VectorBoy

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Everything posted by VectorBoy

  1. once dropzones, small or big, start tagging the dicipline with the word 'dangerous' we enter a whole other downward spiral. Dropzones are not tagging us dangerous. Phoenix fly did that. Not the girl sewing suits but the BIG chief instructor. It's all in his report. You didn't get a copy?
  2. Recently -on another thread - posters were complaining that USPA had no teeth and DZOs were not grounding enough people for stupid stuff. Now the DZO of Snohomish grounds one group BEFORE they kill anyone, and a few people slander him. Silly! Hypocritical! I was one of those "other post" posters, not complaining mind you ,but stating simply that enforcement of the rules happens at the local level. Not that there is not enough groundings. I have to respect this DZOs reasons for not catering to specialized offset jump runs as a personal and local decision. Not hypocritical ! As long as the reason is sound and not based on fear mongering coming from the wingsuit community itself I have to give the guy a break. Are the local WS pilots happy about that, maybe not. Don't confuse the two.
  3. Dave like you I believe most USPA instruction is pretty good. Also like you my experience witnessing wingsuit instructors of the current status has been positive. It jives with your own personal comments to one of the board members in the instructors forum. Now unlike you I've been very vocal against one self proclaimed expert after another claiming we all need sweeping changes in the wingsuit instructor realm and that they are just the ticket to get us there. Now let's refer back to yours and mines experience with the status quo instructors. I've been at this long before our current self grandized experts have even been jumping. Nine years later and the proposed new better way is the same old. It is not dynamically different than what is in the SIM now. I'm sick of it. If they had a better mouse trap I'd listen. It's all secret. Smoke and mirrors. Do I think the USPA will do harm? No. Do I feel we need to be exposed to possible un needed complications. Oh hell no! Keep in mind my feelings are along the lines of your comments in terms of what should be a priority in the USPA resource allocation. You know canopy training issues,Airport access. The not low hanging fruit. Sadly if this does not pass I can see he who's name should not be spoken taking concerns straight to the FAA.
  4. I believe every factory manual says to stay closed up until past the tail. I can even find it in French. What more do you want meditation?
  5. Currently I Try to be very aware of aircraft speed. Mostly because of the canopy I fly but when I do fly wingsuits I need to judge this for any outside exits. Steves jump run was reported to be exceptionally fast by close mutual friends who exited in his 4 way group. As for these photos being used to prove bad and unstable exits happen Ok. They also show plenty of clearance from the tail. I've personally been closer on a tracking jump from the camera step. If these shots were out of a Pac or caravan, granted they would have more hysteria potential
  6. I remember when some people said you could not BASE jump a Tony suit. Ha ha.
  7. That looks like a twin otter, Yes? Other than exiting not fully closed and in one case unstable neither of those guys are in danger of stricking anything unless jump run was faster than usual. So your point is??? Unstable exits? You want to ban go-pros? Ban geeks? Throw me a bone.
  8. Come and present this to the USPA then... if you are a full time USPA member that is. If you are not stick to your own governing body issues please. Just because Robi's lap dog is manufacturing scare tactics doesn't mean everybody should. This won't effect Robi he does not jump here, so why should he care?
  9. The truth is, nothing bad will come of more structure and very strict rules on how FFCs should be taught. The sky wont come falling down, and the world will not end. But any student making a first wingsuit skydive WILL get the same quality instruction, regardless of where he goes. And not be get the 5 minute version,. Are you kidding me ?!? There is nothing to ensure that a tandem or an AFF student gets a particular level of quality in instruction and these are regulated. The USPA is powerless unless something grossly tragic happens. I've seen some pretty shoddy AFF videos and tandem epic fails are practically viral. Buddy those bad AFF instructors are still flying. In the mean time the USPA has to figure who can instruct WS and who can test the instructors ability to instruct WS. What happens in the mean time while we wait for this to be sorted out? Again WHY? The people that were united behind this that are now bowing out of the proposal maybe now see the true agenda. Maybe the false credibility of "buying" into Factory chief instructor status via a huge fleet of factory demo suits instead of ability. The reasons swoop ponds are closing have nothing to do with the USPA, It is a local decision. USPA wingsuit instructors won't have an effect on whether a DZ wants to ban wingsuits or not it will be as it always has a local event. Meanwhile a wingsuit instructor examiner is gearing up to travel and clean up in the mobil WS instructor examiner arena...... no thanks.
