MakeItHappen

Services for this weekend.

Ash dive tbd

https://www.baue.com/obit/gary-e-peek/

 

Gary Peek was found dead in his house yesterday morning. Concerned neighbors asked for a wellness check because they had not seen him around in recent days. Gary took an early morning walk every day.

 

A few weeks ago Gary was in a car accident were his SUV rolled 4 times. He was treated and discharged by a hospital. No one knows, at this time, if this had a relationship to his death.

 

Gary was a long time USPA Central Regional Director. In fact, he had the longest tenure of the current board members. Gary served on the Safety & Training committee during several of his terms. He chaired the Constitution and Bylaws committee last term. He was a strong advocate for the needs and concerns of small DZs and many were in his region. Gary also served on the Group Membership committee during several terms.

 

Gary was also a prolific speaker at the PIA Symposiums. He gave talks on various subjects, including opening forces that he measured with custom strain gauges and recording devices that he engineered. He was also one of the test jumpers. One year he made a bunch of itty-bitty LED circuits with a 555 timer chip that could plug into expired CYPRES batteries and give a light show with blinking LEDS.

 

Gary was well versed in the happenings at every DZ in his region. He called, emailed and visited the DZs frequently. After he bought his Cessna, he was able to visit the DZs more often. Gary posted in rec.skydiving and DropZone.com. He wrote several articles for DZ.com.

 

Gary was instrumental in getting me a gig as a load organizer at the WFFC in 1996. He also recruited others as LOs for the WFFC. After I bought an arduino, Gary helped me with my tinkering with microprocessors. He even brought back issues of Nuts and Volts to the board meetings. He told me who the the best electronic component distributors were. There are a bunch more stories about Gary and the board, electronics and jumping.

 

Gary Peek will be missed by many, as he touched so many people's lives, whether you knew him as a jumper, an electronics guru or board member.

 

Blue Skies Gary Peek.

RIP

 

On 2/8/2019 at 12:00 PM, skybytch said:

What does USPA plan to do with the information gathered from these reports?

How is USPA going to protect the instructors who submit these reports from being sued by a student? 

What guarantee does an instructor have that USPA will keep his/her name confidential?  For that matter, what guarantee does an AFF instructor have that his/her entire report will be kept confidential?

If an instructor or cameraflier does not report their own AAD fire occurring on an AFF skydive within 48 hours, they are subject to disciplinary action? What exactly does this disciplinary action consist of? 

As usual Lisa hones in on the real issues.

As I said earlier, Wadkins told me each time that the motion came to the plenary session (3x IIRC) that it was only if the student's aad fire or a tandem aad fire that was required to be reported. If he has changed his story since then so be it, but I was sitting next to him and asked this Q each time.

 

What you are not being told is that if someone does not report the aad fire they will be subject to disciplinary action.

 

And --  this idea/concept of anonymity is in the area of la-la land.

Generally, the incident reports are anonymous. However, if the case of these aad fires HQ has to keep track of who reported the aad fire in order to verify that Joe Jumper did file an aad fire report.

Then there was a comment, by someone, who I don't remember, that said if we end up with a bunch of aad fires from the same instructor - well then we need to do something about that. That tells you two things: not anonymous and there will be a disciplinary action. It used to be that Is got additional training. Now they get a 1-6 against them and some sort of suspension and then possibly additional training months later.

 

The reason I voted against this motion was because USPA may be putting the I in a place that puts "OMG I'm gonna be sued" vs "yeah USPA needs the reports". Anyone that owns a DZ or is an I, that has to deal with this, would more than likely follow the advice of their attorney. Their attorney would advise not to send any report in to USPA, thus putting them into the potential disciplinary loop of USPA.

 

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2 hours ago, mark said:

In other words, "any AAD" does not mean "any AAD."  Did I get that right?

--Mark

That's right.

On 2/5/2019 at 11:28 AM, billvon said:

>Please let me know how you would interpret this new BSR.

You have to send a report to USPA if anyone's AAD fires during a student jump.

That's what I would think too. After asking, no report is needed if the I's AAD fires, as long as the I is not acting as a TI on that jump.

