PixieUK

Lol - I tell them I'm going camping (we pitch a tent at the dz) which is far too hard core for most of the people I know at work . A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Good luck! You may want to consider digging out your thermals - I had mine on this weekend at Sibson which isn't too far away from Hinton, lol. Be prepared for LOTS of waiting around - UK weather is unpredictable at best and it gets very frustrating sitting on the ground whilst everyone else can jump, in winds that are too strong for students. I ended up flying backwards for a few thousand feet yesterday on a student canopy at the end of my AFF level 7 so there are good reasons for the rules!! A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Sounds fabulous to me A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Stay single Keep your own interests, your own space and don't expect to do absolutely everything together. Have some shared interests but also plan time apart. Allow each other to grow My ex couldn't do any of the above, hence I am divorced and will never get married again. For anyone who says "never say never as never is a long time", so is "forever" and I'm not promising that to anyone again. A long term relationship is fine, a legal commitment to someone else just isn't going to happen....... A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

the correct technique in these cases should be, once you're solidly on the ground, to let go one toggle and pull hard on the other one: the canopy will beautifully collapse itself on the ground without problems.

Well done you, sounds fabulous! At least you got to go up

I did my first AFF jump yesterday and was given a HUGE canopy (280 sq ft). I weigh about 140 lbs and it's supposed to be ok for up to 266 lbs so it took a long time to get down, lol. Turning it was very easy, as was flaring. I found it easy to make little adjustments which was just as well as my radio wasn't working until I was at about 1800' and I was already planning my landing unassisted. In the event, my instructor was able to talk me down and I landed very gently on my feet - until a gust of wind caught my chute and pulled me over backwards . It was more difficult to try and collapse my canopy than to fly it A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

I've done 1 tandem and have just started AFF but haven't had light enough winds to actually jump yet. Hopefully tomorrow!! From what I can gather, a student canopy is a bit like an automatic car on cruise control. If we don't touch the handles, it will happily keep flying in a straight line - all we have to do is learn to steer. We can turn left or right or by pulling both at the same time, put on the brakes. So if we line it up correctly (using the wind sock on the landing area as a guide), and make gentle corrections as necessary to stay on that course, it should be relatively straightforward. The complicated bit comes in landing under stronger winds, at different angles off the wind, or in squirrelly winds that change at the last minte etc etc and we don't do that stuff as students because we are only allowed to jump in very light winds. And hopefully you will have a working radio so your instructors will be telling you what to do at each point anyway Nice theory, I'll let you know tomorrow if it works out that simple A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Thanks! Hope you get to jump too. I don't have too worry too much about other people at the moment because our little plane usually only takes up 8-12 people so it's likely that there will be a couple of tandems with photographers plus me and 2 instructors. Everyone else will know exactly what they're doing and where they're going and will know I don't so hopefully I will have lots of airspace for any mistakes with steering A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

It reminds me of learning to sail, I'm looking at weather with a whole new mindset all over again, lol. Needless to say, weather that I consider to be great for sailing, is really not good for fledgling skydivers A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Rich has an orange and blue jumpsuit - and I was the one who was wandering around in and out of the sheds / manifest / storage cabins etc who didn't even get into a jumpsuit, lol. You may have seen me sitting on the bench by the pen doing strange things with my arms in the air going through my skydive procedure, or scooting about on a creeper muttering "arch, arch" A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Thanks, that's the one! Useful information about the pricing too - will remember that

Yep, we're planning to get up to Sib on Saturday afternoon to pitch the tent (hopefully not in the pouring rain that is currently forecast, lol) and start spreading out Rich's numerous old rigs in the packing shed to see what he's actually got Sun and Mon are looking good with low winds so with any luck, I'll get 2 or 3 jumps in. I guess it just depends on how many other AFF students are there and whether any of the AFF instructors are at the Nationals. Fingers crossed

A few days ago I found a link from somewhere on this site that took me to a price list for different wind tunnels, and now I can't find it. Can anyone help? The Airkix website is broken - I can get to the front page but get server errors when I try to find any details about costs or facilities Thanks

