Fast

I have avoided the problem for the most part by doing my best to not fight what the canopy is choosing to do. If it's going left on deployment, I want me going left with it, etc. I make a point to bring my hands/arms/legs close to the center of the rotational axis that runs from my feet to the top center of the canopy. The line twists happen because the configuration of the risers and canopy isn't able to exert enough force on your body to make it spin too, so I do things that work to make that easier for the canopy. The few times I have had decent line twists I have always found that getting the canopy to stop diving prior to dealing with the line twists was easier. It's super disorienting but I have managed to work it out. Generally I do this by adjusting using harness input. I haven't had twists bad enough that shifting my weight one way or the other wouldn't cause the lines to slide past one another through the twists. It usually goes something like "fuck this thing is spinning, *lean over*, fuck this thing is spinning faster, *go other way*, stop turn, kick out of line twists" Dunno, just my personal experience. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I dunno if something is being lost in translation of the internet, but I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall in this thread. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Businesses in all industries pay the search engines to run their ads, that they create themselves, and just like a newspaper ad, they are paid a set fee to run an ad regardless of the result, so I would think that the answer would be no, they are not a middle man. I don't think it's quite that black and white though. Cost per click advertising varies a lot based on search term, competitors, etc. Clicks don't always mean a sale either. It's all a form of advertising. If it takes 100 clicks for me to get a tandem sale @ $1.00 a click am I making more or less money than taking say $140 (my cut, regularly priced $199) from groupon for a tandem sale. With paid click advertising it fluctuates a lot and can be hard to measure the effectiveness, with a groupon sale it's direct numbers easier to gauge. I think that's a big part of why people are using it. Well, do tell, which one? greatlakesskydiving .com - which I am not linking on purpose. My understanding from what people have told me is that it was setup by some shell of skyride in some way. And you glorify them? I don't know what you mean by that. The point that I am trying to make is that DZOs/DZMs get put in a sticky situation. If we try and avoid the groupon like deal sites, skyride just comes along and runs their own groupon. Don't get me wrong, I think that these deal sites are one of the worst things that has happened to the skydiving market, but we have to work within the world around us. The tool exists and generally that means someone - for some reason or another - is going to use it. I think that this is a bit different than a ticket scalper. It's somewhere between scalping tickets and booking an airline flight on expedia. Either way - yes someone is getting a cut. I am not suggesting at all that people should use this stuff, just that it's out there and it's near impossible to keep everyone from using it. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

For the most part, skyride is in a position to just offer enough regional dropzones if people stop taking them that they can deal with the fact that others aren't taking them, so it's sorta moot. In a lot of cases, groupon / living social / etc, is just a form of competing with the guy down the road. It's hard to reach customers, those deal sites are just a different form of advertising that has a higher per customer cost - but it's also more quantifiable because it's a cost that is only paid when you make an actual sale. The deal sites aren't competing with the dropzones, they are a tool for dropzones to compete with each other. The deal sites just also happen to make a bunch of money as they do it, not unlike everyone else you have to pay for advertising. It's also a tool skyride has been pretty effective in using to tap into various markets. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

That's fantasy land talk. It's never going to happen. What do you define as a middle man? We spend thousands of dollars annually on google advertising to keep our ads above the competitors. Is google a middleman? Are you suggesting we only use advertising that is free? In what world is someone running a business going to not try and take business from the guy down the road? If you're in a multi-dropzone market you really have two options; Advertise, grow, have a great dropzone and fight for customers; or go out of business. If the DZO down the road isn't trying to steal them from you, skyride damn sure will. I post in these kinds of threads cause I have a pretty strong idea of what I am talking about. In my market, sport jumpers have 4 good turbine dropzones to choose from and at least 3 cessna dropzones. All of this is within a circle that is about 3.5 hours from top to bottom. We have struggled for a long time with sport jumpers from the Madison area for example because there isn't a good direct route, there is a good cessna dz there and a lot of the younger people drive to Skydive Chicago or CSC - it just is what it is. Tandem wise, we have all the same dropzones trying to make money AND a dedicated skyride ran turbine dropzone - which runs groupon/livingsocial/whatever deals constantly. I just have to wonder what your experience is really in understanding how all this works. I have been running a dropzone for 6 years (though that's going to change soon, which will hopefully make the things more about fun and less about work) and it's offered a really unique perspective on the sport. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Huge difference. It's also the reason that the GoPro3 has a flat front housing. Getting good focus underwater with a round faced lens is non-doable. I have a Eye-of-Mine housing for my GP1 and now I have a GP3 which makes that unnecessary. Hope that helps! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

