JPWoerner

There used to be one of those police radar detectors that showed you your speed on the road that my dz was off of a while back and after a fun night at the dz... Let's just say the next morning, it was out by the swoop pond!!! Haha

4:47 into the video... Would've been great if he actually swooped his reserve! That would be true dedication to a competition!!! (I know how stupid that is... so don't even bother commenting!)

I don't know if anyone else has already said this, b/c I don't feel like reading ALL the replies, but there are very few people, if any, who will say they have "Mastered" any of the above... That's one of the things with skydiving that I think is a big motivational factor to everyone is that there's always something to learn and to improve on!!!

Tomcat, as stated in the above few replies, I would suggest NOT buying new gear. You should wait a few hundred/thousand jumps because in those next few hundred jumps, you will most likely be downsizing faster than you may think!! Stick with used gear until you have fine tuned the type of freefall you want to do(freeflying, crw, flatflying......) and the size canopy you will be comfortable flying for at least 3-600+ jumps... THEN, if you really want, buy new. Buying new at this point in your career in my opinion is just a very unwise decision, b/c it's such a short term investment.

Sorry to inform you, new USPA rules state that you have to start all over again. You have to go through your tandems, ground school, aff... Sucks for you.

There's a difference between a pond and a "Lake"... They should get a canoe for swoopers that don't make it out of the middle!!! (even though it's probably only 1-2 feet deep)

I put this quote I came up with in my 8th grade year book: "The more you know, the more you know you need to know more."

I'm not around my dz enough this time of year to really know any of the insides of jet fuel prices.. I know jet fuel prices usually go down after regular gas prices go down. A lot of DZ's jump ticket prices have gone up since gas started going up... Here's the thing: GAS PRICES HAVE GONE BACK DOWN! JUMP TICKETS ARE STILL $4-$5 MORE/TICKET! I absolutely love this sport, but can't keep going at the pace I like if ticket prices don't go back down. Talkin 4 jumps for $100(now) vs. 5 jumps for $100(old)... When you like doing 20+ jumps/week, it adds up. Is this 1) greed by the dz's for not lowering their jump ticket prices? or 2) jet fuel prices have not dropped yet? or 3) other?

guess I should make an attempt at forming a team... Considering Feb 1 is my birthday and I will be there!!!

Cute blonde having a hard time finding someone to jump with?! As I'm sure previous replies have stated, go to a different dropzone. It's a shame that there are people out there that think they are skygods, but shit happens and they will regret it one day. Whatever you do, don't throw in the towel!! The more cute blondes we have in our sport, the better! I'm sorry that was your first impression upon joining this sport, but that is not how every dropzone is. I started to realize(after visiting a couple other dropzones) how fortunate I was to start skydiving at my home dropzone(CrossKeys). When I started skydiving, I never really had a problem finding anyone to jump with and I still don't have a problem(only problem I do have now is price of jump tickets). There is always someone (or a group of people) willing to jump with new jumpers there. And again, whatever you do, don't throw in the towel because the people you will meet in this sport WILL BE the coolest and best group of people you will ever meet in your life! I consider the people at my dropzone to be my second family. I saw you mentioned you were fairly close to Chicago, so jump there. I have never jumped there, but have jumped their planes and with other jumpers from there and they seem like a pretty cool crowd! If you ever plan on heading to Crosskeys, I'll jump with you! Hope this helps.

In my opinion, deciding on a jump suit is like buying a car tailered for you. If you like off-roading, you get a 4x4. I suggest waiting for just a little while longer until you HAVE your A and know what you will be pursuing in this sport. If you think you will be interested in freeflying, then you should wait until you can freefly and then get a suit based on how fast your freefly fall rate is. If you are into RW and want to stick with that, get an RW suit now... They're all pretty tight anyway. I personally have 2 jumpsuits, one freefly, and one flat-fly. I have jumped my flat-fly suit about 15+- times and my FF 4XX++ times... But that's what I like to do. I have a FreakFly FF suit, which I got after 100+ jumps. My first jumpsuit I got off ebay for $50 and took a while to realize it was too baggy for me, so after the experience I acquired, I went and got a suit measured and custom made to tailer to what I love most in this sport. Hope this helps.

I have never had a problem using a rig as a carry-on. One piece of advise: There's a wallet sized card that comes with the cypress of what a rig should look like through the scanners with a cypress installed. This should help in preventing them from tearing your rig apart in case of suspiscion. As for "weight requirement", I have taken several commercial flights and not once had one of my carry-on's weighed. So don't know where that came from. My second piece of advise is: as soon as the "fasten seatbelt" sign shuts off, stand up, get your rig, start putting it on, and watch people's faces light up!!! Some in-flight entertainment for yourself!!

I didn't read all the other replies to this question, b/c I'm lazy, but I just got my life insurance a few months ago. I had the whole interview thing over the phone. I told them how many skydives I had(~300 at the time) and how many I was planning on doing in the next year(I said 90, so far 4 months later, I've done over 120)... They also asked all the safety equipment I had... All in all, they didn't even take skydiving into consideration when determining my life insurance, b/c I guess I convinced them skydiving was safer then driving a car! Prudential Life Insurance. Good luck buddy and congratulations on you new son!!! Put him in the tunnel in a couple years!!!

Just in case anyone reads this post, I posted it and have had an HC-40 for a few months now and LOVE IT!!!! I love how I don't need a docking station for it and it's just great!! I use a Cookie Composites 0.45 lens with it. Love it and don't even want anything else!!! Thank you all for your advise and help.

Hit it on the nose! Guess that's why I haven't had a girlfriend for the 3 years I've been in the sport(that and I can't afford one anymore b/c all my $$$ goes into jumping)