Ether

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I understand that DZOs will have to make a finance based decision here, but I offer the following; why doesn't anyone (or does someone?) pair up students/instructors/coaches in FJC? Doesn't it make sense that there would be a hand-off from instructor to a coach who has some SA on how the student has progressed? The first time I ever heard of a coach was when I was ready to do a coach jump. Then I never made a second jump with any of them. It was simply whoever was available at the time.

Yes yes yes! Not knowing who I can ask for a coach jump (e.g. who is best able to teach the skills I am looking for at the time), and who is even interested in doing a coach jump(s) with someone who may need a bit of extra help, has kept me away from the DZ more weekends than I actually showed up. Being more closely connected with a coach or two would help considerably.

Also the whole process of "okay now I've got my solo; now what?" would have gone a lot more smoothly if I had had someone specific to talk to for advice. I ended up talking to the DZOs directly, which while helpful, most of the time they were simply too busy to help very much.

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Whatever you do, if you buy new, don't get your name stitched onto the rig.

This is for resellability, yes? Are there particular areas of the rig that can be custom embroidered that are easily (and cheaply) replaceable if the rig is resold? I'm thinking perhaps riser covers, or main cutaway pillow.

Personally I'm thinking that when I buy new, I'll have "D22" put on it.. since that's the name I've kinda been stuck with at my local DZ..

Ok, I read the thread from a few years ago that covered this ground.. someone said "well what about wrist-mounted altimeters? aren't they a snag hazard too?" and on thinking about it, I'm not so sure that they're not... Sure, the wrist strap is velcro and *theoretically* the velcro should give way before your hand or wrist... but the sheer (sideways pull) strength for velcro is way strong er than the peel strength. Picture something (a disconnected riser, or the bridle perhaps) wrapped around the altimeter and pulling parallel to your arm. Is the strap going to open?

Perhaps someone can rig something up with a force meter to test...

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I was thinking about it more from the point of view that BASE canopies are typically not opened at terminal

It entirely depends on the jumper and the area -- e.g. if you live near Norway, you might do lots of terminal jumps from the large objects there. Of course, the rig is configured differently for such jumps -- perhaps different canopy, but certainly different slider and pilot chute than a 0- or 2-second delay jump.

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Hey ether if u want some really good and friendly coaches come jump in kamloops

Yeah, I love Kamloops... I even had an intimate relationship with your taxiway sign (see avatar picture)

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Are the instructors and coaches at your DZ not approachable?

The DZ atmosphere is kind of funny, but not much different from others as far as I can tell. Sometimes it feels like I'm back in high school again and I'm the geek in the corner watching the jocks run around having fun (something someone else observed quietly to me once too).

No, mostly it's just that I'm very, very, shy, and that doesn't pair well with being a perfectionist and not having great self-confidence in my physical ability. My learning curve is very odd -- I appear to not have gotten the hang of anything at all until I fully understand all components and can put it all together, and then BAM! I've got it all right -- great at work when I can get up to speed on new things quickly, but crappy on the dropzone when I screw up everything and get the bowling speech before getting my solo (and then a hospital ride at a boogie).

I took up skydiving precisely because it's such a challenge though, so I think I'll be sticking with it...

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Like I said elsewhere, everyone has some bottleneck or other that 'hinders' their progression toward their licence.
So what was your 'handicap'?

I'm stuck at solo status because I'm too shy to ask for a coach to help me sign off my 'A' licence requirements.

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At the DZ i learnt at we were told not to wear shoes with metal hooks. If someone pitched up for a FJC with those only, I think they would have got taped up or something.

I had brought something else for my FJC (probably my nice new white sneakers), but after I got covered in mud (it was very early in the spring and most of the LZ was still an inch under water), I started bringing shoes I was more comfortable getting filthy.

I don't recall anyone saying anything about the metal hooks, but I had already become a dz.com whore by that point and had read about snag hazards on my own...

(edited to be more clear that my instructors didn't let anything slide here...)

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I am perfectionist with no confidence... nice combination huh?

Thanks for this entire thread... it's all sounding very familiar to my own situation. Try not to give up hope..

During opening shock of my first jump (an IAD), my legs bent up 180 degrees and my feet came very close to the lines. Most of my student jumps were done wearing low-rise hiking shoes (stiff impact-absorbing soles) which had metal hook closures, so I started wearing short gaiters to cover up the hooks in case I ever had such crappy body positioning again (which I did). I got a few stares at the dropzone, but everyone went "oh, ahh, of course" when I explained what I was doing.

