FlyingRhenquest

Mythbusters proved pretty conclusively that a terminal impact on water is only marginally better than concrete. You're still gonna die either way. Also, hitting the ground at 120 mph or faster will at least be a quick way to go, and should be as reasonably painless as anything is likely to be. If anything, I'm pretty sure I don't want to risk surviving that landing and would probably go head down. The last thing to go through my mind would be my pelvis.

It's getting worse in Colorado now that pot and gay marriage are legal. Everyone wants to retire here, now.

chemist

I had the same problem on my first tandem but it wasn't from anxiety it was just hard to breath from the wind in free fall.

My instructor said I'll have a lung full of air at the door which is enough for a skydive. First I took breaths through my nose then after about 5-10 jumps I was able to breath normally.

Sounds like you weren't keeping your chin up enough, then!

Sure! For extra doucheyness points, say loudly "Oh my God! Someone do something! Wow this is going to make an awesome youtube video!"

Amazon

***Take down in 3, 2, 1...

I had a clown in a BMW try to road rage me in Portland. He was riding my ass in heavy traffic all the way down HWY 26 from Beaverton and followed me off the freeway to the light on my way to Portland State. We were stopped there at the light and he got out of his little car and he started banging on the window of my Mercedes..... I stepped out... the needledick was about 5'4".... I was towering over him... he ran back to his little BMW and locked his little door I was a very bad girl and I wrote FUCK YOU with a chapstick on his windshield.

Did you write it backward so he could read it?

Heh heh heh

AndyBoyd

Before you make any more jumps, you must get checked out by a doctor to make sure the symptoms you described are not due to some sort of medical condition that would make it unsafe for you to skydive. You will not get competent medical advice on an internet forum, especially this one. For what it's worth, what you are describing sounds to me like normal first jump anxiety. But you indicated that you have medically related anxiety issues. Do not take my word for it, or anyone else's word for it on this forum. Go get checked out by a doctor, and specifically ask the doctor if it is safe for you to skydive.

You know how that conversation goes.

"Hey doc! I need you to OK me physically to go skydiving!"
"NOOOOPE!"

Meh. Just tell 'em you're going on holiday to Maccu Picchu and need to be sure you can hang out at that altitude for a few hours without having a freaking embolism. Also mention that the bunch of random strangers you asked on some internet forum mostly thought you'd be fine and that surely their collected medical experience should be taken into consideration.

Sure. Safeish. See how you handle an AFF jump. Could have just been too tight tandem harness or something. Maybe you just forgot to breathe. It's easy to forget to breathe. I'm pretty sure I did my entire AFF 1-4, ride to altitude and all, without actually breathing.

akarunway

More like pathetic. I was racing motocross at 13. Took a lot of lumps and bruises. Loved it. Couldn't keep ME in the house. What is sad is this whole world nowadays.

These things come in cycles. Their kids will be parquor champions.

A classical piece! By Mozart!

Right here! You know someone's going to try that and lose a hand or something, and then with the laws about electrolysing water at home...

peek

https://www.facebook.com/cleansafequietskies

Read down a few pages. There sure does seem to be a lot of hate for General Aviation and Skydiving here.

Makes Kim seem like a sweetheart doesn't it?

No worries! The Plane of the Future will run on Clean... Atomic... Energy!

Edit: Hey, does anyone remember that Clean Atomic Energy poster? The one with the scientist in the googles and the nuclear cooling tower in the background? I'd swear that was a thing, but the internets can't seem to find it.

jackwallace

When I've been "let go" its usually a half hour before the day is over. So when I've gut I tell them a half hour before I go out the door. Never regretted it.

My most recent one was 9AM. Fuckers made me drive down there in a snow storm so they could fire me. Didn't realize exactly how much I hated that place until I left. I was hating life driving in that day, sitting in the fucking hole they had my team in and drinking the coffee that was seriously like a punishment for working there. They offered me two months salary to leave within a couple of weeks and they understood if I wanted to sleep on it a couple of days. I told him I'd sign the paperwork before he even finished the sentence.

