Salamander

Protection from whom??? Prosperity... are you sure you want to make the argument that Canada receives some sort of parasitic benefit from US prosperity? Please explain the dangers Canada faces due to this perceived socialist influence turning Canada away from the US.

Probably the same thing that is "up with Americans"... This isn't a one way issue. I recall the following situation (http://espn.go.com/columns/kreidler/1372839.html) So... just let it slide. Honestly, does it really bother you that much?

Why are people trying to complicate this issue? If you do a proper PLF (assuming under a square and not into an obstacle) you shouldn't need to protect your head / face. The points of contact do not include your head!!! Your hands and arms shouldn't leave the full flare position. I completely agree with skybytch... keep your hands at your crotch, leaving your arms inboard for the roll - ie. you aren't sticking them out to stop yourself from hitting the ground. Students have a difficult enough time perfectly timing the flare for landing. Keep it simple, leave your toggles down at your crotch. My first jump students don't need the extra stress on landing of trying to figure out when to bring their toggles up to protect their faces.

Just remember that if you are landing a square you may want to flare before you hit the ground. So, your hands are not holding on to your risers (assuming you are not doing a rear riser flare). If you are landing a round, holding on to your risers isn't that bad of an idea.

I also have a perforated membrane in one ear. It is NOT a problem for skydiving if you are smart about it. You will learn to deal with the problem and still enjoy your skydives. Choose a helmet that protects your ear from the wind. Pro-tecs with holes at the ear slots should be covered with tape, otherwise any helmet will do. Since I started wearing a full face, I have had no pain after or during a skydive. Why are you scuba diving with a perforated ear drum??? Are you able to keep ALL water out of your ear when you are submerged? The only other advice I will offer is that you stay on the ground while you have that infection. Good luck.

It is a little less painful than that. You must have competed at a regional, provincial or national competition in at least one discipline. For those that are interested in the modern CoP requirements. Follow the link below to a PDF. http://www.cspa.ca/cspa/Students/CoP2001Mar16CDv2.pdf

Does anyone know what the requirements for the E-CoP were? Did it come with any privileges?

Ian, you have been gone a little too long. You can find people with an E, however, when the licenses became harder to get, the E was tossed. Most recent numbers listed in Canpara: A 10260 B 5163 C 3055 D 1012 The numbers work the same way the USPA numbers do... kinda. When the new licenses came into effect, the numbers were all bumped to the next thousand to distinguish from the old system. So, the new A's started counting at 10000, B's at 5000. C's at 3000, and D's at 1000.

Execution is not likely. No death penalty. (edited for spelling)

Fair enough... A fish tank does a great job of showing a greenhouse effect. However, it does not even come close to the complexity of issues surrounding the larger fish tank we live in. In the fish tank you eliminate variables that are too important to ignore in a global environment. We could come close to modelling a fish tank... now model every particle of every additive, how it interacts with every other particle, include the variations in the suns solar cylcles... see what I am getting at. Or they imagine a situation where CO2 may actually cause a cooling affect all on its own. No counter effect needed. Agreed... so lets fight the battles that need fighting. Global warming becomes so popular and heated a topic that people ignore those problems that we know are serious. We already have enough contradictory science to say that we should just back off.. ie. not make things any worse, but don't bother trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Caution all you want. However, don't ask for the world to build biased panels, spend billions, drop what is becoming doctrine on what we can only assume based on invalid science. “The intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.” - Sir Peter B. Medawar, British immunologist, Nobel Prize 1960. I am only fighting global warming here. I do believe that humans aren't doing good with our environment. However, I have yet to see even remotely convincing evidence that global warming is a concern that validates the attention it has been and continues to receive to this day.

Because too many believe that the science behind global warming is sound. That these environmentalists aren't walking blindly. Truth is, science is blind in this issue. The blind leading the blind. The resources to compute the actual affects of any additive to the atmosphere are not available. The models that are used to predict this problem are so weak that anyone could easily turn them the other way around and say the earth will get colder. Just for the record... The environment is important to me. Wasted energy, pollution, water etc... are definite environmental issues. Global warming the greenhouse effect and such are as of now wild unscientific attempts to correlate a human affect on the world.

I have also seen the adamant global warming "specialists" look foolish time and time again. No insurance company is capable of doing an unbiased and complete study to determine if this so called "global warming" has a direct affect. First off... give me a definition of a global temperature that doesn't make me want to throw a 6 inch thick statistics book at you and then we can discuss global warming.

I am not USPA instructor and have never read the SIMS, so I can't comment. But if it is unclear, perhaps you should send an email to a USPA representative in your area. If you are having issues with this - you probably aren't the first.

I should mention no real harm was done by trying different canopies. It may have slowed down your learning of landings, however, you WILL figure out how to land. Also, the experience under the falcon could be priceless. If I am not mistaken, it is the only F111 canopy you have flown to date. Chances are your reserve is F111. That experience could prove very comforting if you ever find yourself under a reserve in less than ideal situations. As for the not answering your question deal. Sorry, not much anyone can do about that. I am sure very few instructors are keen on definite heights for flaring. It just isn't that straightforward. So I would say... whether you assume feet, head or hips for a given height is less important than the issue of figuring out when to flare so that YOU land happily. No number in a manual is going to help you with that. I know this is a redirection, but I hope it makes sense.