livendive

I've mostly been a frap hat guy and let all my ratings lapse for the last few years. I'm going to get a couple of them back to help out a couple of friends, starting with tandem. It seems like full face helmets have become pretty standard during my absence, and with the proliferation of handcams, I see why. Sooo... Which one is best for ease of use and communication with your student? Blues, Dave

Talk to your DZ, it sounds like they have a TDM ~~> AFF progression which likely has specific performance goals. In all honesty, even if the first tandem is designated as "working", not a lot of work actually gets done on them outside of settling some nerves and developing a much greater understanding of the process. It's possible that two more tandems could be sufficient to knock out the performance objectives for their transition to AFF, but the instructor will be key to that decision. For a more traditional AFF system, I agree with what Chuck said...while a tandem isn't specifically required, it definitely improves performance on your first AFF jump. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Looking for a neuro or ortho who could PM me to resolve some conflicting opinions I've received and help settle some unease related to life in general and jumping in particular. The questions are related to cervical fusion vs artificial disc replacement and single vs multi-level. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

As a weekend warrior with a desk job, I went through a phase a few years ago in which my tailbone was giving me trouble. I got a new chair at work with a cutout that lets the tailbone hang free and put myself at the front of the plane every load for a couple months so I could hang my tailbone off the front of the bench or bring a homemade "donut" made from foam pool noodles to keep that aluminum straddle bench from pressing on the bone and the problem was resolved. Shoulders and hips are the bigger wear items in my opinion. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Thanks, that thought occurred to me after I made this post. I have bifocal glasses, but usually just take them off to read things, as I haven't gotten the hang of looking through the bottom of them. That said, I realized if this thing is going to test me as if I was flying a plane instead of freefalling, I might as well dress like I'm going to fly a plane instead of freefalling. With my glasses on, I should be able to pass both near and far corrected, then I'll just wear contacts for jumping like normal (I have had to land a few times after losing a contact and it's not a big deal). Now about avoiding white coat syndrome on my BP... :-) Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Thanks, good to know, I was hoping that was the case. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Dude, it is not 1990 anymore ;-) That was kind of my point...even 1990 technology would be better than 4 weeks for a membership renewal. ;-) Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Currently a 4 week backlog to renew membership even without ratings? This should take 5 minutes tops. Someone should introduce them to computers, maybe even FoxPro, dBase, or even Access. My phone could do this it in a couple hours a day max. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Early in my tandem career I took a terminally ill student who had lost all but the tiniest of stumps on one side and had a very fragile leg on the other that would soon be amputated. This was before release of the sigma harness. I did a bit of jury rigging to feel comfortable that his stump couldn't pop out but overall it was pretty cheesy. If I had to do it over, I'd want a sigma harness with a papoose sack like addition below the belly/back bands. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I let all my ratings lapse last year and am thinking of renewing just the tandem rating (had all instructor ratings and ~1200 tandems). Based on the only excerpt of the IRM I can find, I'll need to go to a course and, take a written test, and make one jump. Does that sound right? My medical also expired last year and I have one concern, vision. My corrected (contacts) vision is fine for jumping, but uncorrected is borderline and near-vision is rough with contacts in. I have no safety concerns, as we rarely read maps or emergency procedures in the air, but rules are rules...any easy way around problems associated with "old guy eyes"? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I just treat male and female students identically, with one purely verbal exception...I tell guys that clearing their legstraps of anything sensitive to crushing forces is their responsibility, not mine. Beides, that, if it would be creepy for a student of one gender (or me), I don't do it with a student of either gender. Tandem jumping is an intimate activity, there's not getting around that, but it's no excuse to be a douchebag. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Yeah, that's a fun way to do things when you have all the ratings and a good student. It isn't without risks though, as it can be tempting to get a bit off script, and diligence is required to make sure no learning objectives are lost in the shuffle. Also, it works best when the student sticks with one instructor, or a set of similarly-minded instructors who can easily communicate with each other. Otherwise, it can be difficult for a subsequent instructor to pick up where his predecessors left off. The ISP helps a lot in this regard, by allowing some standardization of non-standard progressions. Without it, explaining such a "dynamic" series of jumps to a more rigid instructor when a student goes south to finish their training in the off-season is annoying. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I've taught pure IAD and pure AFF, and also tandem & iad progressions to single JM AFF. I'm cool with the concept of 1 working tandem > IAD thru PRCPs > AFF to solo status, and could easily be convinced to ditch the tandem jump and just go IAD > AFF (although I do believe there's some value in a *working* tandem). These progression methods are far and away my preferred method of instruction. That said, going back and forth between the programs is a bit fuzzier in the real world than it is on paper. If you have a student who has done a few IAD PRCPs and a couple single JM AFF jumps, at what point would you put him back in the IAD world? Clear and pull? 10 second delay? And what sense is there in program that says if we keep you in AFF, you must do three more jumps with an AFF instructor, but if we switch you to IAD, you can solo freefall right now? If we back them up a level to make them demonstrate progressively longer freefalls, we're just milking them for money and making the student process last longer than it should. For this reason, I haven't ever transitioned a student on AFF back to the IAD realm except to let them knock out their C&P on a low altitude day. Edit: I take that back. I have (rarely) had students in AFF phase do an IAD style jump, but not so much for "progression" purposes as to simply deal with a student-specific issue, e.g. canopy control sucking and weather not conducive to AFF, or freefall sucking (multiple failures) indicative of a good candidate for the "slower" progression of IAD or S/L style methods. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Just to state what I'm sure you already know, but every hundred feet you spending fighting a problem on your main main is a hundred feet you won't have to deal with any problems on your reserve. I've chopped a spinner at 10k, knowing I had zero chance of recovering it and some chance of reducing my capacity to respond later due to diminished faculties. When you know, you know. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

If I'd have waited for that - I'd STILL be waiting! What was the currency when you started, sticks? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)