No update about the meeting is on USPA.org yet. That is usually done Sunday night.

Anyway, the following motion was adopted:

 

Move  to add to SIM Section 2-1.G.1.c “On any student jump, the supervising instructor or both instructors if a two instructor jump, must submit a completed incident report to USPA within 48 hours if any AAD was activated on the jump. No disciplinary action will result from this self-report."

 

Please let me know how you would interpret this new BSR.

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Weather is the biggest differentiation between those 2 DZs this time of the year.
Both can have pleasant temps on the ground and be friggin' cold at altitude.

Weather systems in SoCal tend to linger for days at a time. In Eloy the bad weather blows in, rains and then blows out in a day, maybe 2.

The good news is that if you choose Perris and the weather sucks, it's not too far to drive over to Eloy with blue skies.

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Steve-
I do not know how much or which skydiving organizations have donated to the museum. You'll have to ask the organization.
I will posit that it is extremely doubtful that they are donating on levels of several dollars per member.

Rich & Ron-
USPA generally does not take roll call votes. On this particular motion no one even voted by name.
The exact motion is:

Motion 14: 13-9-0 Passed (Mr. Berchtold)
Move to establish USPA as the Host Country Affiliate of the International Skydiving Museum & Hall of Fame in accordance with the attached specifications titled “USPA & ISM Host Affiliate Specifications-2018.” This represents past cash donation of $25,000, past in kind support of $87,200, future in-kind support of $34,200 and $25,000 per year for 6 years. This totals $296,200.

The vote count is 100% correct. Both the president and secretary count and confer the tally. The vote count is recorded in real time.
If you want to know how each board member voted, you'll have to ask them directly.

...
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Here’s my take on the museum motion.

I am on the BOD and am the USPA secretary.

Jim McCormick gave a presentation to the FB at the summer 2018 meeting and one about a year earlier. I’ve known Jim since the early 1990s. He’s a professional speaker and made a living at that time by giving motivational talks to corporate clients. He’s an excellent speaker and very well organized in his presentations.

Jim gave a presentation at the summer meeting that was a sales pitch- not a motivational speech. It was sprinkled with motivational tactics, as well as, sales tactics.

The pitch was to get USPA to agree to become what the museum calls the “Host Country Affiliate” (HCA). The HCA is a new thing, I have never heard of it before. I am listening to this idea and thinking that for the greater portion of the past 18 years, USPA has been trying to rid itself of the ‘USPA Museum’ moniker because so many members thought USPA was synonymous and the same as the museum. I thought to myself that this was strange and probably wouldn’t fly just for that reason alone.

Jim goes through the rest of the presentation and eventually presents a cross-comparison chart of annual donations for several countries. I don’t remember what countries he used, but they were some of the larger skydiving/parachute organizations from around the world. There were columns for donation levels ranging from $10K to $25K.

The breakdown of this chart implied that if country A gave an annual donation it would be something on the order of $4-9 per member of country A’s skydiving association – even at the lowest donation level. When the column for USPA was listed it worked out to be a fraction of a dollar per member – even at the highest donation level of $25K.

USPA membership just eclipsed 40,000 members. I don’t know who comes in second, but it is a distant second, maybe under (or well under) 10,000 members?

The pitch basically said USPA “only” had to donate a fraction of a dollar per member when these other countries would be donating several dollars per member. That’s a false assumption because these other countries would mostly likely NOT be donating at those high levels. I thought that this was so obvious that everyone would see that.

Then the USPA treasurer said that USPA could not afford this, even at the lowest level. We have just raised dues this past January and that brought us to be even in the forthcoming years.

But for some reason, 13 of the current board members voted to saddle USPA with an unplanned expense of $25,000 per year for the next six years. Nine board members, including me and, as previously noted, Gary Peek, voted no.

The good news is that this can be changed at a future board meeting, provided you elect people that actually understand USPA’s business.

I also want to say that Jim McCormick was 100% honest, did not deceive us in any way, and gave a great sales pitch that worked on several board members.

