brettski74

Think of it this way. If you're in an Otter doing 90mph into a 90mph headwind, the Otter is standing still relative to the ground. Assuming that everyone falls straight at the same fall rate and that the winds are not changing with time, every person jumping out of that plane will be following the exact same trajectory through the air. If they deploy at the same altitude, they'll be deploying at the same point in the sky, relative to the ground. This is the extreme case, of course, but hopefully helps illustrate the point. In reality, people will also have different fall rates, so their trajectories will be slightly different, but not by much and it's also not something I'd want to rely to givce me separation at opening. By the same principle, if the uppers were 45mph, then your separation at opening will be half what it would be in a 0mph upper if your jump plane's airspeed is 90mph at exit. So, while our movement up there is relative to the air mass around us, unless we're going to jump out of the plane and hover until we're all ready to start dropping, there will always be more to separation than just the plane's velocity with respect to the upper winds.

I know this post is about 9 months old, now, but this thread got resurrected recently and when I read this, something about it just bugged me... I know I have much less jumps than you, but you deployed your main at 4000' inside a cloud and you're calling into question the safety of the other guy's actions? Exactly how did you clear the air above, below and beside you on deployment? Aside from when you're at the hard-deck, is it not everyone's responsibility to ensure clear air before hitting the anchors and wiping off about 100mph of vertical speed? In the interests of not dragging this thread too far off-topic, here is a more appropriate thread to further discuss cloud deployment issues.

Because it was not my plan. I actually came here after reading a similar comment in the one of the 45 degree myth threads that bugged me. In that post, the guy said that he deployed inside a cloud because that was his nominated pull height and was calling into question the safety of the jumper behind him who chose to deploy at 3000' in the clear air under the cloud. Let me ask you this... If you were planning to throw at 3500' and you looked over your shoulder and saw another jumper above you, would you trust him/her to see your wave off and make sure they got outta there, or would you maybe take advantage of the remaining 1000' before the hard-deck to try to get some horizontal separation? I think I'd be doing the latter. I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, we can be friends on the ground, but you're all trying to kill me up there. :) If you'd wait in that scenario, then why would you throw inside a cloud (assuming that you're jumping somewhere where this is legal)? How are you going to clear the sky above, below and beside you? Even if you do a slow right spiral like you're supposed to in the cloud, you'll be a much larger target and using a lot more airspace through which to collide with something than falling straight down the tube in freefall. I never really thought about jumping through clouds in Canada, because it's simply not legal, so it's not really covered. When I went to Australia, I was required to read and sign their cloud jumping rules, which could be summed up as avoid horizontal movement and velocity changes inside a cloud with one exception - If you're at the hard-deck you will throw, cloud or no. It made a lot of sense to me then, and it still makes sense to me now. I've now been jumping in Latvia, where we often may be jumping through clouds, and I was told similar things, here. The only modification I've made to my thinking thus far is for RW, where tracking away from the formation at break-off is much less risky than no horizontal movement in the clouds, but even then, once I'd tracked away, I'd still hold until either clear air or the hard-deck to deploy my main. I can think of several danger scenarios with the stick to the plan approach when inside a cloud: - clueless jumper in front or behind you has tracked/backslid/sideslid into your airspace - jumper in front or behind has lower horizontal separation at opening than expected (eg. 200') and you both open on a collision course. - You and your RW buddies do your slow right spiral down through the cloud as you should, but how big is a "slow" spiral, and did you think about the fact that you're all spiralling blind back towards the centre of formation, towards the rest of your RW group? The same applies to solos who deploy facing opposite directions on each other's right. - you're on a load with several RW groups and at break-off, you're lucky enough to be tracking towards the previous/next group Since you couldn't clear the airspace, these are real possibilities that you can't be aware of without visibility. You might be able to shout, but not everyone's distance/direction perception for sound may be as good as you would hope, so maybe they/you still won't realize until you're too close to do much about it. So far, I haven't been able to come up with a scenario where the don't deploy inside clouds unless at the hard-deck rule makes things worse except when not everyone follows it, whereas, even if everyone follows the stick to your plan rule, I can think of several bad situations that could result, so for now, I'm sticking with don't deploy inside a cloud unless local rules dictate otherwise, but I'm still new in the sport, and if someone has a different viewpoint, I'd be interested to hear it.

