skr

>and dispersing the energy by rolling over my shoulder
>(like a foward somersault but rolling from right shoulder
>to left hip).

This sounds like what I do.

I learned the PLF motion from ex-paratroopers, but when
there is much horizontal speed I do it in the manner of
the judo roll where you're going forward and you sort of
roll up your arm and across your shoulder and diagonally
down your back to your hip and slap the mat.

Except I don't stick my arm out or slap the ground.

I do the standard feet and knees together and lightly
up the leg while bending at the waist and twisting
into it to make it happen and across the shoulder and
diagonally down the back.

I never hit my head because I tuck my chin and do the
bending twisting make it happen motion.


I think sliding in is a really bad idea, but people are doing
it because nobody is teaching them how to do the PLF /
judo roll motion.

( Insert standard rant about the quality of some of
( today's training here.

Skr

> Cool . . .

> Why hasn't this one been actually done yet?

> http://manifestmaster.com/...utist/big1980_02.jpg

I believe that formation was invented by Matt Farmer
in 1975 at the Gulch.

His "sketch" of the dirt dive was a model built out of
pipe cleaners (those long white things with a wire inside).

We tried it a couple times a year or two after that at
Pope Valley, but is was just a big funnel.

I should imagine that with today's skill and a tail gate
it would be possible.

Skr

I was on that load. From memory:

It was organized by the Pacific Coast Skydivers.

I don't remember the cost but it was like $50-$100.

We took off from somewhere in LA, like Long Beach,
although I don't think it was actually Long Beach.

It was owned by Blatz(?) Airlines.
The seats were in place.
The stewardesses were on board.

The idea, besides jumping an exotic airplane, was
to have the inconceivably large number of 100 jumpers
in freefall at the same time.

Most people were afraid to have that many people
in the air so we had 64 or 65.

We flew to Taft. I vaguely remember someone, Bill
Pyle?, spotting. We were at 15,000 ft.

The fear of too many people was not necessary,
just getting out of the seat, shuffling down the aisle
guarding your reserve handle and diving out spread
us out over several miles.

The stewardesses were back by the door watching
us dive out.

I never saw anybody the whole freefall, but that was
because I had to pee so bad I was about to go in my
jumpsuit and hope it dried out on the way down, so
I spent the whole jump in a head down dive and
pulled pretty low so I could get down and pee.

I don't remember why we were up there so long,
but we made several passes over the dropzone
with go arounds before we jumped.


I remember Dirty Ed telling me that the guy in front
of him passed out as he got to the door and fell
down and Dirty Ed, in the exit frenzy state of mind,
just picked him up and threw him out and dove out
after him.

Then he thought "Shit, what did I just do?" and started
chasing after him.

The guy is laying there on his back, passed out,
in a slow turn.

Part way down he comes to, shakes his head, does
the fastest half barrel roll in the history of the world,
and Dirty Ed just kind of fades off into blue.


We made a second jump, taking off from Taft.

This time we were more organized and several groups
tried to do some RW.

I was with some friends from Oceanside.

"Organized" meant that we sat close togther so that
when we struggled up out of our seats and shuffled
down the aisle we would be following each other out.


The other main thing I remember is this is where I met
Bob Sinclair.

I worked for Bob and Dave Burt for several years
after that and consider them my main teachers,
along with Bud Kiesow and Richard Economy.

So, that was 40 years ago, but that's how I remember it.

Skr

Also remember, while you're figuring out what body
position you want to freefall in, to put some real and
systematic effort into learning the parachute jump skills.

That means gear and maintenance and weather and
spotting and exit separation and tracking and canopy
flying and stuff like that.

Maybe find a couple experienced jumpers who are
good at that stuff and ask them to help you learn it.

Skr

> Every time someone dies on a swoop the blood is on
> our hands. How long are we going to go on denying this?
> And there's plenty of blame to go around. We jumpers share
> the blame with gear retailers and canopy manufacturers who
> are putting profit ahead of safety. We are selling killing
> machines to our innocents. I've thought about this from all
> angles, and the only conclusion I can come to is we are
> royally screwing up

:-) :-)

I would hate to be called into court as any kind of witness.

