hillson

USPA teaches the braked approach during the student progression and it is also taught during various canopy courses. Not flown all the way to the ground, obviously, but up high. A requirement for the USPA B license is a canopy control course...I think the OP was talking about that.

Some of the Phantom Brigade sport jump as well. Every single one of them wears sneakers while doing so.

Nah...any jumper with half a brain wouldn't let anyone wearing those ridiculous shit-kickers anywhere near their RW formation.

Near the Bass Pro Shop and Top Golf in Brandon across from the mall...allegedly. That's what everyone keeps saying, anyway. I've not seen any construction but I haven't been out there in a few weeks.

November 2016, allegedly.

I think that most of those useless apps are written by someone with 10 jumps that thinks they've found the answer to the question that no one has asked. My favorite is the altimeter simulator so you can learn "altitude awareness" on your phone. Give me a fucking break. For precision (especially in WS and swooping) use a flysight and the software solutions developed by actual practitioners. The marginally useful apps are informational / functional not fakey / bs data driven. Burble for manifest is a delight if your DZ is so equipped (all should be, frankly). AeroWeather pulls AWOS (do I get out of bed or no). SpotAssist is ok, I guess. Then again some people get all sweaty if their log book exit altitude reads 13,500 instead of 13,467 actual. YMMV.

That whole thing could have been ghostwritten by el gibbo. Such nonsense.

Just rotate it so that it is on the side of your arm or on the underside of your wrist.

Hey bud...I generally just pull cash out of the ATM at whatever airport I'm at...at least for some walking around money. The currency exchange places in the airport (Thomas Cook and the like) are a giant rip off. Avoid them like the plague.

The next phase is: Did I take the dog out? Did I remember to lock the door? What am I going no to have for lunch? Etc etc.

Those are slider locks ("slocks") sewn onto the risers.

At a certain point, especially at the OPs jump numbers and history of not being a canopy whore, "I want a *slightly* smaller *slightly more aggressive canopy" is an acceptable response. He doesn't need the "swooping speech." It isn't a crime to desire a marginal increase in speed and or performance.

I'm feeling "red wine honest" so...not to piss in your Cheerios...just one dudes view from the DoubleTree hotel bar near SeaTac... The reason there is no "coherence in the skydiving app space" (whatever the fuck that means) is due to the fact these there is exactly zero worth spending money on. So with that said: 1) WL: I'm not sure that anyone really cares...or doesn't know how to use their iPhone calculator. I'm "about 2.0ish..." On a 120 I was 1.7ish and a 150 1.4ish. I suspect that most are the same when it comes to lack of specificity - and also blame the beer weight. Most ppl can give you a guess that is close enough. 2) don't understand "list of stats." Sameish size, sameish planform...pretty similar. This data already exists...look here or chat with another jumper. Not that hard to find a dude that jumped a pilot. More aggressive stuff...don't need an app. 3) DZ database. Already exists. Not in app form but why would dz.com give up their data? 4) see #1. This is very useless (so is the existing app) 5) various solutions already exist. The best require no input. I use the burble app tied to the manifest software. I pay my monies and it counts my jumps. Couldn't be easier. Some ppl like paper log books, some folks use an alti etc. who gives a shit about a "jump counter"? No one, really. Show up with a D license (USPA FAI BPA AFP CSPA etc etc etc) and no one really gives a shit so long as you can make a passable display of currency and reserve date. One even gets some small benefit of the doubt showing up with a C license. So, again...cool for new guys I guess Maybe some folks would like to develop apps and interfaces just for shits and giggles. Happens a bit within the swooping and wing suit crowds...but those are very small, specialized markets and the guys writing the code aren't worried about monetization. Back in the day I had a weather app that would pull the local AWOS data so I could see the conditions. All seemed very sexy and up to date...but also didn't really mean much. Now in the AM I take the dogs out for a squirt and I see low clouds, wind, and cold. Time to go back to sleep. So, no...I don't think there is a need. Maybe a new guy that just picked up a license...not too long after that it it simply annoying makework. Which, I think, might be the point.

Depends on the timing, I suppose. Mid-March to beginning of May and Octoberish-early Dec are generally glorious in FL. The rest of the time is really touch and go. Summer? Bring a snorkel.

As an aside...what is the deal with the Nano? The max allowed weight is way lower than most "other" stuff on the market from PD and Aerodyne particularly as sizes get smaller. What, exactly, does "max allowed" weight mean - in an academic / TSO / fudge factor sense? Is it an individual manufacturers safety recommendation? Is it something tied to a TSO regime? I've never really thought about it as I've always had a PD reserve and never anywhere within a nine iron of the max exit weight. I'm not suggesting that someone pick the smallest and load it up before people start howling...there are plenty of "what size reserve if you're unconscious" threads. All of the newer LPV stuff say "tested to TSO C23d" with exit weights ranging from 254 (PD) to 167 (Icarus) on the same sized canopy. I'm just curious how the number is arrived at...?

You live in the far north.. get a Malamute.... the bigger the better... and get a sled... to exercise the dog.... Saw a lady at the dog park with a 9 month Malamute "puppy." It was the size of a small horse, ate 10 cups of food a day and shit like an elephant. Gorgeous dog...but very spendy. Gotta have a wheelbarrow instead of the handy poo bag for the walkies...

There was a guy a zhills a month or two ago. It was like seeing a unicorn.

