CoolBeans

I haven't been jumping much lately, I have total over 80 jumps. But my shoulder is doing really good after surgery and I would totally recommend it / do it again if needed. I did good research and put a lot of work into that project, including picking the hospital, picking the doctor, picking the rehab center and doing the rehab itself. It can also help to exercise before the surgery to achieve better results.

What helped me at the beginning of jumps with other people is to say who's the base. If you are the base - you just fall in the most relaxed & neutral way and the other jumper(s) try to get to you. If you don't specify who's the base you will be going up and down as everybody tries to slow down & speed up simultaneously. Now you already know that you fall fast, so get baggier suit and make sure other jumpers on the dive know that you are fast faller so they can get skinnier suits and arch more.

Dekunu has plenty of features, have a look https://dekunu.tech/dekunu-one

I want to see pictures of that invention! Was it one BOC on top of another? Or one BOC with openings on both sides?

After pulling the red handle - can it be assembled back 180 degree flipped? So that way it would become a left hand side rig.

Some of the AFF rigs that I've seen have the BOC that can initiate deployment from right & left hand side. It's helpful if during first AFF jumps right instructor goes MIA and left one can still deploy. Can those rigs allow for flipping BOC 180 degrees without any rigging? Picture below. If it could be flipped, then @David Wang could potentially use existing AFF rental rigs without having to worry too much.

Bring it to the best rigger you know around and discuss with them. That's the best thing you can do for now.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wuffo wuffo = what for?

Get used to it ^_^. There's quite an amount of people who do one two or five jumps and never go back to it. Go through classifieds, you will see so called "closet queens" that have very minimal jump numbers on them. Some students break their ankle or mess up in some other way very early and they are out of the sport for 1-2 years or forever. The amount of different options, styles and features that rigs have are overwhelming. Maybe, but maybe, you start jumping and you start hanging out with relative canopy work folks at your dropzone and maybe you will really want to focus on that? The training and gear that goes into relative canopy work is different than other types of skydiving. If you buy brand new shiny gear now and on jump 20-30 realize that you need something completely different, who will you be mad at? The infinity guys? Dropzone.com crowd for suggesting you something when you need something different? Maybe as you start jumping, you will see somebody get hurt on infinity rig and want to use different type/brand. Maybe you will learn that you have some issue with your spine and need to fly more conservative canopy or use dacron lines. Maybe you will really be very awesome and decide to downsize faster and need smaller canopy & container. Maybe you will learn that your body type causes rig to not fit very well and you need belly band or hip rings. Or maybe hip rings cause the harness to sit weird on your butt and you don't want them? Maybe you will see that some people on the dropzone use colored lines which helps with packing and you decide you want that too. Maybe you need longer risers than standard. Maybe packing pilot 230zpx into infinity 55 is a bitch and after doing it 5 times you give up and decide you want different combo. Maybe maybe maybe. Don't get me wrong, but you are kind of like 4 year old kid that *knows very well* what's best for them but in reality they don't. There's nothing wrong with being beginner and there's nothing wrong with asking questions. Ultimately you can do whatever you want, it's your life and your money. Nobody knows you personally here. Skydiving is a hobby that requires some money, you better get used to that. You can save here or there but if you make bad choices people won't want to jump with you. Nobody wants to jump with a person that makes poor decisions. Also, AFF on many dropzones REQUIRES rental gear. Rental gear has some extra features that normal rigs don't have (e.g. instructors can deploy from either left or right side). You will most likely not be allowed to jump your own rig during AFF - call and ask your dropzone to verify. Also, rental gear usually is basic and unified, so you learn and get familiar with certain things. One example could be that cutaway handle is red pillow and reserve handle is D shaped metal handle, called "silver". Once you get your very own rig, you can decide to get two red pillow handles. You can imagine that can get very confusing and dangerous very fast? I attached the picture of rig with two pillow handles. They have different colors but I've seen rigs with two red pillow handles. I can almost guarantee that no dropzone will let you jump that during AFF.

It is generally recommended for new jumpers to start with used gear. If you are on the budget, that advice applies even more. Used gear if purchased right has very minimal depreciation, so you will be able to recoup most if not all of the money when you sell. Used gear allows you to test and experiment with things that work and don't work for you, with things you like and you don't like. When you are fresh and new to skydiving, you don't know yet what you will like and what you won't. I recommend you look into buying used gear. And how that generally goes? You figure out the canopy size and style you want, e.g. pilot zpx 230 or 210 and try to find rig with that canopy. Second hand skydiving equipment isn't all that available, so shopping for particular set may take you many months. In other words, you may not ever see used i-55 / i-56 with pilot zpx 210/230 fitting your body dimensions for sale.

Could we do it over Zoom this time?

https://uspa.org/skydiveschool/A#academics partial malfunction Note: On single-operation systems, pulling the reserve ripcord releases the main canopy first before deploying the reserve. Partial malfunction procedures for a single-operation system (SOS) are the same as for a total malfunction. Check altitude. Return to the arch position. Ripcord systems only: Discard the main ripcord. Locate and grasp the cutaway handle. Locate the reserve ripcord handle. Pull the cutaway handle until no lower than 1,000 feet. Pull the reserve ripcord handle immediately after cutting away or by at least 1,000 feet, regardless of stability, to initiate reserve deployment. Arch and check over the right shoulder for reserve pilot chute deployment. Cut away above 1,000 feet. If a malfunction procedure has not resolved the problem by then, deploy the reserve (requires a cutaway with an SOS system). In the event of any malfunction and regardless of the planned procedure or equipment, the reserve ripcord must be pulled by no lower than 1,000 feet.

