Ruffles

Does the APA have an official position they preach in Instructor Training regarding chasing students to low altitudes & if so, what specifically do they teach? Im aware the chase is a big part of the curriculum, but have they set limits?

Thanks for the the feedback folks. I see all your points and the comment about "my comfort zone" is right on the money. I still do several gear checks, sorry if I left you with the impression I wasn't concerned about them anymore. I just dont do 15 checks in 5 minutes anymore. It was really bad, you'll just have to trust me when I tell ya that it was an unhealthy degree of worry. Somebody else pm'd me and said that the really dangerous phase was when I was so horrified before each jump; had a mal occurred I may very well have had a meltdown/brainlock. Thanks for the sentiments gang, its good to be back!

I jumped for about 2 years (100 jump wonder), then gradually got out of it as my best friend (& RW partner) got married and then his wife got pregnant. He jumped less which led to me jumping less, etc. I just did my re-currency AFF7 today after a 2 year absence and skydiving just became a totally new experience.... I used to get nervous-sweaty-nauseated before every single jump (even #99). I would check & re-check my gear feverishly the way an obsessive compulsive locks the door 10 times to make sure its locked... people would stare; it was bad, trust me. I used to be horrified the entire ride up until I let go of the bar and began to fall... then ironically I felt fine and relaxed. (weird?) Today I went through my briefing, gear checks(2), climb-out, float, and dive flow, and I was NOT the sweaty/nauseated OCD boy for the first time in my entire life!!! I felt good, positive, relaxed, and excited. While my performance was, at best, adequate for recurrency, this was the most enjoyable dive of my life because my feelings had morphed into anxious excitement instead of pure horror. And there in lies my concern...i'm not that scared now (dont ask me why, I couldn't tell ya). Seems many accidents begin with complacency. Is this the path people get on before they lose alt awareness, stop tracking safely, and start doing half-ass gear checks? I wanna feel good about this new sweat&horror-free world I've re-discovered, but there's this concern nagging me that this may not be such a good thing. What do you experienced guys think about this, ever seen this sort of thing before?

Hes got no jumps, no container, no parachute, and no home DZ. There ya go...

How long after AFTER deployment? I think they're sit-flying bro. Last time I looked at a FAR, skydivers have right of way over EVERYONE if dropped in marked DZ, in freefall or not, ballons or not. Gliders can stay up longer than our parachutes can. While gliders have long wingspans, they are skinny, seriously doubt you could see one from 13.5. One should ask if the pilot noticed the little purple parachute symbol on his regional VFR chart. Glad you two and the glider pilot arent dead. Where were you guys at??

Duh, should have thought of that. Thanks for the info anyway gang.

My DZ doesnt have a hang in trainer, so I can't find this out for myself easily. I pulled the cutatway handle on my Mirage G3 for practice and noticed that there was a hell of a lot of cable (3ft?) that came out when I pulled it. So much in fact that I had a hard time getting it all out in one arm extension! I just read that incident report on that fellow at SDA that evidently (preliminary) did not completely extract all of the cable for a good release and one riser hung up. Does the main get released well beofre the entire length of cable is extracted? This has me a little worried considering I couldn't get it all out in one pull (Im six-one and 210, so arm length is not this issue). Anyone have experience with this?

How could the reserve come out if the pilot chute was still in the tray? Can do you get a horse shoe mal (without tangling your limbs) on a ripcord deployed main? I can't see it.. help.

Good one meesh, I remember you telling me that one at Elisinore. I realize twenty-seven people have already posted better stories than mine, but I have to throw this one in for good measure for my scared brotha. Jump 18, h-n-p time. My coach says to me 'The exit is really the important thing. Thats what I'm really looking of on this jump, OK?" I reply, in what was reported to me later as a somewhat arrogant tone "Oh, thats no problem, my exits are always smooth..." (long pause) 3500 agl comes, door opens, I leave the plane and immediately flip back to wind, and go head to ground, feet to sky. While I'm dealing with the sheer horror of being completely unstable at an altitude already lower than I usually pull at, several seconds go by. Enter 2500 ft (i think), I get stable again and pull. Under canopy at 1900 ft, and for the very first time in my short life, I sensed ground rush. I did not enjoy it. I landed with the intention of getting in my car and going home never to skydive ever again. That coach still doesn't talk to me anymore...

Is this your pre-second jump with booties?

The same thing just happened to me. I have 2 years left on mine. I appreciate their attention to detail, but I would have also appreciated if someone had told me it was going to be 2 months before I got my unit back. My DZ is a "gotta have a cypres to jump" place, so I rented shitty gear for 2 months. I would have just bought a new one if I knew I was going to miss my entire summer of jumping. Airtech does rock on the quality however.

I need a picture...

Addressing the question asked that started this thread, my DZ does Skysurfers, Big-way belly, small-way belly, freefly, tandem. However, this is when the plane is flying INTO the uppers, When the plane is flying WITH the uppers, Freefly out first, then belly, then surf, then tandem. For some reason the uppers in San Diego like to reverse themselves during the fall months, but otherwise, its the former of the two exit orders. Why? DZO says its because FF tend to sink straight and fall faster and bellys slower and tend to drift. Sounds to me... as long as we don't get rushed on exit, I've never had a close call (100-jump-wonder mind you).

Please list the container & PC your were jumping when it happened. Also, please note the origin of the PC-in-tow if known (mis-routed, pin stuck, etc.) and what you did to survive. Thanks Brothas & Sistas .