Had a huge grin on my face driving home and spent the next couple of months skydiving when I could and looking for work. It's kind of an adjustment working for my current guys -- their people are nice, seem to actually like their jobs, have a manager who doesn't constantly undermine my work and can make changes to the system that are actually useful to their users.

I'd go back to work for the old guys in a heartbeat... for double the rate they were paying me before. I think they'll have some trouble finding the talent they need for less than that, now. Once you get a reputation, it's really hard to shake it. Most jobs are not much fun, but it's not too hard to find out who the real shit companies are. One of the local Satellite TV companies here had to spin off their IT division because no one would work for them. Now the spun-off company has the same reputation, must be time for another spinoff!

skymama

I only reluctantly eat a hot dog when there is absolutely nothing else to eat. Just ketchup for me, no bun. I'm not wasting calories on a stupid, flavorless hot dog bun.

Can you tell I don't really like hot dogs?

Maybe you just haven't had enough! While I was living there, there was an ice cream shop in Montgomery that did Coney Island dogs. They're good in all the ways regular hot dogs aren't.

This one time I had to roll through the Amtrack station in Chicago on Thanksgiving. I had a few minute between trains and found a hot dog vendor there. I asked for a bratwurst and he asked me if he wanted it black. I said "Whatever the locals think is good." So he gives me this sausage in a bun that's completely black on the outside, juicy on the inside and entirely delicious. If I could get that bratwurst and the unfiltered wheat beer I had in Austria in one place, I could make a million dollars.

Huh, I missed that bit somehow. Can Mile Hi also file an appeal and ask for the full $85 grand since CQS filed an appeal? After all, they've got to dust the lawer off again, and he'd just barely started accumulating dust.

Well good luck with that! Give your a replacement a call and tell him that story before you split!

Mustard and sauerkraut. And maybe jalepinos, depending on the mood I'm in.

"It's not the size of the hook knife, it's how you use it!"

Sounds like something someone with a small hook knife will say! I've seen some hook knives at the DZ that look to be 6" long. I don't know where they got them, though. There IS actually a hookknife.com where I would expect there to be a plethora of hook knives of all shapes and sizes, but Google warns that it's potentially hosting malware.

Looks like you flared either way too late or not at all, but the video quality and the very short clip of the landing make it difficult to tell for sure. Was that the Nav 300 they put you on? I had the worst time with flaring on their big Navs. Talk with your instructor about doing some practice flares once you get deployed -- deploying at 5500 gives you some time to experiment. You might also want to practice your PLF a couple more time on the nice soft packing mats and always be ready to do them until you get your landings sorted out.

Actually just talk to your instructor in general, about your last landing specifically and how to improve it. Even if you get the same instructors next time, they will likely have to be reminded what happened and should then be able to give you some constructive advice on how to fix it.

If you get there early in the morning (around 7:30 - 8 AM) on a weekend, they're usually less frantic and the air's usually better. It gets a bit bumpy in the afternoon, even if we don't have rain.

If there's a guy with a GoPro on your load, you might be able to talk them into trying to video your next landing, too. Most of them will be getting down before you do.

419gotaminute

Now the fireworks guy's mom wants more strict rules and regulations... Because people need to be told that lighting and launching an explosive from the top of your head is a poor decision stoopid people!

Yeah, well here's the thing, most of us don't need rules and regulations to know not to do that. At some point you should teach your kids not to be stupid, come to the realization that they're a little slow and make them wear a safety helmet 24x7 or Darwin's gonna take his course. Our society trying to coddle people like is why we can't have nice things in the first place.

skydiverwannabe

Somewhat of topic but still related to the kingsman movie:
Why aren't there any 'heads up display' skydiving helmets available for commercial skydivers? Showing for example altitude and free fall speed. If only I had the technical knowhow I would design one of these and fund it on kickstarter.

First and foremost it's hard to design a good UI. I got a N3 early on when I started skydiving and was quite impressed with what they did. I was even more impressed after I took a look at Recon's Flight HUD offering. It was like Recon didn't actually talk to a skydiver before building something. I've heard they've improved it quite a bit with recent firmware updates, but the initial one was atrocious.