Since then I've worn loose and sloppy sneakers which have no such issues, as I stopped having hard landings :)

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This doesnt have anything to do with anything really but it did pass 5 min of work time thinking about it......a wingsuit that could land without deploying.......

Yeah, and I bet Jeb Corliss has spent even more time than that thinking about it!

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Wanna know why there weren't enough AFF instructors to go around? Because you can make a lot more money and a lot more jumps in the same amount of time with a tandem rating. And you don't have to teach, either, since most of your passengers have no desire to learn anything about what they are doing.

And maybe *that* is the heart of the matter. Insert crosslink to NickDG's excellent thread.

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This was also an issue during the AFF program for me. The AFF-Is were also doing tandems, and quite often would be doing a back to back (and sometimes to back) after my jump, so it was sometimes an hour before they could debrief me on the jump. This also delayed manifesting for the next jump, and then the winds would show up and ground me.

Yeah totally!
Last year when I was a student I spent entire weekends at the DZ, arriving at 9am, waiting until 5 or 6pm to do a single jump, then the evening wind arrived.. I did my FJC in March and didn't get solo until July. :/ I didn't blame the tandems though.. it seemed a simple matter of not enough instructors with the right ratings to go around.

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One peeve of mine is hearing someone say, in talking about their first tandem jump, "Gee, I could never have done that on my own." But my entire generation did their first jumps on their own, and I taught a whole generation to make that first jump on their own. So it's a shame we present first jumps that way because it's simply not true.

I started skydiving last year, after reading and thinking about it for a year or so before that. My first thoughts were "I don't think I could ever do that", but, as is the case with other things in my life, that's where the seed started and where the initial appeal came from. I started because it was hard, not because it was easy.

So, I did a FJC and an IAD jump last year and went down the road of making lots of mistakes before finally getting my solo (e.g. there's a hospital bracelet stapled to jump #15's entry in my log book..). I never did a tandem and have still not done a tandem... My first jump was mindblowing because I had no idea what to expect, and it was all new. Putting that first foot out onto the step of the cessna and feeling the rush of the wind for the first time was like nothing else I had ever experienced.

Now this year my DZ has made a tandem jump a prerequisite for the FJC, and I see that as somewhat unfortunate. I can see the reasoning, as a few students went in last year from what were apparently errors in judgement and it is perfectly sensible for the DZ to want to screen out the people who are going to panic, but it still seems somewhat sad, and I'm happy I started last year so I could skip the carnival ride and go right to the difficult stuff.

Skydiving is still challenging, but that keeps me coming back. I don't know what I'll do when I start having "just another skydive". Maybe switch to BASE.

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It's so true! I'm a small girl, and I get wedged between some really big guys. You can lean on me whenever you want, but if I really can't breathe ...and it happens a lot...please give me a bit of space. I'd hate to be known as the girl who passed out on the way to altitude.

My feet seem to *always* fall asleep when I'm wedged into a Cessna; somehow it's always a big guy who is sitting between my feet/knees, and the rig ends up sitting fully on my feet pinching them between the BOC and the sides of the plane and the guy on the other side. It makes for some really sloppy exits when I can't put any weight on my feet... I have to just kinda roll out of the plane and then let them wake up while I'm in freefall.

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Most PC in tows that I personally have witnessed or been told about were because of a misrouted bridle or grommets getting hung up on each other, the remainder were from some other hangup in the main packing tray and the reserve leaving the rig allowed the d-bag to come out.

What about a poorly-folded PC resulting in the bridle tightening in a loop around the PC? I've seen many methods for folding a PC, and some methods seem to make this entirely probable (especially if the spare bridle is left loose in the BOC rather than folded inside the PC, or say if the bridle loops around itself inside the folds).

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Besides, you can always burn extra alti once the canopy is open by just spinning a little. Heck, I actually like to spin my canopy!

Hell yeah!
Especially since spirals aren't a good idea below your hard deck, I like to leave a little bit extra for those mad spirals where you're looking sideways at your canopy and the horizon line is top to bottom and everyone on the ground can hear you shouting "woohoo!" -- it's great advertising for the tandem wuffos.

