drdm

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Gear

  • Container Other
    Icon
  • Main Canopy Size
    129
  • Main Canopy Other
    Safire 2
  • Reserve Canopy Size
    150
  • Reserve Canopy Other
    Speed 2000
  • AAD
    Cypres 2

Jump Profile

  • Home DZ
    Aero Fallschirmsport GmbH Kassel
  • Licensing Organization
    DFV
  • Number of Jumps
    505
  • Years in Sport
    4
  • Freefall Photographer
    Yes

Ratings and Rigging

  • USPA Coach
    No
  • Pro Rating
    No
  • Wingsuit Instructor
    No

Recent Profile Visitors

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  1. Germany does however. German licenses, dropzones and the sport here in general are overseen by the Deutscher Fallschirmsportverband. A few dropzones "double up" as USPA member dropzones simultaneously. Either way, you'd have to convert the mentioned Bulgarian license to a DFV one if you live in Germany once you got back. I'm not an instructor or administrator of any kind, so I can't say how involved it is with a Bulgarian licence - it might just be some forms and a small filing fee, or there might check jumps or a written test involved - I really don't know - but whatever is involved, it almost certainly would have to be done.
  2. Haven't shipped a canopy, but have shipped a harness... It counts as sporting equipment, not essential safety equipment (same way a climbing rope or a bicycle helmet, for example, is sporting equipment). Gonna have to either suck it up, or risk problems at customs.
  3. Sure thing! It's been an interesting process as an American learning to jump in Germany (in fact, hanging around the dropzone regularly was one of the biggest sources of improvement in my converstaional German), and I'm happy to share any small bit of local knowledge I can.
  4. Most people in the Frankfurt area jump at Westerwald / Breitscheid or Pullout / Giessen. Both are pretty well-regarded. I jump a bit farther away (Aero / Kassel, which is more like 200 km compared to 100 km for the other two), but that's because it's where I learned and where my community is.
  5. Hey guys, I recently picked up a used new variant (i.e. rectangular flat top section rather than circular / oval one) Tonfly 2x. There's nothing on the mini-flat top at the moment, and I'd like to install some kind of quick-swap / removable mount on it, with the mounting process staying limited to simple drilling (which eliminated the TF-Pro mount, since that requires a section to be cut out of the helmet). Does anybody have any recommendations? The Cookie Flatlock (single, not double) looks good, but I'm worried it's too big for the mounting area. The Schumacher Quick Shoe also looks like a possibility, but the swappable mount plate only comes with a single center screw hole - I assume it's easily drillable for other positions as well? Anybody have any experience with that? X-shut is a possibility too, though that would stick up / out a little bit more than I'd like if I stick to the "just drilling" mounting. If anybody has any advice about any of those systems, particularly in conjunction with a rectangular-top 2x, I'd be quite happy to hear it. I'm open to other suggestions as well. Thanks, and blue skies!
  6. American living in Germany - lots of people swear by the Speed over here. With the caveat "seriously, before you buy, ask your rigger" (and also contact Paratec - speaking from personal experience, they're super friendly and helpful), I can confirm tripp9r's experience - I've got a Speed2000 150 in an Icon I3 (nominally sized for a normal pack volume reserve in the 110-130 range). My rigger was fine to pack it and it definitely doesn't feel like a brick on my back. Haven't had to land it yet, but I've seen a few others land, and it always looked smoother and easier than one might expect from a reserve.
  7. Everybody I know (myself included) who jumps Safires (I'm assuming you've got a Safire 2 or 3 - can't say much about the old Safire 1s) is consistently impressed with how slow and soft the openings are. I've had openings so soft (if the packer pulled the slider too far in front of the nose, or pushed the nose in a bit) that I've been briefly worried I was dealing with a streamer. If you're 100% confident in your packing and body position on deployment (and I don't mean "yeah of course it's fine," I mean, have you gone over your packing with a rigger since you started having hard openings? Have you had an instructor film a deployment or three?), have your rigger check the canopy and the line trim.
  8. Hrmmm, could be, I'm honestly not sure... I've only been there during boogies and events (our club has their pre-season boogie there every year). Their website says they're open 7/7, but it very well could be that during the low season, there's not much going up during the week.
  9. Germany itself has a good, if small-ish scene. I've been jumping out of Kassel for the last 2 years and it's a great community there. Plenty of other fun places too - a lot of the northern / coastal German DZs have inhopp (island hopping) boogies during the summer. As said though, picking up some German helps. For the winter season, Skytime Castellon is a highly underrated place - about an hour from Valencia, very chill, and literally right next to the ocean - beach landings every time, if ya want 'em.
  10. Of course it's dangerous. Just not *too* dangerous for most of us, obviously. Now that that's out of the way... I've only been skydiving for two years, so I'm pulling what I'm about to say more from years of climbing and freeride / backcountry skiing than skydiving, though it obviously applies in the same way. An important distinction when discussing danger, which I don't think is made enough, is the distinction between risk and consequence. Risk, meaning how likely it is that something goes wrong, and consequence, meaning what is likely to happen when something goes wrong? Understanding both those factors is key to making informed decisions. For example, how would you compare an activity where you're unlikely to die, but you run a 1/10 chance of badly twisting your ankle, to an activity where you're unlikely to sustain a minor injury, but 1/1000 of the time something goes catastrophically wrong and you probably die? Not so easy, is it? I've climbed routes where I'm at my limit and I know I'm probably going to fall, but the rope anchors are solid, the fall angle and expected distance isn't too bad, and I know that I'll probably end up with some scrapes or bruises and nothing more. I've also free-solo'd routes that are so far below my limit that the chances or me falling are only marginally higher than the chances of me spontaneously falling on my face while walking from my bedroom to my kitchen, but I know that if I *do* fall, it's not going to be pretty. Again, how do you compare those situations? Is a laughably high chance of bruising the same as a very very small but none the less quite real chance of broken legs or worse? Being able to think about risk and consequence in a semi-independent way (and understanding when and where they are and aren't linked) is important for evaluating what's a reasonable level of danger for you, and if you aren't taking the time to think about those two aspects first separately, and then in terms of how they interact, you're not evaluating danger right (in my admittedly amateurish opinion). One of the things that I've found to be most jarring about this sport is that there isn't much of a range of injuries. Most other sport have a sort of continuous range of possible injuries, ranging from bruising and sprains to minor broken bones to major broken bones to the really horrible stuff. But you can sort of see the whole range, and see how the worse injuries often correspond with the higher levels of the sport. In skydiving (with the possible exception of injuries from swooping - bad injury, high level in the sport), you don't have that nearly as much. The continuous range we're used to is broken - injuries are either minor (hahaha your buddy rolled a no-wind landing and broke his thumb) or unspeakable (holy shit your buddy turned low to avoid someone on final and femured). There's very little in between (or at least that's my impression). This makes our usual, learned-over-years-of-life evaluation tendencies a bit hard to work with, so you really have to stop and think about these things. Anyway, done rambling for now :-) Blue skies!
  11. drdm

