ryan_turner

There are numerous people on this board who are both riggers and pilots, so I figure someone will know the answer to this. Is your rigging certificate and pilot certificate on two separate licenses? I have had my rigging certificate for several years and recently earned my private pilot certificate. I was expecting that I would end up with just one license with multiple listings. Instead I have the same certificate number on two separate ones. Anyone else have a different experience?

That is an interesting stance to take. Observers on planes that do not have seats is clearly a FAR violation. You think it should be up to the DZO to decide if he should follow the FARs? Do you feel the same way about airplane maintenance issues? Ryan Slow down, Sparky. I made the mistake of assuming people following this thread knew my stance when I made that post. If you look back, I'm the one that (in the original thread on "incidents") first mentioned that the incident appeared to violate FAR's. Any opinion I issue is predicated on following FAR's and - if the DZ is USPA - BSR's. However, there are legal observer rides too, ya know. When I say the decision should be the DZO's, I mean within existing laws. Now drink. Didn't mean for that last post to be as confrontational as it came out. I think we are both on the same page on this incident. Ryan

That is an interesting stance to take. Observers on planes that do not have seats is clearly a FAR violation. You think it should be up to the DZO to decide if he should follow the FARs? Do you feel the same way about airplane maintenance issues? Ryan

Many of the responses are from TMs who skydive fulltime. As a former part-timer, who only worked on the weekends, I have a slightly different perspective. I started doing tandems because i enjoyed working with students and I figured it would help reduce the cost of skydiving. At first, it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. I did 50/50 tandems and fun jumps. As the season went on, it became almost 100% tandems and the pace was so fast that I had minimal interaction with my students. Taking a break from tandems and getting in some fun jumps isn't easy to do when you know that if you come out of the rotation, then not all of the tandems will get jumped that day. Eventually it became a job that just happened to involve skydiving and all of the fun was gone. Tandems just don't pay enough if you aren't having any fun, so I stopped doing them.

> My concern is that making it into a job would change skydiving for me. It can be a problem. Work jumps completely changed my outlook on skydiving.

It will probably work. But I also think it is very bad idea. If it was me, I would not do it. Ryan

It really depends on what type of mistake it was. With one exception, I only repack my own rigs. But the one time I opened up someone elses rig to repack, the slinks were not tacked down. Something like that should be done, but I didn't feel the need to tell the person or try to track down the previous rigger. I just tacked them down and repacked the rig. If I had found tools in the pack job, that would be different.

You have to be a rigger or be directly supervised by a rigger to pack a parachute for someone else. Most dropzones violate this law. My home dropzone recently started requiring packers to log every packjob and list the supervising rigger. I have used packers at almost every dropzone I have been to and that is definately not the norm. I am lazy and I like to use packers, but I don't care if they are a rigger or not. I care how well they pack my parachute. It might be a violation of the law, but I would rather be safe than legal. Of course, both would be even better.

I don't have any stills of my canopy opening, but I do have some videos. Both are shown at 50% speed. Jedi 170: http://www.freefallphotography.com/video/Jedi_170_Opening.wmv Nitro 150: http://www.freefallphotography.com/video/Nitro_150_Opening.wmv

My first sewing project was a camera belly-mount. I used my mom's consumer sewing machine and then my dropzone's bar tack machine in a couple of the important places. It works really well, but in a couple weeks I will have a real sewing machine (Singer 241) and I plan on making version 2.

He isn't hesitant at all, but I am. I am a rigger, but I am also trying to get a more experienced rigger to look at it as well.

I am having problems trying to convince a friend of mine not to use an old FOX for BASE jumping and wanted to get some more experienced opinions. The canopy in question is a vented (but not valved) FOX 205. The general condition of the canopy makes me think it has about 250 jumps on it. I hanged it in order to inspect it and when I let it back down onto the ground, the canopy doesn't hold any air. When I do the same thing with my Troll (only 18 jumps on it), it holds air and I have to push the air out to put it back in my stash bag. A significant amount of air goes through the FOX when I try to blow through the material. Also, my friend wieghs about 150 without any gear. Am I being crazy when I try to convince him to not use this canopy?

I had a very similar reserve ride. No shit, there I was minding my own business when Kyle Grim wraped the lines of his canopy around me. Very similar to the canopy wrap in the movie Cutaway.

If he is jumping a 170 main, what size reserve does he have? Both my rigs have bigger reserves than mains, but that is definitely not the norm. I have found Brian Germain's downsizing chart to be useful. I haven't always followed it, but it does provide a good reality check that you are pushing past the recommended limits. http://www.bigairsportz.com/pdf/bas-sizingchart.pdf

Thanks. That was the information I was looking for.