Being under oath to tell the truth I'm not sure I could be as
diplomatic as that.


I think the evolution into our current state of parachuting
skill and canopy flying is the biggest collective fuck up
I've seen so far.

I slowed way down in the 80s and when I got active
again in 1993 I was amazed at what I saw people doing
under canopy, and it wasn't a good amazed either.


> I'm not, and never have been for banning anything.
> I've always seen that after a steep learning curve we
> jumpers figure out how to do dangerous things.

Me either, but we're light years past where we should
have learned.

I have no idea how to break the cycle, DZOs, S&TAs,
USPA, gear sellers, experienced jumpers ... the people
with the power to set trends ...


It's like collective Sport Death.

A long time ago we used that word for people who
persistently did stuff that was predictably lethal, you know,
take a bunch of quaaludes and pull low a lot.

But back then it was individuals, now it's skydiving as
a whole getting people in way over their heads with
little or no training.

I don't mean just little canopies and swooping here,
but canopy skill at all levels. When I do coaching toward
the A license it's about 75% parachuting and 25% freefall,
and I think canopy training should go well beyond that
into the later licenses.


More money .. I can hardly grasp the price of things now,
but I've always liked that bumper sticker:

"You think knowledge is expensive? Try ignorance."

Skr

>However, the image and sound of that incident
>is burned in my mind.

I still remember my first one.

We opened a couple hundred feet apart at about
1,500 ft.

He had a line over. A reserve started out, started
to tangle, pulled it back in, got one riser released,
reserve tangling in main, lower, lower, the sound
of the impact, the little ring of dust that went out.

Landing beside him, the chute was partly covering
him, raising up one edge to see who it was, the
emptiness of his facial expression, the horrible
smashed body of a vertical impact.

That was 1967.

I couldn't get it out of my mind for days. What finally
broke the obsession process was Jerry Bird telling
me that people on the ground heard him scream
just before he hit.

That made it so horrible that my processor broke.



>Do you somehow forget?
>Become numb to the reality of this sport?

I don't think I've forgotten, I just don't think about
it very often any more. It's not a new idea. The shock
and disbelief aren't there any more.

When it happens now the pain and loss and grief
are just as sharp, but they don't last as long, and
there is no longer any surprise or shock or resistance
to the idea of it even happening.


I've lost a couple hundred friends, not all of them
to skydiving, but most of them, and not all of them
close, but enough of them to be pretty painful.


I think it does somewhat explain my short fuse when
I see shitty training or corner cutting, unsafe procedure.

I can understand young guys getting carried away
with testosterone and ignorance and doing stupid stuff,
but I just don't have much tolerance for experienced
jumpers being sloppy about taking care of new ones,
or endangering others.

I want all my friends to be in the hangar at the end
of the day too.


I remember the last thing Alan said to me. We were
at Taft and he had just bought some zippy little sports
car and he wanted to show it off, so we jumped in
and he put it through its paces down to the end of the
runway and back (we were young guys doing stupid
stuff :-) :-)

After the airport manager finished chewing us out Alan
looked at me and said:

"Don't let the small minds get to you."

And then we put on our gear and went up and jumped
out and he died.



So I guess the way I cope now is I just go through the
process of feeling the loss and grief, it's a really familiar
process, and renew my efforts to watch for all the little
things, the undone chest straps, the dubious loads,
the accumulation of circumstances.

I'm pretty introverted so I tend to do it alone, but if you're
a more outward person sharing the process with a few of
the right people can really help too.

Skr

> Are you defending me?

Maybe I was now that you ask, but at the time
I was reacting more to a multiple reality situation
being artificially framed as an either/or choice.

Even if Bozo knows what he means by "either in
or out" it doesn't mean that everybody or even
anybody means the same thing with those words.

You can consider yourself "in", or be like me and
not even have a stance on the subject. I don't
even see skydiving as a sport.

I have a friend who started in the late 50s, made
about 600 jumps and then didn't jump for 37 years,
and then a couple years ago started up again.

I made a jump with her last Saturday.

Was she "in or out" just because she took a few
weekends off? Is there a boundary somewhere
between a few weekends and 37 years where
you suddenly change states from "in" to "out"?

