Baksteen

Why not simply have the repack expire together with the AAD and make a note why the repack interval is shorter?

I'm not

26.

I read about skydiving and wanted to try. When I saw that a SL-course was about the same price as a tandem, but for 5 jumps instead of one AND you got to do everything yourself, the choice was easy.

Before actually jumping I had this idea about smearing out the jumps I had left and afterwards jump perhaps once or twice every 2-3 months.
After I landed I hoped that there would be enough time to make a second jump that day and knew I would be spending a lot of free time at the DZ from that time onwards.

Maybe it's not part of "value"so much as self-esteem:

If one has low self esteem (don't love yourself) one might also think they're ugly.

By the way, that is by no means limited to women.

wolfriverjoe

The larger DZs I jump at have an 'Air Boss', who's job it is to watch the sky. He (or she) knows how many jumpers are on each load and counts canopies. Cutaways or 'out landers' are spotted and chased after. I'm not sure what would happen if they came up a canopy short (someone going in no pull). I've never seen that happen.

This one time I was at a DZ when someone committed suicide by going in with no pulling. It was a very busy day so the DZ was flying two planes at the time. What with hop 'n pops, Tandem, AFF, Freefly, FS and full-altitude CReW all going on, people were landing every five minutes. Add some off-landings reporting back at Manifest into the mix and I am not surprised at all that nobody saw the no-pull go in.
Since that incident, check-in systems have become the norm for the medium-to-large DZs in the Netherlands. In my experience, people conform with no more grumbling than they do about any other aspect of the sport.

obelixtim

***seems you know everything. but umm.. i dont have a home dz.
anyway its nice to meet you raff the GOD.

There is no such thing/person as a skygod. Get that out of your head.

Anyone arrogant enough to consider themselves as a skygod, is nothing of the sort. Wanker would be a much more appropriate description...

In my understanding the two terms are pretty much synonymous.

Without reading the article and without verifying credability:

The main problem with this treatment is that the response must be tailored
to each individual patient and each individual primary tumour separately.

That means not only prohibitive costs in reagents, lab space and labour, but also a lot of calendar time before a single treatment is ready. Time the patient may very well not have.

Still, it will be interesting to see how this treatment will be improved upon - maybe a valid treatment can result from this in the space of several decades..

Meh, Europe is so close I could walk there.

Please retain SC!

At the very least it keeps a lot of the vitriolic non-issue discussions in one place and thereby away from other forums.

skyfox2007

Baksteen,
In my previous comments, I also stated, "or representation from many of the other nations who might abide by their rules." See your quote my comments in your previous reply to me.

This has nothing to do about about bilateral international relations - one country and another. It has everything to do with how one multinational organization influences private business and personal conduct in others, be it in the states or in the Netherlands.

This affects us all...American, Dutch, or wherever you come from.

-JD-

Personally I think it is a great idea to try and standardise the international licences. Makes life for DZO's of DZs with visiting foreign jumpers a lot easier.

I also think it is a good idea to have jumpers hone their basic freefall skills on their belly a little bit before allowing them to progress to full time freefly / canopy disciplines.

skyfox2007

Westerly,
The changes do bother me to a fair degree given their focus on the safer freefall portion of skydiving and not on the more dangerous canopy phase. And the impact they have on smaller businesses.

But more than that, these changes were the byproduct of a foreign organization. You may not think it a big deal, but this does establish a discomforting precedent. Today it's "little" changes in licensing requirements, what will it be tomorrow? What about a decade from now? And those folks at the FAI have no reason to care absent any US representation on their Executive Board...or representation from many of the other countries who might abide by their rules.

As someone with nearly two decades of government service and an IR master's degree, I have to say this little stunt has the potential to impact our hobby more than you might think. Can you recall any other agreements gone bad that companies, government entities, or even private groups entered into with international actors that went bad? If not, look through a history book or thumb through the business section of a reputable news source. Examples abound.

I don't think Mike Mullins and the rest of the BOD understand the potential consequences of what they're doing. Yes, it was their call to adopt these rules. But in doing so they abdicated their authority to govern our sport on our behalf and opened they and the FAI to liabilities.

-JD-

I totally agree.
Countries should be wary of big foreign nations trying to force their own agendas onto them.

Have you met mr. Kettle by the way?

The fact that you post this tells me you're not entirely certain you made the right decision to stop jumping - despite all that happened to you. You got a lot of good advice here about conquering your fear. The windtunnel would indeed be a great help, because you'd get the freefall sensation without the actual falling. That is a great starting point for learning skills to help you feel in control should you decide to switch back to the skies.

It is also absolutely true that the first jumps are the most fear intense and that you learn to feel in control when your brain "gets used" to it.


But at the end of the day skydiving must be something that *you* want to do, however deep down inside yourself that feeling is buried.


Should you decide jumping isn't your thing, there is no shame in calling it quits. As others have said you can still hang out at the DZ. However, if all you do is sit in the bar waiting for your wife to be done jumping, the attraction of spending a day at the DZ will soon fade.
You might want to look into doing non-jumping jobs at the DZ (such as in manifest, or picking up people who land off) so you are not solely dependent on your wife for your interaction with the other skydivers.

Lastly, whatever you decide, you made a few jumps. If nothing else that will at least give you a deeper understanding of the stories she tells.

baronn

Apparently, The USPA's only job seems to be to make suggestions to it's members and then cave in to the demands of outside organizations from other countries. And all of this with 0 input from the members. Gee, good thing we have them. As long as the members, (both individual and group) keep paying dues, these elected elite are gonna do whatever they feel like. I hope a few board members besides Mike and Gary are lookin at this. I personally wude be ashamed if I had this many of whatever members I represented this dissatisfied with my performance. I can guarantee if this was a publicallly traded company, you'd be packin yer shit.

