williammonk

Where did you get these CSV files? This data is severely outdated. Is there an updated version that I could download?

I broke mine, But did not break the structure, just the acetabulum. That's the socket that the femur plugs into. Jumped 4-5 months later, jumping just like before now.

In my opinion, the Sabre 2 is an awesome canopy. You've got to figure out what you're comfortable with, and how you want to progress in canopy flight. A navigator will respond like a student canopy. It will fly like a student canopy, and it will land like one. A sabre 2 is an intermediate canopy, with all of the flight characteristics that come with one. I agree that at some point a canopy is just not for you, but you should consider that along your canopy progression path canopies will handle differently. If you have aspirations to get into high performance canopy flight, it may be better to begin learning how modern canopies fly. The Sabre 2 is an awesome canopy. You can learn a lot about canopy flight under it. William

FWIW, I agree with Dave. I see plenty of guys flying highly loaded canopies straight-in... And eat it on the landing almost every time. Crossfire seems like a lot of canopy not to be swooping with.

I would email Dan BC. He runs Perris, and I'm sure he would be happy to talk to you about the situation. He is the one to talk to about this kind of thing. [email protected] William.

Jesus man, 195 - 200 ??? I get the req, but come on. He didn't volunteer the info, you had to question him. At least this guy sounds like he did 195 honest freefall skydives; not what half the guys are doing nowadays: 200 hop-n-pops. Coach quality? I'm no wingsuiter, but I imagine that he had priorities, and pulling was a higher priority than whatever else? This guy has my approval... William

Dude, it sounds like they didn't know they were going to try for it until 10 minutes before. What do you want the organisers to do - look around the packing hall and go "Well it looks like we've got the talent here to put a really cool dive together but we probably shouldn't because some other guys went to some training camps two months ago"? Makes no sense. (BTW - the only people who use the word 'drama' are the people who revel in it. If you stop looking for a way to take offense at what people are doing or saying you wouldn't have any.) Exactly what I was thinking.

I Jump with a bunch of guys who live in the SCV. At PERRIS! WIlliam.

Get a cookie G3. You won't be disappointed in any way. William.

You've got to go to Perris. Many people on here will vote for Elsinore because they allow big turns (swooping), that's a big reason for your poll results. It's a bit of a confounding variable. I had an excellent experience at the Perris school a couple of years ago. The instructors really know their stuff and are very friendly. If you happen to spend some time on the ground, the pool is awesome this time of year. The restaurant/bar is also a great place to hang out. I cannot speak highly enough of the load organizers at Perris. If you haven't heard of a Load Organizer -- They're staff members who will take you under their wing and teach you the skills you need to become a great skydiver. I think that every jump I did until jump 50 or so was with them and it really helped me out a lot. It really helps to have people to jump with that are goal-oriented and that are all trying to improve. That is the environment that the load organizers foster at Perris. If you're the kind of person that would just like to get out of the plane and do your own thing, though, I suppose any dropzone would work for you.

The Cookie G3 is the best (full-face) helmet on the market bar-none Sure it may be faster to change the visor on some new models, but do you really want to have a visor that comes off semi-easily? My G3 has 6 Phillips head screws to remove its visor. The whole process takes about 5 minutes. If you want something to do open-face stuff with, buy both. Cookie Fuel and a G3! Everything about the G3 is awesome. No other helmet comes close. William.

Hey Guys. Let me preface this by saying that I am not an advocate of regulating canopy choices. And i dont think banning hook turns is a good plan. I was just ad the dz the other day and had an idea that I'd like to pass on. So. I was at a dropzone where anything above a 90 is against the rules. Just after that I was talking to a relatively low timer who was jumping a canopy that I thought was pretty damn aggressive, a crossfire 109. We got to talking about canopies and he mentioned that he usually does HP approaches (90's), and he was trying to get more surf out of the canopy. So after I had this discussion I had an idea. If a jumper does nearly all of his jumps at a dz that disallows hook turns, I thought that people would perhaps be downsizing more aggressively, due to the relative safety of 90's when compared to. 270's+. Guys that want to get more out of their 90's would be more likely to hop on a swoop machine, and only really be capable of doing 90's or vanilla landings. I liken it to driving a car with nitrous. Sure, you can drive the car around town safely, but once you get out to the track you might be in for a rough time. What do you guys think? William.

Are you saying we should ban swooping? Should we also ban fast cars? If the highest speed limit in the U.S. is 80 mph, why should any car go faster than that?

I think that some of you guys are missing some of the picture. If all these rules get passed, the people who really want to push themselves will just go to dropzones that don't enforce the rules. Just like gun control laws, I fear that these rules would take the fun canopies out of the honest people's hands. We can call it: Fun control. We are all members of a dangerous sport. Some people will always try to push themselves to the limit. These people will always exist no matter what rules are in place. Now that equipment has become so good, We see most deaths are self inflicted. It is the unfortunate truth that the death figure will likely remain constant regardless of any new policies. The USPA coming in and telling me what's the best canopy for me isn't good for the sport. It hinders progress and retards growth.

Hey Guys, This Saturday (6/1) a cookie "deluxe helmet bag" was taken from the packing area outside square 1. http://www.chutingstar.com/skydive/cookie-deluxe-helmet-bag If you were there, please check your stuff. I had a fleece helmet bag sitting inside, along with an L&B altitrack bag. In the zippered pocket were some 3m microfiber cloths still in the package, the extra helmet foam and some pull up cords. I really hope that nobody stole my bag and that it was an accident, but it is hard to take a bag that you didn't arrive with honestly. If anyone knows anything, please send me a message at: [email protected], or call me at 805-813-5737. Sorry if this is the wrong forum. William.

