tdog

Actually.... I once asked Bill Booth for info on cutaways on the ground due to high winds. His comments confirmed what I assumed: If someone with a traditional RSL cuts away on the ground - the reserve PC and reserve freebag will plop out on the ground. The safety stows on the freebag will hold the canopy in... The worst case scenario is that the reserve gets damaged... The likelihood the wind catches the reserve PC and opens the reserve is very low, unless it is hurricane force winds... Yes, it will cost a packjob of the reserve. IF A STUDENT IS BEING DRUG - I honestly have debated, would I want the level 1 AFF student to be drug farther while they fumble the RSL - or just cutaway and deal with the reserve sitting on the ground in a bag? I have no clear answer, but I think the possible damage to the gear/human being drug across the ground could be much worse than the cost of a packjob... SKYHOOK CHANGES THIS: With a skyhook, the reserve will get to line stretch and the freebag and reserve PC will leave with the main canopy. The main canopy will keep pulling as long as the lines are loaded, then collapse to the ground once the lines are no longer loaded (the reason we run towards a canopy instead of pulling against it, on high wind days)... The skyhook will keep load on the canopy until it is fully released/fully complete on the cutaway. So now you have a reserve out of the bag at line stretch in a folded wad on the ground, or possibly in the sky, ready to catch air... Will the reserve inflate? Will the reserve slider come down? Will the reserve start to pull you across the ground? I think this is part luck of the draw, part how fast the winds are, etc... It would be ineresting to test this... Would it attempt to inflate much? So all that being said... Honestly in the FJC I keep the "disconnect the RSL" conversation to a minimum because the info is much less important that about 100 other things I think matter more for the very first jump, knowing no student can remember everything. Somewhere around the 3rd jump we start discussing the nitty gritty and details of the RSL... If the student had a skyhook equipped rig, I might consider increasing the RSL conversation priority... I don't fully know at this point...

For sure once - it was a female student who PLFed near the edge of the landing area in 12-14MPH winds and was being drug on the ground and could not get the canopy under control... maybe twice... I remember an AFF 7 where the winds went from 5 to 30 and he landed going backwards over a mile away from the landing area in a small pocket of a landing area... I think he cut away... But I do teach they should cut away if they are being drug across the ground. On days where we know the winds are higher, as they were a few weeks back, all day we had 10-12 winds, I quiz the students as we are waiting in the landing area what to do after landing in higher winds. It is something we talk about... If they had skyhooks on the rigs, I think I would consider adding a disconnect RSL (if you can) before cutting away in that conversation.

Depending on how much content is in the FJC you teach, with a skyhook, in the very unlikely chance a student is being drug on the ground, and they cut away, the RSL will cause the reserve to land in the bag on the ground. The skyhook will take it out of the bag and to full line stretch. So it is possible you might want to say, "if you are needing to cutaway your canopy on the ground, and you can, disconnect the RSL first..." I know this is the only consideration I have when I am jumping a skyhook rig.

Where I teach in Colorado we often have two turbines in the air at the same time. But my AFF students RARELY have any other traffic... We all are on the ground, sitting on the trailer, waiting for the students to land. You said the key word, "after receiving my license". AFF students open very large parachutes at 5,500 feet, licenced skydivers open smaller parachutes at 3,500 feet. So there is already separation, and the separation gets bigger as time goes on. We can drop 35 people in 5 minutes and the AFF students are never near funjumpers. Every once in a while some tandems, but the tandems know this and get the hell away - and the tandem landing area is on the other end of the landing area, maybe a thousand or so feet away. I agree with your post, a novice dealing with traffic is a concern, but the concern is most common around 25th-100th jump when the student's skills are starting to line up with other skydiver's skills in terms of canopy size and pull altitude, not AFF, and therefore, I would not make an AFF buying decision on that. To the OP post. Lodi is an interesting place. Some real good instructors work there. The place is fun, and the people are nice. But, the price of the jump tickets some people say is too good to be true, and therefore there is something fishy. The stories range from conspiracy theory to facts. Facts such as the FAA shutting down the entire fleet. Guesses if the facts the FAA cited were true, etc... There are tons of posts online arguing these facts like junior high school rumor mills. Lets not turn this thread into anything like that (again)... I would 100% trust Lodi's instructors (the ones I have known). The aircraft - that is the only real debate, and instead of rehashing it here, search other threads.

Do you have links to any clubs that have such a room? I was curious so I started googling different searches and did not find any hits other than in medical research.

