fonz

RedBull> I always had my doubts about that cranky critter. What? You mean... you DIDN'T KNOW yet? Uhm, let's see. Oh dear, how do I explain it... Ah well. Just check out http://come.to/evilbert if you wish to discover the ugly truth about Bert. Alphons (don't say I didn't warn you)

BenW> Turn 180 from the centre of the formation and track like a beeeatch! The originator of this thread was talking about SOLO jumps. And so was I. Alphons

Snowflake> When you jump alone you should not track towards the DZ Snowflake> The reason being that your tracking back towards jumpers. Don't most DZs have a fixed direction in which they want you to track? My current DZ has and I know so does Perris. Alphons

Thanks to all of you guys for trying to help me out with this. If I understand it right, my turn was most likely caused by one (or more) of the following: 1) turbulence 2) not sitting straight in the harness, unevenly tightened legstraps or some other asymmetric thing I did 3) more input on one toggle than on the other 4) the canopy I jumped has a builtin turn In this case, I doubt it was reason 3 or 4. Another thing I learnt is to give more input if necessary. No radical yanking on the toggles of course, but try to find a position that keeps the canopy flying straight. Thanks, Alphons

billvon> there was a sudden something that caused a 90 degree turn Not sudden. Continuously. For clarity's sake, met me try to properly restate what happened. I turn onto final, in the direction which I know is into the wind. I know it's normal that one needs to make small corrections in order to keep going in the right direction. But, for some reason which I don't understand (which is why I'm asking) my canopy started turning in such a way that a "minor" course correction would not suffice. Even though I had both toggles all the way up, I started turning steadily (yet not radically). Of course I tried minor corrections through subtle toggle input, but that didn't help. The amount of input required to stop the turning was more than I was willing to give/dare/risk. Alphons

geoff> unless there's turbulence, The landing area is grass only. In fact, even the runway is grass. Wouldn't that make turbulence an unlikely event? > or a different wind speed hitting one end of the canopy to the other. Now what could cause such a thing to happen? Alphons

RemiAndKaren> use the harness: just shift your weight on the side you want to turn into. Now that's something I will try on my next jump. Thanks! Alphons

Fab> Hee Fonz Hi Fab! Fab> Is www.parachute.nl becoming to boring? There's definately more traffic here. And it helps me to keep an eye on what's happening at Perris. Besides, the people here are a lot more friendly than those over at www.parachute.nl Blue skies, Alphons

freeflir29> If they are not perfectly lined up on the wind line freeflir29> they will want to turn and run down wind. That might be the answer to my question. Thanks! I will try the front riser technique, but no sooner than I'm perfectly capable of making decent (i.e. stand-up) landings. I have only jumped the Sabre twice and so far I screwed up both landings. Not dangerously or something, but I just look bloody silly, tumbling across the grass.

sinister69> interested in building one at the Perris DZ Whee! I can't wait to get back to Perris... still stuck in Holland I'm afraid :-( I take it PVSS will be very happy with this (although on the other hand they will be making less money from level repeats *grin*). Soft landings, Alphons

Merrick> You could consider yourself very lucky.... During the walk-and-talk debrief: JM: Are you a religious person? Me: Nope. JM: Then you should become one! I had a sore shoulder and a bleeding lip (and a hurt ego), but no serious injuries whatsoever. But I do realize that things could have worked out much worse for me! Alphons

I am not an experienced jumper, but I can give you some pointers: DON'T start experimenting by yourself. Skysurfing is more difficult and dangerous than "conventional" skydiving. Seek out competent instruction/coaching. If you live in the CA region, go to Perris. They have a Skysurfing School there, with very experienced "teachers". You need to be completely comfortable in freefall. Sitting, standing, on your back, head down, everything. And of course you have to be able to perform "basic" aerobatic moves like layout loops and stuff. Skysurfing is truly 3-dimensional. I too want to take up skysurfing sometime. My plan is to first seek instruction in freestyle, then move on to freeflying and ultimately go to a skysurfing school. The best thing for you to do is probably just going to a skysurfing school or coach and ask. They will not accept you yet, but they should be able to tell you what to do before they will/can accept you. Good luck, Alphons

3fLiEr> did this happen on full drive after your turn? Yup. 3fLiEr> are you jumping an eliptical? Not exactly. A Sabre 170 loaded at approx. 1.0 I know that you might need to make minor course corrections on final, but this time I found it quite radical. Blue skies, Alphons

billvon> You flare, get a slight drift off to one side Actually, it happened way before the flare, only seconds after turning onto final. Sorry for the confusion, Alphons

> will also pull the same side toggle down slightly I'll definately make sure not to do that. Thanks! But ehm, in this case I'm pretty sure it wasn't the case. I'm positive that I had both toggles all the way up. I turned in excess of 90 degrees! Alphons

Hi, On my last jump, I turned into the wind for final, but as I went down, I caught a lot of sideways drift and ended up with a crosswind touchdown. Where do drifts like this come from? Blue skies, Alphons

riggerrob> Your stories remind me of some mistakes I made when I riggerrob> was a junior jumper. Here's one from me (Michele probably already heard about it; since it happened early july this year at Perris): I was doing my level VII AFF jump when I suddenly found myself on my back at pull time,which was 4,500 ft. Doing as I was tought, I pulled while still on my back ("at pull time you pull, regardless of body position"). However, I ended up giving the PC quite a short throw. This resulted in the PC and bag going up between my legs and I ended up being suspended upside down under the canopy, with both feet entangled between the risers. The latter caused the canopy to turn; other than that it looked fine. Because I had plenty of altitude, I tried to fix this situation before going for those two handles on my chest. Somehow I managed to "climb out" of the risers and bring it in for a stand-up landing :-) I did scare the hell out of my JM though... Blue skies, Alphons

Auch! That's gotta hurt... I agree I'd rather jump out of a plane as well. It's probably more animal-friendly as well, although that doesn't seem to bother this particular bull a lot :-)

Maybe, as a compromise, we could offer a choice between the top so-and-so-many (e.g. 3 or something) poll entries? Just had to throw in another two cents, Alphons

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to get rid of a cold? I can't jump because I caught one. So now I'm very annoyed and bored out of my skull :-( Alphons (I wanna jump, dammit)

Maybe it's just me, but ehm... What about everybody getting to have his/her/its own choice of quote on their shirts? It may be a bit of a hassle, administration-wise, but it doesn't look like we're ever gonna agree on which quote is best/funniest/est :-) Blue skies, Alphons

> interest in getting dropzone.com t-shirts. Sounds like a great idea. > a witty slogan I think "If you can read this, where the f*@# is my rig?" is a nice one. Blue shirts, Alphons

> I graduated from AFF Congratufrigginlations, dude! Blue skies, Alphons

> So where is your local drop zone? In the Netherlands: Texel In the U.S. the only DZ I've ever been to is Perris and I think it's just friggin' awesome. Alphons

The Airtrash homepage (www.airtrash.com) lists Tim Farnam's e-mail address as [email protected] Does anybody know if he actually reads that mail? The message I sent didn't bounce, but I'm not getting a reply either. In case you don't know: Tim is the badspotter dude with the curly mustache. Blue skies, Alphons