Baksteen

DSE, it's not about the ability to pack tandems, it's about how you approach doing it.
What makes "Yahoo" a terrible skydiver, regardless of his other skills, is this little sentence:

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Yahoo's response is, "I don't care really; I'm not the one who will be jumping it anyway."

If you'd not be happy jumping a packjob, just what the hell are you doing sending other people up with it?

I mean, you say you cannot pack tandems? Point is, you know this, and you're not doing it.

Cat:
Dude, you are SO suffering from compensation urges...

Let's resurrect this
..when you reply to any random question with "talk to your instructors".

This is class!

All I need now is a Dutch version...

Hear, hear!

Last sunday i had a close call.
Still shaken, I dropped my chute in the packing area and went to sit in the bar for a while.
When I entered, this song was coming over the radio:

"Opportunity," by Pete Murray

And so it goes another lonely day
Your savin time but your miles away
Your fly was drownin in some bitter tea
For seeing lost opportunity

Find your mirror go and look inside
And see the talent you always hide
Don't go kidd yourself well not today
Satisfaction's not to far away

Hold on now your exits here
It's waiting just for you
Don't pause too long
It's fading now
It's ending all too soon you'll see

Soon you'll see

Your coffee's warm but your milk is sour
Life is short but your here to flower
Dream yourself along another day
Never miss opportunity

Don't be scared of what you cannot see
Your only fear is possibility
Never wonder what the hell went wrong
Your second chance may never come along

Hold on now your exits here
It's waiting just for you
Don't pause too long
It's fading now
It's ending all too soon you'll see

Soon you'll see

Hold on now your exits here
It's waiting just for you
Don't pause too long
It's fading now
It's ending all too soon you'll see

Soon you'll see [x5]

The article deals with CEOs, but I do not think it concerns them exclusively. When you apply for your new job with your average modest salary, do you put skydiving as one of your hobbies on your resume?
I'm not entirely sure that that would be a good idea, the reason being the lack of knowledge about our sport among the general public.

So what is more important; their right to know who they're hiring, or your right to pursue your interests?

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One company asked its president to give up flying when it went from private to public. To keep the executive happy, the company offered to employ a couple of personal pilots.

This is not a solution, and a rediculous kind of compensation. Besides the fact that being flown around in some kind of glorified taxi is totally different from piloting, what exactly do they try to achieve? The risk of a fatal crash is still there, they just get to blame the CEO's death on a different individual.

:4 : ?

I'm not sure.. does *earning* beer compensate for *owing* beer in the tallies, if not in actually having to buy any?

Beer owed:
* not landing obstacle free for the first time (grazed barbed wire with arm and leg , followed by a perfect standup landing somehow)
* Finished my canopy control requirements
* First jump with my new helmet
* Achieving my A-licence

Beer earned:
While checking other student's pack jobs I:
* Caught a near certain pilot chute in tow, due to misrouted bridle
* Caught a possible bag lock due to stows wrapping each other
* Caught a misrouted static-line (from six feet away)

Here's another thing. I made four jumps, yet I packed eight parachutes this week.

Somehow I cant help but think I must be doing something wrong...

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I have been saying for a long time, that whether or not that is true, it still has merit because it brings attention to two important facts:

1) Skydiving is much less dangerous than the general public thinks.

2) Driving is much more dangerous than the general public thinks.

And what is your read, or perception, on how dangerous the general public thinks driving is?

I heartily agree with your closing statements. Most (90% ?) people are way too casual in their driving habits. Or to put it bluntly, most people are pretty shitty drivers.

I found the following comment on youtube, in reply to one of the gazillion Lutz-videos:

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get over yourself you jump and then you pull cords, not friggin brain surgery. I wonder what your coffins look like when you go SPLAT. flat but extra wide
-mayziemayzie

What else are you gonna tell such a person? Not all people saying stuff like this are trolls. You have to have something to get their attention - or vent your anger and frustration.

As to the perception of the danger involved in driving, people keep "safely" doing stuff like:

1) (usually) old people doing 20 on the highway
2) People steering with their knees because their hands are occupied with other stuff, like unwrapping a sweet or changeing their glasses for their sunglasses.
3) People drinking and driving
4) People phoning while driving
etc. etc.

Like everyone else said.

Everyone thinks their training method best, both the student taking the course, and the instructor teaching it. I'm no exception.

But maybe you should ask those instructors (but especially relatively new students too) what they think are the pros and cons of their method. Don't ask how they feel it compares to othger courses, but
make your own list, compare, and choose.

For instance, this is the way I see it:
Jumping in winter at my DZ means that an SL student gets to jump more often - the conditions and clouds are more likely to be ok up to 3500 ft than all the way up to 12000 ft.

OTOH, an AFF student gets freefall coaching and feedback from their instructors from day 1, while a SL student has no point of reference in the air at all and has to rely chiefly on ground briefings; and on debriefings based on what they felt, rahter then what the instructor saw.

AFF is more intense and you need more money up front. You progress quicker because more is demanded of you per jump.
SL is more gradual and cheaper in the beginning. It takes longer to get there, but there is a lot less pressure per jump and in addition, you'll be jumping from higher and higher, rather then lower and lower.
Is there a "best" method? I think not. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it is entirely up to you to choose the one that you think you can work with.

Maybe.

