tvandijck

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Gear

  • Main Canopy Size
    139
  • Reserve Canopy Size
    160
  • AAD
    Cypres 2

Jump Profile

  • Home DZ
    Paraclub Flevo
  • License
    D
  • License Number
    30374
  • Licensing Organization
    USPA
  • Number of Jumps
    1600
  • Years in Sport
    8
  • First Choice Discipline
    Formation Skydiving
  • First Choice Discipline Jump Total
    900
  • Second Choice Discipline
    Wing Suit Flying
  • Second Choice Discipline Jump Total
    400

Ratings and Rigging

  • USPA Coach
    Yes
  1. Never had it either ;) but I'm willing to try this for science, shits and giggles... Sunday, anyone at Elsinore can come dock at me and pull my arm release ;) see what happens...
  2. Just a simple but awesome scrambles event, nothing new. The more people around the more fun it is though ;) It'll be targeted to those that are just starting to do 4-way, although obviously anyone is welcome, but we'll be drawing from the NSL A class divepool. (http://skyleague.com/pages/rules/) Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/135638963257414/
  3. I think this argument fails in the first part a little bit.. I don't think the added bureaucracy forces people to pay for instruction. An instructional rating is like any other rating with the USPA and comes at the cost of approx. 30,= to renew on a yearly bases. If you currently hold a 'coach' rating you already pay this, and hence having the extra "WSI" checkbox does not add any additional cost. If you do not hold a 'coach' rating, you should not be coaching in the first place. Secondary, if you are the coach, you make the price for teaching others, if you wish to teach others entirely for free, the rating does not change that in any way, and if you wish to ask 500USD per jump, then you are free to do so too.. I myself coach people merely for slot typically, and often I forget to ask even that, I don't feel I have to suddenly change my price if the rating becomes official. Sure getting the rating may be a bit of an investment depending on which "Examiner" you go to, but there again it is the examiner that sets the price, not USPA, and hence if I were to be an examiner at some point I'm free to continue offering my service for slot and continue to forget and ask about that. This is somewhat of a point I'm struggling with too, I'm not at all in favor of adding additional bureaucracy, however it seems that within the USPA as an organization there is no other way to standardize training methods but to make a rating for it. There simply is no other procedure for attaining standardization. And we as a community can't even agree on anything let alone a standard training method, so lets just say that "doing it ourselves" is not really a strong argument considering our past with doing things "ourselves". I've never seen a community with so much drama. So why standardize? well, in my opinion - if all coaches did teach the same material it becomes easier for those coaches to exchange experiences. - Furthermore each new wingsuiter can assume a certain level of quality, just like going to mcdonalds always gets you the same burger. (although admittedly that may be a poor example depending on whether you like mcdonalds or not). - if everyone teaches the same material we can fall back on that material by way of a checklist to assure you have covered everything. For some of you it may be so natural because you have taught to 100's of student, but for others like me that may not be the case. Having reference material is a good way to prevent missing something. I often refer back to the SIM and AFF manuals to refresh my mind before I take on a student. - Measuring is a big thing for me too, measuring someones performance is not objective without having something to measure with. Are you good to become a coach or not? - Accountability: We can be held accountable as a coach for the things we teach, and thus held against higher standards. All this said, we can start today with making plane loaders make that comment as you suggested, we can start today by having loader look for a sticker on your rig to prevent you from going onto the airplane without a DZ briefing. And we can start today by talking to each other constructively about our training methods and see if we can align them as we claim we're so good at ("we don't need bureaucracy because we can do it perfectly fine ourselves"), and then maybe the USPA doesn't have to step in at all... Ultimately the USPA is only stepping in because we've been acting like a bunch of little kids. It started with the brand wars, then the grid had and still has it's drama, the next thing we're going to have drama about competitions, all because we're too ego and want to be the first to propose something and get our 15 minute of fame... Anyway, I guess more puppy poop ;) I'll shut up now...
  4. this exactly, and so this email is a warning that that particular decision is imminent unless we take action as a community.
  5. I'm sorry, I was googling for the name of aircraft insurance etc, and ended up there, I might have made an error... however, this would be what I found otherwise: Air, Inc 8975 Vanns Tavern Rd Gainesville, GA 30506 678-947-1780 678-947-1781 fax So it appears you are right, and the two are entirely unrelated. I'm sorry...
  6. Well, those are the 11 that this company got claims for, so that does not include potential strikes at dropzones that insure their planes at other insurances, or potential strikes that no claim was filed for. So while the number sounds absurd, it may be just the tip of the so called iceberg.
  7. http://aviationinsurance.com/ also, can we cross-post this to the wingsuit forum, I'm sure we can have some brand wars and other general name calling and indecent behavior about this..
