FlyingRhenquest

You too? They've only just got contact lenses in my strength (which I now wear for jumping). My glasses were very effective contraceptives. As for fogging up in the plane ride on the way up... jeez. Took 5-6k for them to clear in freefall I did the lasik thing back in 2004, best 4 grand I ever spent. Some number of folks can't get it because of their pupil size in the dark. You want to make sure you get some guys with an eyeball-tracking laser, make sure they know what they're doing (Including measuring your pupils in the dark to insure your night vision won't be borked,) and spring for the custom correction that has the potential to render your vision better than perfect (I got 20/20 in one eye and 20/15 in the other.) Driving back to the exam the next day without corrective lenses of any sort after 20 years of wearing glasses and never having driven a car without them felt... weird. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Dunno, when do I stop being a newbie? I actually looked like I knew what I was doing in the wind tunnel, kinda, last time I was in there. Took me 12 AFF jumps to get through AFF, but I never failed any once I lost my fear of the door and just relaxed. My fall speed is still very inconsistent, though I now seem to be able to fall and a normal or near-normal rate, at least sometimes. When I went down to 1 instructor for AFF, only a couple of the instructors would jump with me because the rest of them were worried that if I failed to act, they wouldn't be able to save me. I never did fail to act, and one of my instructors said I was "the most altitude-aware, fastest falling student I've ever had." We all learned some things on my jumps, though. I can get to the ground but I think my approaches still suck. I just kind of get in line and follow everyone else down. My landings are also pretty atrocious, and this is AFTER the canopy course. At the same time, I don't actually feel like I'm going to hurt myself on landing. They're not pretty, but they always seem to work. I do have what I think is a VERY nice barrel roll, though. I don't know where I picked it up, but it's tight. I think it's from previous swimming experience. About the only thing that translates well (Big movements and kicking don't buy you much in the air.) I never thought I was all that much, I just wanted to get my ass in the air and I did that. I enjoy the control in the air that I'm learning, and each jump presents a new and different challenge. I seem to learn something new each time I jump, and hopefully am not forgetting too much in between. I do think I could get my B license now, as soon as I get some water training, and I want to do some B license things (Balloon jumps, night jumps and eventually jumping in Hawaii) so I need to do that sooner or later. It'll be spring before any of those options roll around again, so I'm not in a huge hurry. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