I managed to get in touch with Lyal, who basically confirmed most of what's been said by Remster and RiggerRob as well as a bunch of other information, so in the spirit of sharing for any other noobs like me that may be watching... Nights are cold - expect to see ice on the ground in the morning - I think I'll go for the bunkhouse - probably worth it for the extra heat and reduced baggage. There are several food options, including a restaurant on the DZ, restaurants in Casa Grande if you find yourself a ride and you can also probably find yourself a ride with other folks on the DZ to go on a groceries run if you so choose. Airspeed is probably above my level, but there will be coaching available to get me to my B - as Lyall said, this is one of the things they specialize in - getting people the training for their next level if they need. He also mentioned that the CRW camp is probably above my level at this stage, too, but if you want to do CRW, you just have to ask and someone will be happy to show you a few things. Blue skies. Edit: I should add, if anybody has specific questions, ask Lyal as suggested above. He was really helpful.

I was over in Australia in June and did a few jumps at Ramblers, near Brisbane. At the time I was on my Canadian Solo Certificate and had only 27 jumps. I turned up with my Solo, log book, and a letter from my DZO back in Canada. They looked over my log book and docs, gave me an APF student licence and were happy for me to jump. I did some reading of the APF regs before I went over. As I understand them, it's up to an APF instructor to clear you for an equivalent level under the APF. It's not specific in the regs about exactly what they must do to clear you, so they may be happy with checking your log book and USPA A licence and give you and APF A, or maybe they'll ask you to do a checkout jump with a coach, first. Your best bet is to check with the DZO where you're planning to jump as to what they will require. You will have to pay an APF membership to jump in Oz. I paid around 30 aussie pesos for a 3 month temporary membership. Check the APF website or the DZ for details about prices for that. As far as dropzones north of the border, there are several around Brisbane that I'm aware of. I've only jumped at Ramblers, which is an awesome DZ, but from Byron, you're looking at maybe 4 hours drive. Byron's a great DZ by all accounts, so why would you bother? FWIW, the places I know of around Brisbane are Ramblers, Ripcord, Caboolture, Redcliffe (looks like a tandem factory) and Brisbane skydive centre. You can find more info about them in the dropzones section. IMHO, unless you have a reason to travel north of the border, I would stick with Byron if that's where you'll be living. It's a gorgeous place and has great DZ by all accounts.

Come and check out Skydive Burnaby while you're there. Like someone else said, they have an Otter during the summer - I think it's about the only dropzone in Canada that regularly has one. It's flown south for the Winter now (about a week ago). From memory, I think it was here by May, but I could be mistaken. You're best bet on finding out when the Otter is back would be to talk to Mike, the DZO, next year when the weather starts warming up. Burnaby also hosts a bunch of events, like canopy piloting comps and the last several Canadian formation records. The staff and the regulars are a good bunch of people. There are a few regulars who come from the Waterloo area. I haven't been to Skydive Niagara, yet - been meaning to for a while, just hasn't happened, yet. I met a few of their staff who came by Burnaby one night - they seemed like nice people, so you'll probably enjoy it there, too. Burnaby would be slightly further for you, but they're both pretty close, and the only places in the area where you'll get more than 10.5k.