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I'm not struggling to get stable now, I just typically do a dive exit and read my alti down to 3ish, by the time I've opened it's 2500 and I'm under canopy 2+ so I don't see it as much of a problem.

You're missing the point. You're still opening at 2500 when you should be opening at 3000.

I cannot agree more. When I was a student, I was not allowed, ever, to pull below 4000. I moved down to 3500 and eventually to 3000, but have no hesitation whatsoever about bumping that up again if I'm doing anything new. My first pack job, pull at 4000. My first 2 way, break off at 4500 and pull at 4000. First jump after breaking for the winter, pull at 4500. Extra altitude is your friend!

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If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough. Personally, I'm trying to be less dumb.

Channelling NickDG here: that's a nugget!

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The trouble he was having getting around the corner is just not acceptable. I am glad they got out of that one unscathed.

My first impression was that he threw the drogue intentionally because both TI and passenger were large and heavy (therefore concerned about stability).

Either way, to my newbie eyes it seems that maybe this combination of large TI and large passenger is ill-suited to the cramped conditions of this plane.

Question: Would you ever consider doing a tandem out of a larger plane that you wouldn't out of a cessna?

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I've talked to my instructors about Q2. I'll ask them to check my exit this weekend.

I've quoted the relevant part of your post in boldface. With your jump numbers, don't try to think really hard about lots of "what if" questions -- they just make it harder to concentrate when you need to be really focused on nailing your jumps, and at worst could stop you from properly executing your emergency procedures should you need to. Your instructors will tell you what you need to know for the environment at your DZ, and you'll learn the rest as you progress and start travelling around to other DZs and start to jump from other planes.

I've got low jump numbers too. I wish I hadn't watched so many malfunction videos when I was a student; I got a little paranoid and it slowed me down (which translates into $$$)!

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Just for my own curiosity, what kind of canopy is this, how big is it, how much do you weigh, how many jumps on it?

It's a Skymaster (PISA) 230, rented from the DZ. I weigh about 165 lb in this rig (checked last week); as of the video I had done about 8 jumps on it (2 this season).

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That brings me to my next point, on your final you are not flying with your hands all the way up.

I think it appears so much more than in actuality; I checked this out in the air again and the toggles hit the keeper rings when my hands are just above my head (so definitely not at full arm extension). I think in the video I may have had the brakes applied a bit, but not so much as it seems. Would this be another indication that the brake lines and possibly the risers are just not sized right?

So, I got back out this weekend (it looks like summer weather is finally here to stay), and for the first jump of the day went up with an IAD student and friendly instructor (hi riggerrob!) for a hop and pop, then another from full altitude. Much better! I'm still looking down too much (this is a bad habit that just started this season, so I'm hoping I can shake it quickly), which resulted both times in starting to flare too early, going "oops, too high", backing off on the brakes a little bit, then getting too low to get a good solid flare.. but it was much less so the second time. I'm no longer flaring assymmetrically, and was able to hold the toggles down right through to the canopy losing air.

Thank you all for all the advice and especially the encouragement!

Responding to various points:

I've tried taking wraps of the lines at altitude, and didn't like what I got -- when my arms were fully up, I was in what felt like half brakes, so the flare wasn't very satisfying at all. I suppose one could grab fistfuls of brake line at the last minute -- but not very safe.

Good call on coming off the windline - indeed I was veering to the left, and about 30 feet short the edge of the field, which is a deep ditch filled with water, so I was trying to pull back to the right where I would have a much longer line before hitting the edge. (The wind at the time was SW with variable gusts from the west, and the field is E-W.)

Something else I noticed, which is more obvious in the earlier (edited) portions of my landing pattern, is that I am doing my leg straps up way too tight, which is causing me to sit assymmetrically in the harness and also making it harder to straighten out completely..

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The video link doesn't work.

oops, fixed now I think.

Here's the video: http://froods.org/videos/ether_jump_37.wmv (about 3 megs)

This was my 37th jump overall, and the 7th this season, and the 2nd this season with a rented Skymaster 230. Last season I did several jumps on the 230 (which went pretty well - not fantastic but no mishaps), then this season I went back to a Solo 270 while regaining currency. My 270 landings have all been good - tiptoe landings, within 20-30m of the target. I think I'm having difficulty adjusting to the greater forward penetration on the 230, but I don't recall it being so hard last year.

I'm not sure if I'm flaring too late or if I'm doing something else wrong... Any advice would be greatly appreciated.