Yeah, not exactly. Some sites list the full cost, some do not. Zhills and Clewiston list the full cost, Sebastian and Deland do not. After you "pass" your AFF and are allowed to jump "solo" (cleared for solo self-supervision, technically) there is still a list of requirements which must be met (these are performance-based objectives) in order to achieve an A license. Let's say these take 6-7 additional skydives - which is IIRC about average. Those skydives will also include an instructor / coach. In general each of those jumps will cost you $95-100 (at least in FL). That includes: your gear rental, your lift ticket and the fee for the coaching etc. Each solo jump will cost you ~$50: $25 for your lift ticket and $25 for your gear rental. For example, here are the full prices at Zhills. http://www.skydivecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PriceList.pdf Dropzones don't just "instruct you" for 8 jumps and then unleash you to the world for $25 a pop.

Excellent fishing (charters) off of Islamorada (better than KW, imho). The lobster sport season ("mini-season") is 27/28 Jul. Can be a zoo-ish debacle. The regular recreational season starts 6 Aug. Can be a spendy charter, tho. You can do it with a snorkel but it is easier with tanks...obviously. If you think you can fish...try your hand at bonefish. :) Surfing is better along mainland eastern FL. For general consistency you're looking at from New Smyrna in the north and Sebastian Inlet to the south (Cocoa is in the middle). Basically, Brevard County. TBH, though, surfing in FL in the summer months can be sucky...can be pretty flat. Much further south...FLL/Miami etc the Bahamas block the swell for the most part.

Why should they? It doesn't take that many meatbombs to actually "break even" or "make money" on a single plane turn. Takes a lot more money to, er, run the place. Gotta pay the manifest ladies, gotta pay the guy that cuts the grass, gotta pay the electricity to keep the lights and heat on, gotta pay rent. Gotta pay the insurance for the thing with the spinny things. Gotta pay a loan and / or a lease on a plane (plus, likely, a "per head tax" to the actual owner). Shit...your P&W needs a new hot section...not cheap. Gotta pay the rigger to make sure your rental gear isn't a deathtrap...gotta buy some new(ish) tandem gear...not cheap. Wanna get that big turbine in for your boogie...gotta pay that ferry fee plus god knows what else. That extra buck or two they may charge probably won't cover it... Wanna make a bit more money, maybe? Don't own the DZ...own a fleet of planes. At the end of the day we spend what amounts to a small amount of money for essentially a wasteful (but fun) activity...almost literally "throwing money out an airplane door." Jump prices have been pretty flat for quite a bit...while the cost of every single thing has gone up. Everyone howls when the tickey goes up by a buck (imagine if they "normalized" at 5 or 10 bucks more...oof). We're generally "users" of DZs and not "contributors" in the grand sense...all the fun, less of the asspain. If they get a few extra pennies in the kitty due to favorable gas prices, so be it. I'm worth more than a tandem over time...but in a single instance, I'm not. etc etc

ah...excellent. good for them. it's been a while since i've been there. fun dz, nice ppl.

The best advice is...don't be penny-wise and pound foolish. In the grand scheme of things in skydiving one or two hundred bucks is a rounding error, an afterthought (and these prices are just for AFF with no rejumps...let alone a full license). Clewiston has an excellent "Skydiver Training Program" and is relatively close. Sebastian is also relatively close and has excellent facilities and gear...and the best view going. Deland and Zhills are the two biggest in FL, with Deland being the largest. Both have excellent gear, staff and multiple full-time aircraft of the turbine variety. Palatka is a nice, smaller DZ. But you'd be driving by Sebastian and Deland on the way...so I'm not sure the point. Jump FL is...Jump FL. Smaller landing area, more of a tandem mill. When their grass field floods they bus the folks to the a few miles up the road to Zephyrhills airport...where skydiving has been going on for 50+ years and already has a DZ. Deland, Zhills, Sebastian have full facilities (bar, restaurant, showers, team rooms etc etc). The rest do not. Lake Wales is nice (and is huge) but lacks some of the facilities - namely food, drink and showers.

About the actual defect? No idea. There is at least one picture of the broken ring in the wild, however...maybe one of the folks closer to the problem will post it...

The McDavid Hex knee and elbow pads work pretty well, too.

In the main, I think we tend to over-romanticize the selection of initial training DZs. At the end of the day we are simply learning to skydive - it isn't rocket science. Most national federations have similar training schemes and requirements. There are differences but at a certain point they sort of even out (you can pick up a USPA or BPA license at Empuria). I think that John Mitchell's comment above pretty much sums everything up. Some students seem to want the instructors to do everything including tie their shoes. Some students simply want the brief, jump and evaluation. Most fall somewhere in the middle...between needing undue individual attention and feeling like a number. At the end of the day...a bigger dropzone will likely get you your license quicker. In either case...you'll probably end up with 25-30 jumps and fly like someone with 25-30 jumps. Things probably begin to really diverge after that...100 jumps at Empuria with their lift, tunnel and a higher level of skill of both additional training and, frankly, the sport jumpers would put you ahead of the same 100 jumps at the local 182 DZ, skill-wise. Of course, you may also experience the multi-1000 jump hero with a badly ingrained skillset... Also, personally, I think that the experience of a larger DZ is valuable when it comes to having familiarity - from the start - of larger planes and learning to manage substantially greater canopy traffic. But maybe that's just me. Your home DZ is where you make it...not necessarily where you were licensed. It isn't like you're never going to fit in because you didn't toss your first pilotchute at the local club. I'm sure there may be a few "the plural of anecdote is data" type stories where someone saw or experienced something and uses that as a prooftext as to why their choice is "more correct." At the end of the day *thousands* of new licenses are issued every year, all around the world, and pretty much everyone seems to be doing a-ok regardless of initial training method or location. Time, money and desire are the big limiting factors. If you want to be a statistic, at least under USPA auspices, have a decade in the sport, 1000+ skydives and turn yourself into the ground and / or jump gear with without (admittedly non-mandatory) generally recommended additional safety devices. But that is another discussion.