Those links should be: mailto:[email protected] http://www.aerodium.lv lv is the country code for Latvia. I have no idea what Iv would be... Italian Villa? Intra-Venous? :)

Planning to go to the Canadian Invasion at Eloy in January. Being relatively new to the sport, this will be my first big event and my first time travelling specifically for the purpose of jumping out of planes (does that mean two cartons of beer?) I'm sure that SkydiveAZ will be the land of milk and honey that we've all dreamed of, but since I've never been to Eloy or the invasion before, I'm wondering a few things... - What kind of food options are there, and how much should I budget for food if I like to eat healthy? - How cold does it get at night in January? Am I going to freeze my nuts off camping in a tent or is a few bucks per night in the bunkhouse overrated? - The Arizona Airspeed camp - anyone know if that's above my level. Sounds like you'd wanna be at least a B. It's conceivable that I'll finish my B while I'm there, but still, should I perhaps save that for another time and concentrate on other learning experiences better suited to me?

Whoah! I assume by "top poster" you mean me? I hope you're really not getting bent out of shape. I was asking for guidance, not bashing tunnel flying or any tunnel in particular. I went to a tunnel - Aerodium Sigulda. I didn't expect it to be a SkyVenture Arizona or anything close. I expected it to be set up mostly for tourists. Nonetheless, I still expected it to be a tool I can use to learn to fly my body better in the sky as well and for a variety of reasons, I left disappointed because my experience fell short of those last expectations. I will definitely do a SkyVenture one day soon and I do expect it to be very different. Due to some of the response I've gotten here, I may even go back to Aerodium Sigulda, but this time I think I may have a better set of expectations and might be better prepared to make better use of the time.

Yeah - I was actually. I jump with one of the Aerodium instructors here in Jelgava and we talked about the Olympic display a little while back. Fair enough. I don't think I'm too big - I'm about 5'10" and 175 pounds. Maybe I'll discuss what kind of training the staff may be able to provide and give it another go sometime. I did feel that I really didn't get a lot of feedback apart from a few comments like "try to do barrel rolls" during our haf-time break and "you are good" when I was leaving. I felt more frustrated because compared to how I fly in the sky, I thought I sucked, which is why I left there thinking there wasn't much point going back.

I agree that loops in a wind tunnel are certainly not for the new or light-at-heart. I was lucky that I was starting to come out of the loop. A little less height or a little slower rotation and I quite probably would have been diving down head-first into the net with my arms in no position to provide any protection, either. I won't be trying that again for quite some time. For any tunnel-kiddies like me at home, wait until you grow up before you try loops in the tunnel!

I'm working in Riga at the moment, and there's an Aerodium "wind tunnel" close by. I've talked to a couple of local jumpers who've tried it and didn't think that it was overly useful as a skydiving training tool, but I thought I'd give it a go, anyway and see. I'm wondering how my experiences here might compare to a similar amount of time spent somewhere like SkyVenture Arizona. I tried 20 minutes, in 4 x 5 minute sessions, with my whuffo mates doing some shorter sessions in between, and afterwards, I'm kinda feeling like the locals were right. It's interesting to try out once, but I didn't feel that I got much of an educational experience out of it. It seemed perhaps underpowered to me, or maybe they just didn't turn it up high enough for me. They did have it going significantly faster for me than for my whuffo mates, however, in my normal, comfortable arch position, I was stuck playing tummy-tag with the net. I had to push on the airflow a little to get up and stay up. I also felt less stable. That's probably due at least in part, to my inexperience in a tunnel, but I also felt that constantly having to work to stay up probably didn't help, either. I recall some people in the past suggest that having the fan underneath you would produce turbulence in the airflow. I'm not sure how true that is or how much that might affect things, but I certainly felt less stable in the air stream than I do in the sky. Maybe someone who's tried both types of tunnels could comment? I couldn't wear my normal jumpsuit that I wear in the sky. Instead, they gave me this huge baggy suit. If I need twice as much fabric wrapped around me to give adequate lift, I think that goes to support my underpowered theory. The instructors wore the same suits, so I don't think it was a newbie thing. That extra fabric was rather annoying when doing barrel rolls. Didn't try backflying. I rolled through 360 degrees when I did it, without a stopover on my back. Reading through the body flight progression before going might have been a good idea. I did try a back-loop, which was probably premature for my experience level, although nobody told me that until after I did it, at which point I'd already figured that out. I did get around ok, but only just, - dropped 4m and banged my knees on the net as I was coming out of the loop. Is that normal in the tunnel? Bad technique? Lack of power? All of the above? Overall, it seems set up mostly to cater to whuffo tourists and the like, rather than skydivers. Apart from a few brief words before and during "half time", I didn't really receive much in the way of instruction. They did work a lot with my mates, but they kinda had to, cos they've never flown before. I'll probably try some time in a SkyVenture somewhere next year, but it would be interesting to know what to expect in comparison to Aerodium Sigulda. I probably won't go back to Aerodium. It wasn't the training tool I'd hoped for.