The current state of affairs is that now the “International Skydiving Museum” is now the “USPA Museum” because USPA is the “Host Country Affiliate”.

I think that the museum zigged when it should have zagged and all of this will be rectified in the near future.

...
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FYI:

The current Pacific RD is resigning effective 11:59 pm PT Thursday March 1, 2018.

A USPA member from the Pacific region will be selected by the full board at the next regular meeting that starts on March 2, 2018 in San Antonio, TX.

If you are interested in serving USPA members as the Pacific RD, then you need to be nominated by a current board member.

Here is a mini-tutorial concerning board vacancies:

- read the Governance Manual
- make sure you know who will nominate you.
- realize that it is the full board (minus the vacancy) that elects you, not your constituency. (This time.)
- attending the next board meeting enhances your chances of success tremendously, but does not guarantee success
- contact information for all BOD members is on the USPA web site and in Parachutist
- send your information to the full board
- ask your constituents for endorsements

Good Luck to all that apply.

If you have any questions, please ask.


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jimjumper

If you need some in-depth info, you might want to talk to Jim Wallace. He did drogue-less tandem RW (2 tandems docking) for the movie Bucket List. They probably did 10-15 practice jumps with staggered drouge throws after attempting RW. Craig O'brien did the camera work while head-down and then digitally inverted the film. I seem to recall Morgan Freeman's stunt double was good size, so they were probably going pretty fast!

I recall Tom Sanders saying he did some drogueless freefall video with another person on top of his back to give him a really fast fall rate.

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baronn

Of all the places I've worked at (yeah, it's a been a few)....

I really, really feel for your situation of not being able to hold a steady job or contract at a DZ.
Maybe that is related to your attitude???

GFY - good thing that acronym has multiple meanings because the mods might take that as an insult of you and your posts when I *might* actually be complimenting you.

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baronn

This is getting into a grey area. A DZO needs TI's. they run an ad for help. Get responses, they show, present the proper ratings, medicals and USPA ratings. Starts throwing drogues without any fanfare and life is good. A TI is faced with a situation like this, reacts as this person did and gets unlucky in the outcome, (let's not get into a discussion on how it was a mistake. We/he knows that) and now the DZO in THIS situation has his personal membership yanked, an investigation is started into the examiners credentials and any other TI's that were trained by these guys now have to be retrained. Other tandem fatalities have occurred in the past and I don't recall these type of actions being implemented. Let's not get into whether it is right or wrong at this time. Everyone agrees we need proper training and ratings. My point is would this have happened to any other USPA group member DZ or is this action unique to Lodi or any other non-group members?

This has nothing to do with whether the DZ is a GM or not.

This is about a TIE who had his examiner rating suspended a year ago that continued to hold courses and did not train his candidates properly.

The closest previous incident that is somewhat similar to this case is from the early 90s.
A Vector rated TI used a Strong rig. The rig was owned by someone else. The jump was done in central CA, but not a regular DZ. (IIRC it was Arvin.)
The landing was bad, killed the student, TI lived.
IIRC, the rig owner, as well as the TI, had his rating suspended.
Back then tandems were operating under the FAA waiver - slightly different than the rules today.
The similar rule is/was that the tandem rig OWNER is responsible for ensuring that the TI making the jump has the proper ratings.

Other than that incident, I cannot recall any other case when a suspended examiner continued to conduct courses and somehow convinced the candidates that everything was fine, even when the paperwork never came.
If you go through a rating course and don't get your credentials within a couple of weeks, you should say something or realize that you've been duped or maybe you are complicit in the bogus rating.

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baronn

snipped stuff about SR that you don't have a clue about

Unless he KNEW these instructors did not have the proper certs or ratings, I don't see why the USPA yanked his personal membership. Seems "Bullyish" to me.

You ought to go read this
http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/PDF/Support/Tandem%20Information/05501(End_User_Agreement).pdf

From that pdf:
"Buyer agrees that it shall not use the Tandem Parachute System in violation of any FARs,
or other federal, state, municipal, or other governmental regulations, or any United States
Parachute Association Basic Safety Requirements (BSRs). "

What this means is that the tandem rig OWNER needs to ensure that the TI is properly rated.

