zonie

LOL J Very funny. It get worse, Im sitting there trying to explain "uh, well, this is a guy from dz.com and uh...", and he's like "dz what?" I swear Im such a dork.

What makes you think that everyone else can afford it? You might be surprised at the sacrifices some of us make to skydive. How do you know? You haven't made a single jump yet so I'm going to suggest that you really don't know what you want. Bigger gear stores should have a decent selection of mains and containers too. You might put 1 jump on the V3 and decide you don't care for it at all. Demo, demo, demo, is the name of the game when it comes to gear in this sport. Be sure and let us know how that works out, I could use some spare change myself. - Jim I dont know WHAT I want, story of my life. Whatever the case, Im going to put in a few AFF jumps and then go from there, one day at a time. Demo is a great idea, Ill start there and see what goes on. Good deal! How many people in this world can afford anything they do?

Shit, I need to worry about money is what I need to be worrying about. This is going to take a while, a long while, unless there is some way to get a loan, so it looks like around 4000. That could be a long time or never at the rate Im going. I knew skydiving was expensive but thats a killer. If I cant afford it then I must not be making enough money because I see a lot of other people doing it. As far as the risk, there is a certain amout of it I am pretty comfortable with, it gets to the point where youre going to die of something someday, but there is like you said a lot of ways to control it, so the reason I like the skyhook. From the way things look right now, if I go through AFF, get through it, then after that Im screwed because I cant afford my own equipment. Now that really sucks, but I can say I learned skydiving. Maybe you can rent a rig for the day but I wont be jumping what I want in equipment. Now Im thinking I need to put it off till I save up enough to go the whole distance. I dont like that either, but what can you do? Feel like I want to just go rob a bank or something.

Are you serious? Thats not hard thing to do, but if you get tangled up in the reserve, well that reserve is your last hope. The thing I was worried about are spins and high speed mals, where you can go temporarily unstable or flip over. I dont know whether to be concerned with it with student parachute openings, what worries me is the high speed mals, horseshoe mals, pilot hesitation, not throwing it out right, unstable position, ect. Im not really too too nervous about AFF-1, two instructors holding on to you, and Ive already got pretty stable body position, so not too much to worry about. The real worries are how far I can go after that. You know, when I think about it, I feel like Im actually going to be less nervous jumping with my own chute than on tandem, I dont know why. Maybe it is because the first time was tandem from a Cessna and that scared the crap out of me. I dont know man, Im weird. I mean, really. Thx for the support! Ill PM you.

Nope, the list price of a NEW Vector III container with Skyhook is $1720. (no stainless, no rings, basic colors, etc). Canopies and cypress are separate. BTW you shouldn't pay list price. How do you keep from paying list price? Deland told me to go to the Square 2 shop at Eloy to order one, would they be asking list price I wonder? Im anxious to find out about that. If the entire process is going to be several months, they should be able to take a deposit.

Hope you get to feeling better. Youre probably better off at home, you can get some sleep without all these people calling you! It felt kind of dorky calling and saying "hows sunshine doing?", the guy that awnsered didnt know who "sunshine" was. Didnt know your real name, so...

If a small ring can fall out of a pocket, then the pocket should be loose enough for the credit card and id to fall out, but maybe not the cash. A credit card can slip out a lot easier than a ring. Ask yourself if the ring was really in the same pocket, or maybe if you mistakenly took it off somewhere else, ie your car. Also, you would have to be upsidedown for something to fall out, so I wouldnt make that assumption right away.

That all sounds like pretty sound advice, the only problem with it is that Im not a "sound" individual. Im afraid of flying in commercial aircraft because of what few accidents there are, same with skydiving. I wanted to give it up because of the paranoia and risk involved, just didnt think I could handle it over the long haul. The thing that makes me feel a lot more secure about skydiving is my own equipment, and the skyhook which makes RSL a lot less risky. To put it in short, I was thinking skydiving is just too risky for me. BUT, when I take a look at the possiblility of myh own equipment, safety feature, docile parachutes, skyhook RSL, I look at that and feel a surge of confidence about it, to the point where I want to do it without having to push myself to doing it. I havent even started AFF yet, but I can go to AFF-1 without any problem (other than the usual "door opening" paranoia). Ive been through the training class at another smaller DZ, and thought it was inadequate for handling emergencies. They didnt even address what happens when a cutaway becomes unstable. The attitude was, well, skydving is dangerous and you can get killed. But Im not ready to get killed, so everything Im saying here is about me being extremely defensive about it, yet really, really wanting to continue skydiving. The fact is, I love this shit, but I am not prepared to take certain risks. Now you had some great advice, dont get me wrong, but this is where Im comming from. Im not going to be much good at skydiving unless I gain more confidence. But this is what does it. Insert the word "used" and I start getting paranoid again. This is all a very big mind game, and Im not in control of my mind. By the way, when you say $1500, are you talking about just a container? I thought that was the container, reserve and main, ect. The AFFs are going to cost, I was thinking of starting the first ones even though I may have to take a long break in between jumps, time and money factor, so Im disputing with myself whether to start or wait until I can get through it without any long breaks. What do you think?