Sounds like your student is not concentrating on the most important part of any skydive: Smiling and joking around and having fun! Telling a student to relax never works for me. But finding creative mind games to distract them is kind of fun for all involved. 2nd point... The simple rules never work with tough students. You have to get creative. A student who can't hold heading, but stays on their belly - sometimes needs to do turns back and forth to feel the turns - instead of doing the same failed jump of not turning over and over again. Perhaps your student needs a bit of a confidence booster. Maybe you exit a typical RW two way facing each other. After exit, you grip switch, he holds onto your arms and you guys just "feel a fun jump" while your hands are open to toss signals. He has to do nothing other than keep his head up at you and see your huge smile and huge thumbs up. Of course make him smile in freefall. Then do the same jump and after a few seconds, when the body position is dialed in, you let go but keep giving a huge thumbs up and smile... If he has any body position issues, make sure he understands hand signals, including some you might have to make just for him, so you can throw them. Things like "look here", "check your arms", "knees too wide". The most fun jumps as an instructor for me are the ones where the student needs a bit of creativity and you break thru their mind block...

See the difference is, when I go on an 8 hour+ long ride, the entire trip is in the mountains on curvey roads. The speed is not the issue, 75MPH is a good starting point (hehehe), it is the constant turning that causes soreness. (hehehe) Now, I did do the 405 from San Diego to LA on a saturday night once at 100MPH (following the speed of traffic for the most part), and when you get to a long straight away at those speeds in bumper to bumper traffic, you forget about your butt hurting...

I disagree. Sport bikes suck for 4+ hour rides for those reasons, but short hops around the city are fun on a sport bike. If you are the first bike at a stop light you get to hop to the next redlight with a bit of speed and fun. And city driving makes it hard to get 75MPH over the limit tickets you can get on the open highways. ;-) I had a CBR600F4 as my first bike. I think any of the 600 sport bikes are good choices for a first bike if someone has discipline with their wrist. Now I have an R1.

It is very rare that someone sells the container without a reserve, they seem to go as a set... But, the common practice with most skydiving components is that when it is sold used, you ship all the parts that came with it new... Slinks with the canopy... Risers, toggles, PCs, bridles, with the container... Batteries, cutters, and etc with AAD... Considering the reserve data card comes with the container, I see a lot of people leaving it with the container. You would think the manufactures would leave room on the serial number placard for SBs done to that component, so container SBs would be documented on the container and canopy SBs on the canopy, AAD SBs done on the AAD case... But, yes, I have had to many times start from scratch on gear because the packing data card was "lost"...

Pchapman, Not split... Yes, on the white line.

I wanted to share with the rigging community a rigging error I became aware of regarding the UPT Skyhook. Photos of a skyhook RSL lanyard are found on page 2:7 of this document: http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/PDF/Support/Manual/09109(skyhPackIns).pdf It is unknown, due to a missing packing data card, who assembled the rig, and who handled it - although indications are that it had 2 reserve packjobs by at least two different riggers. I don't have a skyhook open in front of me to take actual photos of the error so I will have to describe... The RSL lanyard as shown in the link above consists of black webbing with a red and white line attached to the lanyard. The red line, the skyhook attachment line, is larksheaded onto the RSL lanyard and can be removed, at least on the rig in question. I have assembled brand new UPT Vectors, and it is my recollection that this assembly is fully assembled by the factory when sent to the customer. In the incident in question, the larkshead on the skyhook red line was around the white line, not the black lanyard, presumably sitting near the black RSL so it would appear at first glance to be correctly placed. The rigger who completed the final I&R did not catch the mis-rigged lanyard. This was human error in failure to notice the incorrectly placed larkshead. The owner and rigger have been notified. Due to the rig being sold "brand new" to a 2nd hand buyer a few years ago, it is impossible to know if the factory or 1st owner made the assembly mistake. Result. The reserve ride was uneventful after line twists on the main causing a malfunction with a low reserve deployment due to the user's choice to try to fight the linetwists. But the larkshead on the skyhook slid down the reserve pin white line on RSL activation, and the only thing that kept the red line attached to the white line was the ring at the end of the reserve pin being fatter than the cinched down larkshead loop. If the red line would have fallen off, the skyhook would have been disabled and the user's low reserve deployment would have been lower as the PC would have had to pull the reserve. So long story short: 1) Riggers, inspect this connection point. I reviewed the manual at http://www.unitedparachutetechnologies.com/PDF/Support/Manual/09109(skyhPackIns).pdf, and while it has photos, it does not have specific steps in the instructions to inspect this assembly for assembly errors. In fact, it appears in the photo on page 2:7, even when zoomed into the point it is too choppy to view, that the red and white lanyards might be permanantly attached to the black lanyard with fingertrapped loops in the photo, while the middle photo on page 3:7 shows larksheads. The photo on 2:7 might imply that the assembly is permanantly assembled at the factory. If that is the case, as always, riggers never assume the factory has assembled anything correctly. 2) Skydivers, this is yet another reason why your harddeck should not be moved lower due to a safety system that can malfunction. 3) When you sell rigs used, send the packing data card... The rigger who missed the mistake on inspection was notified and took responsibility for the mistake in inspection - but the history of the rig is unknown so the rigger/factory who assembled it incorrectly will never be known.