I don't know.

It was curious thing for Bozo to say but I don't
know what he meant or what prompted him to
say it.


>I don't know if you remember me

I imagine I would if we met. I'm going to some kind
of SOS thing at Elsinore in a few months so if you
walk up and say "Hi, I'm Sandy" we can find out.

Skr

> You are either in the sport or you are not ?

I think that's leaving out all the in-between states,
all the ways a person relates to jumping, physical,
emotional, mental ... and how, at any given moment,
all those ways are a certain degree true or not.

I even have multiple and contradictory feelings at
the same time about all those threads of relationship.

Skr

Now that's a good post.

I didn't realize that that's been bothering me
until you brought it into focus.

Trees and forest.

Skr

I have mixed feelings about zero-g in jump planes.

For one thing it's always unexpected, at least I've
never had a pilot warn us.

For another it only lasts a moment and the pull out
is not always smooth and gentle.

Still, I mostly liked it.


A few months ago I went to http://www.nogravity.com/
where you get 25 seconds worth at a time.

I buy a powerball ticket a couple times a year just
in case the universe is trying to funnel $20,000,000
my way so I can go over to Russia and and go up
to the International Space Station.

Skr

>I'm still debating whether this is worth the long-term risks

I don't think you can answer the question of whether to
jump or not with a statistical approach.

Statistics work for insurance companies because they
deal with lots of cases, but you're only one case and
you don't end up in a mixed state of 90% alive and 10%
dead, you either live or die.

And there is also the risk of living a long, boring life,
getting old, having done nothing, never experiencing
the friendships and jump stories and insights and feelings.


I think that if you like to jump then jump. Maybe someday
you'll feel full, like after a good meal, and just naturally
move on, but in any case you can't decide the whole
rest of your life today.


Skydiving is kind of like a narrow mountain trail. If you
stay on the path where a lot of stuff has been figured
out, you'll probably be OK.

But you don't have to stray very far off the path to be
in some deep and lethal shit.


I wonder about this myself from time to time.

Skr

I don't know where you are in Wyoming but I think
Skydive Ogden over in Utah is the nicest dropzone
in the mountain region.

I don't know whether they do static line jumps but
you are only in that student phase for a short time
and then it's all the same so maybe going to Ogden
and doing AFF would make sense.

Skr

Yes, he made a difference, and it was a good one.

Even as a skinny young kid with only a few jumps
he was full of energy and ideas and vision.

I know some people don't like him, but it's hard to
do anything of significance without ruffling someone's
feathers.

I stopped by there a few years ago on my way back
from Quincy (Chicago really is on the way to Colorado
if you hold the map just right) to see him and what
he was doing with his dropzone.

He took several unscheduled hours out of a busy morning
to show me around and tell me what he was doing.

Skr

> Just wondering how easy it is to become complacent and was
> looking for a catchy phrase I could reflect upon so I can avoid
> ever getting that way.

This is a great question.

I'm not sure you can keep from getting complacent.

Also the boundary between being really current and
relaxed vs sliding slowly into complacence is hard to
notice when you're sliding because it can happen
bit by unnoticeable bit over a long period.

And then there is being too tired to take the normal
care, or getting stupid from dehydration.

I remember one year at Quincy I caught myself going
through the motions of checking my gear. My hands
were raising flaps in the usual order and my eyes
were pointed in the right direction, but nothing was
registering. I wasn't there. I was going through an
auto-pilot set of motions.

I had gotten complacent about exhaustion and dehydration.


I think the real answer to your question lies in the
direction of meditation and sports psychology and
all the ways people have figured out about how to
pay attention.


One thing I do is have a kind of rigid or strict sequence
of steps that I (almost) always do the same way for
each phase of the jump.

When I pack I don't really like to talk to people or
stop part way through and come back to it.

When I do my gear check I do it the same way
each time and put my stuff on the same way each
time.

And so on for other parts of the jump.

It's not that I can't step outside of these patterns,
or change them if a better version comes to mind.

It's more like making intentional use of habits.


But even with all this I go along until I either notice
I've gotten lax, or I see something happen to someone,
or I scare myself, and I wake up out of my dream
for a while.

Good question.

