rouey

Used to be 6 months in Portugal. Changed to 1 year recently.

I remember something like this being mentioned in FJC: - If you find yourself hanging from the plane's tail and it's your main, cut away immediately; - If it is your reserve you're screwed. You could use a hook knife, but we won't let you carry one since you might end up cutting the wrong stuff;

My 5 years old kid artistic rendition of skydiving.

Per my instructors advice, I did a practice pull, chose a heading and enjoyed the view. I can't describe how relaxing it was not to have anything to do in freefall apart from checking my alti.

In Portugal only a handful of people make a living off skydiving. Only one DZ operates daily on a regular basis - Skydive Algarve. The others only work on weekends and some are struggling at the moment due to the financial crisis and one of the worst winters in recent history. You could certainly have a supplemental income as a TI, AFF-I, camera flyer, etc, as some people do, but it will be a long time before you break even. My advice - either do as most people do, taking the steps to become a qualified and experienced skydiver one at a time, while paying for it with some other source of income or seriously consider moving to another country and still have a hard time, as people explained in this thread. For the time being you should start visiting DZs, feeling the vibe, socializing with the staff and fun jumpers and find out for yourself what skydiving is all about as a hobby and as a paid activity.

At my DZ you get 1 slot for bringing a tandem and 2 slots for an AFF student. If they don't have a policy in place... Haggle!

That's some quality stuff you've got going on there DrDom. You're definitely way better than I am, but I have the feeling you are also much younger, so just cut the old man some slack... One thing got me worried - your main pin cover flap is loose on AFF level 3. From my relatively poor understanding, that is not a problem if you are flying belly down, but that's a discussion for a different section in the forum. Keeping up with the spirit of illustrating our points, I've uploaded my failed and passed AFF L3: Failed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLMGglo4DvQ Passed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILIj3loGSVg

Of course people will not all progress at the same rate. I'm having ups and downs myself (brilliant AFF1 and 2, disastrous AFF3 - rigid and stretched arms causing instability, lost altitude awareness and had to be reminded by the AFFI to check the altimeter at pull altitude. Had to do it again). Passed AFF5 yesterday in a not too bad jump. My stability is somewhat decent and I don't think I will ever again forget to check the altimeter regularly [/blush] ) About the AFF videos on youtube: 1) People will be more prone to publish them if they are really proud of their performance, or if they screwed up so badly they actually have great entertainment value. I don't think they represent an unbiased sample of AFF performances. 2) Often they are edited and they will leave out the "embarassing" parts of the whole AFF progression. Keep it up and keep as posted!

Let me tell you about my experience so far: - Did a Tandem and signed up immediately for AFF; - Took the FJC the following Friday; - On Saturday morning the primitive part of my brain took over and made it abundantly clear that this little idea of mine was stupid beyond comprehension. Never mind all this people at the hangar who seem to value and enjoy life more than almost everyone else I know. Some of them girls on their 20s (I'm 39). How embarassing.... - Had trouble practicing the exit in the door mockup. After a few tries my instructor and I settled for a "diving out the door, aiming at the tip of the wing", instead of the initially planed "both feet parallel to the door, left foot out first, body facing the wing" exit. The reason for this - with the first plan my legs shook... Yes, I know.. - Finally got into a load, jumped, went through the AFF1 pratices, landed off as instructed from the ground since the main landing area was quite busy. Back to the hangar, my main instructor yelled at me "Now, WTF was that all about in the ground earlier on!?!?". Turns out the jump was almost perfect apart from one pull practice too many - thought I should do something worthwhile with all the time I had left before pull altitude - Got into another load for AFF2. Same comment on the ground - "Dude, again, just tell me WTF was wrong with you earlier on". Turns out this time it was nearly perfect - good arch from the exit, stable throughout with little help, no "shadow" moves, etc... - Had to stop for the day, planning on going back this last Saturday, but the weather prevented AFF jumps. I still oscillate between wanting to go back in the air immediately and this primitive pesky fear, but I take it all as being a very valuable part of the experience - face your worst fears, adopt strategies to cope, perform when you must and end up doing something so exhilarating its hard to describe. P.S.: Take a look at Jennifer Bourne's cartoon's: http://tailotherat.blogspot.pt/search?updated-max=2012-06-19T13:32:00-07:00&max-results=20&start=15&by-date=false She puts it much more eloquently than I ever could.

Hello skymama and Trafficdiver, Many thanks for your words and for making me feel welcome. At the moment my inner self is mostly excited about the whole thing, except for a little voice in the back of my head constantly making up very reasonable excuses to present myself and others, preparing for a last minute flinch. But I believe you've heard all of those. But in the end your feeling will prove to be correct, Trafficdiver, and you could place a large bet on it. Will keep you updated.

Hello everyone! Been lurking around for some time now, and just thought I should go ahead and introduce myself and tell my very brief history with the sport. Skydiving is something I have been planning on doing for quite some time but kept postponing for years - poor finances, in a relationship with someone who wouldn't have any of it, working my ass off and being a parent thus ending up without time for any side activities, the list goes on. Having just turned 39 and with the above issues behind me (apart from being a parent, but that is now manageable), the time has finally come. Went to the DZ last Saturday, just to "check the vibe", ended up doing a tandem at the end of which I had a smile on my face that is still there today. I immediately signed up for AFF which is scheduled to begin on Friday. At the moment I'm having mixed feelings. On one hand I can barely wait to jump out from a plane on my own and to be the one in control of the canopy once it opens, on the other going through the "Incidents" section in this site has given me some pause. I'm trying to reassure myself by reasoning that I will not be in the type of situation where most accidents occur - not doing extreme maneuvers at low altitude, the DZ is small and the instructors are extremely experienced, which should make the chances of a collision extremely small. Why come to this site and not to one where I can speak my first language with people closer to me? Well, the skydiving community in my country is quite small and apparently there just aren't enough of them to make a skydiving forum anywhere as complete and vibrant as this one. That, and the fact that skydiving is every bit the same everywhere in the world - so why not go and join the biggest online forum. So... Hello everyone and apologies in advance for the inevitable broken English popping from time to time.