Hiya Have you looked up the reviews for your two choices on the Dropzones section of this site? Michigan dropzones Can you visit and just hang out there? Are there lots of non-tandem jumpers about and are they able to go up and jump or are they hanging around bored whilst lots of tandems go up? Are the instructors helpful and willing to answer your questions? How does the atmosphere feel compared with the other dz? Good luck exploring the options! A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Obviously I can't comment on the skydiving aspect as I've never been in that situation. However, having been in life-threatening situations more than once where my brain went into overdrive, I imagine from your reactions to the other scenarios and later in that jump, that you would be fine. You didn't go to pieces, you didn't 'forget' how to fly your canopy after such a shock and your rational mind kicked back in very quickly. I had a scenario where I was sailing with my partner and we were unexpectedly caught in a gale at one of the worst possible places along the south coast of England (weather forecast was for winds dropping and it changed rapidly and unpredictably to go the other way). Seas were building, driving onshore winds, horrendous rip tides etc so on calling the harbour we'd intended to call in at and checking in with the coastguard, we quickly established the safest thing to do would be to head out offshore as far as we could to try to ride it out. Even though we'd trained for this and planned out how to cope with just such emergencies, my immediate and irrational thought was sheer panic and "I don't want to go offshore in a gale!" despite knowing that was the safest place to be (avoid running aground, less likely to be anything to hit). It literally lasted a couple of heart-stopping seconds as my brain desperately tried to work out how I could get in to harbour and tie up, then survival mode kicked in and I just got on with all the preparations I needed to do to keep us as safe as possible. The training took over - I didn't need to over-think anything, the steps were all there once that initial shock had hit and gone. And from everything else you've said, I think you would probably be similar. You will never know how you will react until it actually happens but the very fact this happened to you and you've now got the time to sit and work it through makes me think it would be very unlikely that you would refuse to cutaway a malfunction. And my instructor has repeatedly told me that the reason why students deploy so high compared with other skydivers is precisely so they have time to deal with the shock of a malfunction, hesitate for a couple of seconds, then deal with it and still have plenty of time for the reserve to come out. A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

I'm too new to skydiving to have had any really harsh comments yet, but I've certainly had the same said to me about motorcycling, indoor and outdoor rock climbing, sailing yachts and dinghies and even Tae Bo kickboxing (which is non-contact!). It says far more about the person who expresses the comment than about anyone who pursues the activity in question. As someone else said, it is a projection of their fears onto you and the strength of their reaction is very likely to be proportionate to the strength of their fear / phobia / experience / or whatever trigger it's provoked. People generally fear the unknown and many people do not challenge those fears in a rational manner, merely continue to respond with the reactions of their subconscious. I find it highly ironic in some ways that I am scared of jumping out of a plane with my own means of landing safely, yet I am perfectly happy to be flown thousands of miles in what is essentially a very heavy metal box, across oceans / mountains / highly built up areas etc and trust that all those thousands of tonnes will not just fall out of the sky randomly. The fear of falling is instinctive and as the subconscious mind cannot be 'reasoned with', it only 'learns' from repeated experience so it is only by pushing the fear factor, that the subconscious can be retrained. From my experiences with doing fall practice whilst indoor rock climbing, I know familiarity will largely allay my instinctive fears so long as that experience is built up in a controlled manner. If I leave it too long in between practice sessions, instinct kicks back in and it becomes almost impossible to drop a couple of metres off the wall on a safety line. But to try and explain that to someone who has never pushed any of their limits into the fear factor and beyond, is almost impossible. And it is those people who I have found tend to react most aggressively to my 'extreme' activities, even though I am actually a very cautious person, definitely not an adrenaline junkie and I wouldn't do anything that my logical mind hadn't reasoned out to be safe. Edit: By "safe" in the last sentence, I mean an acceptable risk. Driving to work on the motorway every day is far more unsafe than most of the other so-called 'risky' activities I undertake A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Sadly it didn't happen - it was too windy for fledglings, lol. But there's always next weekend, and then we have a 3 day weekend after that so hopefully I'll get some jumps in soon. And my other half had an absolute ball - lots of new friends to jump with A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Wow, I'd not heard of the plane rides before. Our dz seems to make the call early on students, perhaps to avoid that risk because the Caravan is very small - I wouldn't want to land in the back sitting on those little wooden benches with the door open, lol. Do your instructors stay in the plane too? Presumably at least one would have to stay to shut the door and make sure the students didn't freak or try to jump anyway. One of the new mantras I learned is "Hurry up and wait" I was first at briefing at 8am each morning and stuck it out until the last plane was landed each day - I would rather not join the statistics of a twisted ankle or dislocated shoulder from a squirrelly landing so totally understand the cautious approach where students are concerned. They don't seem to have many new students - I was there from Thursday night to Sun night and only met 4 other students, 2 of whom were on consolidation jumps, and the weather forecast was pretty good. Hopefully that's just because it's holiday season. We're planning to be back at the dz next weekend for 2 days and the weekend after for 3 days so fingers crossed the weather will be good and I'll manage to do at least a couple of jumps

