bob.dino

From memory, that's about the average in Australia. Incident stats are better (though not perfectly) collected here, and to get your sporting license renewed you have to supply the # of jumps and # of reserve rides in the last 12 months...

Total and utter shite. The whole point of a packer is "you pay your money, you take your chances."

Raeford is a great place to play in the tunnel. Let the instructor know that you'll be doing AFF in the spring and they'll tailor the training to that. You'll have a ball :-)

I'm hearing that Robbie McMillian (Australia, JVX) ended up in fourth. He's been going great over the last year... Go Aussies .

Bloody hell! I heard that Robbie frapped in as well? Is everyone trying to kill themselves?!

#8 is Darren Pearson from Australia.

It's up, with our very own moderator making the cut. Congrats Ian!

Out of an XL - which has a slightly tighter door than the Otter - we do the following: 1- Rear diver is the first of the door crew to get in position. 2- Get your shoulders past the edge of the door. Should be plenty of room out there - the two rear floaters don't have to be pressed right against the 'plane. 3- Get out below the center inside diver. Then the only way your exit can be screwed is if you go late, or leave your legs in the 'plane, which it looks like the jumper #10 is in danger of doing.

Doin' it old-school.

Nah. If that was the only way you flew, there'd be little point. Even if contorted at the back of a B (Stairstep-Diamond), you're still getting practice in: Seeing across the formation Being aware of the keys The moves to and from the point The rest of the points in the skydive Keeping your moves small ...plus other stuff I can't think of right now... It's not perfect, but it's still very very effective.

Bet you didn't do 19s in there . It's a great tunnel, though as a rear, I spent a lot of time against the glass. Being the solo flyer in a 2 is more an exercise in "fuck, where's the space" than anything else... ...it kinda helps to have Kirk running the place. Did you use him for coaching, or was it all the Fury crew?

TexAus, huh? You have the Aussies on your plane? Good luck . Who's playing?

If you don't want to wait.

Another review. Limitations: 5 minutes of continuous HD recording. No autofocus while recording.

Congrats mate.

Jumps 1-30: Student canopies: 240-300sq ft. Jumps 30-45: Airforce 220 (think PD F-111) Jumps 45-450: Spectre 190 @ 1.05 Jumps 450-850: Samurai 170 @ 1.2 Jumps 850-1100: Samurai 135 @ 1.5 I had no interest in swooping until I had about 400 jumps. Up until then I wasn't willing to accept the additional risk. By the time I got to 400 jumps, I think I'd a fairly decent grasp of how to fly my Spectre, and I was looking for something new. Attending Brian Germain's canopy course explained the hows and whys of canopy flight to me and demystified the process of becoming a swooper. Upon reflection I figured I could learn to swoop without taking inordinate risks to do so. Right now I really enjoy swooping, though I'm far from good at it. Maybe in a few years, if I jump regularly enough, I'll actually get decent. But for now, I'm having fun

Yes. If you're coming from Singapore, contact Skydive Express (York, outside Perth, WA, Australia). Cameron Rolfe and Matt Harris both run courses there regularly.

I'd replace the Outside Centre. That'd fix all your problems . More seriously, maybe you could spend a day or weekend where every jump has the same exit? Because you're keeping the exit point the same, everyone can focus on the other details - focus on eye contact between yourself and the IC the whole way through the exit and having everyone calm and relaxed. The key will naturally speed up because everyone's awareness increased. Then, when you bring the extra awareness back to the other exits, you'll find errors getting fixed more quickly and more accurately, allowing your keys to come faster. Just my opinion, but then I'm not all that much more experienced than you guys...

Standard Parcel Post from Australia to the USA (via Australia Post and USPS) takes about a week. FedEx/UPS take 3-4 days. The world is smaller than you think .

That looks wrong to me. Jay was given the Gold medal for distance last night .

Bullett, or if that's not available, Woodford Reserve is nice. Jim Beam is far too sweet for my tooth. Jack can be nice.

When I left today just after 11am, low cloud was slowing but not stopping progress. Competitors were getting out two or three to a pass. Jay Moledski unofficially broke the World Record in R2 of Speed - 2.56. Francisco Neri took out the end-of-course speed sensor and ensured a few folk needed rejumps. He may have done more than just knock the sensor over - apparently his arm was quite sore. There are a lot of PD orange/white/charcoal canopies here. Makes it bloody hard to figure out who's who! I'll be back there tomorrow & try and update some more. Thanks to Liam from Deepseed for the booze yesterday and the sore head today. Various PD people are blogging here.

Not entirely. Feet and knees together. If you flared much later you could have kissed your pelvis goodbye. It's hard to tell from the camera-work, but you seem to be making lots of small control inputs - turning, then needing to correct heading slightly. That's inefficient - it slows your canopy down, and means that others aren't so confident about where you're going to end up. How long is your canopy in full flight from your last input 'til you start your flare? Again, it's hard to tell, but for a straight-in approach, anything under 10s or so means that the canopy is still under the influence of your previous control inputs. As others have mentioned uneven flares. And again, feet and knees together. When you fuck up (and we all fuck up), having the feet and knees together will make a PLF easy and save your ankles/knees/femur/pelvis. Those two videos, while hardly providing conclusive evidence, suggest that you don't (yet) quite "get it". Hopefully you will, and fairly soon.

For me, that's the best answer so far.

Fuck you too Tailplane .