robinheid

Sorry, no... not the same problem. You can disconnect an RSL when you see that the winds might require a cutaway when you land, but unless they've changed the design since I last saw one, you can't disconnect the cutaway and reserve pull functions on an SOS. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Indeed. As Johnny Carson famously said: "You can get a lot more with a gun and a smile than you can with just a smile." Back to the drawing board for you, Douglas, and next time, try something that will pass private enterprise muster instead of forcing people to adopt it at the point of a quasi-government gun. It requires more creativity, excellence and persuasiveness, but I think you're up to it. As I said in my thank you note above, you've accomplished a lot and you're on the right track, but you can take this to the bank too, my brother from another mother: Until you demonstrate that you're aware of the difference between "standardized training" and "bureaucratized training," y'all jes' gonna keep beatin' yore punkin haid up against another brick in The Wall. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Thanks for doing your homework (and mine too!) Good thing I included "IIRC" in my post. Obviously I mis-remembered the ship type (but I got the country and last plot altitude right!)... ...and John, the 8K figure was for a did-everything-fast-and-right scenario... at those speeds, you cover a lot of airspace during a standard OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act), so, sorry if I wasn't more clear, but if he even took just one extra second to solve the problem instead of just bailing, he would have been closer to 6,000 feet - and accelerating. Something else on which I apparently didn't elaborate enough for math wonks: the MiG-21 can climb sustained at more than 500mph (44,000 fpm), and it can go 1,500 mph in level flight, so given a supersonic start, he hit 12K in about ten seconds and he obviously sustained that speed or accelerated because he was off the radar in one turn of the dish. So when he started down, he probably went a lot faster -- a lot faster and may well have hit the water at closer to 2,000 mph than 1,000 mph so, sorry, but I don't buy the rapid deceleration profile you outline. It wouldn't be too hard to figure but if he and his seat go out of the plane at either 1K or 2K mph, and the forward throw is straight down, no matter what your drag profile is, it's gonna take you quite a while and a lot of distance to slow down and, again, if he delayed his ejection even a second or two beyond an immediate OODA loop to get out (because he may have thought he could solve the problem and save the airplane), even a few thousand feet of air would not be enough distance given the time he had left. And of course, this is all academic pissing in the wind anyway because he went off the scope at 12K and no one knows or will ever know what all these numbers were even though they did finally figure out the proximate cause and (IIRC from a conversation I had with Don) the fact that he most likely did get out at some point on the way down but was too low for the canopy to open. That was kind of the whole point about mentioning the MiG incident in this thread, you know, John? To buttress your contention with a real-life extreme example that the faster you go the more distance you need to get a parachute open. Your S&A thing doesn't track, either, and for the same reason; yes, they did and still do go faster than flat flyers, but their canopies were/are not taking 400-700 feet to open either. That was my point -- the combination of generally (if slightly) faster freefall speeds and generally I (and significantly) slower opening parachutes makes the 2k pack opening altitude BSR arguably obsolete so it should be revisited instead of wasting any more time on a wingsuiting BSR that is a solution in search of a problem. So let's stay on task and not nitpick numbers that were meant to be illustrative, not absolute and as a coda for the MiG-21 portion of this thread, here's some basic performance data on this magnificent bird: General characteristics Crew: 1 Length: 14.5 (with pitot) m (47 ft 6.86 in) Wingspan: 7.154 m (23 ft 5.66 in) Height: 4.125 m (13 ft 6.41 in) Wing area: 23.0 m2 (247.3 ft2) Gross weight: 8,825 kg (19,425 lb) Powerplant: 1 × Tumanskiy R25-300, 40.21 kN (9,040 lbf) thrust dry, 69.62 kN (15,650 lbf) with afterburner each Performance Maximum speed: 2,228 km/h (1,468 mph) Maximum speed: Mach 2.00 Range: (internal fuel) 1,210 km (751 miles) Service ceiling: 17,800 m (58,400 ft) Rate of climb: 225 m/s (44,280 ft/min) Armament 1x internal 23 mm GSh-23 cannon, plus 2x R-27R1 or R-27T or 4x Vympel R-77 or 4x R-60M or R-73E AAM or 2x 500 kg (1,102 lbs) bombs More here. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