See, that's where you are missing the whole picture. In some senses it can be worth it, in many it is not. It cheapens the "product" that's for sure. The issue most people started running into though was that sportations (skyride) was running groupons in all the markets. If you want to compete with that you either figure out how to better inform the consumer (good luck) or you run these deals too. Or you are in a market where DZO's are doing it to one another. Either way it sucks all around - they are taking money out of the sport but there is so little that you can do about it at this point. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Due to low interst, the state record attempts have been canceled. Boogie is still on though! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I'll be there second weekend with my wingsuit

You're the one who has to live and work there...I just go to see the Bean, eat at Quartinos and Shaws, and visit the Museums. I just work there. Live in the 'burbs. It's a beautiful city by the lake. Sure beats ANYTHING in Texas or Florida (well, except in January). As long as you stay in the "right" areas, yeah it's a great city. Ranked in the top 5 of segregated cities in America. (Right up there with the one I live in.) I dunno - it's easy to say Chicago is great until you consider the fact that we're both white middle class people who never have to go into the bad parts of town. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Or just stop the page load after the article comes up but before it greys out. Silly how easy that can make those pop-up things go away. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

This is the last week to get your pre-registration in. It really helps us with the pre-planning, so if you're coming please head over to the event page and register! https://skydivemke.ticketbud.com/2013-cheese-boogie ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

This is the last week to pre-register if you're coming to our boogie! ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Yeah, I'm not even sure where that started, but I think it was on DZ.com. I don't really hear that at the DZ with the arbitrary "10 year" threshold. How about a term for people like me, who jump only on weekends, usually just good weather, and only get ~ 200 jumps a year, sometimes less when life gets in the way? What do the full time, 1000+ jumps a year folks think of us? I think that part of it comes from the people that have been around a long time. I mean, I have been jumping for ten years and in that time so many people have come and gone that it makes my brain swirl around just trying to think about it all. We actually have run into a problem at our DZ because we aren't having enough people stick around for long enough to get a good high end experience base. Everyone always just has 200-700 jumps and then they quit or move or go to another dz. After a decade it's getting harder and harder for me to be motivated to put the time and effort into helping someone get better because they all just leave. My wife and I are looking at having kids and I know even after 10 years, we might slow down jumping a bit, I don't really want to - but also a good deal of the fun has been taken out of it cause I don't have a lot of people who are higher skill level to jump with. I guess I need to get out more from my home dz, but that's the root of this mentality I think. Frustration over people leaving after time and effort was invested on them. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I was able to squeeze the whole thing quite tightly and prevent the backside from spinning while removing the screw to get at the spring. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Yes both and as the instructor :) ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

No it's not common practice. Some people ask questions about stuff like this, but never in much detail and the answer for my dz at least generally is "Yes people have died here, but never a student or tandem". If you asked me for copies of any kind of incident reports depending on other behavior displayed I would be pretty worried about having you jump at my dropzone. Wouldn't turn you away - but it would somewhat make me uncomfortable. The only people I have generally run into that ask for that detailed of stuff are lawyers. I mean, I guess it shouldn't matter that you want to know, just something sets my mind ablaze with worry when it does happen. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Sure! Unless you abuse it in some way. -dirt -sand -briars -cornfields -dragging -flare guns -other I disagree. If that were the case then I could buy one canopy and use it forever. I think your mincing words here though. Cause a canopy with X000 jumps is going to have more "wear". Which can cause it to be less "zero porosity" than a new canopy. I'm not talking out of my ass here, I just went from a canopy with 3000 jumps on it to one with none (brand new) and there is a distinct difference. Just sayin is all... ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Sure - in the greater sense. But we are talking about dropzones here. A kegger now is always more fun than paying the mechanic later. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

