JSE

The short answer is yes, they closed up shop a while back.

That would be awesome. Thanks! and thanks in advance to anyone else who posts a video link.

Nice, but the super quick editing, with two second scenes, makes it hard to explain to non-skydivers what's going on. There's tons of BASE. There's also a lot of focus on the highest level of achievement. So on the one hand it does show off what can be achieved (eg, XRW, Gary Connery's wingsuit box landing, Red Bull Stratos, various BASE terrain flying), but one would want more 'regular skydiving' too, to show what is more common. Still, it is a video (through iloveskydiving) that has a million clips of fun stuff all combined into one. I agree with everything you said here. I actually really enjoyed that video. Its the kind of thing I personally like to watch, but not really something that would give to mom/dad/new friend/co-workers/or someone interested in taking aff.

Looking for a good video to show people who are curious about the actual "sport" of skydiving and what is involved. Something not long that will give a whuffo with absolutely no exposure to skydiving a decent idea of what it is we do (i.e. fs, vfs, freeflying, swooping, wingsuits, bigways, CRW, etc.) A youtube or vimeo link would be great.

Your post is misleading. The average temp for one month, January 2013, was the same as Jan. 1995. Even this article shows a warming trend over 20th century averages and multi-degree increases over recent averages in certain regions. As far as your clip about rising oceans, the article states that "The January 2013 globally-averaged ocean temperature anomaly of 0.41°C (0.74°F) was the eighth warmest on record for January." Does this article prove conclusively climate change one way or the other - no. Will people who already made there mind up that there is no climate change incorrectly assert this article supports their position...

Just say everyone who wants to do a wingsuit jump should get a full briefing on those topics from someone with those qualifications and be done with it.

Check to make sure your switch is plugged in all the way. If thats not the problem then your switch is just wearing out. I used to go through at least two per season. That is the tell tale sign its time to replace the tongue switch.

They don't want to land on the rockets because it would kick up dust that would land on or damage the rover. That seems odd to me. First, aren't there really bad sand storms on mars? If so its going to get dusty pretty soon anyway. Second, if that really is a problem, why not encase the rover in a shell that could be opened after a few hours when the dust settles? That seems like it would be cheaper/easier/lighter than hovering with rockets and lowering the rover, but who knows.

This is not a good idea. First, any "really fast" alternating toggle inputs can cause line twists. That is definitely something you don't want close to the ground. The "trick" is to realize you are too high (or too low) before you get to final so that you can fly final straight in with minimal input until flaring. If your current initiation point and altitude are putting you too high on a consistent basis then you need to change either where you start your pattern or the altitude you start at. You were right not to do a 180 on final. That is a good way to die. Also if your base leg is along a tree line, don't fly down wind of the trees. You may have to fly a shorter final or turn to final lower. That is better than flying downwind of an obstacle. Try doing a hop and pop and fly your pattern up high a few times to gauge how much altitude it takes. Also filling in your profile will get you better advise here. Bottom line, talk to your local instructors or canopy coach who can actually see what you are doing.

Very good post by Andy9o8. I just want to add that its not just middle aged folks. I'm in my late 20's and have struggled with similar issues. I was employed by a large company through which I had health insurance. I was laid off in late 2009. I stayed on cobra for a while, but it was extremely expensive, something like 5-600 a month for a health, then 27 year old. Very hard to pay that when unemployed. When it became clear that there were no new jobs that I could jump into right away I decided to pull my self up by the bootstraps and start my own business. When I went to get my own healthcare plan, I was turned down by every single insurer except one. The reason - I had seen a chiropractor on 3 previous occasions more than a year before for neck pain. I even provided the insurance companies with a letter from the chiropractor stating that there was no long-term or chronic problem. Nevertheless I was deemed to have a preexisting condition and was uninsurable. The one company that agreed to insure me made me pay an extra 30% on my premium because of this preexisting condition. to be clear, there was nothing wrong. I was totally healthy. About a year later I went to see my primary care doctor when I got sick. He spent 10 minutes with me and gave me a strep test. The bill was more than $400 dollars. My insurance reduced the cost a bit, but it was still expensive. If that one company had not agreed to cover me I would be in big trouble. It is ludicrous that a healthy young man like myself is denied coverage because he once took advantage of his prior coverage. Its is ludicrous that I have to pay extra to the one company that would sell me a policy. It is ludicrous that costs are so out of control that a strep test that costs $2 to purchase ended up costing me hundreds. The system is broken. Say what you want about the approach that congress took when it passed the new law. At least they did something. I was pretty close to having no insurance, and what I have is almost unaffordable and the coverage is terrible. From where I'm sitting it can't get much worse.

Care to elaborate? Not to hijack the thread, but other than quartered how do you position it?

I remember watching Terry toggle whip is velocity (it was scary) , swoop right up to the van driver in Monterey, and grab a lit cigaret at the end of each swoop. they did this on load after load.

All you need may be the card and a SIM but having just that stuff is not optimal. One thing that impressed me about Brian Germain's canopy course was the wonderful book you get with it. Its been a great reference tool that I can read and think back to what he said. Now it doesn't need to be a published books on amazon, but visual aids, reference sheets stock video of certain maneuvers, etc. stand out and stick with students. Another example is the great videos of the various AFF levels that Jay Stokes made. Rather than do a new rating put the effort into creating or licensing stuff like that. If we turn it into a rating it will just drive the price up courses up with little benefit to the students. Realistically, how many of the best canopy pilots and instructors are going to get a rating that only entitles you to teach a special ground school and video other peoples landings?

First of all the problem you identified, that not everyone is getting canopy control instruction beyond AFF, is what the new B license requirements are trying to fix. For the record, I wasn't suggesting that jumpers should be taught every single skill during AFF. We are in total agreement that some skills need to be learned later. A good skydiver should never stop learning. I guess the point I wanted to make is that as an Instructor I should be able to teach flair turns. Now, I know that I can teach that, but can all Instructors? I'm not talking advanced swooping, I'm talking about canopy skills that all licensed jumps should learn. If we come up with another rating and call it canopy coach, it creates an additional hoop for someone like myself to jump through. Then someone like me, who does not want to spend a bunch of money getting a new rating won't be able to teach canopy control, but someone with a freshly minted "canopy coach card" who just squeaked by with the minimum requirements will. How does that make things better? Also the guy on the Katana 99 (actually its 97, i had one ;) ) might well be in the 500-1000 range like I was when I had that canopy. A lot of the proposed rules I've seen stop telling jumpers what they should jump at 500. Personally I would rather see the .1 increase in wing loading per hundred jumps rule that goes up to 1000 jumps than for the USPA to create more ratings. Unless there is an epidemic of unqualified people trying to teach basic canopy courses then I think a new rating is a solution looking for a problem.

I don't think that we need more ratings. The new system allows S&TAs, among others, to appoint qualified persons to teach canopy control. How about just improving that part of the AFF-I course so that instructors can teach all the basic stuff (hint: that's what we are already supposed to be doing as part of the AFF progression) What would be more helpful is if USPA published some course materials (perhaps licensed from some of the more successful professionals who have been doing this for many years) to help those who have been approved so that they can actually put on a comprehensive course. Don't you think? What ever method of wing-loading restricts is chosen I hope is from the KISS school of thought. A chart, a .1 increase per 100 jumps, whatever, but it should be easily determinable. I agree that we don't want to burden folks with enforcement issues