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Stritar

Hello everyone,

I did a tandem jump a year ago and liked it a lot. I applied for AFF a month ago and had my AFF1 today. We had some wind issues and had to wait for a good portion of the day.

To make a long story short, when we came to me getting on the ledge and jump with both of my instructors I chickened out and landed with the plane...

I have some serious doubts about skydiving if its even for me. I was really in to it after doing tandem and waiting for the season to start again. Now I'm thinking of quitting completely. I feel massively disappointed about myself.

I am going to send you off to a link about me being "Too Scared to Jump" that I wrote 20 years ago about my student jumps in 1981.
Too Scared To Jump

I did my first jump in 1981. There was no AFF or tandem back then.
Jumping is much safer and easier now, but the fear factor is about the same.

Don't let anyone else tell you what to think about jumping. It's your decision - your choice.

Years later, I am the USPA Secretary and have been on the BOD for 11 of the past 13 years, have 4 world records, blah, blah, blah... so don't let 'them' tell you what's right for you.

YMMV

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HQ is notifying candidates this morning.
The full roster will be released late today.

Yes, I won. Thanks for your vote.

Jan Meyer, National Director
Nominations and Elections Committee Chair

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stayhigh

The USPA also shows its childish/coward behavior by putting Scott Smith's quote right next to Rich's face therefore secretly making fun of Rich.
...
I've attached a pic of the USPA election page that makes fun of Rich and I've also posted a pic of a DZO who made some serious wrong choices and threw his life away.

The order that the ND candidates are placed on the ballot and in the magazine is completely random.
A public random drawing was done at Skydive Perris on August 9, 2015.
Random jumpers that were standing around drew names out of a bag.

Scott Smith's statement was edited by Scott, after the N&E committee noticed a slight inaccuracy, to ensure that everything he said was true and factual.

I should know, because I am the Chair of the Nominations & Elections Committee.

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RichyR

Twice yesterday at my DZ, I saw questionable safety issues.

Firstly a JM was instructing people to leave 45 degrees between jumpers - which I understand has been proven pretty useless.

Secondly, a girl almost half my size was instructed to jump before me on the basis she was on a smaller canopy 170 vs 190, ignoring the fact I was on a much higher wing loading, and would fall faster.

What would you do if you saw the above - ignore, confront, report?

It seems that sexism is still alive and well.
In my FJC, (1981) we were told by the instructor that the heavier people are dispatched first.
This was back when students were dropped under T-10s.
When it came to loading up the plane for our first jump, they wanted me to exit first.
Me = woman, ~140# and the other guy = +200#.

I brought up what was taught in class and the exit order was changed. The big guy was first pass and I was second pass. (cessna SL load)

Years later, I learned that reason 'they' put out women first is to provide social pressure for the men to jump. ie if a 'girl' went out before the 'men', then the 'man' was less likely to balk or ride the plane down. If the woman balked, the man could be shamed as in 'you don't want to be a pussy do you?' or if the woman jumped, the man could be shamed as in ' hey man - a GIRL already jumped- don't you have the balls to jump too?'

The 45 degree rule is of the same vintage of teaching.

The guy you are dealing with is old school in a big way.

Keep up the good work.


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yoink

*** Great Example.....

http://s7.photobucket.com/user/markovw123/media/IMG_2577_zpsroyrfjkb.jpg.html

http://s7.photobucket.com/user/markovw123/media/IMG_2578_zpsqfg3mugn.jpg.html

http://s7.photobucket.com/user/markovw123/media/IMG_2579_zpsllulnbts.jpg.html

When were these taken? If they were taken prior to the incident, they're kinda pointless. We know he was doing it... if they were taken since then it's a whole 'nother thing. It's proof that he doesn't give a shit and hasn't learned.

September 18, 2013 6:09 PM
no time zone noted

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Two Out - Downplane Scenario
(one person version)

What pops into your head when you hear 2-out downplane?

I bet it's a picture of a jumper in the air that has two fully inflated parachutes, stretched out, opposing each other and diving very fast towards the ground.

