VectorBoy

My apologies. You would be correct. They would need the requisite number of jumps to renew the coach rating but I would believe they could be wingsuit jumps, maybe???. Thanks for the clarification. V/R Buzz No it has already been asked here and clarified by someone in the know. WS instruction jumps do not count as coach currency because a WS candidate with 200-500 plus jumps is not considered a student skydiver. There would either have to be a change in this consideration or WS coaches would have to do some community service with real unlicensed skydivers. Something not every WSI has a passion for.

It is interesting that the USPA is entertaining requiring a coach rating for WS instructors even though it has been stated that any WS instruction jumps don't count towards being current in the coach rating. Would this not force WS coaches to also jump with unlicensed jumper s to fulfill currency for the coach rating?

Great post Jeb. It needed to be said. I'm of the opinion you are not under any obligation to be a positive spokesman for a segment of people that have been hating on you for the last ten years for basically for doing your own thing. Anything you do is so much more refreshing than anything produced by the entire cadre of factory backed wingsuit instructors who haven't produced squat Besides turmoil in the ranks and telling the rest of how fucked up we are. But they'll all tell you they are the cornerstone of the sport.

A lot of real good advice in these replies. Best advice is practice in the crosswind days to get a foundation and add gusty days later. But no I started my private in North Dakota we always had a cross wind. Practicing at short strips with wind breaks near the runway threshold you had to make huge adjustments through the gradient then line up on narrow runways. When I came out to Southern Cal I had more x wind confidence/ capability than most of my SoCal instructors. I was way behind on the communication side which I was not exposed to in North Dakota at the intensity we have at some of the busier areas. Practice your x wind with a good instructor. I think mine had a bob Hoover admiration complex and didnt mind placing a single main wheel on the ground and holding it for a 1000' and demonstrating at max published or a few knots above. Definately own it before transitioning to your multi. Or you could move to southern California were most of the wind is practically straight down the runways.

Its good as long as you kids keep it safe and don't violate any confidentiality agreements.

Tail strikes, door bashes and fuselage scrapes? What is the status on the number now? Have we reached the exponential strikes Vs time period = Q many strikes.......or Has the usefulness of this tactic by those willing to lie to the great majority of the membership lost its, well usefulness? Since the info on the first batch of strikes was so secret. Sorry sooooooo secret. don't violate any agreements responding. Just Pm

Years ago dean Vernon Wormer put the Deltas on double secret probation.... that seamed to work until they went on a road trip. I swear the topic of this tread has nothing to do with me I haven't been there in months.... I've been on a road trip.

I, for one, am sick and tired of seeing wingsuiters with big, stupid gopro-equipped booms all over their shit so they can video themselves.. Chuck Wrong answer Bobble-head videos are the best! IGM. Chicks dig it.

The advice I gave was to not have a WS cuttaway regardless of chute choice. That other stuff= not advice, not gospel and not a lie. Its just stuff. The thing you should remember also not yo puppet

I really dont get all the fringe talk when it comes to safety. You really seem to make it a trend to try and find stuff where you can advise against the common taught safety standards. But maybe I'm just not getting what you're trying to say. You can't talk to him like that, he isn't a phoenix puppet. You don't own the WS instructor/ examiner world yet. Maybe he is just trying answer the original question specifically directly.... which is partly based on a manufacturer statement. Check post #1, check, check. I don't have any WS students: I'll answer it for the original poster. The JFX is billed as an everyday X-brace. One you can do everyday work jumps with, Camera and even WS. It is not a VX or velocity. It opens better. I personally didn't believe and had to demo this. It opens very nice. I have multiple original FXs and its better than them. It opens even better with a wingsuit. It does everything better than the original. I've never had to chop a xbrace but a spinner is a wild ride and worse with a wingsuit. I want a JFX but not for wingsuits. Simon has a point. I had docile canopys that opened like shit rarely on heading and just didn't perform. To me they were dangerous with a wingsuit, I got rid of them and use a moderately loaded eliptical that opens nice and like its on rails the majority of the time. Basically it performs. I hear about my bad choice in WS canopy all the time from my WS friends, its a personal choice. Jarno is also right in general you want a docile lightly loaded forgiving canopy for WS. Nothing earth shattering, it has been taught and is in every WS manual from the very beginning. To me a chop is a chop practically everybody has had 1 or will. But a WS chop is a big deal. Its fuel for a fire pushing for better WS instruction certification. It is not as juicey as a tail strike but it gets mentioned here and there. Some thing we need to remember.