Well, it's not a commercial company, but they're elected representatives of the skydiving community, aren't they?

That means that the people on the board are looking out for the interest of the majority of voters.

Speaking more generally and not necessarily directed at Baronn:
Of course, if over 95% of the registered members can't be @rsed to vote (like often happens in the Netherlands) it's a different story.
Then again, people who don't vote, don't get to complain afterwards.

Besides, you can always decide to run for a position yourself.

skytribe

High pullers out first is acceptable. That's what CRW jumpers now do often. If its cloudy with multiple passes or incredibly strong winds then maybe let them out last but otherwise out first is really not a problem.

In my experience, when CReWdogs exit before the rest of the load they do so over the DZ or up to two miles downwind, while the freefallers exit well upwind.

In other words, there is a lot of distance (and time) between their exit point and that of the freefallers.

Gotta love the helmet setup of the TI.

Also, did Cruise do any kind of tracking after the tandem opened? I don't think the video doesn't show it, but I'm willing to give him te benefit of the doubt.

First, I forgot about the written test, which is also an A-licence requirement over here.

mbohu

Quote

FS-I jumps are defined as "learning to jump with other people" instead of simply being held on to.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I am pretty sure that the AFF jumps that would count as FS are not the ones where one or more instructors are holding on to the student, but the last few jumps, where the student flies on her own relative to the instructor and practices turns and forward/backward movements. That's really not that different from doing a 2-way with an experienced jumper.

Personally, I'd tell anyone who'd want to count any of their AFF-jumps as a formation jump for any licence to go jump some more and come back when they want to be taken seriously.

I'm not an AFF-instructor, but as I understand the jumps where the instructor does not hold on to the student anymore are spent learning skills the student needs in early their solo jumps.

Nor does the "delta track" as taught during AFF count as the "tracking"requirement.

Just for Shits and giggles I'm posting a rough translation of the Dutch A-licence requirements:

10 seconds delta
10 seconds tracking
Stable rear-facing exit
C&P
fix instability
turn left 360
turn right 360
Backloop
five FS-instruction jumps
five canopy control jumps
twenty-five freefall jumps
fifteen minutes freefall time
spotting
packing

Many of these are of course included in the AFF-program, but note that an AFF-jump would not count as an FS-I jump for the student. FS-I jumps are defined as "learning to jump with other people" instead of simply being held on to.


BTW, the indignant comment about the ideas of some uppity foreigners being incorporated by the USPA actually made me laugh.

Turbine baby...

SethInMI

***
It is both. Horizontal is always primary - but vertical separation can save your life if the horizontal separation is misjudged.

If you are coming down on top of me, I am not sure which is better, for one to be in freefall and one under canopy, or both under canopy which would lead to an entanglement or wrap.


Hmmm.. let's see. What would I prefer: An 80 kilo slab of meat hitting my canopy at 200 kph or the same slab of meat hitting me with 50 kph?

Just about the only advantage of wraps / entanglements is that they are relatively low speed, allowing for just a little more time to solve the issue and for communication between the jumpers.

SethInMI

IMHO the rules for horizontal exit separation have been written in blood. It is extremely important to maintain those rules for the safety of all jumpers, and if someone is incapable of doing so, he/she is putting any jumper in the previous group at risk, regardless of pull altitude.

If it actually is that important, the rule should be spelled out somewhere, if someone opens above XX altitude, you MUST give them YY additional delay. Just telling them what is going on is not enough.

Maybe not, but communication about what they're up to is a start. In fact, knowing what is going on in the rest of the load (or at the very least in the groups around you) is just as important as the exit order itself.

For instance: there were a lot of factors contributing to my first reserve ride, but being distracted moments before pull altitude by seeing open canopies in the distance at an altitude I wasn't expecting them certainly didn't help.

Crispy.

Another example of stellar exit separation here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJd6skENPcs

Three seconds of separation (and that's being generous).

What? Looks like 45 degrees to me.

IJskonijn

Plus, I see no reason. I can still hear fine enough under canopy with earplugs in.

Really.

Then tell me, how would you reply if I'd shout "Hey @$$hole" at you under canopy?

Well, that's your opinion.

I sometimes feel that too much time is invested in "cool optional gimmicks" and too little in functionality and user friendlyness. This forum may be basic, but at least it is relatively easy to use.
Going with your windows analogy, Win95 was easier to work with than Vista. Windows 7 was way better than Vista. Windows 8 sucks on any non-touch screen. Now we're afflicted with Windows 10 and the flashy moving start menu with all its revolving tile crap is driving me crazy.

Afifly2

Hi guys, we have recently developed a software called Afifly to manage your dropzone as you want. you can easily manage everything you need as manifest, accounting, members, display in your dropzone, and even more.

You also can adapt the software to your personal management of your DZ and we customize it with you as you please !


Find on the following link our test session : https://demo.afifly.fr/Src/

You can join us by email at [email protected]

Can you please develop some manifest software which enables us to manage our dropzone as we want and provide individual customer support? Providing us with some contact details would be a great step in the right direction.

chuckakers

By default, an RSL that becomes dislodged is not a properly connected and functioning RSL.

By default, a properly connected and functioning RSL is relatively easy to dislodge.

BIGUN

Quote

He found that before flying away, the spiders would lay down an anchor silk strand for safety. They would then reach one of their front legs into the air to evaluate how fast the wind was blowing, and from which direction. That’s the spider equivalent of licking your finger and sticking it in the air.

SOURCE: https://gizmodo.com/watch-tiny-crab-spiders-take-flight-with-10-foot-silk-p-1826809868

Sometimes you come across something that reminds you this world is awesome.

Especially when you are walking somewhere with a lot of trees around, cursing and spitting every few metres because you have yet another drifting strand of damn cobweb across your face.