brrrrr. I don't know how you guys do it. 5k jumps at winter time?? brrrr I did one from 12,500 yesterday and it was pretty damn cold. My fingers started to hurt once I started thawing out. Seems like all I really need to do is upgrade my gloves and get a decent head covering and I think I'll be OK. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah. Whenever I get a visitor from out east, I love to take 'em up to trail ridge road (12,500 feet above sea level) on the first day and watch 'em fall over when they get out of the car. I could have taken my sister and niece on a tandem the first day they were here, but wanted to give them a few days to get used to the altitude before going up in a plane. They didn't have any trouble at 12500 AGL a few days later, for the few minutes they were at that altitude. I also get superpowers when I go back to sea level :-D I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Try having the doctor check your ear wax and flush it out if you have a build-up. That's probably not the problem, but it doesn't hurt to do that occasionally. The little home kits with the bulb are too underpowered and inaccurate to do much good. You could also try nasal irrigation to flush the gunk out of your sinuses. You can buy a couple of different saline products designed for that purpose. Don't flush them out with tap water though -- three or four people got infected with brain eating amoebas a few years ago after doing that. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Maybe ask down in the instructors forum if you don't find the information you're looking for here. I weighed in at 247 just before my first jump, but went straight to AFF so I never did a tandem. Not sure I could do one now -- that's scary! Didn't have a problem in AFF, though, and have lost 20 pounds since then. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I'm not sure anyone started out as exactly a natural. Your ability to fly gets better over time. Flying the canopy is pretty easy. They're so not-worried about it in the AFF courses here, they slap a radio on you and chuck you out of an airplane. I usually found it better to not listen to the radio for the most part. Take a canopy course as soon as you can, it'll really refine your abilities under canopy. You'll be less likely to make simple mistakes, and the skills you learn there could save your life some time. I've found myself using everything I've learned in the canopy course, and intend to retake it once I get my own gear. Experienced jumpers tell me you never completely stop being nervous on the plane. Most of my nervousness evaporated once I got reasonably confident in my gear. I mean really, worst possible thing that could happen there is you might fall out of the plane early, and you were going to do that anyway, right? If you're confident your gear will keep you safe, falling out of the plane at any point really isn't a big deal. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Freefall's not particularly rough other than the altitude you start at. Unless you decide to spin up like a blender and make all the blood rush to or away from your brain. If you do that, your instructors will probably yell at you (If you survive the experience.) My first few openings were rough enough to make bruises where the harness comes in contact with my body, but the didn't feel like a car wreck or getting hit in the head with a baseball bat or anything (Yes, I know what those things feel like.) Once I got the body position down and started pulling from a stable position, they got much smoother. Unless you seriously screw up your pack job or something, they should be well below the threshold for "Brain damaging." I can't think of any way to sustain brain damage on any landing that would even be remotely classifiable as "Normal." You might snap your femurs like twigs if you do something stupid, but your brain should be OK! And get to enjoy those femurs snapping in glorious hi-def! Yeah! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah, welcome to skydiving! It's a weather-bound sport if ever there was one! You'll get there. Down here south of you, it decided it's time to be winter and got pretty cold. I'm not really looking forward to skydiving tomorrow (But I'll probably still do it!) I'm planning to spend more time in the wind tunnel and less time in the air during the winter months. October/November ought not to be terrible, but I'm seriously not looking forward to December/January/February. Not at all. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Did you not want to go? I asked my sister if she and her daughter wanted to go. They didn't even really think about it before saying yes. I gave them plenty of opportunity to back out, too -- didn't want to drop the $200 for the tandem and $100 for the video guy and have them chicken out on the plane. They both went through with it, might have helped that I was the first one off the plane on that load. Or the nearly half an hour we put in at the wind tunnel earlier that week... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I heard a Buddhist say once, "Just because they're gone, doesn't mean you have to stop loving them." Or something to that effect. I've also found that dead family members and pets will come visit, if you call for them in a dream. Small consolation, I suppose, but hopefully better than nothing. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I think the old swoop pond mostly dried up this summer. The Google Maps satellite picture of it looks like there's hardly any water at all in there! No sense in making that bigger! Clearly, your picture is old/outdated (and in comparison to reality, actually DOES look like a glamour-shot / pin-up! ) ...See instead, rather a more recent/current one, attached. This is nothing a judicious application of "Chef's Pleasure Bag" couldn't fix... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I think if you really want to get attention, get the animal print tattooed on! That might be one of those "Seemed like a good idea at 20, not so much at 40" ideas, though. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Don't care for them. None of them are really big enough to provide an immersive experience, and the 3D effect isn't really all that good. Deliver a floor-to-ceiling model that actually looks like I'm looking into the room being projected, I might go for it. I'm not paying anywhere near what that would cost, though, assuming the 3D could be done well enough to convince me. Buy a regular HD flat screen and a Tivo. The Tivo is an actual advancement on how you watch TV (remote code: "select play select 3 0 select" turns the skip-forward option of the remote into a 30 second skip, ideal for skipping commercials :-) I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Damn straight. You should always trust your instincts. I'd rather ride the plane down early on a few times and be wrong about whatever set me off than jump and get hurt. No one (who's not a huge asshole) should ridicule you for trusting your instincts and riding the plane down. If someone's enough of an asshole to ridicule you for that, you shouldn't care what they have to say anyway! It was much sooner for me, with the AFF program. It's going to be different for everyone, of course. Around jump 4 or 5, I realized that the worst possible thing I could think of happening at the door was my strength just completely failing me and falling out the door early. Being confident of my equipment and realizing that "falling out of the plane" was pretty much my goal anyway, I was no longer afraid. I'm not sure what my reaction would be if I were next to the door without a parachute, though. I'm also still a little wary of it on the ride up. A couple places down there, your only choices for landing would be a road or a bunch of trees. I play a little game of "Spot the emergency landing zone" on the way up. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It seems like it's mostly died down now. They're expanding the runway and no one talks about the issues so much anymore. It sounded like most of the trouble was going on before I started jumping, back in July. I hear the planes pretty regularly from my house, but they're no more obtrusive than the commercial jet I hear flying over right now, and much less so than street noise and the trains. I've been living in Longmont for a couple of years now and I still get woken up by cars and trains at 2am. I hope the runway expansion leads to commercial service between Longmont and DIA. A round trip to DIA via the interstates is miserable. You could hit the toll road, but IIRC the round trip is something like $40 that way. I seem to recall the price was similar with the super shuttle. If I could just fly out of Vance Brand or fly visiting relatives there, it'd be worth a pretty hefty premium to me to not have to mess with any of that. I'm not sure if enough people feel similarly to make it profitable, though. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I always have to stop and look up to see who it is. I can identify the otter by engine sound pretty reliably. You want to talk about noise, how about the guy who drives down my road at 2am with apparently no muffler on his vehicle, or the 18 trains a day that come through, blowing their horns at 2am, long after all self-respecting airplanes have gone to bed! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Having a workout routine was more than I had! Heh heh heh. Sounds like you're in pretty good physical shape. I think Yoga or Tai Chi might be good companion routines for skydiving. I bet you could find an indoor skydiving facility in Oregon or Washington. They tend to be somewhat pricey, but per minute it's less than freefall and a lot less than AFF. Some time in a windtunnel might keep you from having to repeat some AFF levels. Depends on how freaked out that big ol' planet coming up to say "hi" at 120mph gets you. If you can ignore that and fly like you do in the tunnel, you'd be in pretty good shape for AFF. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