  10. Its just a shame that with no governing body enforcing the suggestions, Its those exact stunts that (both in media and on DZs) keep us in the spotlight as a bunch of lunatics, instead of structured and well trained professionals at what we do. We are not standing here facing a non -needed instructor issue because of a bunch of lunatics. lets face the fact that it is predominately a 1 man audio- visual barrage presented to the USPA of suspect facts and a very broken root cause analysis of actual incidents.... Yes I admit there are incidents but they are all far from being directly training related. Some are just bad luck and some are just assholes being assholes, as you say. And its still the S&TAs job to deal with those whether its a USPA rule or not! Some of the guys here choose to be part of the solution. Their the ones that have the most to loose. Or you could stick your head in the sand and claim soon the USPA will fix everything wrong about wingsuiting and the problem will be out of our hands. Sounds like socialism to me.
  11. In the case of USPA regulation ( possible/ probable?) there won't be " Wingsuit monitors" on the DZ. The burden of monitoring and enforcement of the current recommendations or new rules will still fall on the DZ staff, S&TA & DZM at the local level. Besides policing ourselves, we can help the staff be more educated in regards to wingsuits. Don't feed the hysteria currently being used as a propaganda machine for personal agenda.
  12. Believe me brother I feel you. Ironically wingsuits is my discipline I have chosen one reason being I can get rid of airplanes and regulation and fly in the mountains alone away from this type of control/manipulatin. You are fooling yourself. There isn't a real base jumper that does not test new wingsuits or other gear out of planes before they take it to the mountains. You can't realistically " run to the hills". BASE pouch deployments are banned at the winsuit intructor creator's home dropzone. Something to think about if you want to work on muscle memory before a trip to a big wall.
  13. I'm fairly sure it has come up because certain individual(s) is/are making a lot of noise about it. And I suspect (t)he(y) has/have a financial interest in the outcome. The USPA is doing this the right way. The wingsuit sub- committee doesn't have enough first hand knowledge of wingsuiting and they need our help. Sadly most skydivers/ specifically wingsuiters will not respond to the questionaire. Most don't know it is out there or even of the sub-committees existance. They have fun jumping and are not political enough to care about the BOD's activities representing...... them. Some won't care one way or the other regardless. I urge you guys that care to get all the wingsuiters you know to get involved in this one issue and respond. Don't let an ultra small segment of our discipline try and represent us all. Don't let ,basically, one individual tarnish the view of wingsuiting from the BOD's perspective with scare tactics.
  14. It is "the best suit". Very easy to get a lot of performance. There are bigger floatyer, maybe a little faster suits but you will work to get that performance. The S-bird does what you want. It has won many competitions, even over bigger suits. Not super demanding to fly. Everybody that went from a Phantom or Ghost to an Apache or X-bird that didn't stop and fly the S-bird first for a while will have a steeper learning curve. You want to do XRW? Stop here for a few.
  15. VectorBoy

    Dragonfly

    The dragonfly, Q-200, Q-2 are off shoots of a plans built aircraft 2 guys had Burt Rutan design for them called the quickie, which was a single place Onan 2 cylinder powered single place. The two gents went on to design a VW powered two place Q2 and continental 200 version, you guessed it, Q200. Somebody completely different came out with their own VW version and called it the dragonfly. They were based in Eloy, if I remember correctly, or it was just the engine converter HAPI. That was all during the early 80's. The outboard wheel design amplified taildragger issues and some inboard tail dragger and tricycle gear units exist. It just was not very popular for lots of reasons. They made great go-carts and were fun to taxi but x-wind takoffs and landings spin outs scarred some pilots. Burt Rutan only designed the Quikie based on his design for the AMSOIL racer. He was not involved in any of the others. There is ( was) a domestic message quikie club news group someplace and an annual fly-in here in the states. looks like somebody is just repackaging the plans in SA.
  16. Everything you say is correct and should be taken literally in regards to tandem and AFF instructors. Not sub disciplines. Next people will want me to have a horny Gorilla instructor. You know we just can't keep that thing flying for very long. I might forget my leg straps. And the young lady I have my legs locked on to with the low top might distract me enough that I might need a Gorilla instructor's reminder to pull.
