JeffCa

I'd argue no On what grounds would you argue that the camera does not have at least some positive aspects, including this one? I've put forward a real-life example in which a safety violation was detected after reviewing video, one for which a newer jumper was being unfairly scapegoated. It may not outweigh all of the negatives for flying camera, but it is something that goes in the + column. Cameras on skydivers can function much like the dashboard cam on a car might, in the sense that they can collect evidence from unexpected incidents that might prove useful later to help determine what happened. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Cameras can be useful not just for getting cool video of your jump. I don't wear one, but recently was very happy that my dive partner did. There was a situation that could have resulted in an incident. I brought it to the attention of a more experienced jumper in the group that exited before us, who I felt had made an error. Being much more experienced, he naturally accused us of being the ones who made an error, and convinced one of the staff that was what happened. Despite my protests, I was getting lectured. The video from my partner very clearly showed that we did not do what we'd been accused of doing, and it was indeed the more experienced jumper who made a potentially serious error in safety protocol. So I'd argue that there is a safety/review aspect of flying a camera that offsets at least some of the disadvantages of wearing one. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Thinking about this myself. Don't know if I'll be back next season. I just got my first wingsuit jumps in, and I'm trying to make a decision about it before I spend $1,500 on my own wingsuit. The time and money investment is starting to wear on me. I'm getting much less sleep on weekends, spending a lot of time stressing over the rain, wind and clouds (and wow do we have a lot of that here), and I have other directions I could send the skydiving budget in. At our club, you can spend the entire day there and only get 2-3 jumps in because we don't have enough lift capacity. The payoff is when skydiving is fun, it's a whole lot of fun. I know I'd miss it if I left, but I'd console myself with my spare time and cash. And yesterday I found out that I might have overlooked a pretty expensive tax obligation. Depending on what my accountant comes back with, cutting skydiving could be the quickest and easiest way to make up this cost. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Did the seller also think it was from 2000 and ZP? Aerodyne charges a premium of about $200 or so for the ZPX fabric. If you bought a DOM 2008 ZPX Pilot for the price of a DOM 2000 ZP canopy, you win! "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

SOFPIDARF "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Some people at my DZ have been bugging me about why I'm NOT flying a camera since I was at about 120 jumps. Now I'm over 200, have my C, and got the question again the other day. I didn't realise that jumping a camera had become some kind of requirement or strongly-recommended item. Their heads might explode if I tell them I actually do own a GoPro, but choose to not use it for skydiving. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

My cousin's father's sister's son is me. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

I'm appreciating learning about the Speed. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

And we can't even have 1 in Tokyo, one of the largest, wealthiest metro areas in the world. Our members travel to Moscow, Los Angeles and Singapore to use a tunnel, FFS! Anybody want to make a large investment? "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

I intend to survive an unconscious scenario. My reserve is a 0.8 wingloading, 30 sq ft bigger than my main. I think I can keep it that way, even if I downsize the main. There is at least one person on these forums who has survived the unconscious scenario, and there could be others I don't know about. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Riggerrob is correct. I don't want to downsize because there is no reason to. I don't want to swoop. Only possible reason for me to downsize would be to get better wind penetration, so I might go down 1 size in the next couple of years. My canopy, at least for now, is just to get me to the ground safely. Yet people I don't know keep telling me that I need a smaller canopy. They can never seem to articulate why. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

This is before my time, but there were once 2 clubs at the same DZ. The other club folded after it had the dual tandem fatality in 2004 (link below), leaving ours. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=850862 If you mean a totally different club, there is the Fujioka DZ, but it's significantly farther from Tokyo. I've never heard any talk about it at TSC, don't know who jumps there or much about it at all. I think they have a helicopter but no plane. Maybe I should check it out. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

These last posts are from 2007. If you have a newer AltiTrack, some of the functions have changed. There are now at least 2 versions and I believe the backlight works differently on them. The manual on their website is still for the older version. I emailed them about this a year ago. They replied that they know the older version is on the website and the newer version is not, but gave no explanation for why the newer one isn't. So you have to read the manual that came with your unit. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Have any G3 owners out there tried or moved to the Rev 2? How does it compare for size/fit, noise level, audible space, construction quality, vision restriction, etc? I'm really interested in the Rev 2, but there's nowhere around for me to get my hands on one to check it out. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

My instructor for my 1st A-licence back in 2003 was a #4. He said if he couldn't save his own life that he deserved what he got. I wonder if he'd still say the same now that AADs have matured and become so common. Perhaps those of us who can afford AADs should be encouraged to put them up for sale when they still have 1-3 years left on them, instead of running them down to zero. We could get a lot of AADs on the used market with some life left in them for hugely discounted prices over new, to allow our friends who can't afford a brand new one to always have one by essentially paying instalments every 1-3 years. My understanding is they hold their value pretty well, so it wouldn't even be much of a loss for those who are selling early. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

