivia. Skr (

> who came up the diamond track I don't know who first did the two people track apart and then back together version, but Ray Duffy told me that the 4-way diamond version was somewhat of an accident. He was the leader, and he mis-spotted, so he started gently sliding toward the spot. The other three guys were staying with him so he started sliding a little more and a little more until he was in kind of a wide track. It looked good from the ground so they practiced it and started using it in real demos. I vaguely remember him saying 1961. I first saw it in person at the Las Vegas Professional Meet in 1964. It was awesome (which is a case of beer, I've never seriously used that phrase before). It was that and Richard Economy's hovering jump around the same time that go me so fired up about flying no-contact. Skr

Damn it, I knew what this was going to be about before I even came over here .. I did not want to hear that. He was truly one of the good guys. You gotta start spacing these out a little more. Skr

For as long as I can remember I've been told that each part of the brain does a specific thing, vision, hearing, motor control and so on, and if that part of the brain gets damaged then you lose that function. I was also told that some time early in life your brain is fully developed, that's all the neurons you get, and from there on up it's all down hill. I was also told that you only use 10% of your brain, and a lot of other definite sounding statements. I always used to wonder - How do they know? Who says? How can I keep learning and changing if nothing is changing? They made it sound like someone somewhere knew the whole story, when in fact it all looked more like an expanding frontier of ignorance to me. We keep learning more and more stuff and looking over the edge at the other 99% that's still out there. Then not long ago I stumbled across a word, neuroplasticity, and Googled, and found that most of what I had been told was wrong, and in fact, lots of other people were looking into this very question. I bought a book: Train your Mind, Change your Brain by Sharon Begley (Ballantine), and actually resisted buying a whole wheelbarrow full of books - going into a book store with a credit card is still a dangerous act for me :-) :-) This seems like it has vast implications for the learning and training that we do. I had meant to post more about this, but this China trip is now looming and sweeping all else before it, kind of like psyllium husks for the mind. I'll be back. Skr

I agree with your post. I used to say it as we need to keep our skydives within the framework of an intelligent parachute jump. When I coached post AFF people it was 70 or 80% parachute jump stuff. > So the point I guess is that those of us that are new at this > (maybe even people with a couple hundred jumps already) > may be flying around with really basic skills and not attempting > to learn more or asking "why?". I think new people show up and tune in to the attitudes and outlooks and practices of the people who are already there, and it just perpetuates. I used to spend over half the dirt dive practicing the part that happens after breakoff. Track away, pull, hands on rear risers - and I'd run over to some other position and say "OK, here's someone coming right at you, which way do you turn to avoid the collision?" And then go into we're here, the target's over there, the winds are like this. What's the landing pattern and what do we do to get from here to the beginning of the pattern? And we'd walk through all that, walk through the pattern, the flare, and so on. Do you see people doing that? Most dirt dives I see end at the break. There's nothing wrong with downsizing and head down and swooping and most of the other stuff that gets popular. What's wrong (just my view of course) is that we've created a world where people skip over the couple hundred jumps where you make a real effort to develop that foundation of making an intelligent parachute jump. Plunging immediately into all the other stuff without that foundation only makes a social kind of sense, where you act like the people you're trying to fit in with. But the air, the sky, the ground don't care about that. So since you are thinking this way, maybe you can develop your foundation, and then pass it on to a few people when it's your turn to teach. Skr

> That was the first time I was "grounded for life" Now *that's* funny :-) :-)

I was just looking at those pictures. That's Bill Spargur and Jim Hyland hanging underneath. Lyle is up on top and Suzie Bateman is standing in the door. That looks like Hector Nunez's dark blue Crossbow piggyback on the strut. And I vaguely remember Chip Maury sitting on the wheel, but I could be confusing that with some other jump. Skr