Reginald

LOL, I really don't care what the pilots get paid I only care what the AFFI's make! ;-) Seriously, I was trying to make a point that the numbers the OP put forth were a bit biased to suite his point.

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Lets take a busy weekend and assume average pay for each person in their respective jobs. lets say that at a cessna DZ there are 80 tandems for the weekend, leaving 40 a day and 20 loads per day. in that weekend a tandem master would make $1,400 (40 tandems @$35/per jump), a packer would make $1,200 ($15/ per packjob) and a the pilot would make $800 ($10 per load) lets ignore manifest for the time being. It seems odd to me that the pilot is the least paid out of the whole bunch, . . . I just feel that pilots seem to get the shit end of the stick.

Okay, it sure looks like you fudged these numbers to make your point.

Let me make a few modifications to them.

First, no TM is going to be able to make 20 jumps a day. 10 is just about the upper limit so you say a TM would make $1,400 but in reality that is cut in half to $700.

Second the packers likely get $10 per tandem rig and there are almost certainly two of them so that becomes $800 if it’s one packer and $400 if it’s two.

And the pilot is the one person physically capable of flying all 80 loads so even at the paltry rate of $10 per load he is now the highest paid person at $800. And just as a note, the pilots at our DZ get much more than $10 per load.

So, it is likely in your own case that the pilot is the highest paid person.

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My problem is, when they pair up, their fall rate lowers, so I have a narrow window of when I can actually dock, and usually I miss it. Then they fly above me, and despite my best fall rate control efforts, I cannot catch up to them. ....

It could be that I'm just jumping with mediocre jumpers as well, and they don't arch once they group up.

So the other jumpers are going high on you, eh?

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I've had 5 reserve rides, but none in the last 4500 jumps.

What were you doing your first 1,000 jumps then?

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I think the moral of the story could be better said as "Don't get a useless degree!"

Thanks for writing this post it saved me from having to say the same thing.

I think the article just goes to show that even the WSJ can get it wrong sometimes.

Education is the most valuable thing a person can get. I advise people to choose wisely though and get one that will provide tangible benefits on the other side. However, the world does need a select handful of PhD’s in obscure liberal arts fields. Who else is going to transcribe ancient scrolls of dead languages for pennies a day?

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how can you expect someone in freefall for the first time to do everything right

I don't expect them to do everything right, just the learning objective - deploying their own parachute by their assigned pull altitude.

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no pull, no pass period.

Like John Wright, I am going to do everything to keep the student motivated and coming back,but, no pull, no pass.

I agree 100%. It is unconscionable that a no pull student is moved on to the next level.

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Countries currently using the AN-2 include:
Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Hungary, Laos, Latvia, Mali, Mongolia, Nicaragua, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, Tadjikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

Um, really? Have you read that list? I think I'll avoid following the lead of most of these countries as far as aviation goes.

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So... to get this thread back on the original topic...

Did you call the DZO again to explain what happened with the manifest bitch and see what he had to say?

Oh yeah, out the DZ's name so I can be sure not to waste my time showing up there.

No I did not, I didnt feel it was worth my time.... I will PM you the DZ name....

IMHO, that should have been your first move and posting a rant on the internet your last.

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Sillly me I thought I was having fun!

You probably think Relative Work ( it doesn't matter if it is belly, vertical or canopy relative work) is fun too!!

It is Relative Work not relative fun.

Oh no! I thought I enjoyed 4 way too! I need to reevaluate all my skydiving.

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The Katana set up swoops nice, but is boring to fly.

I didn't realize how boring my canopy flight was until now!

Sillly me I thought I was having fun!

Having watched hundreds of students land the primary cause of serious injury in cases like yours is “surging” the canopy near the ground. You stated you flared too high. Did you let up on the toggles again near the ground, even a little bit? Do you think you might have and not known it?

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And what I'm finding is that the local dealers have the better prices, plus they can offer all of these great services that you just informed me of.

So what's the question then?

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I'll clarify my question further: with the front riser pressure being so light, the line tension on As & Bs must be relatively low, it would stand to reason than the nose is then that much easier to pull down and fold under.

Interesting question. I'm not sure that your assumption about A&B line tension being low is the reason the front riser pressure is so light though. Hmm, interesting question...

Raft dives are dangerous jumps. PM "raftman" to get some advice. He knows as much about raft dives as anyone.

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Maybe I should actually put a quarter in my ass

I've heard that pretending it's a gerbil is even better.

I'm not quite sure why.

Ask Richard Gere

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Yes ... Jay has been with me for every aff jump thus far and he has been great. He is a pretty amazing person.

Since you've mentioned it ... I do always seem to feel like my legs are spread too far apart.

