Fast

We had someone show up at our DZ from Australia who was working in a local summer camp. Nice dude with like 100 jumps. He got canned from the summer camp cause they didn't have enough campers and didn't want to go home, so my wife and I let him live in our basement till his flight home to aussie land. Tim Tams and not having to ever mow the lawn are fucking awesome. That's my story

In any of the places that I have ever lived, I have never had to wait for more than 5 minutes. I live in suburbia though. My current home is on the edge of town, where all the police and fire fighters live (seriously). ~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

Ya know - I have heard that as well. I even watched the video, so did the packers I use. One of them had tight enough double stowed lines that I was getting stood up before the parachute was even remotely out of the bag, causing me to speed up and subsequently have harder openings. Packing is like voodoo half the time.... bleh ~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 price seems high for AFF alone. AFF alone is typically ~7 jumps. I think the prices you have been quoted are probably for AFF and the stuff that follows it to get you to your license. Yeah, but the confusion is that in this market, "AFF" generally means the whole program. Most of the DZ's doing AFF here are all doing some form of modified AFP/ISP program that involves extended amounts of coaching. SDC is 2 tandems and 18 AFPs, SKSPSC is 25 levels of aff/coached jumps, CSC is 14 levels of aff/coach jumps, etc. At our DZs the students don't really see any distinction between where they are in the program except for the change from instructor to coach (and not even always if there are extra instructors around). ~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 didn't tell them before I went, I just went and did a tandem. My mom did know that I was going to do AFF though and that I kept going back. I made it to about 500 jumps before she told me that she couldn't deal with it anymore. It worried her too much. Told me to move out or quit skydiving. She thought it would make jumping cost prohibitive, I moved out and it didn't. It took her a few years to get over it, but she has since been out to the dz, seen video, seen me swoop, I married a skydiver, etc. She understands it all more now and is tolerant of it because it's a big part of my life 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

I'm not sure you got the advice quite right, or your coach isn't doing you any favors. If you are proficient at landing with your rears, and your canopy is otherwise uncomprimised, then cutting away would be a bad idea and an un-neccesary risk. That said, proficiency takes a long time to develop, and should not be intermingled with an emergency situation or a comprimised canopy. Agreed. I land on rears only every now and then just cause it amuses me that it's possible (i.e. it's fun). It always confuses newer jumpers though "why didn't you use your toggles, why didn't you die." It's all about understanding how the parachute works :) It's a good skill to have and if I was assured of landing on DZ I would not cut away from a broken brake line/stuck toggle. If it was likely that I had to land off, I prolly would. That's subject to the fact that I don't like landing in weird places on a velocity with no brakes when I can't be sure of a nice place to slide. ~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'm not, but what I can tell you from my own childhood is that of the friends I had when I was school aged, those of us who either were taught to shoot/hunt by our parents or took firearms safety courses very early on and knew the proper handling and dangers of firearms fared much better. The kid who lived across the street from me, his parents owned a revolver and all they were ever willing to do was tell him to "stay the fuck away from my gun." Contrary to that, he would waive that thing around like it was a water pistol whenever he felt like it and he knew how to take the trigger lock off without the key. He had zero respect for the thing because he hadn't ever shot a gun, hadn't learned firearm safety and had no real understanding of the dangers. Needless to say it was pretty frustrating - I found myself getting the fuck out of his house on at least one occasion cause I was smart enough to know what he was doing was crazy dangerous. I have been shooting off and on for almost 20 years and I'm only 30. Makes for a much greater appreciation of these things and the required safety. Educate and demonstrate consequences. There has to be a very clear understanding of both and today's youth aren't getting very much of either. ~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

Ya know, it's starting to get on my nerves. The amount of drivel about this president or that directly affecting things like this in any sort of "real time." Every single president (along with congress, etc), republican and democrat, is reacting to one thing or another and trying to push it around. The real truth of how that exactly works out is so many times more complicated than you can even imagine. Throwing it around like political drivel is super awesome though isn't it. Typical left winger. Where exactly did I state a stance. I clearly addressed this to both sides of the fence. This type of reply doesn't really surprise me at all. It's very consistent with the way that people behave these days. I mean, sure there is no simple answer, everyone thinks their own opinion is right. I just hope this doesn't play out the way I envision it playing out, cause that's going to suck for everyone. Greed on all sides of the fence is starting to build into an insurmountable amount of problems. ~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

Ya know, it's starting to get on my nerves. The amount of drivel about this president or that directly affecting things like this in any sort of "real time." Every single president (along with congress, etc), republican and democrat, is reacting to one thing or another and trying to push it around. The real truth of how that exactly works out is so many times more complicated than you can even imagine. Throwing it around like political drivel is super awesome though isn't 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

