Peter_ru

No, can't agree. Alcohol is alcohol and drugs are drugs. No excuses for smoking marijuana and etc should be made. To my mind alcohol must be prohibited during jumping day and before jumps. Drugs (all types) must not be allowed at all! Being illegal by the way.

Hey! We're jumping from Mi-8 helicopter (links below), exit both from side and back. Rules are generally the same as for any other aircraft: 1. Stay seated and wear your helmet below 300m. 2. Even weight distribution must be observed. 3. Walk in front of helicopter and beside the plane. 4. Stay away from chassis when separating from fuel tank. 5. Other: emergency exit altitudes, signals for separation and so on. http://www.aerograd.ru/photo.html?gid=64&pid=32 http://www.aerograd.ru/photo.html?gid=64&pid=136

Greetings from Moscow! Enjoy the pics! ;) http://www.aerograd.ru/photo.html?gid=27&pid=5 http://www.aerograd.ru/photo.html?gid=17&pid=3 http://www.aerograd.ru/photo.html?gid=17&pid=26 http://www.skycenter.ru/gallery/show.php?gal=14&pic=1

"Third man out" I wanted to use it myself, but I went jumping formations, so you may take it!

Did you ever see him land? If he does it easily and with no mistakes and has his instructor's permission to fly that canopy, I can't see any trouble here. It may be a bit of a rush though from my perspective, as he may have not enough experience for Crossfire, but it depends on his skills, and in lesser degree on the quantity of jumps. At my home DZ it is prohibited to jump Crossfire unless you have 500 jumps or have 300 jumps and passed a special training. Still some people have a talent for flying canopies, so they advance faster than others. You should ask his instructor or the flight director what they think about it. Then you'll get a better judgement than any of those posted here.

If the weather is bad I use to say to myself "Oh, at least I'm saving my money!" A whole jumping day spent on the ground leaves you some free cash, doesn't it? Though in such cases I'm still displeased with spending so much time and petrol on travelling to the dropzone! Yeah, you can use the time for practicing packing and other ground training, but still spending one of your so rare days-off on it is annoying!

There are some cottages near our DZ. Actually, I feel pity for the poor people who live there. Especially in summer when they come from the city to get some rest and the DZ is doing hundreds of lifts per week... I guess I would have been sick of skydivers if I lived there. And they say that someone crazy made a jump with a toilet bowl ... which 'landed' not far from the houses... So jumping with objects is prohibited now…

Hi, all! I've read the half-baked conclusions about safety of skydiving and it's conjunction with the equipment used in US and the rest of the world. And have to add couple of lines here. Just take a look at the statistics given in the "Safety" section. I think that in some way it does reflect the true situation: Collisions (25) 14% Landings (61) 33% No Pulls (12) 7% Malfunctions (35) 19% Reserve Problems (12) 7% Other (26) 14% If we take Malfunctions and Reserve Problems it overall makes the equipment a reason of 26% of fatalities. Hence it is not the major factor. More than a half of fatalities were caused by Collisions, Poor landing and No pulls (I'm not sure where to place the "Other" reasons). Does it have to do anything with the type of equipment you're jumping with? Sometimes, but mostly - not. In fact it may happen so that supreme equipment causes more incidents than the one of the previous generation due to it's advanced characteristics (canopy flight speed for instance). This equipment can not be easily mastered by everyone, but as you say, it is widely available in US... From my point of view most of troubles come from careless actions of skydivers and improper control of the administration of dropzones that should prevent them. Low turns and low pulls, early downsizing, collisions in the air are all the matter of poor self-discipline, training and ground control. Now let's come back to equipment. My home DZ is located near Moscow. And I do have access to all the equipment from US or Europe, besides, equipment produced in Russia is robust and reliable enough to match the imported. And skydiving is EXPENSIVE sport. A lift to 13500ft (4000m) costs here about $15 both for planes and helicopters. Average 300 jumps per season make it $4.5k per year. If you can afford it, than your life should be dear enough to you for not to be trying to save much on your equipment. And as regards ADDs, it is simply not allowed to jump without one here. By the way, what is the cost of the following items in US: Cypres II, Icarus Safire 2, average reserve (I have "Techno" but it must be rather rare in US), Javelin Odyssey, all of them new?

Here is my dropzone: http://www.aerograd.ru/croc.html Flying: 3 L-410 Aircrafts 1 or 2 Mi-8 Helicopters (depending on season) Open all-year round, every day. And in case you want wallpapers:

Because it's much more simple to teach one to jump with a round canopy. In fact almost no training is needed for jumping a parachute with forced opening (I made my first jump after a 30 minutes briefing and a bit of practice). And surely I can't imagine paratrooper battalion on AFF training! And they are cheaper too, I guess. Though special forces or reconnaissance units use rectangular (or maybe even elliptic ) canopies.

Very familiar situation. Some of my relatives just do not support my going skydiving. And I don't tell the other ones about it not to make them feel nervous. As regarding my mother, she is now more or less ok with it. But I had to promise her that I'll quit riding a bike instead and sell my Yamaha... So, maybe just tell them you're planning to do something even more adventurous and then gradually agree on skydiving? After all skydiving is not even in the Top 10 list of most dangerous sports. The other serious thing I'm thinking about is the death of two people, I was acquainted with, in car accidents during this year. Both were young and had nothing to do with extreme sports. One of them (together with his brother who was driving the car) crashed with a truck that was driving on the wrong side of the road. The other one (a girl aged 22) was waiting at the bus stop when a car crashed into it killing her and her grandmother. I think it really has something to do with fate… So skydiving is only one of many risks in our life and may be not the most serious one.

I think it's not wise to buy a rig before you downsize to at least 139-149 ft. Just a looss of money on further downsizing... You will have to change the main canopy as well as container and reserve quite soon. For instance it took me to only 120 jumps to start flying 139 ft Safire and I consider it was a bit too long. Better get some experience first and then buy a decent canopy according to the balance between performance and safety you prefer.