The wind tunnel also sounds like a fabulous idea. I think it would be worth the investment for me to spend a weekend in NC.

Jay is one of the best skydivers, instructors, and people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Catch him at the end of the day when he has some time and talk to him. I guarantee he can help you. You don’t know how lucky you are to have had him on your jumps with you.

And as a personal story, I repeated an AFF level 4 times and another level 3 times before going to a wind tunnel. After one hour in the tunnel I absolutely rocked through the rest of the student progression. If you are seriously dedicated to learning to skydiving consider doing it.

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100.00 for a recurrency jump. Give me a break. They are blatantly trying to make money off of him for this. Whats wrong with paying both slots. I mean this is a guy who's going to become a regular club jumper and be there just about every weekend.

So you expect instructors to work for charity? Here is the hard cold reality, instructors work for money. DZ's are in business to make money. Skydiving is not a charity.

All of that said, the "money" I make as an instructor doesn't cover my expenses nor compensate me for the time I spend at the DZ on hopelessly un-jumpable weekends working on the ground with students for free. I work as an instructor for the love of it and go way above and beyond the call of duty for my students. But if there wasn't some sort of compensation involved I wouldn't do it.

One of your instructors on your Cat A was Jay Stokes. My personal votes is he's qualified.

What I'm seeing is that your knees are VERY wide. I also noticed instructors on at least one occasion signaling you to put your knees shoulder width (bring them closer together). It is impossible to arch with your legs spread that far. It creates an automatic DE-arch which puts your knees below you as is shown in the video. This is creating a major instability issue.

Please review this with your instructors in more detail but in my opinion the first thing you need to do is to bring your legs closer together, then you can put your hip bone down and extend your toes. Until you fix the knees being so wide the “arch” issue is not possible to fix.

BTW: a wind tunnel helped me resolve me body issues when I was in AFF.

I just hate these threads that bash DZ’s for “sucking money out of a new jumper”

Geeze, your friend has less than thirty jumps, the ink is barely dry on his A license, and he’s highly un-current for his jump numbers!

As an instructor I would require a refresher course and have him jump with an instructor, not a coach, and honestly if the DZ is close to water it’s not a bad idea to have him do water training. I think this DZ is working along common sense and USPA guidelines.

I do recurrency jumps with people from dozens to thousands of jumps, and it’s shocking how little some people remember after a few months off. If you have any delusions that it’s 5 minutes of “show me your EP’s” and let’s throw you out of a plane with a coach that’s not rated or trained to pull for someone if it goes bad that only speaks to your lack of understanding of the dangers of the sport.

Read the Incident reports it’s sounding like a guy died doing a recurrency jump this week. Even if that one pans out to be something different, don’t think for a second that recurrency jumps should be treated lightly.

IMHO it sounds like this DZ is putting forward a reasonable plan at a decent rate to safely get your friend current. Why people feel the need to bash DZ’s for thinking of safety instead of throwing uncurrent, low-timers out of airplanes with no training or competent supervision is beyond me.

But I guess it’s become fashionable on this board to criticize the amount of training that has become the industry standard in the US.

I’ve done one jump without a Cypres. It was with borrowed gear, exiting low, in an urban area, at night, from an unfamiliar plane, with a 25 lb. bag attached to my chest with a giant flag in it. I think it was called a “demo.” What could possibly go wrong?

I'm presuming that the people that came down on the plane were students or using rental gear that had a student Cypres? If the student Cypres was not turned off as the manual recommends it is highly likely that it will fire during decent. The student units are VERY sensitive by design. This sounds like good old fashion user error.

What I’ve learned from this is not that there is likely a defect with a Cypres like you are implying but instead that you are uninformed about how different models of AAD’s function, their firing parameters and how to use them in various circumstances. Please read a Cypres manual and educate yourself about how they work. And if you haven’t done so read your Vigil manual too! I’m constantly shocked and disappointed at how few people have ever read the manual for the computer attached to their reserves. The shocking ignorance by the majority of skydivers of how AAD’s function scares me. Read the manual people…

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldnt the rsl still work as it was designed to in this configuration? What I mean is that the riser is still going to pull on the rsl regardless of routing and then wouldnt the bridal and ring end of the rsl simply pass through the big ring on the 3 ring allowing the main to seperate? I'm not saying I would jump it that way or would reccomend doing so, but I dont believe this would have caused 1 riser to not release on a mal thats all.

No it's possible/likely that the 3 ring would be jamed on the RSL bridal on cutaway thus causing the riser to be stuck and thus not pulling the rsl at all. I sure wouldn't want to give it a test.

So are you talking about traveling to boogies? Or simply one that happens to be at your home DZ?

I like Shiner!

Sounds like a good weekend!

Blues,
R