billvon

The position of your upper body relative to your lower body, and the position of your legs, provide a far more powerful turning force than your hands do. Thus even minor problems with your body position will lead to an unstoppable spin if you are relying on the hands method.

Agreed. You can likely still find people choosing exit separation using the 45 degree rule with the permission of their DZ's as well, and you can find people turning by using their hands as little rudders. That does not necessarily mean that those things are a good idea.

For the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, we held an event where WWII vets could run through a static line program for next to nothing and make a jump on that day. Most of them did OK, although it was effectively impossible to train them to arch. It's something that almost any DZ can do. You can meet the USPA requirements for a course fairly quickly as long as they come in with basic skills, and it's likely the DZO could find volunteers to teach and/or JM the students - thus reducing the cost tremendously. This is getting pretty far from the topic, though, so maybe better to start a new thread on it.

If you are trying San Diego try either early in the morning right after they open or late in the day when tandems have thinned out.

If it was their fault - yes. Note that that doesn't mean they were evil, or that they were bad people. It just means they made a mistake. I've made them - and gotten away with them. I've stopped my students from making fatal mistakes, like walking into the propeller of an Otter. I am sure you've made mistakes, too. If (god forbid) someday you make a mistake and it kills you, it will be your fault. Not because you are bad, but because you made a mistake.

That's sad. Flip was a great guy. I ended up sitting next to him on one of the Thailand World Team records. One one attempt, we took off, they opened the door, we stood up and got ready to go . . . and had a hold. After about 15 minutes they closed the door again; we were going to land with the plane. Fortunately we had plenty of oxygen. After a few minutes my altimeter started to unwind. I guessed we were landing. But the deck angle seemed pretty flat. And we were descending at something like 5000 feet per minute, which is a pretty screaming descent in an aircraft. Were we really descending? I looked at Flip, showed him my altimeter and said "are they pressurizing?" (Actually I yelled it as loud as I could; it was pretty loud in that plane.) He looked at his altimeter for a few seconds, then jumped up and waded up to the cockpit before the crew pressurized us right into a bunch of AAD fires. He got them to stop the cabin-altitude descent before we hit 1000 feet. Another aircraft was not so lucky, and there were a bunch of AAD's on those aircraft that either fired or shut down permanently because they detected something that shouldn't be happening.

Complaining and doing nothing is bitching. Going to BOD meetings, proposing alternatives and working to implement them is not. We know what you have chosen so far. Will you change your approach? Time will tell.

I am a sheeple! I love it! I've gone to USPA three times to get something I've wanted. I've created course plans, I've written articles for Parachutist on the topics, I've collected petitions and I've gone to BOD meetings - and organized trips for other supporters of my plans. The actual BOD meetings were important, but even more importantly was the opportunity to talk to BOD people outside the meeting, in the bar or restaurant before/after the meeting. And today we have an ISP and a rule that requires separating landing areas in the group member pledge. Oh, and USPA doesn't have a ban on mentioning BASE in the magazine any more. (And BTW I was far from the only person advocating for any of that. But together we got enough support to get those changes through.) You bitch on the Internet and do nothing else other than obediently mailing your check in, like a good sheep. Which one of us is a "sheeple" again?

They are good stewards of their time, then.

He can ask if he wants. I am hoping the BOD have better things to do than to humor an angry crank - but that's up to them.

It's not being built yet.

A skydiving museum.

No.

A few random ones: 1) Get a good coach. (Sound like you already got one.) They will be able to see problems that you can't. Also switch them up occasionally, because everyone will see something different. 2) Spend at least 10x the time outside the tunnel going through the exact same dive before you go in. So if you have 60 seconds, spend 10 minutes on the floor or on a creeper going through the dive. Time outside is free and can make your time in the tunnel more useful. 3) Once you feel you are ready, find someone to fly with. Cuts tunnel costs in half and that's something you'll have to learn anyway.

We regularly do 15 minutes a night - 10 sessions, 90 seconds each - for informal 4 way training. But all of us are fairly used to the tunnel. For a "big" camp we might do 30 minute sessions, 4-6 of them over the course of a weekend. Intervals between flights is critical for those. You need at least 2 minutes for walking the next dive, and the more time to recover between flights the better.