They're "over" goggle, designed for spectacle wearer. My concern is the kid didnt even look ac little Jazzed by the jump. Friggin hard to impress some kids. Indeed. Check out this one. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Thanks, Douglas. I appreciate your kind words but I can accept only partial credit for this victory of common sense and good governance. I am indeed proud of whatever small part I played in poop-canning that preposterous proposal, but there are many others who deserve as much or even more credit, starting with Dr. Lee and his compelling farewell letter commentary that contributed so much to this debate. Next on the list is Professor Kallend, and next after that I think probably belongs all the DZOs, S&TAs and wingsuiters who put their heads together and came up with a plan that has reduced wingsuit tail strikes from crisis-level frequency to essentially nil, all without the imposition of a single new rule, regulation or bureaucracy. Without their excellent and stunningly effective work, the outcome may have been different. And finally, great credit for the result goes to those on the board of directors who saw the big-picture consequences of a wingsuit instructional bureaucracy and acted accordingly. It was truly a community effort and we should all be proud that our community was able to sort through all the narrow-focus nonsense to process the big-picture pattern to arrive at an intelligent decision. One more thing, too: Thanks to you, Douglas, for your enormous contributions to the debate, and to the development and advancement of wingsuiting. First off, as Buzz said above, and I have mentioned in the past, you've created a great system at Elsinore and no one could go wrong by adopting it for their own DZs. Second, while your demand for a new advanced training bureaucracy was in fact preposterous, there is little if anything preposterous about your concerns over how wingsuit training is currently conducted and your goal to improve it. The bottom line is that "standardized training" is a great goal and it is the correct course of action, but you didn't actually propose standardized training: you demanded "bureaucratized training" and that, as the board rightly decided, was indeed preposterous. So please take this to the bank, my brother from another mother: You won this debate too. Due primarily to your relentless pursuit of better training standards and techniques, people at all levels and in every corner of sport parachuting are now not only much more aware of wingsuiting issues, they are giving much more thought to what the training should look like, and how it can fit into their DZs, and that is good for everybody. So good on ya, mate - and thank you. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

See what happens when you start thinking? Your concerns echo those I expressed repeatedly and which Dr. Lee outlined in a different way: Not only has nothing actually happened that requires a new BSR, all of the proposed (and thankfully poop-canned) wingsuit-related regulation would have fundamentally altered the way the entire USPA does its business with regard to training, ratings, group member requirements, reporting requirements, liability exposure, all of it. Yet none of the proponents of those preposterous proposals ever even thought about doing an "environmental impact assessment" to see how what they proposed would affect everything else. The big problem was tail strikes and unless there's great conspiracy to hide them, essentially none have occurred since the debate resulted in the three-second rule, the stickers by the door, and improved "social awareness" of the importance of following the three-second rule -- all without a single regulation, rule or requirement other than what a given drop zone decided was right for its business model. The same goes for the proposed wingsuit BSR: It's a solution in search of a problem that is unnecessary and serves only to complicate the lives of the DZOs and S&TAs who will be forced to keep track of yet another paper trail lest they expose themselves to greater liability by failing to do so. And of course, like any complex system, the more parts there are, the greater the odds that one of them will fail at any given time. So, basically, my best guesstimate is that a wingsuit BSR will exponentially increase your liability and general headaches while only incrementally improving safety -- and that math only adds up in cost-benefit analyses based on emotion and rhetoric, not facts and reality. And as I said in the Z-Hills double fatality thread on the Safety and Training Forum (post #129), instead of wasting discussion and BOD time on a counterproductive wingsuiting BSR, we should use that time to revisit the pack opening altitude BSR because it is obsolete for multiple reasons and probably should be raised to accommodate all the changes that have occurred in the skydiving environment since it was put in place. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Very astute of you, John, or should I say, thanks for reminding everyone of basic physics. Faster speed, longer stopping time. Period. Planes, trains, automobiles or parachutes. Story to illustrate: Guy is flying a Mig-21 doing supersonic threat scenarios against a Canadian aircraft carrier. After one run, he pulls up and hits 12,000 feet. Don't know his supersonic speed but 1500 f/s = 1000mph, so it takes him about 8 seconds to get that high. then (as the investigation discovered) something came loose on the wing (pylon, tank, can't remember) and increased the drag on one side, throwing the plane out of control. By the time the ship's radar dish rotated around, the MiG was off the screen. Found the wreckage, found the body, and found the parachute streamered but not open. Pilot was former Navy Top Gun instructor, thousands of hours of jet fighter time, hundreds of MiG-21 hours, and I can't remember the exact numbers, but we worked it out in terms of reaction time to the precipitating event in relation to the presumed speed and IIRC came up with a he-did-everything-right-and-fast ejection altitude of about 8,000 feet and he still hit the water before the parachute fully deployed. Yes, there is aircraft clearance, seat separation, etc, which adds to deployment time, but the bottom line is, he was going so fast that even 8,000 feet wasn't enough to get the reserve out and open before impact. This is a big deal to think about these days of freeflying were everyone's going so much faster, even at pull time, than the AAD firing altitude can comfortably accommodate. The same goes for RW, too; the suits are so much tighter that the actual freefall speeds are faster than they were back in the 1970s when jumpsuits were much bigger and baggier. And if the assumed scenario here - incapacitation on the student's part - holds true, then we have two guys going way faster than the AAD firing altitude could accommodate. Which brings us to raising the AAD firing altitude, which them bumps against the two-out problem --- which brings us to guess what: the obsolescence of USPA's 2,000 feet pack opening altitude BSR. As you remember, John, this BSR was created in the mid-1970s when most peeps were still jumping surplus rounds with and without sleeves, and a lot of them were pulling at 500-600 feet because the parachutes opened in 200 feet and they were all nuts anyway. So let's do the math: When this BSR was created, your parachute was completely open -- or not -- by 1,800 feet, and then you acted accordingly. If it was a total, you had 90 percent of your 2,000 feet left to take care of it. If it was a partial, you had 90 percent of your 2,000 feet left to take care of it. Granted, back then, you have more complex release systems so it took longer to do EPs, but still, you had that 1,800 feet or 90 percent of the 2,000 feet to observe, orient, decide and act. Fast forward to today: Many commonly used parachutes open in 400 to 700 feet, so suddenly you have to wait until you've used up 20-35 percent of you 2,000 feet before you even know what your next move is, yet IIRC correctly, USPA still has a "decision altitude" of 1,800 feet. So that's where we are today: Everyone's falling faster, and most of their parachutes are taking longer to open than they did when the 2,000-foot BSR was put in place -- but it's still in place and people don't think critically about the consequences of pulling at that altitude given these changes in the math and physics. And you know, back when that BSR was put in place, most skydives were from 7,500 to 10,500 feet, so the 2K was a reasonable compromise between opening altitude safety and cutting the skydive too short. Well, now almost everyone goes to 12,500 or higher, so they're all getting several more seconds of freefall time per jump, so, you know, I think maybe instead of having stupid discussions and wasting BOD time about wingsuit BSRs, that discussion and BOD time would be far far FAR better spent revisiting the pack opening altitude BSR and see if it's maybe time to raise those altitudes by 500 to 1000 feet. One final data point in support of that notion: When that BSR was put in place, there were almost no "resort" DZs; everything was kind of gnarly, and rough and tumble (literally) and when you were skydiving you never forgot that you were dancing on the edge of the envelope. Plus, you could only make a few jumps a day because the airplanes were so slow, so you thought more about each one and focused more on what you were doing. Now with all the resorts and high-tech electronics and cameras and cool gear and trust fund baby social scene, it's more like a big party at the amusement park, and now you can make 10 jumps a day easy at most places, all of which means when you have a problem, almost everyone is going to burn through a second or two or three of their "life saving time" shifting their mental gears from amusement park to dealing with the Reaper right in their faces. So the math doesn't add up any more, and even with ADDs (Anti-Darwin Devices) reducing the carnage significantly, we're still seeing a lot more body bags than we should be seeing. So thanks again for the reminder, John. Speed affects distance and if you change one, then you better understand its effect on the other. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Sorry, Wick: It's not a compromise: it's a clusterfink. USPA coach ratings are adjunct ratings to the basic instructor ratings. Coach ratings have nothing to do with training already experienced parachutists how to fly a wingsuit. And if you say the value of the rating is in the way it helps you teach -- and then turn around in the next paragraph and say "honestly it's not that hard," then it's a priori worthless anyway because learning how to help people learn is hard. As for the 200-wingsuit-jump requirement before teaching FFCs... I think that doesn't fly either. For example, I taught some "FFCs" back around 2000 when I had 20 or 30 wingsuit jumps, but at that time I also had 3,000 skydives and had trained 3,000+ static line, tandem and BASE students over 30+ years of jumping. Now compare that to someone who has the 200 wingsuit jumps but only a few hundred total jumps and no other instructor experience. Who's going to give the better FFC? Who would you rather learn from? There is no right or wrong answer to either question, of course, because of multiple other unlisted variables, but the bottom line is: Since there is no WSI rating on which to base requirements such as jump numbers and/or a USPA Coach rating, the whole "compromise" clusterfink is just plain silly. Congrats and kudos to the BOD for stoning the WSI. Hopefully, that turkey won't try to play phoenix and rise from the asses to plague us again, and a great way to help ensure that is to poop-can the silly compromise before it grows any feathers. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

This is very well stated and of course your basic premise is reflected in high-performance aircraft and automobile design too; there is pretty much one optimal shape to accomplish shared design goals so naturally things are going to look generally the same and it's pretty silly to say who copied who because everyone is copying God or the Goddess or Nature or at the very least applying Physics 101 in a similar way. And yes, the differences and distinctions lie in the details and combinations thereof, and that is where the real action is happening and I gotta tell you, all the jostling and tussling and smack talking inclusive, everybody out there who's going for it is contributing to the development of human flight on a scale undreamed of even a few decades ago - and I appreciate and applaud all of you for your work and drive and dedication. And competitive spirit. Really, wanting to build a better suit is the way everybody gets better, the way we all fly farther, faster, with more precision and reliability and durability and everything else. Sooooo, good on all of you out there designing them, building them, and/or flying them, and there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't think about how proud Carl and Patrick have to be as they look down, up or around at their heirs in the air -- and how pissed off they are that they aren't still around to play with all the new toys themselves. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Glad I posted, Lurch, or we wouldn't have heard the second chapter of your amazing adventure. More kudos and respect, man, starting with these key takeaways from your second chapter: "It wasn't futile. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into and I did it with a very methodical approach, starting with having already mastered wingsuits." This is the biggest one. Whereas you had "already mastered wingsuits" when you started the "hard stuff" experiments, the old birdmen were trying to do both at the same time. No wonder most of them died! "I did do my homework, read up on previous attempts. I even read Leo Valentin's accounts of his experiments in his own words. But I had a bunch of assets at my disposal which they did not. For starters, I was somewhere around 800-1100 wingsuit jumps already at the time, I think. Second, I snuck up on it, starting from a known controllability platform- The stock S-6. I'd done enough rodeos to know that I could control an object weighing more than I do, flopping around hanging from my shoulders while I'm upside down and I have all the drag. When I got good enough that I could recover an upside down and spinning rodeo who is still hanging onto my rig by flying under the passenger and picking her up on my back, I knew I could handle something the size of swim fins+fabric, and even if it seriously became violent or unstable I knew for a fact that it'd be rough but I'd be able to dominate it with my armwings and whatever tail surface I could apply." These three elements are big too: You did your homework, you started from a proven platform and, as you say, you snuck up on it, by testing your skillset with analagous control and planform-deviation challenges. All in all, a great addition to the annals of out-there experimentation, innovation and invention -- and I'll leave you with something Thomas Edison is reported to have said in the January 1921 issue of American Magazine about his efforts to make a viable incandescent lightbulb: "After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn't be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way." Rock on, Lurch. Can't wait to hear about your next invention adventure. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Congratulations on your survival and for the entertainment. However, if you'd done a bit of historical research, you woulda known better than to try it in the first place, as others before tried and mostly died pursuing similar solutions. Hard stuff does not work. That is why almost all of the early birdmen died; they used hard stuff to make their wings rigid because they thought that was the solution. No, they didn't have ram-air inflated airfoil wings, but the bottom line is the same: Hard stuff kills. Period. That is why what Patrick created, and what Jari and Robert first mass-produced, was so revolutionary: It dispensed with the hard stuff that killed and went with soft stuff that didn't. Thus do we now have this vibrant and growing community of birdmen and birdwomen flying in ways the pioneers probably never even imagined. And really, beyond the no-hard-stuff rule is the basic physics of human bodies versus avian bodies; just do some basic calculations about weight to muscle ratio, bone composition, and the size of the muscles that actually operate the wings in avian bodies compared to what you tried and the answer is pretty clear: No way, Jose. But kudos and respect to you for giving it a shot -- and even more for living through what a little basic research woulda told you was a definitely futile and probably fatal series of experiments. You gots monster eggs even if you were standing behind the door when they handed out some of the other stuff. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Sorry, Billy boy, you're wrong on both counts. First off, the "poll" is methodologically illegitimate no matter what its results so you sure won't hear from me that it's legit, or from any others who have challenged its fundamental legitimacy . Second, it is absolutely false on its face to contend that "most people who responded WOULD support it." THEY DO NOT! MOST people who responded either opposed it or had no opinion, so who is the one trying to play games with the numbers? Moreover, when the BOD votes on anything, a "yes" "majority" must beat both the "no" votes AND the abstentions, AKA "no opinion." As I have said repeatedly, the whole thing if fundamentally illegitimate and if you'd bother to consult even one professional polling outfit you'd know that as fact not just my opinion, but even if you accept it as legitimate, the only way to "win" is to ignore the "no opinion" votes which count as much as "yes" or "no" votes --- otherwise, why were they included in the "poll"? So please stop this nonsense, Bill. You're embarrassing yourself. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

No it didn't. It was a methodologically illegitimate, amateurishly executed attempt to obtain a desired result, which it did. Period. Full stop. Ask ANY credible pollster what the results of this "poll" mean and see what they say. Go ahead, Bill. Try that instead of pretending that these "results" are in any way shape or form legitimate or indicative of anything except the originator's bias and methodological ignorance. Are those crickets I hear chirping? LOL... 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Generally speaking, it's the legal consequences first. If the prevailing legal age of majority (read: ability to execute an enforceable waiver) in the US were, say, age 16, then most DZs in the US would be jumping kids at age 16 instead of 18. Ethically? Speaking only for myself, having fully raised 2 kids of my own, and being a retired teenager myself, I question whether 90% of kids under age 16 have sound enough judgment and emotional development to make a truly informed and intelligent decision on whether to undertake the particular risk of death inherent in all parachute jumping. (No, it's not the same as other higher-risk activities; it really is a special example entirely unto its own. Comparisons to other activities, including other aviation activities, utterly miss the point.) FWIW (which may be questionable), I feel pretty strongly about this. At some point, adults have to protect juveniles from the consequences of their own will; and failure to do so is wrongful, even abusive, neglect. So yeah, when I read/hear of 12 year old kids skydiving, I get pissed off; as far as I'm concerned, they're the unwitting victims of child abuse, well-intentioned though it may be. While I think you're generally right in everything you say here, there are exceptions to the rule, and as one young person told me when I wrote the attached "325" article, a lot of people don't give kids enough credit -- and give adults way too much! This view was reiterated in the "329" article by a DZO who said the 16-year-olds are better prepared to jump than the frat boys who decide to do it on a whim after a night of partying. That said, many of the posters here are firing close to but still not hitting the real target: What really counts is a jury's perception of skydiving's risks, compared to other risk activities - NOT the true risk comparisons. Mike Mullins (whose four sons all started jumping at 11 or 12) put it very eloquently in the "329" article, which I wrote for the final issue of SKYDIVING Magazine. Anyway, both articles are an interesting read if you're at all interested in the issues surrounding whether minors should or should not be able to jump in the US.... and then go here for a reality check on the subject. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It most emphatically did NOT win; the 2,686 "yes" votes were soundly beaten by the combined 3,342 "no" and "no opinion" votes -- the latter 1,289 of which carry as much weight in this ridiculously designed and fundamentally flawed "poll" as a "yes" or "no" vote. Ergo, if the new BOD does not summarily poopcan this methodologically illegitimate "poll," it must absolutely weight the "no opinion" vote equally with the "no" votes and the "yes" votes -- which means: THE MEMBERSHIP DOES NOT SUPPORT ACTION TO IMPOSE THIS ILL-ADVISED, POORLY THOUGHT-OUT INITIATIVE ON THE SPORT. PERIOD. Seriously, beyond being methodologically illegitimate and amateurishly executed, the results of this "poll" -- which would be invalid even if the "yes" vote actually won -- show clearly and emphatically that the USPA membership either actively opposes or is indifferent to the creation of a mindless rating system that increases liability across the whole sport, reduces the fun factor, and does absolutely nothing to address the principal issues facing wingsuit skydiving in the United States. Hopefully, the new BOD will exercise more common sense in aborting this defective baby than did its predecessor. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

The Coolidge Method is simpler: 1. On the ride to altitude, take a deep, slow breath, hold it, then exhale slowly through your nose. 2. Repeat until calm. 3. Throw the evidence out the door on jump run, then SKYDIVE! 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Jim Slocum by a mile IIRC. He was an experienced pilot and I think was one of the jump pilots at Coolidge when he closed 8th or later on jump number.... 7. He and his now-wife Val are both still active, so I'm sure they or someone closer to them can confirm or correct my recollection. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Ditto. One of the most amazing things was that at his wake/memorial at Perris, several of the attendees were people who had made one or only a few jumps, and Larry had been their instructor. None of them were active skydivers and some of them lived far away, and they came only to pay their respects to someone they universally considred to be the best and most memorable teacher any of them had had for any reason. Never before or since have I seen such a thing for a skydiving instructor. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

It's always been more about who has the money. If you don't have the money, you aren't likely to be able to afford to develop your skills to the point where you'd even get an invite. With the big way camps and smaller events that the organizers want you to have done, you can easily drop $5k just to get to the point of maybe being invited to spend a whole lot more. There's no way I could have afforded to do my only big way event (JFTC '02) out of pocket; I couldn't really afford the jumps and camps needed to earn my slot. It was only because I could raise the money to cover my slot that I even considered trying. You make a good point that should be taken in to account when looking at the total coast of doing a big-way. As you say, you spend money doing the camps to both develop your skills and establish your reputation with the organizers so they know what you can and connot do and thus whether to include you on the big-way to which a set of given camps leads. All that costs a lot too, so when you add it all up, your investment can easily reach or exceed $10,000 USD... before you get to the final dives. Then you add up vacation time used -- or time away from work, plus gear costs, special jumpsuit costs, divorce costs... Fortunately for my pocketbook, big-ways were never my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people who do them, and I have a lot of respect for the commitment, determination and stick-to-it-iveness they show in striving to achieve the end results that we all so much like to see. Besides, I know BASE jumpers with a higher per-jump $$$ burn rate than people who do big-ways like the P3 333-way. It's all a matter of what makes your ducky quack. I've also been on the organizing end of events, too, and with every person you add to the mix, your complication factor doubles and the associated headache factor triples, so it's pretty amazing that BJ, Tony D., Dan BC and the rest of the hard-core big-way organizers do it so long without being locked in padded rooms. (Hmmm. maybe THAT'S where they go when the jump day is over!) Anyway, best of luck to everyone on this one. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

I was there when Jake started jumping. He came to Longmont Altimate High (NOT Mile Hi!) with his then-19-year-old-son. His son wanted to make a jump and Jake came along to make sure he knew what his kid was getting into. His kid made one jump and that was the end of his jump career. Jake kept going... and going... and going. I made many jumps with Jake over the years and stayed several times at his Oak Creek "mansion."* As others have said, he was quite a character, and a good jumper even when he was getting on in years. Moreover, he was not only an accomplished stonemason and poet; he was an accomplished human being. 44 * Oak Creek is one of those classic, colorful old Colorado mountain towns. Its own residents characterize it chiefly in terms of this joke: Q: What's the definition of confusion? A: Father's Day in Oak Creek. SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

The same kind of moron s who voted for... wait, never mind. wrong forum. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

You couldn't tell that my post was not about FTL at all? So why would you assume that I was comparing anything to anything? Are you saying my preferences are bogus because I didn't compare them against FTL? Are you saying that any input is valid unless it it compared the FTL? Again...just a simple listing of some of my preferences for student training. But OK, I'll have it your way. I read the articles. I think FTL is robs the student of good learning opportunities and contributes much more to "dependency" than does radio assistance. The articles are not convincing and frankly, IMO, show some disregard for instilling confidence in students. About the only time FTL would be beneficial, IMO, is when the student is totally lost and cannot find a viable landing area. My preferences still stand. Fair enough. Thanks for your input. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Well, Robin...it doesn't matter what the articles say unless you are trying to assimilate me. Tumult? Defending? Well, no. You are reading into much more than what was said. Quite typical, I passed on my preferences..simple as that. You passed on your uninformed preferences that don't accurately reflect what FTL is about. You expressed preferences regarding something about which you know only what you assume and without bothering to see if any of your assumptions were invalid. This is SOP for many people on this website, but IIRC not for you, which is why I gave you a gentle what-for for not meeting your own almost-always reasonable and thoughtful standard. 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Ahhh, the tumult continues, this time by changing the subject to beat another straw man to death. Beat 'im, Dave! Whup 'im GOOD! Did I not just say in two posts immediately previous to this one that you can keep the radios as you employ FTL? Sorta kills your whole argument before y'all git started, don't it, bucko? Not to mention the fact that, when you're on the radio, you can't show nobody nuthin, kin y'all? Even though you say in that DOA post that show AND tell is superior to show-only or tell-only. So why not incorporate both instead of continuing the tumult? And then we come to your laughable contention that "If the idea had merit, and was 'the way', someone, somewhere, would have latched onto it and put it into use." I mean, doood, not only are you running out of ammo, y'all shooting yourself in the foot with what you have left, given that in post #32 above, you wrote: "FTL is not a bad idea, it's just as good of an idea as using a radio when you're talking about the first handful of times a student is alone under canopy. We use a version of FTL taught in the FJC, that being we tell students to look for (and follow) other canopies if they are having trouble finding the DZ." Maybe you ought to let the tumult subside for a while... it's getting so loud you apparently can't hear yourself think. XO 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."

Says the guy with the 80 jumps! I won't call him a twat, and I am sure Travis is a cool guy, but he is no Bill Cole nor does he measure up to any of the old timers that I have gotten to know in my short time in the sport. What does my jump numbers have to do with it? Im just saying, Travis (along with a handful of other noteables) literally revolutionized the sport of freestyle motocross the same way many names mentioned on this thread have revolutionized skydiving or BASE. I have to plead my ignorance with a lot of the names mentioned here, I got some homework to do, but to imply Travis' achievements in his field(s) dont mean as much to his sport as BC's do in his sport is just unfair. Your jump numbers have nothing to do with it. That whooshing you hear is the point of your comment going right on over Doug's punkin haid. . . . . I concur, BTW; Travis is a big-time extreme sportsman who briefly touched parachuting among his many other sporting exploits. Punkin haid, I like that. Nothing went wooshing by my "Punkin haid". I think that was the sound of your keyboard crying uncle from being so overworked. Probably more of whimper than a woosh! I wasn't the one who slighted the great Travis Pastrana, nor did I discount any of his NON skydiving exploits. I think they are awesome. That being said this was a thread about names of jumpers we should have heard of because of their skydiving exploits and contributions. And if you are going to compare apples to apples Travis contribution to the sport, although very heavily youtubed and promoted, doesn't compare to any of the other names I see on this list. Pssst... skr 44 SCR-6933 / SCS-3463 / D-5533 / BASE 44 / CCS-37 / 82d Airborne (Ret.) "The beginning of wisdom is to first call things by their right names."