I have the N3A hooked up with $20 Moto-Com( USA) speakers. It plays music via an Ipod shuffle. Has a user created sound bite for ascending thru 1K, or a snippet of silence in my case. They are fairly loud under canopy without the pod being turned up to max. This would depend on your source MP3 I bet. I get a nice female voice reading off altitude in 1k increments ( bare in mind under the slow canopy descent.)then the 1500-1000-500 foot downwind, base and final announcements in that same voice. This is in a custom helmet used strictly for CRW video. I venture for free fall I might need in the ear bud type speakers or much more expensive headsets stripped down to the bare driver for use at 120 MPH sound levels to hear the alarms. The thing about all of the standard alarm audibles regardless of brand is that the alarm is thru a piercing peizo element that is very easy to hear at most surrounding sound levels. That can't be said of soundbites you program thru a system also designed to play music in the back ground. You will be doing a lot of testing of various drivers or possibly earbuds depending on what you want it to do.

I agree...your luck with disregarding safety has no relevance here. What does however is the fact you speak from that mind-set, and your opinion should be noted as such and considered accordingly. ...only point I was making. Completely agree ! My mind set and opinion are only from one individual and I only get one vote, hardly a movement. My posts have been regarded " as such" way before you got here Princess. This issue is way beyond a wingsuit " community" thang already. It has morphed into ratings for advanced disciplines. Lots more votes than just that tiny segment of jumpers. So mind your facts on scuba and snowboarding. Some of the non-wingsuiting fallers may call you on some made up stuff sweetness.

Hope ya don't get dead, and no offence but I don't dive with guys like you...SCUBA or SKY Hope I don't get dead before its the right time and no offence taken. The pleasure is all mine. But we should strive to keep discussions relevant to wingsuit training. Not climbing, driving, dancing, diving, drinking, sking, boarding, flying.

Stop comparing wingsuits and wingsuit training to other things that just don't apply. Snowboards, scuba and getting a PhD... really getting a PhD? Or aviation... unless you are going to enter the pattern and land your wingsuit.

There is no standard in scuba training. Domestically we have available five different training organizations ( that I know of) with different methodology. The basics are all the same. There is even an online scuba certification. I have gone cave and wreck diving without any ratings beyond open water and regularly shore solo dive with a bailout bottle....I have a lot of bottom time. Nobody is going to pull my card. There is no such thing as a governing body fighting for snowboards. The resort owners wanted to cash in on what the cool kids were doing in the few limited "board parks" and this greed opened up the whole mountain eventially. But yes I remember when boards and skurfers were universally banned here and Europe, where I lived at the time. Today my kids rent boards and go all over the mountain with zero training because of business retention not due to a best practices policy of a governing body.

The factory information either in the form of manuals or tips on the various factory websites is almost plagiarist in similarity. The same information in it's basic form is available in the SIM. The individual factory information differed in regards to rigging the suit and how to deal with instability. Exits, deployments were pretty much otherwise standard. The information was so simple that having 500 jumps negated the need for an instructor or coach to tag along on the First flight to verify. Just read the manual and go. This was pretty much universal across all makes. If you fell into the 200-500 jump experience range this required a coach/ mentor. Basically someone with wingsuit experience and XX number of WS jumps. Here is were the standard could fluctuate. But remember the info is so basic 500 jumps and reading the manual was sufficient. The strikes and bad video can be attributed to complacency or a reckless execution of an exit taught during AFF. At a big way camp Dan BC gave us a lecture on our biggest foe. Complacency! Things we know and typically know how to do well that we get lazy about because we've gotten away with a thousand to 20 thousands of times. Like lack of attention or allowing sloppyness into our procedures.