Yeah - if you can't make the effort to go get the rating, how on earth are you gonna be able to make the effort to keep it current and use it in the right way. ~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

My personal opinion is that unless you're going to start base jumping, there is no reason to buy tracking pants. It's the only place they seem to get used regularly. Most people in skydiving don't have them, so you can't really go out and do tracking pants jumps with people. Most tracking jumps happen in a freefly suit or RW suit even. If you want to wingsuit someday, save the money on the pants and spend it on jumps. It's not really requisite to being a good wingsuiter. ~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

Bev suits are pretty reasonably priced. Removable booties (in any design I have ever seen) are very pointless. To be perfectly honest with you, this sport is a lot about dressing for success. Wear the right stuff for the right jumps. I own 6 jumpsuits (including a wingsuit) and also jump in various pants/tshirt/sweatshirt combinations for tandems or bigways or whatever. I also (at 205lbs out the door) wear weights sometimes. Gotta have the tools to make it work. If you want to do RW, get a suit with booties, if you want to do freefly, get a suit with velcro cuffs/stirrups. This stuff isn't "one suit does everything" for the most part. Good luck :) ~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

Funny. Who do you think is going to do this negotiation? The only answer we have is USPA, because speaking from the standpoint of both a wingsuiter and a DZM, I have no room to bargain with the insurance company, they don't care about me cause we don't' spend enough money with them. If rates go up even $1000 a year it might well not be worth it. There is very little money in sport jumpers in general, let alone sport jumpers who wingsuit. We need the industry as a whole to fix this problem now (as in quick like). (i.e. USPA) ~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

Funny, but what I see that's challenging in that sign is doing anything bigger than a 2-3 way (no floaters allowed???) How the hell do the other people in the group get in position to exit? Also, flying stable 3 seconds fully closed up is kinda a bitch when it comes to building formations. It's also entirely not nessecary. After 3 seconds you're 200 feet or more away from the plane. ~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

Who should be making sure this stuff is followed? DZOs? AFFIs? S&TAs? What if that person doesn't know anything about wingsuiting. Serious question, not sarcastic. I mean at a minimum, a lot of this stuff would have to go into the BSRs so that dropzones had to follow it. If the above mentioned person doesn't know anything about wingsuiting do we produce some kind of document to try and teach them? What if they don't want to learn, does the dropzone just ban wingsuiting? That doesn't even get into, how do we make sure that a person is at least reasonably competent in the air. For all the other mentioned disciplines the stuff boils back down the skills learned in AFF = basic safety. Wingsuiting is different, it's a whole different set of skills. Again, who do we get to teach the noobs in the sport, do we depend on the manufacturers? Do we require manufacturer training? Do we just let people buy a suit and wing it (hah). These are serious questions that I haven't seen people answering. I like this part of the sport, I don't want to see it go away for any reason. (Insurance companies, ratings, etc). But there has to be an answer to this kind of stuff. People need to get themselves in the shoes of the younger generations. The people who want to strap on a gopro on their aff level 3. What's the answer? Wingsuiting is very different than regular skydiving. I have taken 2 first flight courses and they taught different things. Who has the right answer? How the hell do we sort all this stuff out. Edit to add: Given what people have suggested, the only option I can see to support is having some kind of wingsuit instructor rating. Most of the other suggestions people have made are basically fancy versions of "just keep doing what we are doing". I haven't seen anyone put anything out there with substance that is going to make sure people are getting educated on this stuff and following best practices. If people don't want to support the WSI thing, there at least needs to be some kind of better option proposed other than "damn the man, no soup for you". Otherwise this part of the sport that I really dig could end up going away and that will make me and a lot of other people sad. ~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