But it can also be used to counter the knee jerk "you must have a deathwish" reaction.

Skydiving isn't safe, but (far) less dangerous than the public on average seems to think. People tend to be amazed when I tell them that you can actually control your movements in freefall - some have trouble enough believing that you can steer a parachute, and slow down before landing.

Well, thanks for the great review
I'm glad you felt at home.

Yes, I was there too; we talked briefly while I was having a quick lunch.
Later, while I was packing a chute, you asked me whether I was DZ staff because you wanted needed to pay for your jumps.
ETA: Allright, I'll stop hijacking now.

Good, bad...
Neither, I think. Cheesy maybe.

But as far as pickup lines go, at least it is a semi-original (if excessively dorky) one. There's a lot of lines with a far higher vomit-rating.

Give him a chance

Yeah, please tell us, how did you like the new DZ?

I'm curious as it turns out that that DZ turned out to be the one I jump at
And what canopy did you end up renting?

That pneumatic press is wheezing and banging..
Like a chain-smoking rabbit in the mating season.

While you basically give good advice, I'd like to point out that the OP has only 25 jumps, and I have 85.

Don't you think that for people like us it would be better to trust the rigger's packing more than our judgement as to whether something is landable or not?
I'm not saying that I reach for my reserve handle for every linetwist, but I would rather land a perfectly good reserve and get chewed out for a totally unnecessary cutaway, than trying to land a might-be-landable partial mal.

I reckon that to jumpers like myself the old "when in doubt, whip it out" is more applicable.

Should minimun requirements apply to me...

I would ask the question a bit differently,
"DO minimum requirements apply to me?"

for example:
If I make 16 more jumps, Dutch "minimum requirements" would allow me to jump a Safire2 170, which would then be loaded at exactly 1.3.

But I ask myself: Should I want this, knowing where my difficulties lie?

Landings themselves are (nearly) always soft and sweet, and freefall generally isn't the problem either.
However, last-minute changes in the planning of my approach and in the determination of my conservative pattern are. So I think a more docile canopy type, say a Spectre or a Pilot, of min. 190 sq. ft should be more than exiting enough for me - when I feel I'm ready, not when minimum requirements say I'm ready.

Next on Fox TV:
Smokey and the Rabbit

But.. but.. who am I going to chase on a tracking dive?

Eat up! Eat up! After all it's nearly Christmas....

Twenty-five, if my quick count was correct

I'm 27 as well, and I know the feeling..

I have been doing volunteers work with children for different organisations, for quite a while now.
In fact, I had a fifteen-year jubilee with one of the foundations recently.

In everyday life it all comes down to sixteen year olds whom I've never seen before running up to me all the time and with a big smile starting to talk about that time when I was their leader.

Or one mother giving me a withering look when I asked her how her son was doing. As it turned out I had been standing right next to the offspring in question the entire afternoon.

And finding yourself in a pub staring uncomfortably at your feet, surrounded by 18 year old girls who are drinking beer - and are legally allowed to, girls whom you remember needing help going to the toilet.


ETA: Thanks, I'm really depressed now...
And I'm sure this post will get longer as the day advances, and I remember more stuff.

Know what I'm talking about?
Really small things that you can take a lot of satisfaction out of nonetheless?


Just now, I was wrestling a 500 pound liquid nitrogen container to the cargo lift.
The cargo lift turned out to be full of pesky freshman students, looking at me with a collective cow-like expression, as if they expected me to use the stairwell.

Then suddenly approximately 150 cm of student, with a mouth nearly as big, asked me what was in that container. "Liquid nitrogen? haha! COUGH COUGH COUGH"
I smiled, and then sweetly told him that nitrogen didn't make you cough, as the atmosphere at sea level is made up of nearly 80% nitrogen anyway.
It's an inert gas, I told them, but as you know hot air rises up, and therefore the cold nitrogen in this barrel would displace the relatively hot normal air if it were to evaporate.
Then instead of coughing, the first thing that would happen would be a sort of feeling of contentment or sleepiness. However, you would not notice this, as your judgment would fail simultaneously.
Next, you'd start yawing, and the drowsiness would increase until you simply could not keep your eyes open anymore.
Next, you might have violent epileptic seizures, but you'd not know, as (and here I dropped my voice to a whisper) you'd simply not wake up anymore...

Then, as if by magic me and my nitrogen vessel fit easily into the lift, as I suddenly had the cargo lift all to myself...

Even Shakespeare got burned occasionally.

1)People trying to get on the train/subway before the other people have finished exiting it. Old ladies are the worst, for some reason.

2) Traffic jams after an accident are understandable, but I really resent it that people on the other side of the road cause a traffic jam because of slowing down to look.

3) When I start up my PC at work, it takes 8, yes, EIGHT minutes to do so. The helpdesk found it necessary to end the startup script with a personal message:
"Logon has finished! Good morning {..}"

Solutions:
1a) When I need to exit the train, I give the people standing in the way a good and solid thump, then look at them wide eyed and say "sorry" in a shocked voice. Works every time.
1b) When I am waiting to board, I usually make some very rude and just too loud comments. This will someday bite me, I know.

2) Kill the sensationalists - slowly.

3) A button in addition to the one saying "OK" that reads "F*ck off". Until that time I simply nver turn my PC off between Monday morning and Friday evening.