I think you did the right thing, telling him your concerns. Only thing, when someone is on a plane and the choices are: 1) Jump as is, 2) Ride plane down, or 3) Leave the item on the plane and jump without it... Perhaps the instructor/mentor needs to finish the advice to the jumper about the pending jump considering when someone is on the plane they are committed to making a quick decision. "Hey look, I am not happy at all about that helmet, but what are you doing on this jump? Ok, you can minimize your risk on this jump by doing these things, and after this jump lets figure out a better way to bolt that on..."

Completely unfair comment. I was an AFFI on a jump with a student. We checked the AAD twice on the ground, once while walking to the aircraft. Said "0". On jumprun on our final check the AAD had a 4 digit error code... We rode the plane down. The DZO lost the revenue of three slots, and two instructors lost their pay too for that plane ride. If the jump would have been a typical skydiver, not a student, the jumper would have jumped because very few people check their AAD on jumprun after checking it on the ground. It was a Cypres brand AAD... No AAD is perfect. We all accept financial risk for owning technology.

I googled it, but it happened about 10 years ago, so I couldn't find it... But I remember it... I was driving a semi-truck loaded with lighting equipment for a concert in California, leaving the Colorado warehouse. We got stuck in a huge traffic jam on I-70 going up hill. I saw the road closed on the downhill side and a major accident. The radio said a truck lost control and hit two separate stopped motorists, a quarter mile apart, killing both, as it bounced from one guardrail to the other. A few weeks later I heard on the news the truckdriver was charged with manslaughter and had to serve time in jail for driving a truck with improperly maintained brakes. Why? His brakes had a failed component. Something buried inside the brake, not something the average driver would be able to see in a pre-trip inspection. He was driving a truck owned and maintained by someone else, and he was not assigned any maintenance duties, just driving. I told my boss - "I don't need this S&*^ anymore, hire a professional truck driver, my CDL hereby expires." Anyone who has driven a truck knows how absolutely unfair the state patrols can be in weigh stations etc. (I got a $2,000 fine for 'defacing' my medical card when it got wet and the ink ran from another business card next to it in my wallet, but was still 100% legible.) Googling looking for the incident - I found many other cases of truck drivers charged with manslaughter for incidents. So it is an interesting question my aviation incidents, as others have posted, don't get the attention of prosecutors, but truck drivers are thrown under the bus even when they are driving someone else's rig and have no warning signs of problems... Now that I told my story, be careful what you wish for. The truck story I just told is the opposite extreme... If all of a sudden the government decides to treat aviation like truck driving, skydiving instructors will soon be spending time in jail for Scott Lutz type incidents. Although I agree, it sounds like the Hinkley incident you posted about is a case where maybe someone deserved a little more punishment as a deterrent for others to not do the same.

Excellent comparison. It just so happens that you may not have enough experience with or didn't grow up with that tach knowing from day 1 that 1/4 way around was 4K rpm. I actually have 8,000 miles in 2 years on that bike. It just is that I never have cared to learn where the numbers are, I just care about % of redline and I like to shift at 10 o'clock on that bike... Whereas with the spedo I do care about the numbers because the speed limit changes around town and I need to stay within 40 or 50 mph of it. Well, I like to check my alti a few times while setting up my landing to help determine if my eyes are telling me a correct site picture. I jumped my old analog on Saturday when I loaned my digital to a visitor. I wanted to pull on a front riser at about 480 feet. I got to what I saw was about 480 and looked at my analog and it looked like 0. Half of the problem is that an analog simply does not have enough gradation between 2000 and 0 for precise reading, and the other part is that I think analogs (especially non-electronic versions) tend to be off slightly, not enough to care in freefall, enough to care under canopy. Actually I was going to write in the first post, then decided not to... On AFF-I jumps I really like digital. I try to give the student every chance they deserve and want to offer my "assistance at pull time" when needed, not before. On level 1 and 2 AFFs, I am looking at my alti a lot around pull time to make split second decisions on how best to help. In this case I am not concerned about 5251 vs 5250, but I am concerned about 5200 vs 5100. Ya sure, aff instructors can still be good instructors with analog, I just like digital a lot...

I believe your studies probably showed that the user has to be familiar with the instrument, especially analog, for it to be better... With analog you learn that "at 3 o'clock I pull, at 6 o'clock I track..." But until you learn what the needle means, it probably takes most people longer to process the numbers and convert them to a number. Today I was riding my motorcycle fast and I did a quick test on myself. In a blink of an eye I saw both the tach and spedo. The spedo is digital and I immediately knew my speed and how many MPH I was over the limit. The tach is analog. I immediately knew I was at about 1/4 of the way to redline... But I had no clue if it was at 4,000 or 8,000 RPM. I just knew it was 1/4 of the way... Skydivers with analog alti I think learn what altitudes look like. Skydivers with digital I think learn how to count down from 12K to 0, where you need to pull around 3.5... I like numeric countdowns to impact better than pictures of % of the way to impact, so I will always jump a digital. I also like the fact my fancy digital alti seems to know the difference between 500 and 0, where my fancy analog gives me much less precision under canopy. Without reading your studies, it is honestly hard to know if they apply to skydiving alti... I have seen studies that show scanning a large group of instruments is easier when they are analog (such as in an aircraft)... But they have to be well designed otherwise they can be confusing. But I think most people think of time in terms of digital numbers, considering digital stopwatches, clocks, cell phone clocks, etc are all in digital. In skydiving time = altitude, altitude = time.

Would you mind citing your sources and posting links to a sub-plethora of the complete plethora you claim? I have never seen any studies so I would like to read.

Don't be - the world of technology can get scary... Just a few weeks ago I was filling out a pay-by-internet form where the website asked me three questions from my credit report to identify me. Each question had 3 answers, multiple choice. Question 1 - what car do I have Question 2 - what bank is my mortgage with Question 3 - which professional credential do you hold? Sure enough the credit agencies have harvested this data...

I managed to find a rig that had the cutaway cable routed thru the reserve brake toggle instead of the collins lanyard. You are right, users screw this stuff up. However, it is equally sad that we let jumpers know this little about gear and get their A licence. Although I tend to agree with you - REPLACING instead of REINSTALLING any component should not be done without extra attention to the details...

4:59 - I remember that from my (civilian) rigging exam. "It's in such bad shape it appears the only way to straighten it out is with a pair of scissors." Except, mine was inside out too.

I know some casting directors... You need to know the show. The casting director's job is to make good TV, and find the people that will. If the show is about taking ordinary people and putting them in situations where they are to cry in fear and almost reject the challenge - then you need to be an ordinary guy. Don't mark skydiving. If the show is about taking the top 10% of all athletes and making them race, then you need to be an athlete. If the show is about making brownies in a kitchen, then you need to know how to cook. Before you fill out any forms or audition, put yourself in the casting director's shoes and make yourself desireable to them.

Buying your own rig- priceless! top Actually, not priceless. I ran some numbers in an excel spreadsheet years ago. I put in the new and used (depreciated) value of all the components, maintenance of the AAD, rigging services, linesets, etc. I came to roughly $5 a jump, assuming the skydiver is active and jumping a lot. Granted, there are so many variables this could be $3 or $70 a jump depending on how often the user jumps. But $5 seemed like a sweetspot. So, zhills being $23 means the average joe can save $18 a jump owning. Not quite priceless, but definitely worth it if you plan on jumping a lot.

I visited there on vacation a few years ago and had a lot of fun...

Try borrowing a friend's canopy, look for one of about the same size made by PD... I noticed whenever I borrowed a triathlon, it was hard to time right the landing. The two stage flare often did not work, instead I found you needed a "yank it for all you got" type flare... It just did not feel natural to the other canopies I have flown... In fact, I had a Pilot as my first canopy (same manufacture). We did not get along at all. I gained a reputation for not standing up the landings after having nothing but stand up landings on my paraglider and all the PD product canopies I rented as a student for my first 50 jumps. I got video and coaching, but still I hated it and never got where I wanted to be. In fact, coaching made it worse because the coaches were recommending a two stage flare (because they flew PD also and did not understand that canopy as well) and I found that canopy did not like a two stage flare. I purchased two PD products and sold the pilot and suddenly everything felt right again and my landings became fun again. I am not saying the aerodyne products suck, they just sucked for me and how I learned to land. You may find that your canopy is giving you a hard time, and if so, you will need extra coaching to overcome it - or you could trade your canopy for something that works better for you. The only way to know is to get some coaching and borrow other canopies.

As another side tidbit - I found that "practice touches" was often misunderstood/forgotten. So now I have the student teach me the signals in all review sessions. I find retention has gone up a great deal when they form the signals with their hands during review... You see their brain churn as they try to remember then it clicks.