Thanks for the info. Found the website. No hope with the language right now, but there were pictures of parachutes. :) Perhaps my serbian and bosnian friends will be able to help me with that. Brettski :)

Good call... I actually checked out Greece. Looks like Hellenic skydivers north of Thessaloniki might be less than 200 km away. I guess I could also email some of the DZOs in Croatia and Greece, as they may know of others not listed on here in the region. Brettski :)

Clicky... http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/news/9975446/detail.html?rss=hon&psp=news

I'm still new to skydiving, but wouldn't tracking inside a cloud be a bad idea? My thoughts are kinda conflicted on this, anyway, so it would be nice to get some perspective from some of the more experienced jumpers on this. I've been thinking about this a little lately. At my home DZ in Canada, we aren't allowed to jump through clouds due to Transport Canada rules - similar to the US. When I did some jumps in Australia, I was required to read and sign their cloud-jumping rules, which are probably much the same as anywhere and could be summed up in three main points: 1. No horizontal movement in freefall while in a cloud. 2. Do not deploy inside a cloud unless you are at the hard-deck. 3. If under canopy inside a cloud, do a gentle right-hand spiral down until you in clear air again. We didn't have any clouds to worry about while I was there, but it all makes sense when you think about it. At the time, I was only doing solo jumps. Now I'm doing RW, and jumping in Latvia, where we also jump through clouds on occasion. On the weekend, I was in a six way inside a cloud. We didn't quite make the complete formation, but I still had sight of everyone on the jump, so we were still all pretty close, which was good. We broke through before we hit break-off altitude, but it made me think about what if we hadn't? My thoughts have led me to the following: - with 6 people in the air, we wouldn't be able to see whether we had good separation after tracking while still in the cloud. - if everyone does a 180 and tracks away from the centre of formation, the risk of collision would be pretty low unless someone was wickedly bad at tracking straight. If we lost sight of anybody in the cloud, though, this may no longer be true. - we still need to track some time before the hard-deck, to ensure both adequate horizontal separation and altitude for deployment and EPs So what would be the normal thing to do? We had set break-off at 4500 feet. If we allow 1500 feet for turn and track and hard deck is 2500 feet, if we're still in clouds at break-off, we don't really have much extra altitude to wait. So I guess if you were in the air in such a scenario, then turn and track is still the right answer, but perhaps the better answer here is that we shouldn't be doing RW if the clouds are below 5000 feet - or at the very least, nothing more than a 2-way?

May have the opportunity to work there next year, but can't find details of any dropzones either here in the DZ database or the forums, or on google. Suddenly that contract opportunity is looking less and less promising...

I agree with most of what's already been said, particularly with asking your instructors. Apart from knowing you and your skills, they may know of used gear for sale that you might not otherwise find. That's how I and several of my fellow students found their first rig. Beyond that, unless you're independently wealthy, I'd suggest buying something second-hand and relatively cheap. Not cheap as in crappy - ask your instructor if it's worth buying first - but keep in mind that you're new, you'll be learning a lot, and in a year or so you might want to downsize, so why spend a fortune now when you're still learning? I'd save that money for when I know a little more and want to buy a canopy that's a little more fun. I ended up with something one size bigger than I initially went looking for, but my system has almost paid for itself and allowed me to learn so much more about canopy control. Oh, and F-111 fabric is sooooooo much easier to pack than zero-P! :)