This description is a third person perspective.

I think that a better 'picture in your head for a personal downplane' should be something like 'my main is out in front of me and diving down to the ground'.
Then as verification, look over your shoulder to see what the reserve is doing.
Chances are that the reserve is open and inflated, with or without line twists, and also diving towards the ground.

This description is a first person perspective.

Why am I talking about this? Part 1

Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine 'landed' a personal downplane and lived to talk about it.
It was a low main pull at the same time the aad fired.
The main dived down in front and my friend said she did not know she had two-out.

I thought to myself, how can that be?
It's so obvious that there were two out and in a downplane.
But that was because I had the third person perspective.
I saw it from the ground. It was obvious.
Then I wondered, if the first person perspective was somehow 'not so obvious'.

I came to the conclusion that a personal downplane, first person, perspective was not as obvious as the third person perspective we all think about when we hear 'two-out downplane'.

So I added to my thought process, if the main suddenly dives down in front of me, check over my shoulder to see what the reserve is doing.

Hopefully, if I am ever in a personal downplane, this might help me react properly to the situation. Even more hopefully, this theory will never be tested by me. ;)

Why am I talking about this? Part 2

This weekend, another friend of mine 'landed' a personal downplane.
Only this time my friend did not live.

How Bud got into a downplane may never be known.
It may have been this or that, like a reserve handle floater that popped the reserve on opening, but the reserve didn't deploy until later.
Or a reserve handle floater that got snagged later during descent.

I'm pretty sure Bud, as I, would opt to cutaway the main in a personal downplane situation as opposed to landing the downplane -even if the reserve had line twists.

I think Bud did not know he had a downplane.
He was just trying to control the main, same as my friend from 15 years ago.
He did not think about cutting away because he did not know the reserve was out.
All he knew was that the main was doing something funky and was too low to cutaway with the assumption that the reserve was still in the container.

The lesson that one should take away is
- to learn what a personal downplane looks like from the first person perspective
- check for reserve deployment
- decide what to do after full assessment of your canopy configuration and altitude


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topdocker

***Craig,

You still have not answered the question, who is bought on the board, and what was paid?

You keep making these broad stroke assumptions without any fact or basis, all you have is conspiracy theory.

The level of indignity that you speak with does lend credence to my argument.


Interesting dialogue between you two.

From my POV, the 'bought and paid for' is a more appropriate description of the TIs that use handycams and skip the handles check because it makes poor video.

The TIs with handycams that skip handles check because it ruins a few seconds of video are doing a great disservice to themselves and their customers.
They are jeopardizing the safety of two people every time they do that. For what? Some extra money from the video.

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dmathews1960

Collegiate Nationals Edit | Delete | Quote | Reply |
Without exception, every collegiate sport is comprised of competitors
that have spent much of their youth in the sport. As I read the April
Gearing Up discussion in Parachutist magazine regarding the dwindling participation in the collegiate national skydiving competitions, I was struck by the fact
that this observation was missing. If one wanted to ensure the
demise of any college sport, one would prohibit participation in that
sport before age 18. My oldest son is 17 and has his A license. He
will be the last of group for whom this was a reality. The USPA
Board's regrettable decision to prohibit participation by those under
18 needs to be reversed. If they do not reverse this, at least they
should honestly admit when collegiate nationals finally go away that
it was not just some regrettable external factors such as those listed
in the article, but the logical consequences of their own actions.

David M. Mathews, Ph.D.
C-17804

Underage collegiate competitors can ask for a waiver to the age BSR.
To my knowledge, these waivers are always granted by the BOD and the hosting DZ.
What you are complaining about is a non-issue.

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DocPop

Is anyone else having a hard time getting to the message in these videos?

I am not sure what I am supposed to have learned from them.

Any thoughts?

Stopped watching when he said there were four forces on a human in flight.

Pssst, Brian... jumpers do not have thrust as airplanes do.
If fact, there are only 2 forces: gravity and aerodynamic.
The aerodynamic force is resolved into lift and drag for mathematical convenience.

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Toggle colors are important when considering two out situations.

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