OK, I can completely agree with that. But you guys/gals have me thinking I should be backing up my audible. Thanks for costing me another $250! "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

http://www.chutingstar.com/skydive/chroma-visual-altitude-indicator http://www.chutingstar.com/skydive/optima-ii-visual-warning-port http://www.chutingstar.com/skydive/optima-led-indicator "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Wow, OK. Hands up if you've ever been flat-out saved by your AAD, without even realising you were almost dead, like the 2 guys in the video. Amazing that with these stories coming out, such as the one from BillVon, that there is still opposition to making AADs mandatory. I mean, if they're going to save nearly everybody eventually, why don't we mandate them already? Something doesn't add up, these events can't be as common as people in this thread are making them sound. Vigil on their website claims 186 lifesaves and have been in business for about 12 years. Cypres has a few hundred, going back over 20 years. Of course I think I could need to be saved by my AAD someday. That's why I have one. I got the Racer so the reserve would pop as quickly as possible in a no-main situation and I hopefully wouldn't end up like the Icelandic duo in Florida. OK, AADs are mandatory at my DZ, but I budgeted to buy one before I knew that. I think the likelihood that I'll need it is being exaggerated here. I appreciate the stories very much, by the way. If there are more, keep them coming. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Care to make a friendly wager? Actually, this has me thinking about backing up my audible. The G3 has 2 pockets, after all. If I can again make the comparison to scuba, I've done hundreds of scuba dives, been diving with hundreds of other divers, and have only once (very recently) seen somebody so stupid that they let their air run out by not checking. Coincidentally, she also spent the dive caring only about a camera and had no basic diving skills. These events are really rare, there's no reason to assume it will happen to all of us. I also think you're not giving yourself and the rest of us enough credit. We're talking about 2 bozos who let their AADs fire without even an attempt at pulling or checking altitude. You deployed by yourself and had an open canopy at 1,400 feet. Not really the same thing, is it? These guys were 3 seconds from dead. They were so low that if they hadn't had AADs, even noticing where they were immediately would probably not have saved them, given reasonable reaction and deployment times. I'd bet if we asked people to raise their hand if they've ever done this, you'd get nothing. Really, how many people on here have been outright saved by an AAD while fully conscious? Not fair to compare this incident to a pull at around 2,000 feet. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

I'm raising my hand. I know I don't have as many jumps as many of you, but I've never even gone close to this low. I watch my alti and have an audible. All this talk of "we all make mistakes" is strange to me. This isn't like making a mistake on a math test. This was an enormous mistake that was reckless endangerment of their own lives. It was a failure to practice any of the procedures that are necessary to keep you alive, like running our of air in scuba because you didn't once check your gauge (which I've also never done despite my hundreds of dives). If we believe the above posts, one guy didn't even have an AAD to save his ass, and a DZO intervened to get him one. Again, absolute failure to use any of the procedures or devices that keep you alive. As for the last comment, if you believe the rumours posted above, they DID try to hide their error from the community. How the video came out is not known. I'm happy this video came out, and appreciate them if they posted it, but they do deserve ALL of the criticism they're getting. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

To nitpick your comment, Mac is still only about 5% of the personal computer market, with Windows having over 90%. Mac is more successful than in the past, is still small enough that many software companies just ignore the platform's existence. Apple has done very well mostly because of its other devices. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Assuming you don't have a vehicle, there are 2 train stations you can access the DZ from. They are Okegawa and Kawagoe. Which one is easier to get to will depend on exactly where you're coming from. Use this website to figure it out (it will also be useful for your other travels around Japan): http://www.jorudan.co.jp/english/norikae/ The bus from Okegawa (not sure which bus stand to use from this station) is about 15 minutes, from Kawagoe (get on at bus stand #5, as of this writing) is 30 minutes. Get off at the stop called Yamagayado. Be careful not to get off at Ushigayado, which is one stop before Yamagayado coming from Kawagoe. The first character in the name is different. If you screw it up, the walk from Ushigayado to Yamagayado is only a few minutes, not so bad. After you get off the bus, it's about a 20-minute walk to the DZ. I can give you directions when you need them. For short-term visitor price per jump and membership issues, I'm not clear. Please send an email to: info (at) tokyoskydivingclub (dot) jp The calendar is here: http://www.tokyoskydivingclub.jp/tool/callender_t.php Any date with a marking on it is open for jumps. The various markings are for tandem booking availability, not important for you. If you want to go on a non-holiday weekday (grey/gray), you have to send an email a couple of days in advance to tell them you're coming. Bus schedules From Okegawa: http://www.tobu-bus.com/pc/search/bs_tt.php?key=15090_02 From Kawagoe: http://www.tobu-bus.com/pc/search/bs_tt.php?key=15001_51 Yellow is Monday-Friday, blue is Saturday, pink is Sundays and holidays. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

Eiko and Nao are still jumping, just not with us as of this season. Club politics. Eiko got her 10,000 jump wings, #126, this spring. Parachutist magazine, June 2014, page 17 for the story. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

You're right, I mixed the 2 issues into one tirade. Sorry. I've never heard anything bad about UPT's customer service. I started off objecting to the idea posted earlier that longer wait time = higher quality and more popular product. It is entirely possible for the most popular product to have the shortest wait times and an unpopular product to have the longest wait times. The complaints about PF are about wait times and service, UPT only seems to have the wait time issue. "So many fatalities and injuries are caused by decisions jumpers make before even getting into the aircraft. Skydiving can be safe AND fun at the same time...Honest." - Bill Booth

IMHO... Sounds like you got an answer you didn't like and came here shopping for a different answer? My only advice to you is to error on the side of safety when it comes to downsizing.