The fact that I support the proposal doesn't mean I'm willing to lie. So either I'm being played or just plain stupid? I don't know why you keep using my name or why you even feel it is important. I've not misrepresented my experience level, or anything else. I've expressed personal opinions same as you. On the fabrication note I don't believe he'd be that stupid. kevin I actually hold your integrity quite high ( so far) . I don't think you would lie about this document, I believe you when you say you read it. I use your name so people don't accuse me of making a false account to have this banter, your account profile is not filled out but you are a real person. But I know this if I would have been shown this document, as you say, a factory wingsuit instruction manual that states exiting in an open arms configuration I would be very suspicious of its origins. Like I said before I've owned every major brand of suit, none of the minors like mortis and Alien, read a lot of manuals. Well all of them. And like any hungry WS pilot most of the materials available on factory web pages yet I've never come across exit open methodology. I know you are not lying about what was shown to you and later the BOD. Furthermore I am not telling anyone what to believe in terms of what was fabricated or who is stupid or daring enough to prey on the stupid. I simply stated I'm not surprised.

Dunno, any chance you an Tardo can actually read pryor posts you are responding to and stay on topic?

It would be even easier to make false accusations regarding someone doing that...directly or by inference. Do you have proof of said fabrication, or can you cite solid reference to instances of past such falsification of materials presented to the BOD by this individual? Or are you merely slinging shit because of personality conflicts arising through difference of opinion? Inquiring minds want to know. Directly quoted from Kevin T's ( you know him as Gobble) reply to my post= "Spot showed me the document before the session started at the San Diego BOD meeting (and referenced it in that meeting). " So I can gather that this document was shown to 1 impressionable young Kevin and 2 the BOD at said meeting. Kevin/ Gobble is one of Spot's supporters so , I would believe, never as you say sling shit due to personal conflicts. I have no idea what materials or verbage was presented to any BOD meeting. it could have been the peanut butter jelly time song and dance for all I know. Of course if any of you produce a bonafide wingsuit manual that proves the claim of such an exit, as in open wing or delta, I will give you all an apology for overreaction due to my difference of opinoin.

Spot showed me the document before the session started at the San Diego BOD meeting (and referenced it in that meeting). I'm sure of what I read, but I might have the document wrong. It would be proposterous for any manufacturer to claim that as an ok exit technique. I've owned a suit from every big suit maker and don't recal ever seeing anything so crazy in print or online. Now it would be very easy to fabricate something along those lines and distribute it to the unknowing BOD, whom very few have extensive WS knowledge, and other impressionable young minds as some kind of false fact. Lets say Im not suprised.

Completely wrong Kevin. I'm holding the birdman classic manual from before the skyflyers came out and I took the course with jari and and Kim. The exit is exactly the same as what SPOT taught you. Although in his diagrams and pictures Douglas drops down 25 - 30 feet before opening. He has created nothing different just added to what was in place and removed the silly flat spin recovery foolishness and replaced it with instability procedures. If you have any manual from any suit maker that states exit open I would really love to see it.

Not that I can speak for JP but based on the time line I would wager a guess: 1 The inception of the birdman factory wingsuit instructor program were all of the great knowledge of wingsuiting came from and who had all of the authority to dictate everything wingsuit to others, even those not flying birdman brand suits. A template still being abused today just the same as it was then..... or 2 Wingsuiters training other skydivers to fly wingsiuts with no "USPA" instructing credentials, as in no coach or instructor ratings and lack luster skills....... or 3 A healthy combination of both above. Theses are just my guesses.

Yup! There is a some bad as hybrid wingsuit / tracking stuff happening along these lines that I've seen also. I'm sure those above could not grasp based on their personal short comings and lack of creativity... I like this video. Almost forgot heil safety Homos!

Reach arounds

I was under the impression that the rebel is the amalgamation of what would have been the X3 and appache 2, convertible for use with either a base rig worn harness internal or skydive rig worn harness external?