No problem! Keep us posted on how it goes! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I ended up with bruises on my shoulders regularly during AFF, mostly due to poor body position while opening. I haven't seen any in quite a while now. I haven't had any that feel like a car wreck yet. The packers at my dropzone do a very good job! I've only had one set of fairly minor line twists too. I didn't like the looks of that particular rental rig that day, but it was the last one on the shelf, an older model, with tuck tabs that didn't want to stay tucked. I now avoid these rigs, but the line twists weren't that bad and were easily resolved. The vast majority of these sound like they come from shoddy packing. It's an easy thing to screw up when you're new or in a hurry. Or maybe been doing it for a while, got complacent and forgot to push the riser back into position. Of course, if you want to try flying and don't want to risk a parachute, or a big ol' planet coming up to greet you at 120 mph, you could just go hop in a wind tunnel. That's fun too, once you learn how to fly. It's quite a workout, though, using all flight muscles you never knew you had in ways you didn't think possible. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yes, it does actually help to be current, and knock out multiple jumps in the day. It's less of a mental effort to get back on the plane the second or third time in a day than the first. The longer you wait, the more you're going to forget from ground school and what you learned previously. I saw a tremendous difference between my first jump of the day and the later ones. At the same time, it's not good to push yourself when you're tired. You will be using muscles you didn't even know you had, and until you're comfortable in the air you won't be using them very efficiently. A couple of times I just had to do just one more jump and ended up so tired I could barely lift my arms after I was on the ground. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Only in Holland... I'm sure the dropzones in Poland have lots of Poles in them. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

That's cool. You need to teach her to look for which harnesses have hook-ups on the risers and no backpacks.

Good advice, so far! You'll be dialing in the canopy size you want to jump. There's no sense in buying something before you know what you're comfortable jumping. Pay attention to the equipment you're renting, so if you find one you particularly like you can lean toward that. If your dropzone offers a packing class, I'd suggest taking that too. You'll learn a lot about your gear that way. A LOT. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?