    TDS poptop

    The model name is Teardrop / Teardrop Superfly / Teardrop Viper, and their civilian division is Thomas Sports Equipment - Googling "TSE Teardrop manual" yields a couple manual variants... http://www.ffp.asso.fr/wp-content/uploads/1994/09/Sac_harnais_TEAR_DROP_1pin_sf_09-1994-2.pdf https://pdfhall.com/tear-drop-1-pin-owners-manual-thomas-defence-systems-ltd_5b56aac0097c472c778b4575.html
  12. Hey all, reviving this thread as I'm in a similar boat. I'm 62-65 kg (140ish lbs) (depending on how much beer and grilling went on Friday night) and 170cm / 5'7". I had my first full weekend of camera flying with the beginner class 4-way team some friends put together, and have been getting tips from the local camera flyers, who are my primary source of advice. But, with the usual appropriate skepticism, I want to open it up to the internet a bit. I'm flying at the moment with a relatively snug (but not ultra-tight) free-fly suit. Except when they're in very "flat" formations, I still have to work fairly hard to keep up (hard arch, elbows in and under) without losing the camera angle (I could out-fall them when they're together as a group, but then I'd have to also tilt my head up and back). I only got uncomfortably close to the burble once, and was able to easily backslide out a bit before anything happened. I've been encouraged to try a camera suit (with small, i.e. not clipped over the laterals, wings), and will hopefully get to borrow one from a similarly-sized jumper in the next couple of weeks. I know she sometimes flies with weights, and I find it encouraging to see in the last post that weights can theoretically be avoided for people our size. Anyway, that's the background, and now here are the specific questions (again, I'm getting advice from local camera flyers first, but want to open it up as well, with appropriate internet skepticism): -If I order a camera suit, is there anything I should definitely go for (aside from tight and nylon) or avoid? Any brand recommendations? (My DZ works with Rainbow Suits.) -Aside from what's already been said in this thread, any new fast-falling tips? -One thing I notice (and I'll have some local jumpers look at exit videos soon and see if we can figure this out), is that I exit very close to the team (good) (I do a "follow" exit rather than a "just before" exit, as the timing for the "just before" exit is a lot more demanding), then quickly gain separation on the hill (bad), and have to catch back up coming off the hill. Is this a common beginner problem? Any advice for staying with the team through the hill? -Any general advice for an aspiring camera flyer, lightweight or not? Thanks, and blue skies!
  13. Thanks for digging that out of the depths of the SIM! So I guess I wasn't quite right. It's interesting phrasing though, as it refers to "membership" and not "licensing..." I guess that means that I'll need to get (at least a temporary) membership the next time I go back for a visit and want to jump, but don't need to worry about getting a new license... Interesting.
  14. I've been wondering about this in the other direction (if you don't mind the slight derailment) - I'm an American citizen, but a German resident, and got my license in Germany and have not yet had the chance to jump "back home," so to speak, though I hope to soon. I believe, theoretically, that the USPA regulations on whether you need a USPA license and membership at a USPA DZ are based on residence and not nationality (though I could be wrong - feel free to correct), but the number of times I've seen people (in other contexts) get confused by the seemingly simple concept of having one nationality but a different long-term residency is worrying...
  15. The "properly" sealable one-pin pop-top problem has been solved by TSE (the Teardrop guys) for a long time now. (But, being relatively new to the sport and not a rigger, maybe there's some complexity or subtle detail in the discussion here I'm not fully grasping - feel free to educate me if that's the case; I'm always up to learn a bit more about the mechanics and history of the things I use to get me out of the air safely.)