Skr

sometime in the last few weeks the font size
on the front page got much smaller

other pages like forums are still the same

> there's a "D" stamped on one side

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the "D".

> But how far can you swoop

Well, I try not to make these new guys feel
inadequate but there's a picture of me swooping
about three screens down in

http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/index.html

It's called "1998 - Turf Surfing?? Did You Say Turf Surfing??"

and it's here

http://indra.net/~bdaniels/ftw/turf_surf.html


Actually it's been a long time so I'm not entirely
sure that's me, but it is in my imagination, and
that's close enough for a jump story :-) :-)

Skr

"dash two" floats up out of my dusty memory bin.

On the handle where the cable goes through
there used to be a "-1" or a "-2".

The "-2"s were longer and there was some
combination of housing and "-1" where you
could pull the rig by stretching the housing.

Talk about arcane lore! :-) :-)

Skr

Maybe there are just lots of different kinds
of people who are experienced jumpers.

Some are like lasers, they are going where
they are going and fend off side issues.

Others are generalists who see some bigger
picture from several different sides.

Some are using skydiving as a means of
self worth, and others are just shy and don't
talk much to anybody.


But I see adults who can't seem to remember
how it was to be a kid, or be too young to
have the experience to know how stuff works
all the time.

I have wondered about that myself, but it's
not unique to skydiving.


So maybe for you it's just a matter of feeling
around for the ones who are approachable
and letting the rest be whatever they are.

Skr

Hey Sandy [MissBuffDiver]

I'm trying to think which Sandy you are.

Are you kind of tall with reddish hair and
jumped at Elsinore and kind of dated Bob
Sinclair for a while?

I guess I'm not as clear on last names as
I should be.

Skr

>Can an S&TA allow a non rated individual to act as Instructor

I believe that used to be true for people doing
the post AFF to A license phase. I haven't looked
at the SIM in a while.

I'm pretty sure you can't do that for the AFF phase
though.

Skr

>I don't know you remember me or not.

Yes, I remember you. I didn't recognize the name
Hammitt, but when I looked at your profile and saw
Dean I knew who you were.


>If was certainly one of the most innovative times in my skydiving career.

Yeah, me too. Those 70s years starting at the Gulch
and then moving to Pope Valley were a real high
point in my life.


It's pretty neat how we're all running into each other
again here.

Skr

I'm not sure whose idea it was.

The Crossbow piggyback also had the possibility
of an RSL. I never used it, and don't remember how
it was set up, but the reserve ripcord housing was
attached to the reserve container with four snaps,
so maybe the static line somehow went from a riser
to the housing.

And maybe Perry was working for Security at the
time so it was all his idea anyway. I don't know.

Also I remember Tiny Broadwick talking about doing
multiple cutaways, and had the impression that the
cutaway canopy static lined the next one, kind of like
some of today's base rigs do.

I don't remember her specifically saying that, it wasn't
part of the jump story, but at the time I thought that was
what she was saying.

Skr

I got an email from Pat Swovelin last week.

I met Bill at Elsinore in 1964. It's funny, I thought
of him as "Dirty Ed" but I always called him "Bill"
out of habit.

He's in so many of my 60s Elsinore memories
that I don't even want to think about it, although
I have been.

He made a difference.

His life had meaning.

And a *lot* of jump stories :-) :-)

I remember the Orange Sunshine in Terry's
going away to jail cake.

Skratch

I was going to say what rigerrob said plus one tidbit about
which way your hand are facing while flaring.

When people flare like this:

>flaring with their hands in front of them, they pull their elbows
>to their ribs, then run out of strength.

their hands are often facing "inward", ie the palms are facing
each other.


And one way to flare like this:

>A better technique involves keeping their elbows out

is to have your palms facing forward for the whole flare
top to bottom.

That way you don't get half way down (elbows to ribs)
and then have to shift gears and try to get "up on top
of your toggles" to do the bottom half.

It's hard to articulate, but easy to show.

Skr

Hey RkyMtnHigh,

I'm glad you're thinking about coaching,
I think you'll be a good one.

You have that multiple reality ability to
see through the other person's eyes.

Helping people experience those "Aha"
moments is really fun.

Skr