Avion

When I was spending a lot of money at the tunnel, I found stretching helped and strength building exercises were un-necessary. Just being in tunnel for ten to twenty minutes once a week or so built up all those air muscles just fine. The stretches I found to be helpful were to hang from a bar while standing, lean in, and arch forward to stretch the upper back and shoulders. Quad stretches like runners do. Toe touchers and truck twisters to loosen the lower back. Aside from that the only relevant strength exercise that I found that might be useful is a total gym machine or clone which matches the toggle pull exactly.

Ha, I've heard that before, when taking a moment before jumping in the door of the skyvan to look gaze back at a few nervous AFF level one students with their instructors inching up to the door behind me.

Q: Why would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane? A: Well, at least jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is better than jumping out of a broken one. You don't need a parachute to skydive, you just need one to do it again.

I seems like you and the guy that was asking the same question about RW have discovered some thing in common. Accuracy and RW require work, and most everybody just wants to have fun. That being said, the year the Majik won the nationals six years ago or so, I watched them train in the tunnel in Orlando for hours. That precision 4-way impressed me as a rocking thing to do. And, anybody that can land with their heal on a disk that's smaller then quarter has achieved a phenomenal degree of skill. .

Oh well, let's just sooo ignore him then. By the looks of his profile it seems like he's only here to troll anyway.

Yeah, it's a pretty good camera. Definitely some buyer's satisfaction there. :)

And got a couple of good pictures. At maximum zoom I managed to catch an exit from the ground. The other is just your usual vidiographer coming in for a landing. :) The second one was too big to attach: http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=mu3zfxiyzdo

I remember the day well, It was a good day to jump. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1518634;page=unread#unread

That's what I was thinking too. I've been working on forward motion. That was the point of me going out unlinked. Evidently, I'm back sliding durning the time from exit to speed, because it's during that time that everybody magically speads out a few hundred feet as you watch it happen. Then I have to work the whole rest of the dive to get back to them. The same thing happens with the other guys. They just got tired of trying to dealing with it, that's why they decided to exit linked.

Good point, I know at least one guy lost track of me. After looking a Kallend's simulator again, I realized the second group, was a pair of little guys, like 5' 110lbs, and I was the lightest of our group at 165, the other three were like 175 to 200+. That means we probably fell a good margin faster than the other guys and were the first of the two groups to jump. Good stuff to think about. I learned more than I expected on this one. Thanks y'all.

I had them in sight the whole time, and as I said vertically I was level with them. They were about half way between being right next to me to being a dot in the distance. I was concerned that if I tracked off the jump run I would have ended up closer to one of them depending on how they tracked. So I tracked directly away from the center of the group, which happened to be up the jump run for me. Doing two ways if fine with me. I remember a 4 way sit fly incident at Zhills last year when one guy corked then came through the canopy of one of the lower guys. Just some buises in that case. I would rather be overly cautious then go the other way. Yep, stuff happens, that's exactly my motivation for pursuing the issues involved here.

From what I've seen load organizers are an exeption rather than the usual. That's why I've taken upon myself to be proactive about finding out who's doing what before and after me. Once in a while someone will actually seem put off by my asking what they're planing. I hear people talking about the 45 degree rule all the time. I've been to Dr. Kallends site and played with the simulator two years ago when I first started. I just summerized it to my own rule of thumb as a mimunium of ten seconds seperation and more when its windy. Seconds are cheap, everybody can afford to give a few extra. I just had another look the FF simulator, I can understand what going on with it a lot better now. Faster fallers after slower fallers for your regular into the wind jumprun. I almost want to take my pc to the DZ and type in the numbers for the day to get an extimate for seperation delay MarkM's exit order what the DZs I go to use.

For me the goal of the dive was to stay close to the group. The other three went out linked to help them stay together. I went out seperate to work on my ability to stay with them. which did end up being better than the previous jump. Vertically I stayed right with them, horizonally I got maybe 300-400' away. The load boarded without an organizer, as usual for the DZ. Ground winds were light to none, uppers were less than 10kts. Both groups were doing sit jumps. No belly flyers on that load, except some tandems last. The group I was with were DZ regulars, and the second group were weekend visters from somewhere else.