I agree Joey. Seems more and more people are thinking that since one person shits their pants everyone has to wear diapers. William.

Unbelievable.

AFF at Perris is top notch. Should be the industry standard. I've jumped with fresh new guys out of Lodi's "AFF" program, and have seen some scary things. Students graduating at Perris are safer and have much much better ground school type knowledge. I would not allow a friend to learn at Lodi. Go somewhere else. William.

Hey Man, If you have a javelin, they will not resize the container itself, only the webbing. I've heard from others that this is around a $500 process, but I could be wrong. William.

I'd highly recommend the Perris area. I've never had the luxury of several months of solid skydiving but If i did thats where I would go. Get tired of Perris, get a ride to elsinore. Get tired of Elsinore, go to san diego. get tired of san diego, go to oceanside. I learned at Perris, and they are the best drop zone I've ever been to for newer skydivers. You won't regret a trip to Perris. Plus you get to jump with Mark Brown. He's a real character! William.

I don't think so. But a lubed yellow cable would have. I have had this happen to me. I also have had to put out a reserve without being able to cut away. I did an extensive investigation and found what I am telling you. Why don't you think they'd of helped, John? I haven't done too much research into the subject... Do you think that the hard housings would have crushed, crimping around the cable? My risers have hard housings and I always thought they were a good safety measure. I keep my cables appropriately lubed as well. I'm interested to know what you found in your research. William.

Sorry for the off-topic discussion. I called ChrisD out on some stuff on a thread and now he's digging up all my old posts and commenting on them to make me look bad, just check out the gear and rigging section. Sorry once again for the BS. William.

"(YOU) make regular trips from Hollister to Perris"? - Sorry, I fly my airplane down there. 1 hour trip... I didn't know jack shit about a lot of things when I graduated... I'm sure you were different though. You speak as though you were born an expert at skydiving! I would love to support my local store. But when my local store treats me like a waste of their time, I will not. I'm sure you like being treated like you don't matter though. I'm not sure where you got your 25 jump figure... My lic number is irrelevant. This conversation is about customer experience, nothing else. Sorry for wasting your time, didn't realize it was soooo valuable. EDIT: I do not need to prove any of this to you. Also, If you go back and look, everything you are asking me to prove is beside the point the OP was trying to make. As for the AOPA database of pilots... I've never tried to look for one. I fly the planes, I don't need to go trolling through the internet to try and see if people are pilots. William.

Wow Chris... What to attack a guy for posting about a bad experience he had. I can't even imagine how you'd respond to poor Yelp reviews left by tandem students. I have an extremely hard time believing that his comments were either unsubstantiated or were lies. Why would someone take the time to write an entire thread of lies? Especially when he said he had a good time overall. Maybe you know, there are right ways and wrong ways to deal with problems. It's never right to treat someone like an idiot for making a mistake. If there's an issue, it should be discussed privately, certainly not shouted across the DZ. In the OP's case, it seems he didn't even do anything wrong! Your "suck it up" attitude is not the way business is ran, and is detrimental to the sport. I can give you an example of this: After finishing up my A license, I went down to the gear store to take a look at some things I might want to buy now that I was a "real skydiver." I was excited to be allowed to jump with the load organizers later on, and had some extra money to spend so I went in and looked around. The women working there obviously didn't want to help me. I was the only one in the store, and I had to pry her away from her computer (Facebook) to answer a few questions I had. She treated me like the biggest idiot! I was asking typical questions, "Why is this altimeter so expensive?”, "Can I try on a few of these helmets?" , "What kind of jumpsuit should I be looking at, and what brands are nicest?" She made me feel unwelcome and made the whole process (that would have made them some) money awkward. I recently took a trip to a smaller DZ down the road and placed an order for a complete set of brand new gear. I still to this day refuse to buy anything at that store, although I enjoy trying out the items in their showroom. Much like my experience at the gear store, if a new skydiver is treated poorly they are likely to move away from the sport. As a new skydiver, it's hard enough to find people to jump with. If experienced guys were shouting derogatory comments at me from across the DZ when I first started, it would have definitely turned me off on the sport. Your comments about “fake profile” names are ridiculous. Take a look at your own name, ChrisD. I’m William Monk, there aren’t too many of us out there. I jump at skydive Hollister on the weekends, with regular trips down to Perris. If I ever treat a skydiver like an idiot or make them feel stupid, I would welcome someone calling me out. William.

Hey, I've been fun-jumping at Hollister for the past few months. They've got a pretty good operation going on over there. The owner (Mako) actually just made his first jumps after his accident this weekend, but he was always around the DZ, keeping things running. As far as the instructors getting paid on time, I don't hear too much bickering... It's a pretty open place, I think I would have if it was a problem. They seem to run a ton of tandems too, but it's my understanding that they've got a bunch of outside video guys with few customers ordering outside video. If you're AFF rated, there's always students there. It's funny about the Yelp reviews, I took a look at some of them. I think most people get upset because of weather holds. Over the last few months, several days have been weathered out and customers were NOT happy. Then when manifest tells them there are no refunds (as they were told) some go crazy... I've never seen an (obviously) unhappy customer on the van ride back though... This may come with the territory, but they get some NUTS customers in there. People so crazy you wonder how they even found the place. But I like the place. Bunch of friendly people, fun guys, fun jumps. Laid back place. The bus ride isn't the best thing ever, but its not too bad most of the time. Just a bunch of guys shooting the shit. I didn't see you out there this weekend. Maybe you saw me... blue RW suit, Red Rig. See you soon, William.