Don't discount, too, the value of upjumper money *right now*. Dunno how many tandems pre-pay the entire thing but I'm willing to bet a fair number of the $25 seat warmers keep money on account / buy blocks of tickets / etc. It might take me a month to burn through $1000 in tickets but you got my money today and you can use it however you want now or in the future to pay bills/salaries, fund current ops, invest etc. The $25 ticket from March that I found floating around in my gear bag this weekend was like free money to me...though the DZ had spent my ducats months ago. And then I was out of tickets to time to go spend more $$! Plus in the intervening month or whatever that it took me to spend the ticket money I was spending scads of cash elsewhere on other essentials - like beer. Money "right now" is only valuable if the customer doesn't come redeem it. If they do you find yourself on the hook for something that you already spent the income from. Do that too often and you end up having to short _someone_ to pay the bills. It's a bad way to do business. It only works for groupon type things where you get a bunch of money and hope the customer never comes in. Sport jumpers pretty much always come collect their money. If you can't manage your cashflow to a point where you're trading on sport jumper bulk buys you're spending too much somewhere. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

They would not take us up on an AFF deal. They didn't think people would buy and they were afraid of the extra liability of a solo student. I have been running a dropzone for 7 years now, we are a turbine DZ, so our experience is a little different, but we had to get rid of static line because at original pricing ($135) people who shouldn't have been doing it were buying cause it was super cheap. At a more reasonable price, people weren't buying because it was too close to tandem and the instructors couldn't stay current. There is a place near us that does a lot of IAD, but even they are getting pushed more towards tandems by the customers iirc. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

AFF Student slots don't actually have that great of a margin. Also, you're kidding yourself if you think the average beginning skydiver knows better than to start jumping at a tandem mill as an AFF student. Honestly, it all depends what you're looking for. There is absolutely no need for sport jumpers at any individual dropzone if you're only interested in how much money you're going to make. Flying say a PAC750 - doing all handcam you can run 5-6 tandems per load and if you're charging 200 for a tandem and 100 for a handcam video your profit should be somewhere between 500 and 1000 per load depending on your overhead costs which can vary greatly depending on how you run the rest of the business. Those are just ballpark figures. You're going to have loads with more and less customers. When you put sport jumpers on the plane you just leech that money away, it's not really a profitable enterprise. As an operation like that you're going to have to import your instructors which makes you at least partially dependant on other dropzones, but there are enough of them around to make it work (for now). That being said - a lot of the important points have been made. Sport jumpers set atmosphere. They make it a sport. They become your staff. They are the friends that make it fun. They make skydiving appealing to the public. I dunno, I have seen a lot of this first hand. I have watched one dropzone open as predominantly a tandem factory which turned into sport friendly and I have another tandem factory right down the road from me that seems to just be staying that way. I personally don't look at skydiving as a job - I do the job side of it so I can afford the more fun side of it, but everyone isn't looking for that, some people (DZOs and Staff alike) just want the money and have no desire to do the fun side of it. If the sport jumpers across the board go away for economic reasons or because DZOs don't want to deal with them, the industry will change dramatically. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I think that one of the biggest parts of this is also your serious sport jumpers. At least where I am, there are a lot of people who couldn't afford to jump if they weren't working for the dropzone supporting the tandem side in some way. Even with a pretty reasonable income my wife and I wouldn't be able to participate in the sport in nearly the same way if we weren't both staff jumpers. That would cut down on sport jumpers even more. Everything rolls down hill from the tandem income, without that there would be skydiving, just not like most of the current generation of jumpers look at it. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

I think that we might end up passing on that. There will be almost no moon at that time of the month. ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

More information here: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4501931 Join the facebook event for this boogie here: https://www.facebook.com/events/209981682487181/ ~D Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me. Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka