dninness

I jumped all last winter, which I hadn't done in many years (aircraft availability being the main factor). So I wound up with a couple different glove combos: I use cheapo batting gloves during the summer when its in the 30-40s at altitude. Those I've used for years. (Top tip: buy batting gloves in September/October when the local sporting goods store is trying to clear out the summer's stock. I get Addidas or Nike gloves, normally $25-30/pair for between $10 and $12. Throw 'em in the gear bag for next season.) Those of you not in a country with baseball as a pastime, adjust as needed.. :) When it starts getting colder, I have a pair of thin "runner's gloves" (sort of an under-armour-like material) that I put on under the batting gloves. I also have a pair of Nomex flying gloves that I've jumped with for years, and again, I may slip the "runners gloves" liners under those. When its *really* cold I snagged a pair of Thinsulate lined workman's gloves from Home Depot that have this suede on the fingertips and are *really* tactile. They work very well by themselves, or in tandem with the liners, or if really necessary, hand warmers. (mind you, I'll break out the hand warmers about the time I break out the runners gloves. Big hint with hand warmers: Activate them about 20-30 minutes prior to jumping, like, say, when you've gotten to the DZ. That way they're rip-roaring when you get to altitude. And don't have your gloves on the whole time in the plane, as that will make your hands sweat, and you'll have damp hands and gloves in the slipstream.. bad combo..) I have yet to put latex gloves under any of my gloves, but many of my winter jumping compatriots do. It does work well as a wind block. The usual disclaimers about your ability to find/grip things with winter gloves applies... NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I saw two this past season, and if I remember correctly, it was the same TM and only, at the most, a couple weeks apart. He was not a happy camper by the time he got down... NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Whats that old joke? Learn from other people's mistakes, because you won't live long enough to make all of them yourself. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

VanLand? Hehehe. That's good! Van & Emiko's Skydiving Palace and Ranch? Van's Freefall Pleasure Palace (heheh, that sounds like a bad shaker bar) I'm out of ideas. :( NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

http://www.halojumper.com/ Might be helpful. Changes to the FARs make it difficult for civilian jumps to go above 29,500 ft for jumping... NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

See, I tend to agree with this. Upping it to "one year as a coach" doesn't specifically guarantee you have any jumps with students as a coach (I've seen too many instances where a coach didn't jump with the required number of students during the year, but got signed off as having done so anyway...), but it does put another year under your belt. Whether you got any experience during that year is another matter, but its a start, and its a fairly low/no cost change that could happen quickly without a lot of teeth gnashing. I disagree that coaches can do very little harm. I think they can have both a great positive and a great negative impact on a student. If they're a marginal coach, I think the student doesn't any advancement for what they just paid for their coach jump and in fact can pick up bad habits.. I had the opportunity to jump with a newly-minted coach and a student on a 3-way jump this last year and was utterly amazed at how this new coach paid more attention to a camera helmet than the student (I did the gear checks and briefings) during the ride to altitude, and this coach was hardly in the skydive for a substantial part of the jump. The student said to me later "I hardly saw XX for the whole jump. Is that the way RW goes?" and I had to explain to him that zooming past the base in a track is probably not the best way to win friends and impress load organizers. So, IMHO, a person who marginally qualifies for their coach rating and then does a repeated shitty job on coach jumps is doing more harm than good to students. (and no, I was not an instructor at that time, so this coach was not 'under my supervision,' although I did have a conversation about performance with another instructor at the DZ and got a shrug of the shoulders and "What are you going to do?" for my troubles..) Frankly a lot of what I'm reading in this thread speaks to what I referred to earlier as that so-called "journeyman" period. I'd caution calling it an apprenticeship (and I agree: why should someone pay for someone else's apprenticeship?) Once you get your rating, while technically you're "fully rated," you're still "learning" or perhaps more accurately "experiencing" AFF. I guarantee that nothing I've seen in the AFF course is exactly like what I'll see in the real world. Not possible. So I need to build that base of experience. Of course, what do you do at DZs where sometimes the dude who just got his rating is the only instructor on the DZ at the moment? There are a lot of small DZs in the country where this is the case. They don't have legions of instructors laying around wating. Do you tell the student "Sorry, dude, I can't do your D-1 jump, I can only do 2-instructor jumps.."? NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I work for a distribution company that ships about a million dollars of product a week. (our stuff is small, and average order size is about $200... Its not technology items or anything like that) Stuff happens. People get the wrong thing occasionally (pickers are, after all, human), the package gets mis-delivered, the CSR somehow forgot to put the overnight shipping on the package, etc. When somewhere between 1500 & 2000 packages go out of two facilities every day, there are bound to be a few screw ups. Now, people call all the time irate as hell. And by the time they're off the phone, they're like "Oh, yeah, uh, ok. Thanks for fixing this.." (we do stuff like automagically ship overnight to fix a problem, even when the carrier screwed up, etc.) It happens. I've ordered from Para Gear. They're like any other distribution business: You usually get your stuff, sometimes something happens. I love their catalog. Skydiving pr0n. I, too, opened this message hoping to glean some important lesson I can take into my "day job," and instead thought "Man, uh, yeah, thanks for making it right with the business, but don't expect people to smooch your butt, either.." :) NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I've always jumped "part time," unfortunately. Kids and a(n ex-)wife will do that to you, too. There were a couple-three years where I made less than 25 jumps a year, and I think one year after my son was born I might have made 5-6 jumps. It sucked. The last 3 years I've made more jumps per year than I've ever made, and of course thats when I've gotten my ratings, too. I would love to be a professional jumper, but there is no way in hell I could survive right now like that. :( So its mild-mannered IT professional by weekday, adventurous skydiving instructor by weekend. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

All good but some DZ's do AFP and only do 1 Instructor dives. What we do is keep the newer AFF's on Level 1,2 non release for a time period. Yeah, not sure what to do there. I'm talking traditional ISP-based Cat A-Cat H AFF here. Not hybrid or AFP or whatever. That's a whole 'nuther animal. I don't have a good answer/idea on that. But I do agree on keeping newer AFFs on non-release dives for a period of time. Like I said, I was a little freaked out to be doing a D-1 as my pre-second. Sure, I *could* do it (and I did it just fine), but there is a good possibility to get into trouble, too. Believe me, if that guy had done even the least bad thing to me, it was going to turn into a gigantic single-JM Cat B: "Sorry, Charlie, I aint letting your ass go..." I said in an earlier post: there is a period as a new AFF-I where you're in your "journeyman" period. I used to fix helicopters, and as a fresh-out-of-AIT soldier I swore I knew everything about that aircraft I needed to know. Yeah, got to my first unit and I was working with far more experienced guys for the first 3-5 months. I was a quick learner, however, and got moved into aircrew quickly, but still, I was a "junior" guy under the tutelage of a more experienced person. A "journeyman." (the Air Force, as I recall, in their position titles for guys fresh out of tech school uses the term "journeyman" even... So a brand new, say, cook is a "Food Services Journeyman".. ) I don't recommend using that term, but the concept is valid: You may be book-smart, but you ain't seen it all yet. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

BTW, Para5-0 basically said what I said. I was losing my reply and retyping when he replied. He has the idea, probably a little better than I do. Great minds and all. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I had a nice salient reply typed up, then *pow* I had to do real work and closed my browser and lost it... @#$%* This reply will not be nearly as good. *sniff* When I took the AFF course, the I/E said: "When we sign off the rating, as far as the USPA is concerned, you can do soup-to-nuts AFF." So yeah, technically you can do FJCs & Cat A all the way to A-license check dives immediately after getting signed off. Again, necessarily smart to do single-instructor dives? Maybe not. Possible? Yeah. My "cherry" jump as a newly-minted AFF-I was a D-1. Really. I'm not saying that's smart, mind you, but I had just spent a considerable amount of time getting my ass kicked on D-1 jumps by AFF course evaluators in practice and eval dives, so I knew that dive as well as reaching for my wallet. (BTW, my D-1 student was rock solid thru the whole skydive. I spent the entire time about 4-6" from my grips, expecting him to roll, flip, backslide, whatever. He waved and pulled on time and as I'm tracking off I'm laughing in my helmet over the fact that he basically was "perfect student." I had just spent that entire jump, from gear up to his pull probably about 100% more tense than he was... I know that there are going to be students who are definitely NOT going to perform like that..) The funny thing is, my student on that jump was a CFII. We were talking later as I was writing up his jump in his logbook, and we were talking about instructional ratings (it was here I revealed to him, as a fellow instructor, that his was my pre-second jump as an instructor) I was explaining to him in a little more detail how things work in the later parts of the student progression, and since he was a CFI, I used a student pilot analogy. I said "Its like you as a CFI take a student to solo, and then you hand them off to another person who is sort of 'instructor lite.' You've taught them how to fly, how to get the plane around the airpatch a few times, etc, and now its time to give them to the guy who will polish their skills. Thats kind of how it works with Instructors versus Coaches. We give you the survival skills, and make sure you can pretty much jump without killing yourself, and then hand you off to a trained skydiver who can get you to your license." Which got me to thinking... Basically, how about this idea for a proposal: You become a coach. A coach would be considered sort of "AFF-JM-in-training." Still does the "post E" jumps, etc, mostly as now. After X jumps as a coach in T time (say, 50 in 18 months or 25 in a year or whatever.. something realistic that could be done at a Cessna DZ), and Y total time in as a coach, you are now qualified to take an AFF-JM course. (AKA "AFF pre-course) The AFF-JM course is a prep for the Instructor course. Now you're an "AFF-JM" and allowed to accompany an fully-qualified instructor on 2-instructor AFF jumps. You serve under the direction of an instructor, work closely with him or her in training AFF students (Cats A-E). You can't do 1 instructor jumps, but you're instructor in training. You can do ground training and all that, but when it comes to the actual jumps you need to be with an -I. Then the requirements for AFF-I are something X AFF-JM & Coach jumps over T timeframe and Y time as a coach/AFF-JM. Then you can take the AFF-I course and be the big dog. USPA would love it: Adds another rating level & rating course. More $$, right? Anyway, thats just an idea off the top of my head. There may be something to riff off of there. (I'm submitting this reply before I lose the friggin' thing again..) NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Hey, a blind skydiver can probably get some requirements waived, but depending on his level of blindness, ALL of his jumps might be night jumps... NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Yeah, my first two night jumps were out of Bravo at Tecumseh, one of which was with a student rig because I was too freaked out that my PD230 was too "hot" (hahahaha.. Yeah..) I liked how it was always "hey, we're doing night jumps.." and folks didn't say "I'm afraid of the dark, can I get a night light in the plane?" Now all I hear is excuses: "Oh, uh, my mom is in town that night.. I think I left an iron on at home... Wow, look at the time, my wife said I have to be home when the street lights come on.." (Need to get my ass back to SE MI to visit the family and bring my rig...) NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I was a S/L student at a DZ that HAMMERED the pattern into us. With 7 jumps, I went and did AFF in the winter in FL, and was commended on my "awesome" canopy flying skillz. :) Mind you, I'm not a swooper or a radical canopy pilot. I flew a Monarch 195 for 11 years loaded about 1.1/1.2 (depending on my "winter weight" :) ) and just recently, after 14 years in the sport, downsized to a Sabre 170. My concept of canopy flight is "Enjoy the ride, get to the ground safely with your femurs intact. On target will help." I land within 10 meters of the peas on probably 90% of my jumps, as long as its not crowded in the landing area. My angle toward accuracy is "experience will help" and "try be consistent, and only change one variable at a time if you can." My approach to accuracy is very similar to the Germain article, minus the math :) NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

If its the George Foreman I'm thinking of (and my remembery gets terribly worse every year, so maybe I'm screwed up here) he was a video guy who wound up with a cheesy part in a porn movie. (and by "cheesy part" I believe that to mean "a walk-on part with no sex"..) If thats the guy, then he did video one year (1997?) at Napoleon, MI when I was jumping there. Like I said, my remembery is getting quite poor, and I never did get the whole story. But I seem to recall that someone found the film, realized it was him and told folks at the DZ. He packed up and split the next day or something. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Oh crap. Missed this the first time around. I get it. @#$&! Does that mean I'm officially an old fart? *sob* NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I've considered it, believe me. But if someone asks me to prove "Did you do X type of jumps last year?" I want to be able to say "Why, yes, I did X plus Y number of those jumps... And you can verify that right here.." NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Well, as its been previously stated, part of the way the rating system is arranged is to keep personalities from being (as big) a factor. Face it: If for some reason you're cross-wise with the S&TA for something non-skydiving related, *pow* you could be Jack Jeffries and you're not getting your AFF rating. You took the last beer the other night, you're slipping some extra wood into the S&TA's duty punch, you're parking in his (unmarked) parking spot.... Hell, you are constantly "on the go," hustle back tot he hangar and get one of the packers to pack you up before the S&TA could get the guy's knickers in a twist. Never mind calling him on an unsafe act in the air. Thats a slippery slope. For one, the sport, for all its military roots and origins, is actually comprised of folks who probably don't work well under military-like levels of structure and oversight. As a vet, I get this. Plus, if I were to aspire to become an S&TA (I do not, FYI), do I want to be the guy who says "yay" or "nay" based on no clearly defined criteria other than "hes not a tool."? At least with the AFF course, you are judging people on some fairly objective criteria that also has some checks and balances built in to prevent abuse, and allows a candidate a modicum of "due process." Nowhere on the proficiency card does it say "Is not a tool" with a sign off for the S&TA. I think I prefer it that way. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I have recently heard of similar things, especially surrounding some jumpers who I hold (or at least, previously held) in high esteem for their skills and abilities. Not that they're lacking in skill, mind you, but that they're lacking in the integrity to follow the rules. When I entered the sport some 15+ years ago, I told myself that I would never "bear false witness to my logbook." Basically, what you read in my log is the unvarnished truth. If I fucked up, its there. If I was the hero, its there. But you won't read "0m from target" when I was 25m from the X, or I don't add points to the skydive so I can qualify for my SCR or something. (there may be some rounding errors in my math, and recently after pumping all my jumps into Excel I discovered that I apparently can't add times worth a shit and I really have like 10+ minutes more freefall time than my logbook reflects, and I skipped a jump number accidentally back in 1997. Duh..) But fudging my numbers for licensure? No friggin' way. For a rating? Never. Thats just .. stupid. Those numbers are there for a reason. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Back when I was a young enlisted soldier, I had a t-shirt that said "I spent half my money on booze and women. The rest I just wasted." Seems to me that you could replace "women" with "skydiving" in that phrase and it would still have a high degree of validity. And then there's the booze. So unless you're doing a lot of drinking off the DZ, shouldn't be a factor, right? :) Good job on the cutaway. There are several schools of thought on whether or not you cut away on a total or similar malfunction, but I say if you did what you were trained to do, on the equipment you were trained to do it on, you did good. (minding the fact that sport gear and military FF gear have fairly different configurations and failure modes..) NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Not to pile on, but if you thought it wasn't good enough to control and land, then you made a good decision. Had a student in our program about 2 summers ago who thought she had a busted line on opening. (I think it was a blown toggle) She chopped it and landed the reserve. Good job. Later, shitload of folks gave her a hard time about chopping it, but I told her "They were a half mile away from that canopy and not under it. You were 15 feet away and relying on it to get you to the ground. You made the decision you thought you needed to make with the information you had. And you were successful." People need to chill the hell out sometimes. Geez. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

According to Jr, they all came back with their tails between their legs and went back to work ;) NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

Yeah, I see that too. When I was striking to become a coach, I approached the course very seriously with my head on a swivel and my game face on. Others did not. They came not meeting the prerequisites, not knowing the materials, not in possession of a SIM or an IRM, etc. Some had adequate air skills, some did not. Apart from the guy who didn't have the jump numbers coming in and was only taking the course for skill improvement, everybody passed. A subsequent coach course yielded a similar pass rate, but the DZO only allowed a couple of those students to actually exercise their ratings. I have my own private thoughts as to why, but the bottom line is that some of those people came out of that course still lacking the skill to be a coach, yet they are endorsed with a USPA coach rating. I think there are some instances where the course directors/examiners are letting people slide a little on some basic stuff with the belief that they'll "pick it up later." If a jumper with 500 or 600 jumps does not possess the air skills to effectively jump with a coach student when they show up to the coach course, chances are that they're not going to "pick it up" as they go. (again, I have some private thoughts on that matter, but when we saw some individuals taking a coach course, we assumed "Oh, [insert name of marginal student here] will flunk out of that one on air skills.." and then at the end of the weekend it was "What? They got the rating? HOW?") Flunk your mother, indeed. NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

When I took the AFF course, our I/E mentioned that Don Yahrling used to use the phrase "Entry Level AFF" (meaning newly-minted AFF instructors). He said "I really don't like that term much.." and I said "I think probably a more accurate term is 'journeyman AFF'." There is no way in hell that the AFF course can prepare you for every eventuality you'll encounter in the sky once you're rated. You get your rating having demonstrated a level of skill & ability and meeting the "standard" for AFF. I accepted my rating with the understanding that I don't know everything and haven't seen everything. Even as an instructor, while I may be "teaching" on a skydive, I continue to have the opportunity to learn and extend my own knowledge and experience. Just this past weekend, I had a great jump with a coach-level student, followed by a C-1 that was positively *awful*. I learned on both jumps a few things that I was able to put into my "toolbox" for future reference. On the 2nd one in particular, the other instructor and I sat down and debriefed so that I could glean some additional tips out of it. The rating course standards, IMHO, represent a level of competence and ability you have to demonstrate. I'm hard pressed to call it a "minimum level," but I think folks would agree that you can get your rating without being a member of Airspeed or something. And the idea is that you've demonstrated that you can successfully take a student out of the plane and recognize and respond to "generally understood" situations. And you will continue to gain domain knowledge as you gain experience. I'd be very afraid of someone who gets their rating and then acts like "well, there's nothing more that I can learn, so please, all y'all bow down to my awesomeness..." NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19

I thought it was flippin' hilarious. But then, I'm into CollegeHumor.com, and those dudes are always at each other. Ain't no worse than, say, the old "laundry in the main pack tray" routine...... /Gratuitous Fandango Reference NIN D-19617, AFF-I '19