My buddy and I have 100 or so jumps and thought that a good two way was being able to link up and turn a point or 2...(we sucked).That is primarily what our jumps have consisted of since jump 30. We bought an hour of tunnel time with a coach (Lou Lastra Navy-SEAL extraordinaire) and spent six hours going solo, 2-way, 3-way, reviewing video, creeping, and learning. Results: 3 days later, our first jump after the tunnel, we turned 10 points from 13.5. These consisted of 90s, 180s, and 360s. OH MY FRIGGIN' GOD!! We don't suck any more. Our exit was so smooth we even started the points while still half-way on the hill (something we never fathomed before). While your mileage may vary, keep in mind that my pal and I were WORSE than most other people at 100 jumps, at least as far as RW proficiency goes. I cannot sing the praises of this training enough, you would not believe how much it helped. I'm living proof. Airspeed here we come...

Helo jumps are goooood. You will finally get that "falling" feeling you never seem to get from the Otter. Our pilot was very adamant about us just "leaning out" instead of jumping out, I guess somebody earlier had leaped and it fucked his shit up somehow. Whats it like... falling in no air at all for about 5 seconds then its just like normal FF except you'll need to be tracking/pulling about the time it starts to feellike normal freefall (terminal). You will enjoy it my friend. See if they will let you hang from the strut, its a nicer exit.

What Nighting said, love mine too. Turns fast but doesn't dump altitude like the regular full-on-ellipticals. I'm starting to see the Silhouette get mentioned on here quite frequently recently... I must have started a trend...

Second that...

No that sounds about right. I just try to keep up on things. Thought that might be some new revelation I missed out on. Hey Sunny, I'm not faulting the general public, I would not mouth to mouth someone either, especially given the fact that their going to puke up all that air+stomach contents in about 2 minutes. You sound like my kinda CPR instructor, but after seeing your rendition of the"good morning song" I can't see you as a hard ass.

Actually the evidence that brought about this change is that most people refuse to lip-lock a dead person that they don't know and subsequently fail to do chest compressions too if they're already in the "Not me" mode. The chest-compressions-only model was brought about so that those people would at least to CC without feeling guilty about mouth-2-mouth. Where did you find that study that shows CPR is better than Defib for survivability, I would love to read it.

Most of the time I want to jump so bad I'm as "antsy" as a little kid that has to go pee. But there have been a dozen occasions that work has stressed me out (or the old lady) and I go and jump. I end up tense on jump run, tense under canopy, etc. This is dangerous. Work the things out in your life that need to get worked out and the fire may return. After a brief two years in the sport, I have found that jumping helps keep things balanced in life in general, but what you're going through is totally normal. Don't stress about it. Give it sometime and see how you feel,but don't stress about being stressed. It's the American way... Blues

Thats the altruistic spirit I was talking about!! Nothin' worse than having to deal with burying the bodies of newbies.

--Surfer> Hey dude, I'm a week-day jumper. If you are into RW, my buddy and I are just starting to do the 3-way thing so I'll see if you're around. Glad you're having a good experience, I'll try to tap into that. There are some new faces down there. Andy & Brooke have coached us several times. Dunno if thats who you're talking about. --Elsinore was NOT one of those places that wasn't helpful. In fact, that was my best DZ experience to date, its just too far t drive. I'll be back though. I understand people network and make plans to come jump together and that it's their rplanned day to jump with friends. I'm not saying they're bad people, but even taking the planning into account, that still leaves me jumping with newbies, which changes nothing from my original problem my friend. To the unnamed Belgian individual with no profile who stated they saw two 50-jumpers going low on an RW.... Brotha, that happens with people at 500 jumps, 5000 jumps, and everything in between. You can't say that happened BECAUSE they only had 50 jumps. That happened becaused they used poor judgement. That judgement won't get better jumping alone. BTW - I break off way higher than 3500 AGL (I'm under canopy at 3500!). AndyMan> Too bad you don't jump here dude, you seem like a somebody I could learn alot from, but of all the DZs I've been to, Perris was the worst in terms of snubbing and no teaching (without paying). I would always pay for someone's ticket if they agreed to coach me. Move to SoCal and start a trend of altruism. Thanks for the feedback and not flaming me folks, I get mouthy sometimes. Newbie Blues was an excellent article.

I do jump as SSD Andy, and the problem isn't the number of people, its the number of people willing to make jumps with me and other 100-jump wonders. The staff (the majority of them anyway) are cool as hell and have helped me when they can, but they do high volume AFF and tandems and the time just isn't there. The So-Cal culture is very stand-offish for newbies however, (this may not be true in other parts of the country) and I have jumped at three DZs down here with the same experience:: My friend and I show up to jump, and unless there's another newbie, the other Skygods are too cool to spend time teaching youngsters leaving us to jump by ourselves. Three DZs, three identical snubbings. I swear to god when I become an experienced jumper, I'm gonna dedicate my jumping time to teaching new people.... without asking for profits. BTW-My original post was not actually in reply to yours, I haven't got the "click to reply" concept down yet, so I wasn't countering your earlier statements.

I am a newbie and I generally try to aviod posting, but I feel especially passionate about this so here goes... Despite all of the talk about what a tight knit family skydiving is, there are many places where experienced people won't give you the time of day when you jump there or they do so many tandems/AFFs that they don't have enough time during the day to jump with you. That leaves you two options: 1) Jump alone for the next 100 jumps 2)Jump with other relatively new people. I think its ridiculous to expect someone to jump alone for 50 jumps. If you jump alone, you have no reference points, so you don't learn much about using your body to fly yourself around and dock safely. Those 50 jumps will be an expensive waste. If newbies were trying to do free-flying, certainly a different story as FF speeds and collision risks increase. But I admantly feel there is nothing wrong with two newbies doing 2-way RW. Its the only way to learn and with a high break-off the risk is minimal. My heated passion on this stems from a skydiving culture that emphasizes safety but then turns around and fails to help their youngins' grow by coaching and jumping with them (free) post-A license, unless you want to pay for expensive camps..OK, rant over....