Hey mate, your instructors are not following SIM, you may want to ask them to revise what they are teaching. This is Category A stuff. David seems to have missed the difference completely which is why I replied. That's fine if you want to do your own thing, but at least be aware what are the recommended procedures.

@David Wang you should revise your emergency procedures. You LOOK at silver handle BEFORE pulling red handle.

PM sent, I need some old gear for prototyping risers!

You are really overthinking all that. If you practice 2 hands on 1 handle EPs - that's perfectly fine. Keep it that way. If one day you end up having 1 non-working hand, just adapt and do what you can instead. Pull that handle with any other body part that is capable of pulling the handle.

You can see on the picture how brake lines above her head are at nearly 90 degrees on top of already being wrapped around front risers. That causes significant friction, I tried exactly that type of flare with single hand, NOT EASY. As pchapman says, I think it may be easier/better to pull toggles in between risers. Gotta try that next time.

If there's an emergency like that, you pull. Either main or reserve. Simple. Sure, if your friend is right next, turn around, track for 2-3 sec and pull then. But you want parachute above your head ASAP. What if you make your shoulder worse during signaling or waving? What if you flip on your back and can't go back? What if you take it down to "designated pull altitude" but can't pull then? There's a problem, you work on it right away and you do anything you can to pull. IT'S AN EMERGENCY. The higher you are the better you can figure out your landing options. You can flare with one hand holding 2 toggles, it's pretty difficult but doable. I've been testing that up high and preparing for such landing scenario. You may not be able to get them toggles all the way down, but you can at least do 50% of the flare which should be enough to plane out and do decent PLF landing.

But do I really need to buy the car too?

To my recollection, proper PLF involves feet together, knees together and roll TO THE SIDE on first contact. Modern parachutes have forward speed that makes this impossible. So one either has to turn body 90 degrees sideways right before touchdown and roll to the side (= along the forward speed of the parachute) Or roll forward on touchdown. Or combination of both. All are modified PLF, I agree with the author. Nobody questions usefulness of that type of landing. It's just that instructions on how to perform it have gaps and holes and don't make that much sense. For me the biggest take away is FEET AND KNEES TOGETHER and then roll part is improvised. I wish there were better instructions out there.

That Sabre2 210 will be more ground hungry to what you are used to on navigator. Your last few seconds before touching down may be a little scary. Don't let the emotions control you and stick to the plan. Not sure how you flare now but I'll just tell you that Sabres are known for their powerful flares. What that means is if you are flying full speed and flare all the way down, canopy will lift you up. What you DON'T want to do is flare too high and use all flare power. Because then you are still too high with no flare left which means more rough landing. Obviously talk to your instructors first! Obviously, prepare for PLF, knees and feet together! Obviously, during landing, don't lift your hands up! If you messed up, flared too early or whatever, hold your hands where they are, DON'T LIFT YOUR HANDS UP. That will only make things worse. Now, I would recommend that if and when you jump that Sabre2 210 when you feel like flaring, flare quickly but only 40-50%, that would put your hands somewhere around ears/neck/shoulders level. You hold your hands there and hold and hold. Canopy should plane out, it should be now going forward, not much down. Now, right before touching down, you take your hands all the way down and finish the flare. What's the benefit? If you flare too high which is likely, you will still have good amount of flare left to use when you need it. When you become more proficient in flying Sabres2, you will be able to flare while crouching or even sliding on the butt and then that last pull will stand you up. That's how powerful the flares can be. Also, check this You can see the *lift up* moment here for example: And this guy in orange helmet does really nice job flaring, you can see how he is cruising for couple of seconds after hitting the first stage (plane out):

Once you rolled the tail, with the same hand, you could pull downwards a bit to make the pack job tighter.

G4 isn't supposed to be drilled. Would you consider just gluing the Go Pro mount directly to the helmet? That way when needed, camera either will fall off pulled by suspension lines or bridle or you can use your hand to help it fall off.

I know that some people get AFF done over weekend, but I would say it's unlikely you would be able to manage. There are many components that play a role: - for AFF jumps you need instructors to jump with you, they may not be available on demand when you are available - airplane takes only so many people, people usually line up to get there, you may have to wait in line - for every jump you need to rent the gear, gear may not be available or it may not be packed for you on demand - weather obviously can make whole day or part of the day not jumpable - after 1, 2 or 3 jumps in a given day you may be really tired, no point in jumping tired - it's valuable to take your lessons from a jump and think at home what you did wrong, what you can improve etc. Some of those can be alleviated if you go to big drop zone with multiple airplanes and many instructors available. Most of the drop zones have single plane and only handful of instructors available on a given day for AFF. To avoid disappointment, I would advise that you plan on finishing AFF within multiple weeks rather than over 1 weekend.

Hey man, my AFF wasn't much different than yours. Sometimes you may want to just go with the maneuver from less-than-perfect or less-than-stable position. If you see that you have slow built-in turn in the free fall or are a bit unstable, you can still go for that front or back flip. Don't need to be perfectly stable. And sometimes you can burn a lot of altitude just trying to improve that starting position. The purpose of E jumps as far as I remember is for student to show that they can get back to belly-to-earth orientation after whatever happens. I've done that mistake myself that I was focusing too much on getting all the ducks in the row before starting an actual task at hand but then I would always end up short on time to finish. Have your mindset more on working on stuff right away, right after exit. And if you are a bit unstable? So be it. As long as you pull stable, that's what matters most.