  17. I'm also totally for outstanding fully comprehensive first flight course materials that are complete, easy to follow and available to all instructors and WS applicants...... put it in the SIM. If you have developed something new, revolutionary in terms of first flight safety by all means share it NOW! Otherwise the whole " path littered with bodies" argument does not fly. I've lost life long friends to skydiving. It hurts deep. But we get up back in it. In my case because I hate golf and bowling and am not rich enough to race cars. Im not affiliated with anything in wingsuiting. I pay to play just like most everybody else. My position is based on personal experience. Jari and Kim G performed my training ( ground) I went on to give back to others. Despite not being a full time skydiver or having a bird room full of suits it worked out very well. Nobody's head exploded. Yes I'm aware of the swoop pond going extinct. We also just recently watched someone getting HP canopy training from one of the very best canopy instructors pull a low turn and femur right in front of the instructor who was powerless to save the student once the low turn was initiated. That is just like it is in wingsuiting. The individual is responsible 100% for the outcome. Seek thy knowledge well but it is up to you.
  18. Come on Dave you and I both know, me without being there, that those track instructors are outstanding in every apex of that track..... not mediocre. You also know not every skydiving school out there is happy with some of the changes the USPA has made to the allowable methods of instruction over the years. Smaller dropzones complained they lost some of the tools available to them. The purveyors of this WSI don't want a carbon copy of existing practices. The ultimate agenda will be a multi- level , multi jump course similar to AFF, whether its been revealed yet not sure.
  19. In my 12 years of wingsuiting there is nothing more comedic than the current requestors and purveyors of mandatory USPA level WS instruction. The first bunch I liked. Admirable guys. Agenda driven but likable. And skilled enough. We disagreed but I still liked them. The new purveyors of standardized WS instructor rating absolute joke. Skills sketchy at best.
  20. You don't have to be able to set the world on fire to conduct a first flight course, you just have to be able to conduct the course. Nothing more, nothing less. Well Hero ! You are just proving my point Welcome to a 9 year old arguement. I have conducted the course ,as you say, perfectly many times over, many hundred times over. Yet under scrutiny from a group of johny come latelys that have some how revolutionized the process ( they claim) ( I can't refute they have offered no examples of their new and improved process). Yet I claim They are mediocre in their basic skills.
  21. So you want a mediocre, at best wingsuit pilot, representing your best interest in regards to wingsuiting to the BOD or as your WS instructor? If you DO and you MIGHT I'M done with any thing you have to say in this regard. If you you even pretend to crawl before me and tell me what I need as wingsuiter you better be good. REAL good not Mediocre with a good ability to teach. I'm flying along in a deadly wingsuit. speeds measured in MACH!!!!!! You better be a SHIT hot instructor. Like F-22 skipper Worthy. NOT some ass weasel that can put together a good business plan or a syllabus.
  22. Phree could have done your training, should have, if you are interested....... that could have been a long time ago. If you are complaining that there are not enough instructors in your area has no bearing on mentors or full sail USPA signed off instructors. You are normally better at this.
  23. Another thing most people are not aware of is that most of the people that go before our BOD in this regard ( better instruction), one way or another, ( in the usa) are pretty much at best mediocre pilots themselves. I absolutely guarantee they have not pushed the envelope in terms what is a capable. In proximity to earth , aircraft or canopy. Not a one of them has flown a rock solid slot on any boring static flock formation. At least not one I've been on with them. They have not flight tested a factory new design to see if it is even fly able or survivable. If you were going to address my governing body I would like to see this on the resume. Those that CAN = DO, those that Can't = Teach If you tell me you've got an incredible wingsuit SYLLABUS great. Your skills better back that up.
  24. Dave most of us don't have an issue with a paid instructor factory or otherwise. There are plenty full time wingsuit instructors that I ( we all should ) support. They provide quality training no doubt in my mind. My only issue is that there are more than plenty more than capable wingsuit mentors that have been doing a good job out there ( charging or not i could not tell you ) getting thrown under the bus as bad for business with no proof. As far as I know there is only one fatality on a wingsuit first flight. No instructor just plain solo. Most of the hype against bad instruction are complaints about factory guys ( who probably charge anyway) All of the big suits to soon for the jumpers experience level has been used as a reason for better instruction. Guess what The instructor is for the first flight on a training applicable suit. When said jumper decides to super size ( Down size canopy equivalent) into a big suit the instructor ( no matter how articulate or USPAified is out of the equation. And this data is being used as justification for more better instruction at the first flight level. In the case of an actual incedent That first flight happened a long time ago. It is like blaming your AFF instructor for taking you from a PD 210 to a spectre 190 during your AFF progression as the reason why you ate dirt on a x-fire 120 at 143 jumps. Canopy progression past AFF is largely past the oversite of our AFF instructors. Yet it is this very theorium that is being used to bombard our USPA with reasons which they must adopt some kind of program akin to a first level AFF instruction for wingsuits. It just does not pass the reasonableness test.