You're fighting the wrong fight man. I have said this in other posts previously discussing canopy stuff. The bureaucracy already exists, it's called the USPA and FAA. Some important perspective here is that, you're opinion means absolutely nothing if someone farther up the food chain says they aren't happy with what we are doing. Your points to freeflying and swooping don't really relate well. Though, with how often fledgling swoopers injure or kill themselves maybe we need some focused instructional requirements there too. You can head on over to this thread if you want to argue that. (Other Controversial Topic, or one of the many threads about the canopy proficiency card). Back here in the discussion regarding wingsuits you have to consider where this is all coming from. I mean, when a skydiver goes in swooping, runs into someone head down or otherwise does something stupid in freefall, nothing bad happens to the plane, which most of the time isn't even owned by the dropzone and is shielded otherwise from liability. Welcome to the uninsured part of skydiving, you know the insurance that towns and airports often demand that we get, but doesn't exist. There is just too much risk in the average skydiving activity for any insurance company to get anywhere near it. Now, when it comes to wingsuits, they have a significantly greater chance of causing aircraft damage or problems. We use more airspace than regular freefall (while being much harder to see than a canopy) and because of the nature of our suits, it's easier to make a mistake and damage a plane on exit. Planes are one area we can thankfully get insurance still in this industry, cause w/o it, we wouldn't have many turbines flying around that's for damn sure. In our current setup, you as an outsider (or an insurance company, or the uspa, or anyone) have no idea what standards my dropzone follows regarding wingsuiters. You don't know who we do or don't let jump them and what the people who are getting them are taught. In the insurance world, that equates to an unknown variable. They don't like that. Now, in a world where USPA has a mandated training program and subsequent license endorsement, everyone can point to that as a standardized program that can be changed over time if needed to reflect best methods of training and improve upon problems. Then when a tail strike or xyz other problem happens, there are ways to combat the issue. Training can be adjusted, etc. There is a way for me as a DZM to know that someone showing up at my counter knows what they are doing. When someone does mess up it becomes an accident, not an industry wide lack of training. What we have now amounts to "Everyone do whatever they want and teach whatever standards they want." That doesn't work, we don't do that in AFF and we don't do that for Tandems. Not surprisingly, those are the areas that this sport has the least amount of problems. Get on board here, we need to fix this before wingsuiting just goes away. The way things are set up now with a first time AFF student, we put a person who has very little skill in a highly structured learning environment and teach them the rules of the road taking them from completely ignorant, to reasonably informed on safety. Then we basically turn them loose to do whatever DZO#329 lets them get away with. That just seems quite silly to me. None of this is a perfect system, but we have to work within the framework that is set up for us. ~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

Getting to participate in the DZO side of this conversation, I have already seen one more dropzone ban wingsuiting to just not have to deal with the problem. To anyone who says "if you're jumping a wingsuit you know to keep your wings closed on exit", you're wrong. I have seen people with no practical knowledge try to go skydiving with a wingsuit. I personally, would like to get to the point where I can be a wingsuit instructor/coach. The real question I have is, who should I get to teach me this stuff. I mean - I know all the practical basics, why don't I just put myself out there now as a first flight instructor. I want to see wingsuiting grow and I want to see my people in the air. ~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 sorry. I guess I am still just frustrated with having to get on a plane to get anywhere with any sort of reasonable training option for wind tunnels. ~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

As far as any skydiver is concerned - these tunnels are basically worthless. Guess the hype wasn't worth it. Oh well - let's keep carrying on w/o anything reasonable here in the midwest. ~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

Video (Brian Snarr's point of view): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPxhW3rY9nc ~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

True, not sure what the fuck is going on in some of those shots, with two apparently separate flocks randomly crisscrossing. Kind of scary. This whole video is interesting to me. When I watched it through the first time, what it made me think of is all the atmo stuff that the freefliers are doing, just in a wingsuit. I wonder if that's where the background of these jumpers is. I agree there is some stuff there that is crazy dangerous 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

Thanks Spot - mostly it came down to a having a great group of people that flew a solid almost fitting 14 way on two jumps (including an almost 90 degree carve in formation on jump 1). We ended up getting it as a 13way as time had run out for one person. Thanks again everyone! ~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 have a touch screen app they use. Jumprun doesn't have the capability to do any of the things you asked. I wrote stand alone software that ties into jumprun. We keep track of maintenance in a google doc that is shared to all the riggers. ~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

Asymmetrical toggle input while flaring will cause the canopy to turn, you have to counter back the other way to get the canopy flying level again and all of this is subject to the amount of speed you have available (speed = lift). If you run out you end up landing with the wing not level, which essential equates to force on your body in a direction that is not perpendicular to the ground. (PLF!!!). Also, please practice up high, it should be fairly straight forward to see the effects, you have to listen to the sound of the air as your speed drops out to know how much you have "left". Edit to add: There is a fairly obvious to see example of this, there are a lot of people who have a sudden turn at the end of their flare when they are coming in to land. This comes from reaching with one leg and hand for the ground when they get close, which initiates a turn in that direction. Learning how to do this intentionally will help with not doing it intentionally as well and countering, etc. ~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

We track ours through the pack jobs. We use jumprun and I have software that the packers use to enter the pack job of a specific rig. We can query it then and determine number of jumps for any period, who packed it last in case of a mal, etc. ~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