  8. There is two dropzones I know of that are close enough that you can easily get there by car.. Pitt Meadows, and Abbortsford. Both dropzones are OK. Not sure about the planes at Pitt Meadows this year, but they had a caravan and 2 Cessna's last year. Abbortsford has a pretty darn fast Porter flying most loads. That said, while Pitt is a very fun dropzone, if the caravan isn't flying, and they only have the cessna's, then due to the amount of tandems they turn, the wait times between loads can be pretty substantial in my experience. I never really took issue with that, but this is not the same for everyone. I'd call ahead to Pitt and ask what they have flying that day, and based on that take the 45min drive to Pitt, or the hour and 15 min to Abbortford. Pitt is doable with public transport as well, but that is quite the undertaking..
  9. It's actually really bumpy. Actually, that entirely depends on your point of view. If the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, it would actually be smoother than one. According to the World Pool-Billiard Association, a pool ball is 2.25 inches in diameter, and has a tolerance of +/- 0.005 inches. The ratio of the size of an allowable bump to the size of the ball is 0.005 / 2.25 = about 0.0022. The Earth has a diameter of about 12,735 kilometers. Earth would be an acceptable pool ball if it had no mountains or trenches more than 12,735 km x 0.00222 = about 28 km in size. The highest point on Earth is the top of Mt. Everest, at 8.85 km. The deepest point on Earth is the Marianas Trench, at about 11 km deep. Which is clearly within tolerance. I still wouldn't want to climb Mt. Everest though ;) it's really bumpy ;)
  10. Guys... Please... No pissing contests... Let's try and keep this constructive... It's really quite embarrasing to be part of a community where the same set of people are always screwing up a perfectly fine thread... From my perspective I can't say what happened with the devices. What I witnessed however, is that out of 34 units that where available there were only few jumps that actually got any data. We let people jump with the same unit for the first three jumps, after which they were turned in, data downloaded for judging. At this point we started seeing that virtually every unit had one or two jumps missing or corrupted. From that moment we had people randomly swap units, jump with two units etc etc to try and give them the best chance of getting valid data. Some people made 7-8 jumps that day and still only got 2-3 valid data sets. How do you get 34 units with the same symptoms? I for one do not beleive that 34 units could all break at the same time, and I'm more inclined to beleive this was due to external factors. That said, we jumped on the 5th, and the coastguard thing was not scheduled until the 7th. Its close but not conclusive proof. Also it was really ff'ing cold that day, which I though could have been a factor, but I been driving it around here in Vancouver and it's working fine so far. Anyway, all in all it sucked balls, but it hardly seems worth it to derail this thread with off topic and pointless ranting towards each other. So while I'm no moderator here i would suggest that unless you have something of value to add, you stay out of this thread. Oh and LouDiamond, I'd love to hear your ideas, but I actually do not have you phone number.. PM me if you wish to discuss, or post it here if you can/want.
  11. After doing a Radius measurement from China Lake to Lake Elsinore... it is only 23 NM outside of the testing range. This is very possibly that this was the cause of all the signal conflicts over the weekend. So far the most plausible explanation, although we were competing on the 5th of november.. Any way we can contact these guys and get them to confirm they were testing last weekend?
  12. No, but at USPA Nationals you get a rejump if the error was not something you caused.. And in RW there need to be at least a certain number of valid rounds by all teams to call the competition, and indeed if these minimum requirement are not met, there simply is no winner, but I don't beleive this ever happened.
  13. Murphies first law says, if it can break, it will... Indeed, we were all using FlySight devices, so maybe something is wrong there, who knows, I for sure am running tests to figure things out a bit, and in the process I'm writing a competition specific firmware to fix a few of the problems I saw myself... In addition to there being 30 satellites, they are also not geostationary, and move along the sky pretty quickly, in about 12 minutes they move from horizon to horizon I believe so over the course of the day we should have had visibility on all of them at one point. The problems with the flysight not recording, or getting spiky data must have been some other condition. signal jamming or weather conditions. Fact is, almost all units out of the 34 we had, had these issues. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ConstellationGPS.gif Not entirely accurate.. scoring in all other disciplines relies on camera and camera footage alone, a technology that has been around since the early 1900's. While it is technology for sure, I wouldn't really call it sophisticated, but even there camera people jump with two cameras most of the time because things go wrong sometimes... Thing is here though, these cameras are not from the USPA so if you have a camera bust of any kind it wasn't the USPA that did anything wrong, hence the 0 points. In this event, to prevent cheating etc the flysights where provided by the organization, and hence giving a 0 for no data or inaccurate data is a little harsh in my opinion.. heck yes, and a lot of fun too... thank you for the write up, great stuff, and thanks to the organizers for setting up the event...