I like to get some feedback on a recent experience. I had a four way sit jump planed. We were the first group to jump. Before boarding, I checked with the 2 way group jumping after, and found out they were planning on opening at 3000', ~500' lower than my groups planed opening at 3500'. On the ride up, I mentioned this to the other guys I was with, and mentioned that we ought to let the 2 way go first. They ignored me. Then we jumped. The jump run was flying SW. Our freefall went well. At break off, I was already a good distance away from and on the SW side of the group. Then, I of course, duh, tracked futher SW. After opening I was under canopy about 3000' and before I even grabbed my toggles, I noticed the 2 way guys that jumped after us freefalling past me about 200' to the SW, and deploying about 500' lower. In my limited experiece this was prehaps the third or forth time I have had freefallers passing closer than I'm comfortable with. After we all landed I ask the 2way guys if they saw me wave off. They said yes and described how I waved off, so I tend to believe them. They also said that's why they took their dive a little lower, to give me some room. Then it came out that they only gave my group a six second delay before jumping. Apparently, I am the only one who is noticing a chain of avoidable mistakes that formed here. Basically with each mistake being commited by different people. 1) We knew they were planning to open lower than us, and jumped before them anyway. 2) We, or at least I, presumed they would give us a sufficient delay, at least 10 seconds, before jumping after us. 3) I tracked up the jump run. Looking back, there is one thing I should have done, and a few things I could have done: 1) Firstly and most importantly, I should have tracked off the jump run instead of on it. 2) I could have been more forceful in expressing my desire to let the 2 way go before us, or simply gone solo after them. 3) I could have checked with the 2 way about giving us a good delay. So, am I just being a paranoid ninny here? Should I just buck up and keep going with the flow? In the least case, I want to keep the presence of mind to always track off the jump run every time.

I bought one, then promtly lost it. I tended to lose my pull up cords after each use too. One of the PD guys in Deland heard my complaining about how my pullups dissapeared so quick, and gave me a handfull of them. That was last year, I have yet to lose one since.

Me, me, me! It will take me an hour to get to Orlando. Call me, I sent my number privately.

Heather got most of the drills. Some others include digging knees down to stop quick, and a varity of stability drills, one arm straigt forward with the other straigt down. I got to watch the airspeed and magic camps for hours and hours, and actually took notes on all the drills when I stated last year. The camps were too much for me to spend, but I was able to get in the tunnel and practice all the drills for hours. Sometimes I could get a rat in there too to practice docks with. I'll have to get up to the tunnel when your there sometime. Cheers

Good to heard the ballon jump was so fun. Where did you go, Kissimmee?

Good read. I like this idea of letting the two video guys work things out vertically, instead of introducing a fifth track. "Aber, ich wiess, das ich wiess nichts!"

When I first started last year, at pull time I would throw and maintain a relaxed arch. At times when the opening was harder than usual, my upper legs would flex up. I almost kneed myself in the chin a couple of times, and noticed that my leg straps had slipped down at little. Since then I have switched to arching hard at pull time, and have found that to smooth the whole the transition to vertical, and to make harder than openings less uncomfortable. The point is if a person is unconscious, or for some other reason completely relaxed, I can see how a they could possibly fall out of the harness during opening. I would think that a second point of attachment connecting the back of the legs straps to the middle of the container at the bottom would reduce this possibility.

I have found that maintaining a firm arch after pulling, make harder than usual openings more bearable. Cheers, BW

Maybe some day. I think I'll get another rig first though. Cheers, BW

The pilot controlled the assent, the way down went fairly as planned. The only draw back is that I had to keep it by the window, or it would lose contact with the satellites. This was the second jump I did with it. The first jump I was sitting under the wing of the Caravan, and the plot said we went to 27,000 . BW Hey, how's the tunnel going?

This wrist mount GPS reciever is pretty cool. Now I can plot my dives. BW

I have both. But my home phone is a VoIP phone, on which I get unlimited calls to USA, Canada, and Western Europe for under $25/mth. Cheers, BW