stevo

If you're serious about being a proficient FFer you should learn in the tunnel. find a great coach(not a good coach, a great one) and commit the time and money. the more you do in a short period of time the faster you will progress. but It will be cheaper in the long run. teaching yourself in the air is only going to give you bad habits that will cost even more money to break than learning from scratch in the tunnel. commit 10-15 hours over 3-6 months and you'll be see great progress. yeah it's expensive, but it's really the only way to become a really good FFer, that's what the tunnel has done to this sport.

Hard to beat Eloy for a tunnel/skydive vaca, IMO, it is the best training facility in the world. No car needed, world class instructors, facility, load organizers. just don't go in the summer.

It's hard to justify those prices but That tunnel is SOOO worth it!!!! It's so smooth and HUGE. If you can fly HD and carve ect. I highly recommend spending the money, even if it's only 2 minutes. For learning the basics, it's a complete waste of $ if you have other options.

been to all 3 DZs in the past month and these were the rules. perris - no turns greater than 90. period. eloy - 180s allowed in main landing area, 90 elsewhere, bigger turns allowed on low pass with proper clearance. elsinore - big turns still allowed in hi per area(where pond used to be) on all jumps.

Just got the exact email from this tool

many things we do in skydiving put a great deal of strain on the rotator cuff. I had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff a year ago and since then i notice more and more people complaining about some form of shoulder pain at the dz. best prevention, stretching and strengthening the rotator cuff and warming up before jumping.

try and contact TJ

don't know about just walking in and getting the $10 hr rate, but if you plan on trying that call first and ask if they have standby time available. best time is during the week, noon to 2pm or 9pm to 10pm. you'll have better luck going with someone who has an account. there's normally someone that has extra time to share. leave me your contact and i'll let you know if something comes up. or you can meet some of us who have accounts there and fly some standby time.

http://www.omniskore.com/comp/2010/wc/vfs.pdf

USA 1 - SoCal Converge. travis fienhage, andy machiodi and matt lewis. Gold UK 1 - Volare. Carpenter and i dunno who else. Silver USA 2 not sure but looks like spaceland anomoly. Bronze

i had extensive rotator cuff surgery, it was torn from the bone in places. I was out of skydiving for 1.5 years. things i learned. - avoid cortisone shots, they mask the pain while you do further damage. -avoid bench press and push ups, very tough on the rotator cuff -do rotator cuff exercises every day and before every work out. -rest it if it's sore(or be forced to rest it for 6 month after a hellish surgery.) -shoulder surgery sucks. avoid it at all cost, your shoulder will heal if you let it. i didn't believe all the horror stories, but an extensive shoulder surgery is not fun to recover from and very painful.

if i were to "slow it down" i'd either get a larger xaos 21 for it's nice openings while still having x bracing or get a crossfire2, jumped one a few weekends ago, a 119, and it swooped nicely just doing 90s and openings were scary slow/soft.

Travis is one hell of a coach and all around good dude, he does tunnel coaching at hollywood tunnel as well.

jumped a pull-out for my first 2300 jumps, had surgery for a torn rotator cuff last year. i don't believe it was the sole cause of the injury but certainly think it contributed, it's not real nice on the shoulder.

2500 jumps - 86 xaos 27 loaded 2.4 - 270s - never injured approx progression 1-70 190 sabre 70-200 150 sabre 200-400 135 sabre 400-900 120 stilleto 900-1500 90 velocity 1500-2500 86 xaos 27

with no tunnel - 4000 plus. to fly a slot consistently in hd and, even harder, in a sit is tough. those that think they can do it in 700 or 1200 are on crack and only jumping 300 times per year will make it take even longer. taking docks on a 2 way is a long way from flying a slot in a formation.

well, one obvious difference is pack volume and since smaller rigs are way,way cooler this should be considered. i have a 27 cell and love the openings, some times i get a slow 90 turn on opening but most are on heading, never had line twists or chopped in 600 or so jumps on a Xaos27(dozens on a velo and 3 mals), but i've heard the 21 opens even better. next is the 27 is going to be a more rigid wing. not sure how much more performance you'll actually see from that. that's my .02

i think more emphasis needs to be placed on creating more separation on entering the pattern. even on a full otter load of 23 people we can easily create 7-10 minutes from when the first person lands to the last, that should be more than enough time for everyone to have their own crack at the landing area, with a minimum of 10-15 seconds of separation on landing.

come be part of the FIRST POPS FF world record. where: Perris when: Saturday march 29th, 8AM requirements: be a POPS member, be able to safely fly head-down in a formation. sorry for such late notice, contact me with any questions. [email protected] ~Stevo

would you walk across a busy street without looking if you had the right of way? your mistake is assuming that because you did everything "right" that you should be safe. not so. people do stupid, reckless things under canopy. you shouldn't have been anywhere near this person. that's how to avoid this situation in the future. talk to someone qualified about how to identify the differences in canopies in the air, there flight characteristics and how to use the full range of your canopy to achieve more landing separation, both time and distance from other jumpers.

rehmwa, this is the internet but let's try and be as respectful to each other as we would be in person, we're all talking about how to fix a proplem that's killing our fellow jumpers and may kill one of us. refering to someone's ideas as "moronic" and "idiotic", sounds like your trying to start a problem. let's keep this on track. i do agree with you that trying to explain drift to someone on the plane is rather difficult but i still attempt it and regardless of weather they fully understand it they've been told to give "x" amount of time before they exit, beacause it may save someone's life and on a lot loads where i jump(perris/elsinore) you have slow fallers following freeflyers. i also agree that group size with in disciplines should be irrelevent. but regardless, we need to educate people about stacking there approach and flying a propper pattern and about freefall drift.

so you think it's easier to avoid canopy collisions than it is to count before you exit a plane? statistics show otherwise. fixed it for you. "Any solution we come up with absolutely, positively cannot have me sitting uncomfortably in the middle of the plane."

amen brother!! the way we exit a plane has a huge impact on landing pattern traffic. but don't bring this up with any of Brian Burke's coolaid drinking followers. if we need a separate area for the 2 to 4 people per load doing 270's out of the 17-18 sport jumpers on the typical otter(minus students/tandems) i'd say this sport is collectively a pack of morons. multiple planes/passes is different. if there is a group on the plane who are all on sub 90ft x-braced canopies put them out 2nd or 3rd so they open right on top of the landing area, they would be out of the way and on the ground before anyone. problem solved.

i had a 96 Xaos 27 and it seemed to pack snuggly in a jav 120 tray.

this statement is a little misleading, the winds that create what we call "frefall drift" do NOT push fast fallers and slow fallers in different directions. fastfallers do not drift the opposite direction of the wind as the above statement may be interpreted. they just drift less downwind.