Even if you can manage to stay focused, your device has to be bug-free if lives are going to depend on it. I HAVE seen some situations where my N3 can get confused, especially if the wind kicks up and we have to ride the plane down. It gets even more complicated when you add a wingsuit to the equation. One of the guys with the big wingsuits the other day was looking at his last jump log, which thought his exit was a 8000 feet and his deploy was at 5 or 6 thousand feet. The digital altimeter guys have done a really good job of making sure that quirks like that don't interfere with the primary function of the device. The more features you start adding, the more likely it is that they could.

Battery life is also an issue. I can forget to plug my N3 in for a week and it'll still have a full charge. I've actually done this a couple of times. If you build an app on top of an actual platform, you'll get all the battery-sucking quirks of that platform. Perhaps these could be managed well enough that it wouldn't be an issue -- my android phone can go a couple days without a charge, and it's constantly trying to talk to network. Without networking or many apps running, it should be feasible to get enough out of the device.

Also, it seems like it's hard to design an augmented reality device in the first place. The Recon required you to glance at the display. It wasn't an overlay on the goggle lens. It looks like Microsoft is working on an actual overlay with their Holo lens. Assuming that thing could talk to a mobile phone, someone potentially could develop a decent altimeter app. It'd need very specific sensors, though -- either higher accuracy GPS than most cell phones (At least any of the ones I've tested) have or an actual barometer on the phone. Ideally the app should be able to detect the hardware and adjust accordingly. It'd have to block a lot of shit from popping up on your display, though, and run as a high priority process. From what I've seen, Android really isn't geared toward that sort of thing. I'm guessing the other mobile platforms really aren't, either.

JohnMitchell

Looks like I-5 every Friday and Sunday summer afternoon in WA state. It's to the point our DZ tells people to not bother coming out from Seattle after 1 pm on Fridays.

Yeah, I drove out there for sushi a few years back. The traffic there would drive me crazy in a matter of days. It has the potential to get bad in Colorado, too, but I do a pretty good job of avoiding all the places where it actually does. When I was living down in Lafayette, I could drive around town on a Saturday and hardly see another car on the road.

Being current is pretty important to a new skydiver. If you're only doing a few jumps every couple of months, you'll probably end up having to do more jumps with instructors to verify that you still remember everything well enough. Plus, seriously, a couple of months is a long time to go when you have the skydiving monkey on your back. Having a tunnel nearby should help with that, at least.

I did a canopy course early on and highly recommend doing that if you can. Especially since you're not planning on jumping regularly. The more comfortable you are flying your canopy, the better off your entire skydiving experience will be.

Arching pretty much puts the rest of your posture in order. Your arch is where your stability is coming from. The main thing to be careful of with your shoulders is that you don't roll them forward as you reach for your pilot chute.

I have watched a few people progress through the wind tunnel and it seems like their posture does improve as part of that experience. I'm not entirely sure if it's something about the body position it forces on you or they just weren't that athletic before and that any amount of exercise helps with that. Or maybe they're just more confident now.

If you're near a wind tunnel at all, you'll probably be encouraged to put a few minutes in at one. My instructors suggested it after my AFF 1 and I actually hadn't heard about the place until then. It made a world of difference with my flying. I had the worst problem with leg position. I'd be all like turning and couldn't figure out why and looking at the video I'd see I'd have one leg or the other up. The more practice you can get at this, the better!

September/October in Colorado tends to be pretty nice. Could you get your A license at Mile Hi and then head down to Eloy when the weather starts to go bad? I see a few AFF students in their late 50s and early 60s, maybe a few who are older.

I probably talked myself out of going to the dropzone 10 or 12 times in my first 60 jumps. Just couldn't deal with it those days. I'd always go back and do a jump a couple days later. The more you do it and the more current you are when you do it, the less nervous you'll be. I was always much less nervous on the second jump the few times I did a second jump on the same day. Stick with it, the nerves will go away.