That's surprising!!! My DZ must have at least 1/2 dozen regular tandem videographers with several more trying to break into the business (not counting all us crazy freefliers who jump camera as well). I'm still 2 years away and 270 jumps away from being able to fly tandems, but that's something I could see myself doing down the road (as well as being a videographer). I understand the need to become a rigger, but I'm not sure I'm the right sort of person to do such a job. But I am detailed oriented with my software development career (which I'm ignoring at the moment). So maybe I could become a rigger? I don't need the money made from packing in order to jump. But lately I have been thinking that maybe I should become a part-time packer as it could always come in handy if I was to find myself cutaway from my whuffo computer career and living on a DZ. And like riggerrob, I am also a licensed pilot and could pursue that aspect of the business if I was to become commercially rated. If only I had my three years in the sport and 500+ jumps, then I'd be tempted to cutaway now. There is no point in cutting away, you have all the opportunity to compromise your job with life at the dropzone. When the compromise stops working, then you give them the ol' flip off and spend more time at the DZ while youre casually looking for something else. See, the difference between you, and the career oriented dumbass (COD) is that you have a life well beyond work, the COD doesnt, so he always has to take shit and suck up to keep his life. But as for you, well, either way, you win.

Ha ha, yep I have, about 10 times now, and itll get you 10-20. Or you can just pull your cutaway handle without worrying about the reserve. Its debatable why "Redline" pulled the cutaway and committed suicide, but I think as a careful watcher, he did it in the interests of the team. With "Redline" dead, there are no charges to be filed and no implication to the team that just won the gold medal, so the team goes on. "Redline" was beaten in the speed star race in the end, so he wanted the other guy to take over since he was the fastest. What I dont like about it is that it tries to give a "feel" for what skydiving is, and nobody can get the feel for what skydiving is unless they jump. Then and only then do you know what skydiving feels like. To me, it feels pretty fucking radical, and extremely serious. This isnt one of those sports that give you the opportunity to bullshit until youre safe on the ground.

Whats astonishing here is the delivery time, for the Vector-3 youre talking about 3 months? Wow. The base price is better than I expected. Thanks for the info, so I can see this is a pretty major undertaking which is going to require some time, so I guess I can plan around it. I dont want to continue on with training unless Im jumping my own equipment, to me that is the only way to go. Using someone elses used equipment must be like buying someone elses' used car, you never know what youre going to get. Still pretty hyped up about it though and want to go for it, got a real good feeling about it.

Yea, I just talked to someone at Deland and thats what they told me, told me a Vector-3 was pretty reliable and had a lot of safety features, sounded pretty good. I saw an advertisement on it in the Breakaway video from Deland, FL. Forgot to ask them a price range. Im thinking maybe take a riggers course before committing to anything, cause I dont know shit.

I want to buy a rig in July with docile parachutes, with a skyhook, planning on getting it from Deland, FL & talking to a salesman right now. Other than this I dont know what I want, brand, ect., but Im focusing on reliablility. Any advice?

Guess thats something else I better not get cause I aint going back in no hospital again after that last episode. Still have the scar 20 years later.

These guys got me back in the plane when I had freaked out over one of those situations and couldnt deal with going up anymore. I saw there were other people who were once as paranoid as I was, so it wasnt just me. Im new to the sport, skydiving is a pretty tough barrier to start out in, no doubt about it. This shit aint easy at all for a first timer, especially someone who is afraid of flying in the first place. Funny thing, Ive already talked to two girls who had bungie jumped before, who said skydiving is way too scary and they would never do it. Id never bungie jump....too scary, dont know if I could deal with that "falling" rush.