Spent 3 days straight at the drop zone and sod's law said that the weather was perfect on Friday morning (when I was in ground school plus there was no plane!), then the winds steadily picked up throughout the afternoon. Nothing too major for most skydivers, but enough to keep all students on the ground i.e. me, because I was the only student that day, lol. My instructor went off to do some tandems whilst I practised my new skydive drills and tried to un-fry my brain from information overload. The wind refused to settle enough - by the time it looked like I might just be able to jump, the pilot was on his way home Though actually it was probably a good thing because it stopped all the "do I want to, don't I want to?" questions about doing my first jump on the same day as ground school - I was more tired than I realised and couldn't decide. Rich did a couple of jumps so at least he wasn't sitting around by himself all day whilst I was throwing myself on crash-mats, learning new mantras and having to be reminded to breathe at significant points in a skydive, lol. Saturday was much worse - strong winds in the morning and the dz called it early, sending all the tandems home. I had done my refresh and lots more practice and was wiped out, so we spent the afternoon sleeping whilst wind and rain battered our tent. Had a chilled evening, made some new friends and crossed our fingers for a better forecast on Sunday. Which happened for everyone except students! Very squirrelly winds, very variable speeds at different heights, to the point where all non-students could jump in the morning (so the consols did their jumps) but by late morning, the limit was 50+ jumps and the other 2 students went home. We met up with some of our new friends and Rich joined some groups for jumping and was a very happy bunny. Limit went up to 100+ jumps so it was fairly certain I wasn't going to be able to go up but I was happy enough to stay whilst Rich was still able to jump. The dz staff and other skydivers were absolutely fantastic. By the end of the weekend, everyone was totally gutted for me but they all looked after me so well. At one point I went to get a book because it was getting a bit frustrating watching everyone else jump - I never even got to open it. People came and chatted with me, bought me tea, told me good stories about skydiving and I felt so much part of the community, I was blown away. I did feel a bit of an imposter because I haven't actually managed to do a single jump (other than my tandem) and I don't even know if I'll like it, but they treated me like a skydiver anyway. We stayed until the last plane was down but it just wasn't to be, so we'll go back next weekend. It's a moot point whether Rich will take it back up again - he's hooked, lol. So I'll either be a dz widow or I'll have to join them A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

I guess they teach it differently in the UK. As far as I've been told by my instructors and people I've met at the dz, the options are either static line or straight into AFF for beginners wanting to learn to skydive. I was getting a bit frustrated yesterday after 3 days on the dz with practically everyone jumping but me (squirrelly winds) and asked my instructor if he would take me up for a tandem but he recommended I spend the money on wind tunnel time instead. He would have taken me up and let me borrow an altimeter, fly the canopy etc, but he thought it was a lot of money to burn and didn't think I'd gain enough from it for it to be value for money. He's been an instructor for several years and teaches at multiple drop zones (the one I am learning at is only open Thur-Sun) A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

I think possibly people are worried that newbies like us will learn too much that isn't necessary at first and can be confusing or even dangerous if we over-think things. I know my skydiver boyfriend is being VERY careful about what he tells me in answer to all my questions - some stuff he could answer, he tells me I'll have to wait to see what my instructors say because he doesn't want to tell me one thing and have them tell me something else, which could cause me to hesitate at a critical moment due to potentially conflicting advice.

Yep, know that feeling, lol. I've got ground school and maybe AFF jump 1 this weekend (dependent on the weather forecast improving!) and having just seen videos of people jumping from the back of a plane, I had a sudden thought "seriously?! am I going to do that??". The simple answer is No, of course not, I'm not nearly ready yet. As you say, one jump at a time! And you're not going to be on your own, you're going to have two extremely experienced instructors holding onto you until your parachute has deployed properly. I may do AFF1 and terrify myself and never jump again; conversely I may get the adrenaline rush I missed out on doing a tandem and be high as a kite for days. Absolutely no way of telling right now this minute so absolutely no point in fretting over it either way Enjoy the anticipation of experiencing something new and leave it at that

a baggy tshirt. I hate having a draft around my shoulders. A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

No, these are not people I trust, these are people who feel they have a right to an opinion, lol. Usually someone else's mum /granny / neighbour / random person met at a function or whatever. I have lost count of the number of people who know nothing much more about me than my name telling me I should get married or have kids or buy a house or whatever, for no reason whatsoever that I can see, other than "everyone does it"! Which for me is no reason at all..... Now I can ask them if they would jump out of a plane And no, I am never getting married again. For all those people who say "never is a long time", so is "forever" and there's no way I'm promising that to anyone again A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr