CygnusX-1

If it is a nicer hotel then, I would suggest you put it into their "lock-up". Not sure what the right terminology is for it, but usually they have a room where you can put stuff and you get a ticket for said item and the hotel is then responsible for the item. Talk to the concierge. If you were planning on jumping on Wed, then I would really find out what your company policy is. I know with my company, if I was jumping at the start of a trip and got injured such that I couldn't attend the meeting, I would not have a job when I got home. I know these things, because I debated doing exactly what you are doing on one of my business trips. But after finding out the company policies, I determined it just was not worth it. I did stop by the DZ, though.

First, if it were me, I'd take my own gear. But here are a few points to think about. 1) You only have 3 jumps on your gear right now. So in reality you don't know your gear that well, imo. So going from that to rental gear isn't that big of a difference. 2) What are you going to do with your gear while you are on business? Are you going to leave it in a hotel room? Are you going to lock it in your rental car? Are you going to take it with you to your business meetings? 3) How long is this business trip? Is is possible to jump more or less days? You say you could jump 2 days. Could that possibly become no days due to business and/or weather? Could it become 4 days due to the right conditions? The main points I'm trying to make here are is it worth the risk and/or hassle of taking your own gear vs renting gear. How would you feel if your gear was stolen (from your car or hotel) while you were doing business stuff? I would look at renting gear as more of insurance against something bad happening to your own gear while you are on business. But only you can make that decision for yourself. Like I said, if it were me, I'd take my own gear. [edit to add:] Oh ya, forgot one thing. How would your company feel if you got injured while jumping on a business trip? Some may look at that as an unnecessary risk and if you miss your flight back, you may have to find (pay) your own way back and/or any other expenses along the way.

I would guess it means 17:00 to 22:00 - i.e. 5 o'clock to 10 o'clock. But IDK, I'm as confused as you are.

Go to Deland tomorrow (this weekend, e.g. Saturday). Ask for Martin Sutton. He is organizing jumps for low timers/bigway kind of stuff. Dirt dive is at 9 AM. That is, of course, if your profile is not correct and you are actually off of student status. Edit to add: oops. Today's not Friday.

I totally disagree. My canopy opens by itself. I do nothing to take the canopy out of the D-bag and unflake it and get it into the air to fly. The slider comes down the lines by itself. Well that and the opening canopy. My visual altimeter displays the altitude by itself. My audible altimeter gives me warning sounds by itself. After I press the record button on my camera, it continues to record the skydive by itself. My helmet stays on my head by itself. My rig stays on my back by itself. (I don't physically have to hold either of these on during a skydive.) etc... [end of sarcasm]

Ground-to-Ground I like my hearing so I never take my ear plugs out during any part of the dive.

Jumper = static line or short delay. Skydiver = going to terminal, can control your movements, know what you're doing, etc.

So given a worst case situation of this being a 0.9% increase which equals $1000. Hmm that would mean you pay a state income tax of $111,111 per year? Boy, I wish I had your problems. (In case it's not clear - How much do you make to have to pay $100,000 in taxes per year?)

Next to a building engulfed in flames? With all that turbulence do to the fire? In close proximity to other buildings? From 35 floors up? And possibly at night. With no prior training or experience? Keep in mind that the only time he is going to use this is when it is unsafe to walk down the stairs - assuming due to fire. IDK, but I would think a more prudent use of money would be to purchase a fire retardant suit and a O2 bottle and try and walk down the stairs.

Something else to consider then is to take the whole family to Skyventure. Buy a package to do the "tourist" thing there where everyone will get time in the tunnel. I don't know how old your kids are, but I think if they are potty trained, then SVO will take them in the tunnel. It would be a nice way to show your family what it is like and why you enjoy skydiving in a relatively safe manner. Make it more of a family activity that each of you can enjoy. Not that you are just dragging the family along so that you can play in the tunnel.

1) I'm not an instructor or doctor so I obviously know what I'm talking about and am qualified to give advice. 2) Tunnel - try here: http://www.skyventureorlando.com/ (I'm assuming Leesburg is FL.) 3) Practicing on the floor with someone giving you hand signals will do nothing to help you with TLOs later in the AFF progression. Tunnel will help. The floor will not. 4) Does anyone else see a problem with this: Skydiving is not something to take lightly. You WILL have a hard opening sometime. You WILL have a bad landing sometime. Not necessarily enough to break things, but they all won't be soft stand-up landings. Are you sure skydiving is something you want to start doing? Sorry if I'm raining on your parade. But to me, skydiving is not meant for everybody. Just keep in mind, I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I know what I'm talking about.

Unless "you" live in the US and don't have insurance. Then "they" (we) will pay your hospital bills. Wheee - speaker's corner here we come.....

Ok, I know that doubles tennis is not really the same thing. But it was the only thing I could think of to make my point. That is true. But you can expect that the pro will be there to take his grip. But it is not just randoms I'm talking about. I typically fly inside center. If the pro is flying tail, a lot of the AA blocks are "driven" by the tail. I can count on a pro to overcome some of my lack of flying skill to make the block happen smoother. That is completely different then having someone who is at my same skill level in the tail position. And that is precisely where my complaint comes from.

"When can you call yourself a skydiver?"

Player-Coach is the best way to get better, fast. I think it's an excellent thing to have. True, that is a great way to train. But I personally don't think you should compete in that formation. Maybe its just me, but I don't really want to be in a plane with me and 3 other weekend warriors and look over and see another team that I'm competing against have Thomas Hughes as one of their members. You are going to tell me that that is fair? It's like entering a (non-professional) doubles tennis competition and you look across the net to your opponents and see somebody and Serena Williams...

Ok, I'm back. Attached is the original write-up I submitted... One of my favorite things about skydiving is the canopy ride down. When I first started to skydive, the one thing that kept me coming back to the DZ was not the freefall portion of AFF but the ride under canopy from 5000 feet to the ground. In those early days, it seemed to me that when the parachute opened correctly I was going to live to make another jump. The most dangerous part of the skydive was over. It was time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the scenery. Ah, as Cypher said in The Matrix, “Ignorance is bliss.” It was because of this love of the canopy, that I have chosen a route different than what seems to be too common these days. That being a rush to downsize and get under the smallest, most highly loaded canopy possible. I do understand the draw that downsizing quickly has to most people. Who wouldn’t want to go faster “naturally” under canopy? You can make it back to the DZ when winds are higher. More speed mean more lift. More lift means a better flare. “Hey look what I can do and I didn’t even have to induce a high performance landing to achieve it”. But you know something; I’ve noticed something else about those on small canopies. They are usually the first ones down on a load. Their landing sequence seems to be: break off, pull, flight straight to their setup point, initiate a turn, and land. Meanwhile I’m still up at 2000 feet. Flying back and forth, enjoying the scenery and sometimes looking for thermals to extend the ride as if I’m soaring like an eagle. When it came time to get a new canopy that I would have for a long time, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had this dream since I started to skydive. But I had never seen it done. I had seen the typical logos that PD and other manufacturers had done. I had even seen some designs of other images placed on canopies. But has anyone ever placed an actual photo silk-screened on the bottom skin of the parachute? I was sure it could be done. After all, you can walk into any good specialty T-shirt store and come out with your face printed on a new shirt if you so desire. Hell, I’ve even seen them print a photo in icing on a birthday cake! There has got to be a way to get a photo on a parachute. I took my idea to a couple of local dealers to see what they thought. Did they believe it could be done? Unfortunately, the responses I received were less then desirable. About this time my reserve was due for it’s inspection and repack so I took my Racer 2K3 into Jump Shack for its I&R. Nancy LaRiviere asked how I was doing and I told her that I was looking at buying a new Stiletto and of my idea of putting a photo of a bald eagle in flight on the bottom skin. Even though Jump Shack makes their own canopies, she said she thought she could do that for me. Jump Shack, a PD Dealer? Who’d da thunk it? As it turns out Jump Shack is one of PD’s original Dealers. Nancy said, “We can do it with a dye-sublimate print on a very lightweight fabric – much like the data and logo labels we put on canopies and containers.” Basically she took my high resolution art work and overlaid it on a diagram of the Stiletto, copied the Photoshop document 7 times and cropped each file to match each particular bottom skin with a little extra for seam allowance. Easier said than done! She obtained fabric samples from several vendors to find just the right weight and opacity so as to keep bulk to a minimum, but still get good color saturation. A few small-scale printed samples went back and forth between Jump Shack and the company Nancy finally settled on to actually print the eagle image. I could not have dreamed of the ordeal it has been to get this project completed. Since this technique has not been done before, the process was just ripe for delays. I told Nancy at the beginning that it was more important to come out right verses getting it done quickly. As time went on, I began to question the logic in that statement. Days turned into weeks; weeks into months. Although progress was being made, it just seemed like nothing was happening. Then the questions in my mind started to happen, Gollum style. Do I really need to get this done? Yes, precious, remember all the time you spent looking for the perfect photo. I don’t really need a canopy that looks like I’m suspended from just a bald eagle, do I? Oh yes you do. How else are you going to set yourself apart from everyone else? Yes, but if I just get a used Stiletto I could save all of this money and then later on get a newer style canopy. No, no, NO! The Stiletto has a flat glide angle. It’s the perfect PD canopy for this type of design. It’s the right canopy for the type of skydiving you want to do anyway. Now kill those nasty hobbits and take the ring for ourselves. While dementia was setting in on me, Nancy was coordinating efforts with PD sales, engineering and production. PD’s “Rags” Raghanti was instrumental in making sure the segmented eagle was perfectly aligned on the canopy’s bottom skins. Rags also had the critical job of holding a cold cloth to the head of the lady at who actually cut the eagle free from its’ background and sewed it down. She was understandably nervous, as each of the 7 panels was worth about $150. Happily there were no slips with the hot knife and she did a masterful job. Well, it has taken just over a year to produce. Overall I’m very happy with the outcome. I wish to thank Nancy LaRiviere for having the vision and being able to turn my dream into reality. I would also like to thank Kim Pothuisje for, um – she knows what she did for me. I don’t want to stir up any issues by publicly stating what she did. But without Kim, this canopy would not have been made. And finally, I want to thank Norman Kent for taking the wonderful photos of me under my new canopy.

Thanks for the nice words about my canopy.

In case anyone would like to see a better photo I've attached it. I was hoping to get a better placement then what I got. My copy of parachutist looks like the photo was darkened. Maybe it is just because the image was shrunk so small. The photo printed does not do my canopy justice. All photos thanks to Norman Kent.

10) Listen to your instructors. 11) Do not listen to anything/anyone on-line.

I've seen that go horribly wrong. Something you don't think about, but here is the situation: We were on an 8-way (or something like that) with 1 low time jumper. They wanted to pull slightly higher then the rest of us so the plan was to have them wave off to let us know they were leaving at their brake-off alt., track and pull. At their brake off altitude they were low from the rest of the formation (only about 5-10 feet). They turned, tracked away but because they were new, their tracking sucked and they only tracked for about 10 feet. Then they deployed from below the formation (10-15 feet out). Ok, I know it is not the exact same thing as having the newbe deploy from the center as everyone else tracks away. But it is the same idea. It was quite an experience to see the canopy come out of the bag and inflate and watch them fly right past me that close.

To make this post way more interesting than just an ordinary one asking a question.

Sure go here: www.jumpshack.com That's where I got my nice shiny red and black low profile D ring emergency handles.

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+1 Family orientated DZs are on my "Dropzones to avoid" list.

Yea, I'm in a song for the first time! I, of course, will require my standard royalty of free back stage passes to any concert you have in Florida. Too bad I'm at work and can't listen to it here.